All You Never Wanted Read Free Page A

looked over, causing me an immediate shame-flash that my lips were bright with Rouge Coco plumping lip color, and that I’d done some Gia the Mannequin Goddess poses in my bathroom mirror right before he got here.
    “What’s up, Thea? You look a million miles away.”
    “Oh, just thinking.” I snapped my fingers. “I’m back.”
    What did that mean? With the snap? Ugh. I was an idiot around Joshua. I paid him too much attention. I was too hurtwhen he saw me as the tagalong kid sister. I wanted him to see my Gia self. And mostly I felt like a girl made from glass. A girl who would shatter from the breath of his rejection.
    But my Lord, if you had to wish for anything, wish for Joshua Gunner. Five foot nine by his own word and five seven by mine. Not a big guy but a man to the core. With homegrown delicious forearms and wide-set animal-green eyes that stared off-kilter and right through you. I’ve hashed out Joshua’s flaws a hundred times: his shortish legs, his longish nose, and anyone could see he thought too hard about his haircut. But he had something, Joshua did. Like a kind of defiant joy in himself. Like a guy who was waiting—a touch irritably—for everyone to give him a prize, to kiss the ring.
    “Maybe she just misses her mommy.” Half whispered, half sarcastic.
    “Not likely.” Although … I hadn’t seen Mom since last week. She was always gone. Skiing and golfing and shopping and soireeing. Doing everything that Arthur did.
    “Where’re your folks again?” he asked, as he inhaled another mouthful of whatever chicken-plus-sauce item Lulette had made for dinner. I never ate that stuff. I lived on Multi-Bran Chex, yogurt and salads—more like a resignation to diet food than because I was dieting. Not that I was morbidly obese or anything. But I guess I was hanging on to the hope that one day I might accidentally whittle down to my inner toothpick.
    “Los Angeles. Business trip, Arthur. Arm candy, Mom.”
    “When they get back?”
    “Sunday. Hopefully with that pair of boots from Fred Segal that I’m coveting.”
    Those eyes, oh God. They sandbagged me, they really did. “You still thinking about throwing a party here Saturday?”
    “Well, durr.” I nodded. “It’s an opportunity. Nobody’s around.”
    “Told your sister?”
    “Not yet. But it might be the cure for what ails her, y’know?”
    “Sure. Buncha drunk juniors going wild, breaking the furniture.”
    “Seniors, too. No drunks, no breakage. I know how to host a decent party, Joshua.” Even if I’d never done it before, I was pretty confident that this was true.
    “Yeah? ’Cause the thing is, that might be a help to me.” He rinsed his empty plate and set it in the dishwasher.
    There was a blade sunk in this moment now. Joshua had as good as told me what I already knew. That if I had a party, he’d want to use it to deal. Josh’s business was strictly lo-fi, dime bags to schoolkids. It’s not like he’d ever get to park his private jet in the backyard off his profits. But everyone knew Joshua didn’t pay his junior college tuition on a Ten Pin Alley paycheck. Especially since it was going under, or so I’d heard.
    And now we were staring at each other. Sizing up the risk and trust factors.
    “So maybe you talk to Alex.” I tiptoed carefully through the moment. “For both of us. She’s in charge while Mom and Arthur are gone. She’ll listen to you.”
    “Then. What I’ll need to tell her,” answered Joshua, equally deliberate on his end, “is that you’ll be inviting only the right crowd. Kids who don’t puke in the hallway or fall out windows.”
    Aha. Funny guy. That was an oblique reference to my ex, Austin “Kezzy” Vasquez, who got so shit-canned at a lax party lastyear he fell off a roof, and (for unrelated reasons) has since moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. Kezzy was a prankster, and I could tell by his Facebook that he was now bringing his special brand of Kez-razy to Sinagua High School. Honestly,