I frowned. “Those were extenuating circumstances!”
“You were seventeen!” she exclaimed. Her frustrated, wide-eyed look had always been one of my favorites.
“How about we stop with the personal attacks, all right?”
She smacked a palm against her forehead as she continued, “You don’t even eat with plastic silverware.”
“That’s because it’s cheap and adds to landfills.”
“You’re living on a landfill.”
“What?”
She grinned, any traces of melancholy long gone. “You better believe it. This wonderful trailerhood, where you’ve purchased a home, is built on one of the finest, dirtiest landfills.”
“Doesn’t bother me.” That was a lie. It bothered me. There were probably dead bodies in that landfill.
“Why do you want to stay so bad?”
My cheek twitched while I tried to think of a reply. “Call it morbid curiosity to find out more about you, Wren, and this charming little trailer park.”
Riley snorted then began drumming her fingers against the tabletop.
I rested my hand on top of hers again, this time to stop the incessant tapping.
“Fine,” she said as she tilted her chin up. “If you want to learn how the other side lives, I’ll be glad to show you the neighborhood. But you have to promise to only do what I tell you to. They don’t like outsiders. Deal?”
She extended her hand, and I slowly reached forward to shake it.
“Deal.”
The gleam in her eye didn’t bode well for me.
Chapter FiveRiley
Nate was confusing me.
Having him near... It was different than high school. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and neither was I.
He was upset I’d walked away. Yet he kept my secret, even without knowing the entire truth. He hadn’t told Nola yet, even though he was close with her.
I’d never been at home in the Mercier’s world. Sebastian and June Mercier, Nate’s parents, were as kind as two people could be, and I had nearly lived with them all summer long.
But I’d been born and raised in a trailer park. Even though Sharon and Rob had provided a safe home for me during middle school and high school in the foster group home, they couldn’t help me when I phased out of the system. I had to rely on myself.
When the court gave me custody of my little sister, that had been up to me.
Staying in the trailer park might seem crazy to Nate, but it was a world that I understood and could navigate.
No matter that, Wren and I were doing fine here. Not to mention, if Frank, Wren’s biological dad, saw us living in a fancy apartment or a cottage in a nicer part of town, he would probably want to be roommates.
Bless that man’s nonexistent heart, he could sniff out a penny across a continent. Frank didn’t like to work for a living. He liked to “find” money in unique, absurd, and often embarrassing ways.
I’d once seen him empty the ketchup container in a restaurant so that he wouldn’t have to buy ketchup at the grocery store.
He routinely stopped by the park to say hi to Wren and grab anything he could take. We did our best to keep him out of the trailer. We never knew what would go missing when he showed up. His birthday present to Wren was a purse his ex-girlfriend had thrown away.
The rest of the trailer park had been exposed to him, too, but everyone tolerated him for our sakes. I could barely stand the man, but he was Wren’s father, and he made an effort to say hello to her and check up on her every once in a while.
Even though I was Wren’s legal guardian, I knew how much having a parent take an interest in your life could change things.
I would have been hard-pressed to find anywhere where we would fit in as well as we did in the Burnside trailer park. It was what I knew. The trailer park neighbors had helped take care of us, providing a support system I was familiar with.
I’d rather Nate went back to his life—quietly. Leave us alone in our comfortable existence.
Unfortunately, Nate wasn’t one to handle anything quietly, which was why it concerned me that he was here.
He’d made a big enough splash in the trailer park when he’d paid Larry and Patty a large sum of money for a run-down single-wide. Wren had heard about the entire story within the five minutes she’d been home that night. Sam and Elise were happy to share their side of the story. Their side of the story involved a view through binocular lenses.
I wasn’t about to admit to trying to physically throw him out of his house. But really, I had been trying to save him from himself.
Only an idiot would pay them ten-thousand dollars cash for that trashy trailer. Didn’t he know he could have paid a fifth for that? But no, he had to come in, throwing money around, acting as though he were God’s gift to the world and was here to save me—even if it was from myself.
Well, I didn’t need a hero. I was the hero in my story. It was the way it had to be. Heroes were for fairy tales.
Getting rid of him wouldn’t be easy. It would have to be his own idea. He didn’t like to be told what to do.
What I needed to do was give him the welcome he so richly deserved.
I would be his sensei. His mentor. His yogi. I would guide him and direct him in all things trailer park related.
In other words, I was going to haze him.
I walked outside and marched across the street. The best time to start a project was right now. I was a firm believer in the philosophy of Don’t put off for tomorrow what you could do today.
Welcome to Trailerhood Initiation, Nate.
I leapt up the wooden steps and knocked loudly on the door to Nate’s single-wide.
The door opened a crack, and I saw a messy,
