“Call me Kwang-seon if you want, but don’t be surprised if I don’t answer. You want a beer or something?” I shrug in response to his question and Chasm saunters off, dressed in dark jeans and a red zip-up hoodie over a white t-shirt. He’s undeniably gorgeous, that much is a fact, even if he seems to be nice to everyone but me.
“So, what did you mean about offering to tutor me?” I ask when he comes back and hands a beer out to me. His fingers burn mine when we touch, but he doesn’t seem to notice, so I pretend that I don’t either.
“You blew your chance at that this morning,” he tells me, chugging his drink as I roll the bottle between my suddenly sweaty palms.
“I’m sorry I said that,” I reply, and he stops mid-drink to stare at me like I’ve grown horns. “I’m not usually like that. It’s just something about Parrish that infuriates me.” Chasm looks briefly pleased and then supremely irritated again, all in the span of a single breath. “You and I don’t have to butt heads all the time, you know?”
“Maybe if you’re real nice to me tonight, I’ll change my mind?” he purrs, giving me another look, one that’s dark and heavy with innuendo. I don’t pay it much notice; Chasm McKenna looks at a lot of girls like that. Even still, I can’t help the hot flush that takes over my face and boobs. Luckily, he can only see one of those things.
“McKenna is an interesting last name,” I posit instead, trying to change the subject before I give myself away. “Irish?”
“My dad is white as fuck,” he tells me, removing a small tube from his back pocket. He pops the top and a pre-rolled joint slides out. “Irish, sure, I guess. My mom was his superior at their company’s South Korean branch.” I scoot a bit closer to Chasm to listen and he frowns at me.
“What? I’m always game for a good love story.”
“Love story? Whoever said this was a love story? My mom got fired for dating my dad, wound up pregnant and living with my grandmother, and then died from preeclampsia. Does that sound like a love story to you?”
I just stare back at him, too surprised to formulate a response for a moment.
“Preeclampsia … that’s related to pregnancy, right?” I ask, and Chasm nods.
“I was gonna ask you about your family history, but then I remembered you don’t know any of it.”
A frown pulls my lips down.
“Was that necessary?” I query back, my mind drifting to Tess and her sketchy behavior when I asked about my birth father. Chasm is being a dick right now, but he isn’t wrong about what he’s saying. I know precisely zero about one half of my lineage. As for the other half, I know only that Tess’ parents are both dead and that she doesn’t have any other family outside of the Vanguards. That’s about it. “If you don’t want to talk about your past or your mother, that’s okay, but don’t be a dick to me just because you’re hurting.”
This time, when I go to leave, Chasm grabs my wrist.
“Stay. I’ll chill out a little when I smoke this,” he tells me, and I settle back in, watching him a bit warily from the corner of my eye. He lights the joint, takes a drag and then offers it out to me, but I decline. “Oh, that’s right? You’re a good girl; you don’t smoke.”
“But I can bake pot brownies like a boss,” I reply smugly, and Chasm tosses over a skeptical look. “It’s true. The secret is in the butter.” Weirdly enough, it was Saffron who taught me to make the brownies for my grandmother’s arthritis. I redirect my attention back to the beer in my hands. It seems easier somehow than trying to maintain eye contact with Chasm. “I might not know a lot about my biological family, but I could tell you all about the Banks. I could tell you how my great-grandmother used to do my hair every morning before school, that she collected hotel soaps and shampoos and kept them in a big basket in her bathroom.” I look back up to see Chasm’s pretty face softening in my direction. Oh my god, be still my fucking heart! He’s so goddamn stunning, it isn’t fair. The universe must hate me. “Or I could tell you that my grandparents met in front of a waterfall during a hike, that they got married a week later, and that they’ve been married for forty years. History isn’t just about DNA; it’s about people, experiences, and memories.”
“You’re a wise one, Little Sister,” he admits, almost grudgingly. I watch his full mouth curve around the joint as he takes a drag and then lets the smoke billow from his nostrils.
