I whip my head back to Aidan. Thayer is going to have to work much, much harder than that.
“So,” I say to Aidan, sidling closer to him. “Has anyone ever told you that you have amazing calf muscles?”
Aidan turns pink. “Oh, well, we run a lot in practice, I guess.”
After Thayer’s magnetic confidence, Aidan’s nervousness feels like a letdown. I wonder what I ever saw in him. But I smile and purr, “Oh, I can tell.”
Encouraged by my response, Aidan launches into a lecture about the various weight exercises he does to enhance his calves. I sneak another glance at Thayer, and my heart picks up speed. He’s pushing through the crowd, heading right to me. Laurel has been left behind at the fence, and she looks bereft and slightly lost. I feel a slight regretful twinge—even though Laurel drives me crazy, she’s still my sister. But what I feel for Thayer is totally different than what I’ve felt for anyone else. All’s fair in love and war, right?
I step closer to Aidan, touching his forearm lightly. “Want to dance?”
He grins broadly. “Sure.” He takes my hand and leads me back into the house. He steps through the threshold toward the humid, crowded air of the kitchen, and I turn, offering one last look over my shoulder at Thayer. His mouth is set in a thin, tight line, and his forehead is creased in frustration.
That’s how I know my plan is working.
11
YOU CAN DANCE IF YOU WANT TO
The basement-level rec room of the Banerjee house has been transformed into a makeshift dance floor. The space is huge and finished in smooth, cream-colored stucco and adobe tiling, with moody, striking desert-scape photography adorning the walls. The plush sectional sofas have been pushed aside to make room for the crush of bodies. Tea lights flicker down here, too, casting wavering shadows along the walls.
Someone has queued an eighties dance playlist, and the room is frenzied, smelling of a sweaty mix of summery, floral perfumes. It’s actually slightly suffocating, and I’d rather be outside again in the cool, fresh night air, but dancing with Aidan is the best way to fast-track my plan. I glance around me as I lead Aidan onto the dance floor. Thayer hasn’t come inside. Once again, I’m tense. Did he decide I wasn’t worth it?
Aidan and I sway to some classic Madonna—Aidan doing more of a dorky knee-dip/head-bob thing—and I try to lose myself in the music, closing my eyes and feeling the rhythm. But my mind is scattered in a million different directions. What is Thayer doing right now? Has he gone back to Laurel? I move closer to Aidan, resting a hand on his hip flirtatiously and drawing his face in toward mine. Aidan grins and wraps his arms around my shoulders in response, resting his clasped hands lightly on the back of my neck. We turn and twirl, navigating the crowded floor as people actually step aside for us. Until there’s a tap at Aidan’s shoulder and we pause, mid-step.
I look up, and my heart soars. Two searing beautiful hazel eyes search mine.
“Mind if I cut in?” Thayer asks, his look implying that no is not an option. The question is for me, not for Aidan, and I can’t bring myself to decline.
Aidan puffs out his chest just like a male bird during mating season. But something in Thayer’s face makes him back down. “Okay,” he says reluctantly. He looks at me. “Another beer?”
“Thanks, Aidan.” I offer him a sweet smile to smooth the moment over.
Thayer moves toward me, and when he touches my hip, anticipation ripples down my spine. The music switches from upbeat to a slow, languid ballad. We exchange a glance, barely hesitating before melting into each other.
Suddenly, everything feels utterly right. He does like me. I can feel it in his fast heartbeat, his shallow breathing, his sigh. I inhale deeply, taking in Thayer’s clean scent. He places one hand on the small of my back, and my skin tingles. I rest my fingers on his shoulders, tracing patterns against the strong, firm muscles of his back. We pull away for a moment and stare at each other, both with small smiles on our faces. We don’t speak. There is no need to speak.
Thayer leans in to whisper in my ear. “Let’s get out of here,” he says softly. His lips against my cheek make me shiver.
I nod slowly. “Okay.”
He takes my hand and winds me through the crush of people again, upstairs and out the front door.
There isn’t anyone else in the front yard, and we crunch through the gravel until we’re out of the porch lights. A slight breeze blows the spiny branches of a mesquite tree, and stars glitter a psychedelic pattern against an obsidian backdrop. Halfway across the yard, Thayer turns to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. There’s a heartbreakingly gorgeous smile on his face, and suddenly, I feel silly for the games I’ve played.
“Thayer, I’m sorry,” I start.
“Shh,” he says. He puts his finger to his lips, then moves forward to kiss me. Softly, at first, and then with more urgency. I fold into him, wrapping my hands around his waist and pulling him toward me tightly. His hands slide down my back as I rake my fingers through his messy waves.
His lips trace my earlobe, my jaw, my neck. I moan, arching back and clutching him tighter. I’ve kissed other guys before, but nothing compares to this.
We don’t speak, just kiss and touch and breathe each other in. We’re completely intertwined, like we’re the only two people who exist in the universe. In fact, it’s almost like we’re one person, we’re so completely and utterly in tune with each other. I never want to separate.
Until I hear a rustle from the hedges. And then a wicked cackle. I shoot away. That’s Madeline’s laugh.
But before I can say anything, before I can stop them, Charlotte and Madeline are jumping out of the bushes, camera phones in hands, triumphant looks on their faces. “Gotcha, Thayer!” they scream as the flashes go off.
12
SURPRISE, SURPRISE
Thayer and I blink in the flashes of light. “Gotcha!” Char crows again.
“You are so busted, Thayer!” Madeline squeals.
Thayer makes an annoyed face. “What the hell, guys?”
“Say cheese!” Madeline trills, taking another picture. Then she turns to Charlotte and slaps her high five. “Another Lying Game success!”
Thayer squints. “Lying Game?” He says it like he’s never heard of it before. But I know he has. I’m sure Laurel’s told him about it, if he didn’t already know from school. I feel paralyzed. I want to somehow put on the brakes, make this all stop, but the words won’t come out of my mouth. Everything is happening too fast.
Madeline straightens and whirls toward me, her blue eyes shining like gemstones. “Sorry we interrupted before you had a chance to invite him to the picnic, Sutton,” she says. “But when we saw you guys dancing, we knew you were going to seal the deal tonight. We just couldn’t hold back.”
Thayer looks at me. “Seal the deal? What are they talking about?”
Madeline puts her hand on her hip. “What do you think we’re talking about, Thayer?”
Charlotte guffaws. “You don’t think Sutton would actually go for you, do you?”
Dark realization dawns on Thayer’s chiseled features. He stares at me, his eyes wide. “Sutton?” he asks. “What the hell is going on?”
“I …” It comes out of me like a burp. Just say it, I tell myself. Just tell your friends that you really wanted to kiss him. But my mouth can’t form the words. The moment I say it, my friends will lose all respect for me. What was I thinking, dancing with Thayer for real, for keeps, in front of everyone? How could I have thought they’d just accept this? And it’s all my fault. If I’d have fought harder to stop the prank, this wouldn’t have happened. Even if I’d had to pull back from Thayer, pretend I didn’t like him, at least it would be better than this.
Charlotte gasps. “Oh my God. He really fell for it! He actually thought she liked him!”
“This is better than we imagined,” Madeline says. “You really thought you were so hot that the most popular girl in school would want to go out with you?”
A wave of nausea ripples through me. No, I want to say. Of course not. But then my stomach lurches. I know what I have to do. I have no choice.
I thrust my hands into my pockets and work to keep my voice steady. “It was a prank, Thayer,” I hiss, mustering up every bit of scorn I possibly can. “You needed to be knocked down a few pegs. You can thank us later.”
Thayer’s brows knit together. He balls his hands into fists. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”
“Nope!” Charlotte crows gleefully.
He staggers backward, almost barreling into a cactus. “So, everything we talked about? That moment we had at your house? Those texts? None of it was true?”
I can’t even look at him. “No.”
Thayer shakes his head slowly. “God, Sutton. You’re an even bigger bitch than everyone says.”
I feel dizzy, the air rushing from my lungs. I know what people say about me, of course. I know what they think. It’s just, I don’t care about their opinions.
Only Thayer’s.
“It’s okay, Baby Bro,” Madeline singsongs. “We can find you someone more your speed. Maybe a middle schooler?”
But Thayer barely hears her. He’s still staring at me. “That would be better than getting involved with you,” Thayer says, his voice thick with disgust. “Have you ever been honest a day in your life?”
Inside, I reel, but my expression is totally controlled. “With guys I like, Thayer. Not with you.”
Thayer’s face contorts into an ugly grimace, and he whirls around, kicking clouds of dust up from the gravel of the Banerjee front drive as he runs into the middle of the street.
A lump forms in my chest. I want to follow him. I want to fix this. But with my friends standing here, watching me, I can’t.
Charlotte cackles, doubling over. “Oh my God, Mads, I think he’s actually crying.”
Still giggling, Madeline straightens up and claps me on the shoulder. “That. Was. Amazing. Good work, Sutton.”
“Uh-huh,” I say woodenly.
“I can’t wait to send that picture around,” Charlotte exclaims.
“We knew you could bag him,” Madeline says.
And then my best friends link arms with me, one on either side, and lead me back to the party. Not that I’m in the mood for it anymore. Right now, there’s only one thought running through my mind:
What did I just do?
13
REGRETS ONLY
“Sutton, can you please stop bogarting the Twizzlers?”
“What? Oh, sure. Sorry.” I idly pass the giant bag of strawberry licorice across the couch to Charlotte. It’s later that same night, and we’re back in Madeline’s family room. We stayed at the party for a while after the “prank” was exposed, and I went through the motions as best as I could, but I can’t get Thayer—and that devastated look on his face—out of my mind. I didn’t see him again at the party, not that I would have known what to do or to say to him if I had. There’s part of me that doesn’t want to be here at all. I’d rather be home, snuggled up with Scooby-Doo, thinking about how it felt to kiss Thayer—and how I could fix everything that happened tonight.
Thayer must have come home earlier than we did, and we haven’t heard a peep from his room since we got here. Still, traces of him permeate the Vegas’ media room: a battered copy of Spin sitting on the sleek, mid-century modern coffee table, a row of slightly tarnished soccer trophies locked in a tall glass cabinet, a key chain tossed in a decorative bowl with the Hollier High logo. Thayer is all around me.
Too bad he wants nothing to do with me now.
Then Madeline shoots up. “Charlotte, be careful with the Diet Coke! If you spill on the leather sofa, my dad is going to kill me.” Something in her tone suggests that it’s not an exaggeration.
“God, sorry.” Charlotte sets her glass on a coaster on the coffee table. “We shouldn’t be drinking soda, anyway—we should have champagne to celebrate the smashing success of the first Lying Game prank of the season!”
“Done and done,” Madeline says. “And maybe it’ll give us some inspiration for the back-to-school prank. As long as we’re on a roll.” Then she rises and pads to the Mad Men–style hutch that stands adjacent to the oversized flat-screen TV on the far side of the room. She slides the cabinet doors open and pokes around inside it, her bun bobbing up and down lightly as she hunts.
After a moment, she emerges, triumphantly brandishing a half-full bottle of Absolut. “Will vodka do?”
“Absolut-ly,” Charlotte trills, but I can’t even muster the energy to roll my eyes at her nerdiness.
Madeline dips into the kitchen, returning with three clean glasses stacked in the crook of her arm and a carton of orange juice tucked under her chin, somehow managing to make the awkward juggling act look graceful.
“We’ll save the champagne for after the back-to-school prank. Like a grand finale. This is just a warm-up.” She winks, heavy lashes fluttering against her alabaster cheek.
She pours three generous cocktails, vodka sloshing over the sides of the glasses, which she hastily wipes with the hem of her gray Calvin Klein ribbed tank top. She passes two of the drinks to Charlotte and me. We each take one and raise our arms, clinking glasses.
I will the corners of my mouth into the most convincing smile I can manage. My face feels stiff, like a carnival mask. “Cheers,” I mumble.
“To the Lying Game!” Madeline toasts, brimming with enthusiasm. She fixes her sparkling blue eyes on me. “Seriously, Sutton, your work was inspired. Thank you so much for putting Thayer in his place for me.” She sounds intensely sincere. Almost alarmingly so.
“Don’t mention it,” I say, waving a hand at her dismissively.
My stomach flips over just thinking about the look on Thayer’s face before he darted off.
“Honestly, you’re the master. The queen of the Lying Game,” Charlotte praises. She sounds more than a little bit awestruck, and that lump rises in the back of my throat again. I choke down a swallow of my drink, the acidic tang of the vodka burning on the way down.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, ladies,” I say, as breezily as I can. “But please—the queen is tired from a hard night’s work. Can we just watch the movie and not talk?”
“Yes! Of course,” Madeline agrees. She scrambles for the Titanic Blu-ray she pulled from her overstocked media shelf and slides it into the DVD player. The machine blinks and whirs as it powers on and clicks into gear.
“Just as long as you don’t expect us to feed you grapes and fan you,” Charlotte grumbles, smiling good-naturedly. She takes another healthy gulp of her drink, sighing contentedly.
“You know you would if I asked you to,” I quip.
I’m acting like my old self, but my heart’s not in it. In fact, I think I left it somewhere back on Nisha’s front lawn, or buried deep in the crags of Sabino Canyon. Even as the movie cues up and Leo’s boyish face fills the enormous screen, I can’t stop thinking about Thayer. The look in his eyes as his expression crumbled. The disgust on his face as he realized he’d been a Lying Game target.
And … that kiss.
More than anything, that kiss.
It was incredible; toe-curling, earth-shattering, monumental. It was like no other kiss I’d experienced in my life. And I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to kissing boys.
Why couldn’t I date a younger guy? What would really be so bad about that? I weigh the idea in my mind, considering all of the angles.
Okay, so maybe my friends would make fun of me. Maybe definitely, fine. But probably not for long, right? They’d tease me in the beginning, of course, but once they got used to the idea, maybe they’d even think it was cool. Who knows—maybe I’d start a trend somehow, setting off a rash of cougars on the prowl in the halls of Hollier.
The thing is, being with Thayer might make me really … happy. And I think I might deserve that. I thin
k my friends would agree.
And after that kiss, maybe I don’t really care what they think. Maybe I just want Thayer.
The opening credits of the movie roll and the imposing orchestral sound track swells, filling the room. Suddenly I can’t sit still for a second longer. It’s like ants are crawling over every exposed surface of my skin. I leap up from the sofa, ignoring the startled looks Charlotte and Madeline shoot my way.
“I, uh, need to use the bathroom,” I mumble, wandering down the hall.
“Do you want us to pause it?” Madeline calls after me, sounding confused.
“No, it’s fine,” I call back. “I know the whole thing by heart.”
I tiptoe past the bathroom and make my way stealthily down the hall. I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing, but almost unconsciously, I find myself at the door to Thayer’s bedroom. A light glows from beneath it, and my heart jumps. I have no idea what I’ll say to him … but I have to say something.
I knock lightly, shifting my weight nervously from one foot to the other. But there’s no answer. I knock again, quickly, and when it’s still silent inside, I cautiously push the door open.
I’m greeted with a gust of fresh air from an open window, but no Thayer. A worn-in navy hoodie lies rumpled across his unmade bed, and I’m tempted to run to it and rub it between my fingers, to breathe it in and slip it on over my tank top. It would be almost like having his arms around me again.
Surveying the room, I realize that Thayer’s computer is still on, casting an eerie glow across his desk. An open IM window blinks beckoningly on the screen.
Heading over, it says.
The message is for my sister.
My blood runs cold. He’s gone to see Laurel? He’s going to tell her what happened tonight, and she’ll console him … and then what? It’s obvious she’s totally in love with him. And they’re so close. Just because they haven’t been romantic yet doesn’t mean they never will.
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