All I could do was act like I didn’t care.
So I bit my lip and smiled, kissed him under the jawbone and tossed my hair to one shoulder before leaving the room. Right before we went back into the living room, he smacked me hard on the ass. I giggled and then regained my composure in front of the people who’d started to gather. As if what we’d been doing wasn’t superobvious, anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MY LIFE BECAME this hot, summery haze of sex and drinking. It was only a few short months, and then I would be somewhere new. Somewhere lame, somewhere that I would be studying a subject I didn’t want to study, with no one I knew. Not that I would have anything to miss here anymore. It was all gone. High school. Proms. Assemblies. Games. Being the football star’s girlfriend. Sleepovers with my childhood best friend. All gone. I couldn’t do anything to get it back.
So now I felt fake. Like an illusion that didn’t have a body. Nothing I did felt like it mattered.
I slept as long as I could sleep, as often as I could. I woke up in the middle of the afternoon, often at Reed’s house. I spent almost all my time with him.
It was a Saturday—or maybe a Sunday—and it was almost eight at night. We’d woken up and had sex, fallen back asleep for a while, both of us hungover, and now we were awake again for the night. I couldn’t remember the last meal I’d eaten. I was living off midnight runs to McDonald’s, pizza ordered by other people, Excedrin Migraine, and the occasional bottle of Gatorade to recover in the morning. But only if someone else brought it to me.
On this particular night, we rallied by having a 5-hour Energy shot each.
I was lying on the side of the bed closest to the wall in only a bra and a thong. He was in a pair of black Volcom shorts he’d tossed on to go outside and get the energy shots.
“You are so fucking hot,” he said as he kissed my inner thigh, holding my ankle on his shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn’t even want to hook up with me back in the day.”
“When?”
“My birthday. You fucking dropped me at home.”
He gave me a look and then shook his head before kissing me again.
“What is that look?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He bit me.
“Ow!” I laughed and grabbed him by his tousled hair. “What was that look?”
He shrugged. “It seemed fucked up to hook up with you. I don’t know. I liked you, I guess.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That went away, then? Now that you don’t like me, you can hook up with me?”
He gave me a mild glare. “Brooke...”
“No, stop.” I sat up. “Do you not even like me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter. Why’s that?”
“You’re going away. We’re not going to have a...relationship or whatever. So what does it matter how either of us feels? Let’s not even bother with the subject. You want me. I want you. We’ve got days and nights to fill. Let’s not worry about all the bullshit.”
I squinted at him, my heart splitting a little.
But why? Wasn’t he right? Did I even like him? Or was he one more example of someone I wanted to want me?
“Come on, Brookes.” He gave me a smack on the ass. “You’re just as cold as I am. Stop trying to fight it.”
“You think I’m cold?” I said it with a sly smile, so I would still come off as playful. But I really wanted to hear the answer.
“I think you’re a fucking ice queen.” He grinned at me and adjusted me with my legs on his shoulders. He kissed my stomach.
“Why do you think that?”
He shrugged. “Everything. You just are. You’re not one of those girls who wants to be loved. Well...you are, but you want everyone to love you. It’s not about one person for you. You want what you want. And no one tells you who you are. I love it.”
“Yeah.” I smiled and sank into the pillows. “Yeah.”
Was he right?
* * *
ON SOME WEDNESDAY or Thursday, Reed came out into the backyard where I was tanning and drinking a vodka and ginger ale—it doesn’t go, but it was the only mixer I could find.
“Brookes.”
“What?”
“You’ve got a visitor.”
“Who?” I sat up. “Who, Reed?”
Natalie pushed past him. He shut the door, leaving us quite suddenly alone.
“Brooke, I have to talk to you. You and I have been best friends our whole lives, and I am telling you that I need you right now. You owe it to me to listen.”
“I owe you? I don’t think I owe you anything at all.” But I took my stuff off the chair next to me. She came and sat down.
“I know that this is the worst possible thing I ever could have done to you. I know that. But you also know I would never try to hurt you on purpose.”
“I don’t care if it was on purpose or not. You might not have been trying to hurt me, but you weren’t trying not to hurt me.”
I immediately regretted saying it. That was an Aiden-ism.
“I did try. But...I failed. I didn’t want it to happen. But you know you didn’t want to be with him anymore. And I’m sorry that I did. But I couldn’t help it. I’m weak, Brooke. I’m not like you, I can’t just turn it off or you know that I would. I’ve never had to try, you know I’m completely inexperienced here.”
“I might not have wanted to be with him—” I groaned in frustration. “It doesn’t matter, Natalie, you can’t just decide that I’m not good enough for him, or that you’re better.”
She looked at me like she was trying desperately to find the words to express what was in her head. “You and I have watched romance movies and read romance novels our whole lives. You know he isn’t your It. And I know that, no matter how much you act like you don’t care, you want that one guy who is perfect for you. You want the one guy who makes you want to be your best, and who you would rather flirt with one hundred percent of the time than get attention from other guys. I know that’s what you want. Aiden isn’t that for you. You know that. But there’s a chance he could be that for me. And this situation I’m in...it’s so real. It’s really happening. It’s not about boyfriends and rules...it’s so real....” She shook her head. I could see that she was scared shitless.
She was saying exactly what I’d known she’d say. And I knew it was kind of true. But that didn’t mean I was okay with it. Maybe I wasn’t mature enough to be that noble. Whatever.
“And I know it sucks,” she went on. “I know it. I don’t expect you to forgive me for this. But I miss...”
She bent forward over her knees and wept. The kind of tears you can only cry in front of someone you love and know loves you.
I had to literally stop my arms from reaching for her.
“I miss my best friend so much, and I—I—” She gasped for breath. “I need you for what I’m...for all the—”
“You’re keeping the baby, aren’t you?” I clarified.
She breathed deeply, her eyes fixed intently on a spot in the yard somewhere. “Yes.”
I knew it.
Fuck.
I was supposed to be there for her. This was one of the deals about having a best friend. That when you get knocked up at eighteen, your best friend helps you with whatever your choice is.
“And what does—” saying his name would be difficult here “—he have to say about this?”
“He’s being really mature about it...he’s being really nice and everything.”
No surprise there. “I see.”
“Brooke...Brooke, am I doing the right thing? Keeping it?”
One of Natalie’s most defining traits, the thing that defined her psychologically more than anything, was her mom.
And I knew that now, being faced with the opportunity to be a mother herself—how was this happening right now?—she was afraid of being the same way, or of messing up the kid in a totally different way.
Separately, I knew that Aiden would be great to a kid. Even at eighteen. I knew he was the kind of person—maybe the only kind of person—who could handle something like this and end up having the greatest kid ever.
A reluctant and frustrated part of my brain told me that they might—cringe—be good together. And that maybe this was all for the best. Not ideal. In any way. But not the end of the world.
It definitely was if the other option was me being faced with these decisions.
Natalie would be okay. She would be good at this. She might even be great at this. I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her that, yes, she was making the right choice.
I started to answer honestly, and then my throat closed up like I was allergic to the words. My bitter tongue responded before my opening heart could. “I think you should go.”
She looked hurt. I wanted to take it back, but I was paralyzed.
She nodded, got up...and left.
As soon as she was gone, tears rose up from somewhere deep in me, and made my eyes burn. I couldn’t sit out here and cry. Reed was not the type to help, or to even know how to. I kept them in, which was painful and nearly impossible.
I sat there in the sun, Natalie gone, not coming back, and focused on breathing.
I didn’t want to be in my head. I went inside, found Reed and told him to take me to his room. He was always down for it.
* * *
ONCE WE FINISHED, I snapped my bra back on and pointed at the bottle on the dresser.
“Give me that.”
“Isn’t there a nicer way of asking?” he said, grabbing it, his cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“I think I already gave you all of my magic words.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s true.” He leaned down and kissed me. “I like your dirty words a lot better than your magic ones.”
I gave him a challenging nose-crinkle and then snatched the bottle from him.
“I’ll be out there when you’re ready to go, Brookes.”
“’Kay. Close the door please.”
“You got it.”
He shut the door and went into the living room, where he got a round of cheers from the other guys.
I unscrewed the bottle top and swigged. More than I wanted to. More than I should. More than I could without starting to cough.
I put the lid back on and dropped the bottle on the ground. I was almost shocked it didn’t break. If it had, I wouldn’t have cared, though.
I wrapped my arms around my naked knees and let my head fall onto them.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
The tears came suddenly and intensely.
Why? Why was I even crying?
Natalie’s face drifted into my mind. An annoying sense of forgiveness had been creeping up on me in the past few weeks, a frustrating, sickening desire to tell her to forget it. And now more than ever I wanted to go to her and start being there for her.
I thought of Aiden. When I thought of Aiden, I felt nothing. No anger. Why wasn’t I madder at him?
But this wasn’t only about forgiving my ex-boyfriend and my best friend. This was about the fact that I was so entirely not worth their respect that they hadn’t even given it to me. This wasn’t just about the act, or the fact that they had allowed themselves to exchange looks in front of me and made it obvious enough for Reed to notice.
This was about the fact that I hadn’t mattered enough for them to control themselves.
And there was no way to fix that.
I shouldn’t have, but I reached for the bottle once more and took another big sip.
I stood up, tossed on my tiny dark denim Hollister shorts and pulled on my black tank top. I pulled my slightly knotted hair from the inside of my straps and looked at myself in the warped and tarnished mirror that leaned against the wall on Reed’s dresser.
“Jesus Christ,” I said to myself, licking my fingertips and wiping the mascara from under my eyes.
I grabbed my makeup bag and loaded up on concealer, then put on a new coat of mascara. I tossed on some dark liner to cover up the red rings around my eyes, and called it a day. I tried to brush my hair, but it was too much of a challenge right now.
I grabbed my clutch and headed out the door.
* * *
I WAS GRATEFUL when the alcohol started to take me. I was able to let go. Reed’s friend drove. I sang along to all the random punk songs I knew. The other guys thought I was sexy for knowing the words to songs by bands like the Sex Pistols. In the state I was in right now, having the approval of the scrawny drugheads I was in the car with was enough. I sat on Reed’s lap, even reaching between his legs on the way there and making out with him unselfconsciously.
In another life, I would have seen myself and thought I was trashy. I would have texted Natalie, and said something like, Oh, my God, this nasty blonde hobag can’t keep her fucking chapstick lips off her stupid boyfriend for a car ride. Like, don’t get a room, get a fucking STD test.
In that world I also had a phone. In that world, I hadn’t chucked it out the window.
I chose not to think about it and instead just let his mouth be on mine.
The party was at some cheerleader’s house on the opposite side of town. Judging by the toasts they were taking, they were all juniors going on senior year in the fall.
All the girls were dressed to the nines. I recognized a lot of their outfits and shoes. They all shopped at Nordstrom, my favorite store. One stupid bitch was wearing the Valentino pumps I had been ogling for months.
And here I was in ratty Rainbow sandals, Daisy Dukes and a black tank top.
I ran my hands through my hair, trying to untangle more of the knots.
I stood back, leaning against the counter, debating the benefits of finding Reed and sneaking into a bedroom.
“Seniors!” said a girl who reminded me a lot of Bethany.
“To a fucking awesome year—I know it’s going to be hard to top this past one, but we can absolutely do this shit.” The girl now speaking was thin and pretty, with bright blue eyes, dark black lashes and shocking red hair. Her skin was perfect porcelain, and she had a spattering of freckles on the tops of her cheeks. When she smiled, I saw a set of perfect, white, attractively big teeth. She was the kind of girl who you could tell could wear any color lipstick.
She tossed her hair and held up her shot. Everyone else followed suit, and I watched how the boys watched her. Then I looked at the expression on her face right before she took her shot.
This girl knew exactly what she was doing.
She wanted all the boys to like her. They did.
She wanted the girls to like her. They did.
She was loud, and people listened.
She was me.
Fuck. I hated her suddenly. I crossed my arms and kept watching.
“Brookes!” I heard Reed call my name from across the room.
I tore my eyes away from the girl, who was now dancing in an annoyingly sexy way with her Bethany-type friend.
I followed Reed into a bedroom where a tall skinny guy handed something over.
“Cool, cool. Thanks, dude.”
The guy left, and Reed closed the door after him.
“What?” I asked, looking at the excited grin on Reed’s face.
“I got a present for you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, knowing it was not going to be Tiffany’s. “What kind of present?”
He held up a little bag. It had two pills in it.
I raised my
eyebrows, and responded a little breathlessly. “Oh...it’s...”
“Ecstasy, baby.”
The child in me wanted to shake my head and go home. No. This was too real.
Somehow that child found a small voice. “I don’t think...I don’t want...”
“Okay, okay. No pressure. I wasn’t sure what you would say.”
He took out one of the pills and popped it into his mouth.
“You’re still—” I stopped myself.
He tilted his head at me. “What?”
“Nothing.” This frustrating part of me feared who else he’d give that pill to. “Okay, thanks, anyway, I’m going to go take a shot.”
I opened the door and went back to the kitchen. I poured a shot of the awful-quality whiskey they had.
“Want someone to take a shot with?”
It was the redhead.
I smiled at her. “Yeah, definitely. I, uh, I missed the toast, so...figured I’d catch up.”
“Betch, I’ll always take another round.” She smiled and gave me a little wink.
God. She really was me.
“Awesome.”
“But hey, let’s not do that shit whiskey. That is dis-gus-ting. Have you ever shotgunned a Red Bull vodka?”
She held up a sugar-free can. No, I hadn’t. I’d never even thought of it.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
“Cool!”
She popped open two cans and handed one to me. She swigged, so I did, too.
She pulled it away from her lips. “Okay, now the vodka.”
She poured in Pearl vodka, until it almost overflowed. She filled mine, too.
“All right, now...” She handed me a steak knife, took one herself and then stabbed a hole in the bottom of her can. I did the same, and then we chugged.
Once finished, I wiped whatever had gotten on my chin.
“What was your name again?” I asked.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you.” Her response was the hint of a power struggle with me. “It’s Lana.”
Stupid bitch had a cooler name than me. An undeniably hot-girl name.
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