“You think he’d let her suck him off when he’s blatantly only hard for you?” Harley asks, making me wince.
“Two things,” I mutter, holding up two fingers, but with my blurry vodka-induced vision it looks like I’m holding up four. “One... he’s not hard for me. He fucking hates me and would rather throw me out to sea and watch me drown than he would put his cock anywhere near me. And two... umm...” I hesitate when I totally forget where I was going. “Oh yeah. Krissy is a whore.”
“Amen,” Harley sings, lifting a bottle of vodka that I didn’t know she’d snatched on the way out. “Those bitches give us cheer girls a bad name.”
Poppy’s eyes meet mine in the mirror once more and I read her silent thoughts loud and clear, and I can’t help but agree. I haven’t exactly been acting much better than them in the past few months.
The three of us pile out of Zayn’s car and stumble toward the front door. Jada is home, her car is parked in the driveway and the lights are on, but as we stagger through the kitchen for snacks, we don’t see any sign of her. It’s probably a good thing, Poppy is the only sober one out of the three of us right now, but if the way she’s tipping the bottle she’s taken from Harley to her lips is anything to go by, then she won’t be for long.
“Don’t you have to go back and get Zayn?” I ask when she swallows down another shot.
“Nah, he’s gonna make his own way home. I told him that I’m hanging with my girls. Gotta make sure lil’ Rubes is okay.” She wraps her arm around my shoulder as we start climbing the stairs.
“I’m good. You don’t need to worry about me.”
We pile into Harley’s room and Poppy and Harley immediately flop onto the bed, surrounded by the bags of chips and candy we’d swiped from downstairs. I, on the other hand, go straight for my bag and pull out a pair of panties.
The girls chat away behind me until I step into them and begin pulling them up my legs.
“Rubes, what happened to the pair you left wearing?”
“Err...”
“Oh my God,” Harley squeals. “He has them, doesn’t he?”
“I wonder if Krissy has any idea that he’s got another girl’s panties in his pocket while she goes—”
“Whoa,” I cry, not needing to hear the next words from Poppy’s mouth.
“You can’t not tell us what... went down now.” Harley flashes me a shit-eating grin as she says this.
“Yeah, yeah I can,” I mutter, stripping out of my dress and pulling on a tank and pair of sleep shorts.
“We not going to mention that the bra is gone too?” Poppy murmurs as I walk back over and take the bottle from her hand, downing at least four shots in one go.
“No, none of it needs talking about.”
“He got you off though, right? You at least got something out of that fucked-up situation?”
“No, Harley, he didn’t,” I snap. “He’s a sadomasochistic who seems to get off on torturing me and walking away.”
“But last time he...”
“Last time I passed out and have no fucking clue how it ended.” His words as he explained about having images from that night ring in my ears as if he’s saying them to me right now.
“What? What’s that look for?”
“It’s for nothing other than how much I fucking hate him. Krissy is welcome to him.”
I flop onto the bed, open a packet of chips and shove a handful into my mouth in the hope they stop asking me questions that I don’t want to answer.
“Do I look hot enough?” Harley asks, spinning in front of the mirror and looking over her outfit of choice ready to go and meet Nathan down at the beach.
“Harley,” I sigh. “You always look hot.”
“Argh... I don’t know. Am I showing enough skin, too much skin? I don’t want him to think I’m a cheer slut.”
“Then maybe don’t drag him into the nearest dark corner and offer to suck him off.” I don’t mean for the words to come out sounding quite so bitter, and I hate that they give away my true feelings for what happened last night.
Harley raises a brow at me as Poppy slips into the room. She was here when I fell into a vodka-induced coma last night, but I’m assuming she slipped out to join Zayn at some point in the night.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she asks, looking between Harley and me, clearly wondering what the sudden tension is about.
“Just trying to convince Harley that she’s hot and that prep boy will dig her outfit.”
“You are hot. He’ll love it. Now go, or he won’t get the chance to because he’ll think you’ve stood him up.”
“You gonna be okay?” She shoots me a look.
“Yes, Mom. I’ll be fine. I’ve got a ton of homework to do, so I plan on hiding in my room until practice in the morning.”
She rolls her eyes at me as she slips her feet into her sneakers and grabs her purse.
“Call me later, I want to know everything.”
“I will. Laters.”
She waves at us before disappearing out of the room and down the stairs.
“She’s so nervous. It’s cute.”
“It is. Ugh,” I groan, dropping back onto Harley’s bed.
“What’s wrong?”
“I want a nice boy who wants to date me and take me to the beach.”
“Wanna know a secret?” Poppy asks, sliding her legs under the covers and settling in beside me.
“Sure. You can tell me all your dirty ones now Harley’s gone.”
“You got it,” she says with a laugh. “First thing you need to know though...” She pauses, I’m assuming to build tension. “Bad boys do it better.”
I can’t help but snort a laugh at the seriousness of her tone.
“Because you’ve been with all the good ones to know this.”
“Don’t need to. It’s a fact.”
I laugh and it feels good just let go with my friend.
“What the hell am I going to do, Pops?”
She stills for a beat before turning to look at me. “Is he a real threat, you know, like...” She trails off, not wanting to say the prick’s name who secretly tormented her for years without any of us knowing the severity of it.
“No, this isn’t like that. He just wants to torment me. He thinks all of this is my fault or some bullshit. I mean, really, I wasn’t the one who forced Stephen to leave his mom and hook up with mine, and I certainly didn’t have anything to do with his car accident.”
“I know you didn’t but try to put yourself in his shoes. You’re the easy target. He might be an asshole to both your parents, but he can’t really do much to them. Plus, you’re hot, any hot-blooded teenage boy would want a taste given the chance.”
“He doesn’t want me, Pops. He just wants to torture me.”
“In the most delicious way.”
“This isn’t some fucked-up foreplay that’s going to lead to a hot night of sex, Pops.”
“Isn’t it?” she asks, deadly serious.
“No. I’m not sleeping with him. He’s a prick and doesn’t deserve anything from me, especially not my V-card.”