“Hey, remember when you said you had a condom?”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, his voice muffled against my chest.
“Did you… put it on?”
Silence.
My heart sinks. I tell myself maybe he’s just weak like I am, struggling to think or speak or process memories.
Only, he doesn’t recover like I did and assure me that yes, he totally used the condom, this is just how it always feels after responsible, protected sex.
“I’m clean,” he assures me.
“That’s not what I asked.”
He sighs, lifting his head up so he can look at me. “It’s in my pants.”
I look over at the pile of his clothes on the floor.
Hunter lifts his hips and pulls out of me, moving onto the spot beside me on the bed.
A chill sweeps over me as the drafty air hits my bare body.
I need a blanket. I need to be covered up. I need…
He didn’t use a condom.
He just fucked me without a condom.
He just came inside me.
Fuck.
“Are you on the pill?” he asks.
“No,” I snap.
“Hey,” he says, his voice calm and even as he recognizes me starting to freak out. “Don’t worry about it. It’s done now, I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“My mom was in high school when she got pregnant with me. She will kill me if I—No,” I say suddenly, my eyes widening. “She’ll kill you. Death. Slow, painful death. She’ll murder you.”
“Riley, relax,” he says. “People have sex without a condom all the time, what are the chances that one time—”
“It only takes one time!”
He sighs as I roll off the bed and begin frantically gathering my clothes.
“Riley, come on. What about your pillow talk? I promised you pillow talk,” he says, trying to entice me to calm down and get back in bed with him.
“I have to go. I need… I don’t know, a shower.” I pull my panties on, then my bra.
“Don’t go, not yet.”
I snatch my jeans up off the floor and my cell phone falls out of the pocket.
I grab the phone and step into one of the pant legs.
I’m kinda freaking out, and I’m not sure what to do. On one hand, I could ask my mom. She obviously didn’t handle the situation right when she was my age because… well, here I am, but she’s an adult now. Surely she knows some adult woman way of dealing more effectively with unprotected sex.
I can’t even ask her, though. That would mean telling her I had sex with Hunter tonight, and I can’t do that. I remember how she reacted all those years ago to finding him in my bed, how horrified she was that I would jump into bed with him after he stood me up for a date. If she knew what I did tonight…
Oh my God. What have I done?
I button and zip my jeans. Amid all the jostling, my phone screen lights up and I realize I have a lot of missed notifications. I didn’t have any when I came in here. I’m not sure how long ago that was now. It’s all kind of a blur of Hunter’s stupid sexy life-ruining kisses and…
I have seven missed texts from Sara.
There are three from Anderson.
“Riley.”
Hunter’s voice pulls my attention back to him. My gaze only flickers to him though as he climbs out of bed, then I look back at my phone to see what I missed.
I check the messages from Anderson first, just because I didn’t expect to hear from him again.
I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you.
I don’t think you’re a whore. I mean, you’re not a whore. That was a terrible thing to say. I’m sorry Riley, I was just… hurt. I still am.
My stomach drops, then I glance at the last one.
Hey, you’re not still at the party, are you? Is everything okay?
What? Why wouldn’t everything be okay?
“What are you doing?” Hunter’s voice is closer now. I glance back and see he’s walking over to me with a frown on his face as he zips up his jeans.
“I have a bunch of missed notifications.”
His expression changes. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I saw a flicker of regret.
“Don’t check those right now,” he says, reaching out and covering my phone.
I think he might take it, so I close my hand around it and pull it away from him.
“Why?” I ask, frowning.
My uneasiness grows when instead of answering me, he looks away.
There it is again. That flicker of… shame?
“What did you do?” I ask faintly, but I don’t wait for an answer. With shaky fingers, I open the missed messages from Sara.
The first one is normal, she’s just checking in on me because she knew I was coming to this party with Anderson tonight. But then she starts asking me what’s happening at the party, first just out of curiosity, but as the messages get newer, the urgency grows.
There’s a screenshot. The message above it says, “Wally posted this from the party. Are you still there? What’s he talking about? Is he there with somebody?”
I click the screenshot of Wally’s post and my heart slides into my stomach.
It’s a picture of Valerie’s bedroom door with the slimy caption “where the magic is happening tonight.”
There are a bunch of likes already and a few comments from partygoers. Mostly mindless commentary, but my stomach drops again when I read someone’s comment: “And she’s a screamer!”
I shake my head, horror and denial at war with each other inside me.
Is that about me?
I look at the picture again, verifying it is, in fact, Valerie’s bedroom door. It was posted 20 minutes ago, so… it has to be.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Riley…”
Slowly, I turn my head to look at Hunter.
The look on his face has become more guarded, but I can still see traces of guilt.
I need to get to a bathroom or I’m going to throw up all over Valerie’s bedroom. I snatch my shirt off the floor, shakily pulling it on and buttoning the most important buttons so I can get the hell out of here.
“Wait,” Hunter says as I make a beeline for the door. “Riley, don’t—”
Before he can finish, I yank open the bedroom door.
Then I halt suddenly, as if I’ve run into an invisible wall.
The hallway that was empty when I walked down it before is crowded now, lined on both sides with our classmates.
And they’re all staring right at me.
Chapter Twenty Two
Riley
Horror paralyzes me when all I want in the world is to flee.
I look down the crowded hallway, seeing every smirk, hearing every snicker. I can feel the ridicule in the air, as real as raindrops hitting my skin.
Wally stands off to the side, his smirk the most noticeable.
I want to run, but I can’t move. I think about him coming to find me on the back porch, bringing me to Hunter.
I should have known this was a trap.
Why didn’t I know?
I know the answer, though.
I never thought Hunter would stoop this low. Lying about taking my virginity and spreading it around the school was one thing.
Actually doing it and using it to humiliate me like this… that’s a whole other thing, and I didn’t think he would do that to me.