“Okay. You want me to go to jujitsu with you and beat people up?” I belt out a laugh. “You don’t have to have all the answers, Raj.”
“I’m not pretending to.”
“But you do—don’t you? Don’t you always know what to say?”
“One day I’m going to tell you something stupid.”
“Two plus two is ten. Something like that?”
“Right. Exactly. And you’re going to be so disappointed in me.”
“I’ll never be disappointed in you,” I say.
Our gaze lingers. Like the kind of gaze that happens before you kiss someone. So I look away first. I push that feeling down. Don’t let it out. Don’t let the feelings show. Push it way down until you can’t feel. Until it’s like you’re not even there.
“Raj,” I say. “Did I tell you too much?”
“Never,” he says. “You could never tell me too much.”
* * *
* * *
Later that night I text Blythe.
I’m sorry I said that— I don’t know what came over me.
It’s a lie. But I need to get the apology out.
I wait for her answer back. Sit there watching my phone. Wanting her to forgive me. To understand.
But she waits a full day. Makes me pay for what I’ve done. Then she texts me:
Moving on
31
BLYTHE
When I get home, my mother is in her bed upstairs. Her drugs in action. There’s no waking her up.
My father isn’t home. He never is.
I take off my dress. The floor length part is covered in guck. Crap from it dragging across the floor. It’s like I hiked through a muddy field. I don’t care.
I put on my sweats and a T-shirt. All I hear is what Suki had to say about Sean. He’s got three girls who are eager to get started.
I’m blurry-eyed from the night, but I stare into my phone. It’s the only light in my room. That bright light blinding me, I scan every Instagram account of every stupid girl in our school who I can think of, anyone connected or friends with Sean. My pupils fried. Search for all the stupid bitches who would post a photo of Sean Nessel and her phenomenal hookup. There’s got to be someone that stupid. Someone who wants to show off her prize.
And then I find it.
There’s a picture of Sean’s mouth. I can tell by his tooth. He has one crooked tooth from not wearing his retainer. It’s impossible to miss. A sophomore. Hunter something. SN, she writes as if no one will know. As if no one is looking for those initials. The initials SN are a giveaway. If someone’s bragging about a Nessel hookup, that’s the first thing to look for.
Bae tired, the caption reads.
I’m sure by the morning it will be taken down. Sean will confiscate that. He doesn’t like his hookups broadcast.
Stupid me. Little stupid me. Thinking that I had some kind of line attached to him. Thinking that we had some connection. Some real meaning together.
* * *
* * *
My front living room fills up with lights. It’s Dev’s Jeep.
I open the door. Dev walks in, his hair wet. He’s showered.
“Had to rinse the stank off you, huh?” I say.
“What? No,” he says. “I was a ball of sweat.”
“You weren’t driving Sean around to meet up with his little conquests? Pimping him out? I thought you went home with him.”
He tells me that while I was taking care of Donnie, he and Sean and a bunch of freshman or sophomore girls went to some girl’s house with a pool. Probably the girl who posted the photo.
“I got pushed in. Chlorine all over me and these stupid drunk girls. Someone’s going to drown. They were putting this guy on a raft, and he was passed out. It was a disaster, B. You would have hated it. I heard Chase and Cate had sex in the limo, so I didn’t want to go back in there. I walked home. And it was kind of nice actually. Just staring at the moon. It was so big, and then it just dipped down into the sky and disappeared. I don’t even understand entirely how that happens,” he says, his face full of wonder. “Do I have to really stand here in your doorway telling you this?”
Dev does not deserve a girlfriend like me. Dev does not deserve a friend like Sean.
I move out of the way, let him in. Flustered. Drunk. Stoned. Whatever he is, I know Dev is telling the truth. I know he didn’t want anything to do with what Sean was doing. That he was just trying to be a loyal friend, the bro friend, the bro prince, or whatever they are. And then find his way back to me.
I tell him about Donnie. About the scene in the bathroom. Tell him what I heard. That Sean wants to rally the freshman girls and do his own Initiation. Get a bunch of blow jobs from fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds all at once.
“Before you rip Nessel apart for mentioning the Initiation, believe me he was out cold by the time we got to this girl’s house. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying.”
“We always make excuses for him, Dev. Don’t we?”
Dev wipes his eyes. They’re bloodshot and tired with dark circles.
“I see it as accepting his flaws.”
“All the hooking up. All the girls he leaves by the wayside, like a fucking battlefield of girls—”
“A battlefield? They’re not dead in the ground, B. They want to be there. These girls tonight were dragging him into the limo they had. He pulled me along because he didn’t want to get caught with a bunch of minors. Nessel always covers himself. That’s one thing about him that I’m always surprised about. He sees a situation, no matter how fucked up he is, far in advance. He’s ten steps ahead.”
I slide between my memories of Sean and I making out in my backyard, and that night after the party, the way he was crying in the car, needing me to help him fix everything. Then another moment, the way he held my hand in the hallway, always needing me.
Ten steps ahead.
Did he know how all that would make me feel? How I want to feel needed? That I want to feel like I can fix everything? Did he know that right from the start? Has he known it all along?
“It’s been a long night, B. Let’s just cuddle.” Slides his hands around my waist. Under my sweats, behind me. He massages my shoulders, trailing his fingers up and down my back. Just caressing me.
He’s so gentle and good.
And I’m a monster.