Текст книги "Slow Twitch"
Автор книги: Лиз Реинхардт
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
“Well, like you said, that was when finances were a question. That’s not really an issue anymore,” she sing-songed. Everyone laughed like that was the best joke they’d heard in a while.
Caroline winked at me from across the table. I noticed she was drinking wine. So were the couple of other teenagers. I guessed it just wasn’t a big deal.
“So, do you have a girlfriend, Jake?” asked a woman who looked like Caroline, just older. Her mother? She looked much more like a sister, but this was a world where people obviously hated aging, so it was a little hard to tell.
“Yes, ma’am.” I cleared my throat, happy to be able to announce it in front of Caroline. “Her name is Brenna Blixen. She’s in Dublin, Ireland right now taking a writing course,” I bragged. Man, I wished I had Brenna there next to me. She could have handled this whole snooty gang, no problems.
“Blixen?” My grandmother wrinkled her brow. “Where do I know that name from?”
“Lylee’s friend,” Caroline’s mother drawled. “Don’t you remember, Mama D? She went on and on about her in Bermuda this spring.”
“Oh, that’s it. The art history professor who’s shaking it up in little old Sussex County.” She sighed. “Why do these women insist on wasting their talents in community colleges when universities would scoop them up?”
I clenched my jaw tight. Brenna’s mom didn’t have many warm feelings towards me, but she was a damn good teacher and a smart woman. “Mrs. Blixen likes to help students who don’t think of themselves as college material.” Everyone stopped talking again and looked down the table at me. “She knows how much it means for people to get equitable treatment, even if they are just community college students.”
“Bravo, Jake,” my dad slurred, obviously a few drinks in.
“Well.” My grandmother pasted on a smile. “He’s certainly a Maclean, isn’t he? All piss and vinegar!”
Then the whole dinner party laughed, and I felt like a champion ass. My grandmother (everyone called her Mama D; I wasn’t even sure what her name was) dominated the conversation until dessert, and I spent a lot of time looking at people who had my features, used my gestures, had my DNA running strong through them, but were nothing at all like me. Once we’d eaten our fresh cherry pie, the adults went to the drawing room for after-dinner drinks, the little kids were ushered off to bed, and the teenagers were set loose on the lake to have a bonfire.
Caroline attached herself to my side. “Brenna Blixen? In Paris she and Saxon were joined at the hip. Or the mouth. Or whatever.” She giggled behind her perfectly manicured little hand.
I stopped in my tracks. “Look, Caroline? That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about. I don’t listen to rumors about her, and anyone who wants to spread them should keep the hell away from me.” I kept walking and she ran to catch up.
“Wait! Jake!” She tried to link arms with me again. I shook her off. “C’mon, I was just kidding around,” she sulked.
“Then I must have a really shitty sense of humor.” I stalked forward, hands deep in my pockets. “Maybe it’s best if you and I keep our distance.”
“I don’t think we need to do that.” Her voice came out like a purr. “I’m just sort of outspoken, okay? The thing is, I always know what I want, and I tend to get it. So, why not just come along for the ride?” She smiled like she’d practiced her seductive look in the mirror every night.
She was pretty. Really pretty, and probably smart and possibly great in bed. But just because I could acknowledge those things didn’t mean that I wanted her. I knew her type, and I wasn’t about to be the object of her slumbunny attention.
“I get that you’re probably used to getting what you want.” I took two steps away from her. “But get ready for a shock, Caroline. I have no interest in you. And I’m not going to be your summer entertainment. So find someone else to screw.”
“I’ve screwed them all.” She spit the words out, then relaxed and took a breath. Her face was calm, like she wasn’t remotely offended by what I said. “It’s practically incestuous here. You’re new, that’s all.” She shrugged. “If you’re so committed to your little girlfriend, then forget I said anything. We can just hang out, if that’s cool.”
I knew there was no trusting a girl like her, but I wasn’t about to get on her bad side.
“Sounds cool.” She caught up with me and we walked the narrow path to the beach.
“Do you want a beer?” She pointed to a big aluminum bucket packed with ice and gleaming bottles.
We were down by the beach, and there was a huge pine branch fire crackling on the sand. It smelled like hot sap and dusky smoke. “No.” I shook my head. “Thanks, but I don’t drink anymore.”
“Ooh, what a bad boy.” Caroline ran her hand lightly down my arm. “So do you go to the gym?”
“Is that your best pickup line?” I couldn’t help smiling at her. She might be a pain in the ass, but her persistence was admirable.
“I have better. Should I try them out on you?” She made a kissy face at me and laughed a little. It seemed like a decently real laugh, so I joined in.
“Who’s your buddy, Caro?” Suddenly there was a guy who looked like an Abercrombie model jonesing for a fight.
“Back off, Bryce.” Caroline put a palm on his chest and pushed with all her meager strength. “We’re just talking. Can’t you go bother someone else?”
He looked at me for a long, drawn-out minute, then turned on his heel and stalked away.
“Friend of yours?” I watched his flip-flops nearly fall off his feet as he stormed through the sand.
“That’s Bryce Kicklighter. He and I’ve fooled around practically every summer since we were in grade school, and he has this crazy idea that we should be monogamous this summer.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s so fucking boring I could fall asleep under him.”
“Okay.” Her bored, edgy way of seeing the world threw me, and I sat down on the sand next to her with the feeling I should get up and leave nagging at the back of my mind. I took inventory of the kids who sat by the fire, some of them my blood cousins.
Money sure as hell didn’t buy automatic good looks, but it bought nice white teeth, professionally cut and colored hair, skin treated by dermatologists, and expensive clothes. There was a lot of noise coming from all of their little groups, but it wasn’t really happy. Just loud.
“What’s wrong?” Caroline brushed her fingers over my forearm to get my attention. “You should really have a beer.”
“Wow, you’re persistent. I said no.” I turned my arm so her fingers would slide off without me having to tell her to stop touching me.
“It might help you relax. You’re among friends now.” She flipped a strand of reddish-blonde hair behind her shoulder and stretched like a cat in heat.
“I’ve done the whole drinking thing.” My eyes followed the volleyball that bounced back and forth over a net in the most half-hearted game I’d ever seen. “I’m over it.”
“I didn’t say you should get blitzed.” She slid her foot out of her sandal and pulled it along my leg. “One beer? Maybe two? What’s the big deal?”
Her tone aggravated me, and that was pretty out of character. I was usually a laid-back guy. And I guessed I was feeling pretty coiled up, and it was just one and getting one would get her off my back, so I went over and cracked one open. Once I chugged it down, the whole gathering-on-the-beach thing did look more fun. After three beers the fire started to look really beautiful, and I had a fifth in me when someone suggested skinny dipping.
Five isn’t usually a lot for me, but it had been a long time since I drank anything. I joined the cavorting crowd running down to the lake just like I suddenly belonged, and in my bleary head I wondered about the old saying ‘blood is thicker than water.’ What about beer and blood? My brain sloshed through my thoughts dizzily.
Caroline led me off to the side. She was definitely drunk. She could hardly stand up straight.
“I was hoping you’d do this.” She peeled her tank top over her head and shimmied out of her little skirt.
“Why’s that?” My voice sounded fuzzy in my own ears. I pulled my shirt off and let my pants fall.
“Because I wanted to see you…naked,” she whispered. She unsnapped her bra and her breasts were out in the moonlight, her nipples hard in the cold night air. She slid her panties down her legs, and I saw that she was totally shaved.
I kicked off my boxers, and she drew a finger along my chest. “Just as good as I imagined.” Her smile twisted on her lips.
I was on my way to being good and drunk, but I wasn’t there yet. I was mostly just without any worries or very sound decision-making skills. The moon was big and bright and the water wasn’t completely frigid. We jumped off the dock. I dove under, and the shock of the cold water was absolute. For a minute, I swam just under the surface, and the realization of what I was doing rushed over me.
I was drinking. With Caroline. It was innocent right at that minute, but it could turn into something else so fast, I wouldn’t realize the full extent of what was happening until the deed was done.
That wasn’t what I wanted.
I popped back up away from the others and scanned the water for Caroline, but I didn’t see her. I figured she was just in the crowd, and swam for shore. I had my boxers back on when I heard someone scream. I jumped back in and swam, because I knew without having to ask that it was her.
I swam hard and fast to where she was floating, face down. I grabbed her under the arms and dragged her in. By then everyone was screaming, the girls were crying, and without really thinking, I pulled her onto shore and gave her the best version of CPR I knew. It was mandatory training at Zinga’s, and it had been a while since I’d gotten certified. But I had a general idea of what to do. I tilted her head, opened her mouth, and turned her to her side, filled her lungs with my breath, then turned her again, pumped at her chest, and did that jerky rotation a few more times until she coughed and choked.
“Someone bring a damn towel!” I yelled and someone handed me one that I wrapped around her.
“Jake?” She looked at me in confusion.
“You almost drowned, you idiot!” I held her face roughly. This girl, this dumb girl had almost died right here, and it would have been at least partially my fault for not keeping a better eye on her when I knew she was too drunk to be swimming.
“You saved me.” Her brown eyes went wide. She shivered.
Then her mother was there, pretty bombed herself, and she was crying and rocking with Caroline in her arms.
And I knew it was a dickhead thing to be thinking right at that moment, but I was glad as hell I had my boxers on. I went back to shore and gathered the rest of my things, then stalked back to the big, ornate house filled with shit no one really needed and people no one really liked.
The next morning buzzed bright, the way so many mornings had after I drank. The difference was, all the other mornings I had been drinking because I wanted to. Last night I had done it without really wanting to. I stood in front of a girl I didn’t like while she stripped down to nothing, then got herself into stupid trouble that could easily have killed her.
I wanted to call Bren and tell her what happened, but it was a lot.
Someone knocked at the door. My first thought was that it would be Caroline up early, but she had just gotten over nearly drowning. I got up and pulled a t-shirt over my head and my jeans over my boxers, just to be safe, and pulled the door open. It was my dad.
He still looked spookily like me, but now that I’d had some time to process everything, I could see the real differences. For one thing, he was smaller than I was, skinnier. I figured that would have been more my build if I hadn’t busted my ass for the past few years. He also had perfectly done hair all the time and sometimes did that little goatee thing that I’ve always hated. He dressed like he wanted to be a lot younger than he was, all tight clothes with big, stupid designs all over them, and always one of those surfer shell necklaces on. I’m sure he thought he looked young and hip, and he kind of did, like a rocker getting older but still cool.
Except I knew he was supposed to have been a father, and hadn’t bothered. That kind of took the cool quotient out of the whole equation.
“Hey son,” he said, then put his arms around me. I didn’t want it, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to push him away, so I let him hug me. Was he crying?
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Caroline Morgenstern…” he blubbered. “She could have died last night. You could have died last night.”
“Probably not. I’ve been able to swim since before I could walk. She probably passed out and swallowed water. I think she drank twice as much as I did and she’s half my size.” I was explaining it all so I could sterilize it. Because it was weird to have this grown man weepy over me.
“Jake. I want you to think about something,” he sobbed, his eyes embarrassingly red-rimmed. “I want you to think about become a Maclean in name. Legally. Is that something you might consider?”
I blinked hard and took a big step back, away from him and his embarrassing drink-enhanced emotions. “Why now?”
“Because now is when we have you back.” He was too close in my personal space when he said it. “Now is the time, Jake. And you area Maclean, no matter what your name is.”
“What does that mean?” I wanted to back away, but I was trapped between him and some big, stupid, boat-themed dresser.
“You stand up for yourself. And to my mother, which is no small thing. You’re brave. You act fast. All Maclean traits.” He wiped his eyes with the backs of his wrists.
I snorted. “I think that’s a stretch.”
“No it isn’t.” His jaw got tight and his nostrils flared a little. I guess there’re only so many times any guy will take his surly kid’s attitude. But it was a hell of a lot better having him pissed than having him weepy, as far as I was concerned.
I crossed my arms and leaned back on the edge of the dresser, as far away from him as I could get. “What about being snotty to people you think are below you? What about insane alcoholism? Sleeping around? Abandoning your kids? I wouldn’t do any of that, and those all seem to be pretty standard Maclean traits to me.”
“You’re just picking what’s bad about the family.” He started to poke a finger at my chest, but backed up when I stood my full height. Not that I was considering fighting my own father, but if it came down to it, I could take him. “That’s not really fair.”
Unbelievable. “You’re going to pop into my life seventeen years late and tell me what’s fair? Fat fucking chance.” I pushed past him and walked to the door, where I pointed out. “Leave.”
“Son…”
“Don’t call me that.” I felt so much fury, I was surprised my voice worked well enough for me to get any words out. “And I’m sorry, Gerald, but I can’t call you Dad either. Or take the name Maclean. I’m no good at pretending to be what I’m not. I guess that’s the Kelly in me.”
“There’s a lot this family could offer you.” The snide way it rolled out of his mouth made it sound pretty much like a threat.
I shrugged. “I made it alright without you all before. I’m sure I could do it again.’
“You get that from your mother. She didn’t give a shit what people thought of her, either.” He got this repulsive, shitty little half-smile.
“She cared,” I countered, my teeth gritting so hard, the ache went up my temples. “She cried her eyes out when she talked about you.”
“I would have taken care of her.” He twirled a silver ring that he wore on his middle finger. What the hell did he wear it for? Just because he was the douchiest loser in the house? “She wanted to get married, but I couldn’t. There was Lylee.”
“You divorced her anyway.” I stuck my hands in my pockets hard to keep them from his neck.
He shook his head.
“You and Lylee are still together?” I asked, and this one was a real shocker. Lylee definitely didn’t think of herself as a married woman, and I was sure Gerald was no damn angel.
“We’ve been separated for years, but we’re technically still married.” He ran a hand over his face with a frustrated swipe.
“What about Saxon?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you come around and see him?”
“Jake, it’s hard to explain it.” He shifted from one foot to the other and waved his hands in an attempt to come up with the words to ‘explain it’ to me. “I got caught up in my own stuff. I was selfish, alright? I admit it though.” He glared at me a little, and I thought about how my eyes probably looked just like his when I was pissed.
“Well, congratulations for admitting it. I guess that changes the past decade. I guess that makes Saxon less of a crazed fuck-up. And, if you were going to leave, you could have actually done the right thing and not dumped a guilt trip on Saxon’s shoulders.” My hands were stuffed so ferociously in my pockets, I was afraid I’d rip through them.
“I never did that.” He narrowed his grey eyes at me.
“Yes, you did.” I could feel my heart shot hard with adrenaline, running off the rails. I pointed my finger in his face. “You told him to take care of me. He was just a kid. Where the hell do you come off?”
He jerked his face away from my finger, but he didn’t back away completely. “Jake, I’m sorry. I don’t even remember saying that.”
“Must be another Maclean trait,” I muttered. “I don’t want to be rude to you, but I don’t really want your company right now.”
He gave a jerky nod, turned, and stalked out of the room, and I was left staring at the ceiling again, wishing I were anywhere but here.
Chapter Four
Brenna
Evan sat on the bed, long legs crossed neatly, and stretched until the laptop that had been balancing precariously on her thighs jostled and almost slid off the bed. Devon reached an arm out and caught it.
“I am so damn sick of this I could cry,” she moaned. She grabbed Devon’s hand, and, at that point, he was so completely under her spell he didn’t even attempt to pull away. “Devon, you alwaysfollow every rule that assface Dr. Gorman slaps on us. You can’t tell me there isn’t a teeny, tiny part of you that wants to just…just tear your clothes off and run naked over all those fucking cobblestones!”
She jumped up and Devon barely caught her laptop before it, once again, almost crashed to the floor. She shimmied out of her lilac cashmere sweater, tore off her black jersey cap-sleeved top with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons and tossed it so it landed right over Devon’s left eye, and was about to slide the zipper on her tight gray pencil skirt down when he jumped up and shoved the shirt over her head.
“Jesus Christ, you are so melodramatic,” he muttered, ripping the shirt back off her head when he realized he was attempting to put it on upside down. Strands of her dark hair flew up around her head in a halo of static electricity. “Do you want to go out? Are you hungry? Why don’t you just say what you want instead of staging this whole insane striptease?” He crammed the shirt down her head and over her arms, and pulled back when she attempted to kiss his cheek. “Brenna, control her!”
“Brenna, don’t listen to him!” Her eyes glittered. They actually shined, and I would have been only minimally surprised if bursts of sparkly light shot out of them like eruptions of fireworks. “Remind him how good I’ve been.” She wiggled her shoulders until one arm, then the other popped out of her shirt holes. “Please? Remind Mr. Stick In The Mud that I haven’t skipped one single class–”
“You went to four wasted. One so wasted you had to leave to puke.” Devon sat on the floor, his back against my desk, his laptop open, his fingers poised over the keys with aggressive intent.
“Only very slightly hung over. Usually. Except that one time. But only one time,” Evan objected, balling up the sweater that probably cost more than the plane ticket to get over here and throwing it at him. “And how did you know I puked?”
He didn’t look up from the screen of his computer as the soft lilac fabric puddled half over one of his knees and half on the floor. “Brenna sent me down the hall to check on you.”
She clapped her hands to her chest and pulled the corners of her mouth down in a frown. “Y’all are the sweetest friends I ever had.” She dropped on her knees in front of Devon, leaned over his laptop screen and popped loud kisses all over his face while he tried to bat her away.
“Stop! You are so fucking exhausting, Evan. Being with you is like having a pet monkey on speed.” He grabbed her face in his hands. “Stop. Stop right now. Tell me what you want, okay?”
“I want…to dosomething!” She got up and sat next to me, swinging her arms around my shoulders in an easy hug. “Please help me help him before he has an aneurysm from staring at that damn screen all day.”
I leaned my head on her shoulder and breathed in the clean, flowery smell of her. The smell of Evan was so different from Evan herself. She smelled light and freshly-scrubbed and delicately floral. She should have smelled like cotton candy, liquor, gasoline, and fire. “Did you finish your paper?” I asked her.
She shook me back and forth until my brains felt blended. “How can I write a bildungsroman if I haven’t even fucking livedyet?”
“I managed to write mine,” Devon said to his screen as his fingers clicked over the keys.
Evan bounded across the bed and peeked over his shoulder. Her eyebrows knit and she moved her plush lips around like she was chewing on the flavor of certain words. After a few minutes, she put her hands up to rub her temples. “Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? Devon look up from that damn computer and tell me that this is a joke!”
“This is an assignment,” he muttered stubbornly and turned the screen away from her even though she wasn’t looking anymore. “And it’s almost done.”
“Almost done?” She grabbed a paperclip, a packet of sticky notes, a pen off my desk and tossed them at him in quick succession. “Almost done? You’re writing about the fucking birds? You’re writing about the ocean? You don’t give a single shit about birds or oceans!
“So?” He did finally look up, and his hazel eyes were pink on either side from staring at the computer for so long. “I need to write this. I need to finish. Why go to all these classes for all these hours if you’re just going to blow off the final assignment?”
“Blow it off?” Evan fell onto the bed and gave a long, exaggerated laugh. “You don’t think you’re, maybe, blowing it off in your own cowardly way by writing that inane crap?”
“You don’t even have one word written yet,” he said in the long-suffering voice he’d honed around Evan.
“And you have nothing but bullshit. That’s it. We’re going. Right now. Out! We’re going out to livefor a few hours. I promise I’ll get you back in time to write a new essay.” She pulled me by the hand, and I couldn’t help the laugh that burst out. She twirled me around and we were both laughing while Devon scowled.
“I don’t need to write a new essay. Mine’s almost done.” He shut his laptop and placed it carefully on the desktop.
Evan grabbed me around the waist and dipped me low. I looked at Devon from my upside-down vantage point while Evan shook her head. “Sorry, sweetie. I know you think I’m a world class slacker, but retiring to the ladies’ to chuck during Gorman’s lecture on Yeats is one thing. Turning in a steaming pile of turds like you’re about to? That’s a sad, sorry waste of intellect.” She righted me, kissed both my cheeks, and reached for Devon’s hand.
“That essay is based on what we learned from reading all the greats of Irish literature. Oh, wait, you didn’t bother to read half of it, did you?” He curled his lip in her direction, and Evan’s happiness dropped like leaves drifting from an oak at the end of the autumn.
It took her a long few seconds to string her words together. “I could recite Yeats in my sleep all night long, Devon.” Her voice was a mix of fist-hard and kiss-soft. “I’m telling you that your essay sucks because it sucks. You’re smart enough to know that imitating the greats doesn’t make you great. It just makes you a decent copycat.” She pressed her lips into a tiny hyphen. “Maybe you should listen to me sometime. You know how you got waitlisted?” He nodded, a quick jerk of his chin. “And most people applied?” I nodded, my breath held, waiting to hear what she’d say next. “Well, they sent me a letter of invitation, and it wasn’t because of my family’s shitty lace.”
Devon’s eyes glinted with new respect, then he crossed his arms over his chest. “Why did you get an invitation?”
She took a deep breath and pulled her hair over her shoulder, weaving a quick, distracted braid with her fingers. “You know how I drink?”
He tapped his foot in an edgy, impatient rhythm. “Yep. Like a fish. You’re practically professional.”
She shook her hair back out and her smile was like the first sip of icy lemonade on a dusty hot day. “I’m at least three times better at writing than I am at drinking.” She tugged at my hand. “Brenna? What say you?”
“My essay is pure shit. I’m in.”
She pulled me close and everything about her, her clean smell, her quick breathing, the cymbal crash of her heart, the energy that prickled off of her like live-wire electricity, everything made me feel like I had pure adrenaline running through my veins.
“C’mon, Devon. Come with us.” I held my hand out.
“Where?” he demanded, arms still crossed tight.
“To make errors!” Evan’s laugh was inflating, and I suddenly knew exactly what it would feel like to be a balloon full of helium. “They are, after all, the portals of discovery.”
“Joyce,” Devon griped following us as we tiptoed down the hall, past all the students bent over their laptops with their textbooks wide open in front of them. When we burst through the door and into the dimming late-afternoon sunshine, Evan gave a series of whoops and ran too fast on shoes that were basically begging fate to twist her ankle.
She spun around in wide circles, arms flung out at her sides. “Devon! Don’t believe Joyce! Araby will be amazing when we get there! Mangan’s sister was worth the trip! Or, you know, Mangan himself, if you’d prefer.” She stopped spinning and stumbled towards him, grabbing his forearms, and laughed like a maniac. “We will find the bazaar and spend all our damn florins on gorgeous stuff, and we’ll give gifts to our sweethearts that will make them swoon, swoon with eternal love! What say you?”
“I say you’d probably do really well in an insane asylum.” He tried to make the words hash out with clear aggravation, but he couldn’t disguise the blur of a smile.
“Oh holy Jesus, he smiled. You saw it right, Brenna? Be careful, Captain Crabass. Didn’t your gramma tell you that your face will get stuck like that if the wind changes?” She tweaked his nose and he let out a long sigh.
Evan pulled us into a dark, seedy pub and bought a round. She was always super generous with her money, and had insisted on buying us pretty much every meal we ate outside the cafeteria.
We’d only had a few weeks together, but I felt like Evan was a missing piece to a puzzle I always thought was complete. She had been my constant confidante, along with Devon, and she’d crept into my room or I crept into hers every single night so we could stay up late and whisper about every detail of our lives, every hidden secret. Sometimes I fell asleep with her dark hair curled on my pillow, listening to her snores and dreaming about fields of violets and pansies and daisies with thorns like barbed wire.
“Let’s truth toast,” Evan said as soon as the drinks got plunked on the greasy tabletop.
“What’s that?” Devon asked with the careful reluctance he maintained like a shield around her.
“We all tell one deep, dark truth before we take a sip. One that we’ve never told anyone else and it never leaves this circle. You in?” She waggled her eyebrows at me, and my stomach churned. My gut feeling was to say no, but I sometimes felt like a cobra in a snake charmer’s basket when I was around Evan.
I wrapped my hand around my beer. “Okay,” I said and swallowed hard.
She zoomed in on Devon who shook his head and pushed up the sleeves of his striped pullover like he was getting ready to get down to work. “Fine,” he grumbled.
“Excellent! Me first, since it was my fat idea.” She raised her glass and I watched the beer slosh slightly as her hand shook. “Rabin cheated on me with my best friend. I walked in on them, but they didn’t notice, so I snuck back out. I never told either one of them that I knew, and I’ve been hating them this whole time, so much I think I burned an ulcer in my guts.” She batted her lashes too fast and clinked her glass to ours so quickly I was afraid she’d smash them.
I wanted to say I was sorry, ask her why she’d never told me during all our midnight to dawn whisper sessions, but her look thrust at me like a spear point. “You’re up, Bren.”
“Alright.” I looked down into my beer, the foam already disappearing from the surface and thought about the thing that was too small to be a big deal and too weird to just forget. The thing that it would feel so good and right to admit to them and lift, like a cinder block, off my own chest. “Saxon called after Jake and I were back together and, um, asked for phone sex. He was…he tried really hard to persuade me. Really, really hard.” I squirmed at the memory. All four eyeballs stared at me, waiting. “He was so high. I mean, really high. I didn’t say anything back, of course. I mean, nothing sexy. But we talked for a while. I never told Jake, and I don’t think Saxon even remembers he did it.”
“I need a drink now,” Devon declared, and we clinked glasses and took a sip.
The table was quiet for a long, uncomfortable stretch. Evan must have tried poking Devon under the table, because she was staring right at him, but jabbing me in the shin with the toe of her shoe. I poked him instead, and he scowled.
“Fine!” he barked. “You two have been really aggravating this whole trip, you know that? I thought I was going to get some peace and quiet. I thought I might meet some nice, normal dorks who love Irish literature. But, no, I got stuck with you two freaks.”
