“God, Whitley. You’re practically auditioning for a starring role on Intervention.”
“What?” I grinned at him. “I’m more fun when I’m drunk, anyway. Give me enough to drink, and I might even let you give me a makeover.”
He laughed. “Okay. It’s a deal,” he said. “I’ll just have to trick my mother into leaving the house for the night.”
“Will she freak about the party?”
“Hell no.” He snorted. “She’ll want to hang out with us. And I wouldn’t be able to survive that kind of social humiliation.”
So it was settled. Harrison decided he would hold the party/sleepover on the Fourth of July, just over two weeks away. He could get his older sister to buy the alcohol, and his mother would be on a holiday retreat with some girlfriends. Perfect.
We’d finished our game of Crazy Eights and had moved on to Go Fish when Bailey walked into the dining room.
“Hey, Whitley,” she said, hanging in the archway that connected the dining room to the kitchen. “Mom wants to know if you and Harrison want cheeseburgers. Greg is firing up the grill again.”
“No thanks,” I said.
“I’ll take one.” Harrison smiled at her. “You ungrounded yet, sweetie?”
She nodded. It had been two weeks since Wesley’s party, which meant her punishment was finally over. Not that she seemed particularly excited about it the way I’d expected her to be. She’d taken the grounding without complaint, and not once had I heard her express a desire to go anywhere once it was over.
Actually, since that party, Bailey hadn’t been as chatty, at least not with me. It was really starting to freak me out.
I watched her disappear into the kitchen and out the back door. “Harrison, who were the boys you introduced Bailey to at the party?”
He shrugged. “Just some sophomore kids. I don’t know them that well, but one of the boys was my friend Kelsey’s younger brother. You met Kelsey at the party. She’s skinny, blond.”
“Oh, one of the Blond Mafia?”
“Is that what you call them?”
“Yeah.”
Harrison laughed. “I like it…. Got any twos?”
I shook my head. “Go fish.”
That night, I decided to give Trace a call. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, and texting wasn’t enough. I’d been ignoring Mom’s calls for a while, unable to listen to her bitching, and I needed to talk to someone on the outside of this little bubble I’d been living in.
“I miss you, too,” Trace said, sounding agitated. “Whitley, can I call you back later?”
“Um, sure, I just thought—”
“Emily’s expecting a phone call about a job and our call waiting isn’t working and if I tie up the line she might have an aneurysm. I’ll give you a call later tonight if you want.”
“No. It’s fine,” I told him. “Really. I’ll call another time.”
“Great. Love you. Bye.”
The next day, Bailey asked me to help her practice for cheerleading tryouts. I wasn’t sure how I, the anti-cheerleader, could help, but whatever. I sat on the front steps and watched as she did cartwheels across the grass and belted out goofy little rhymes.
“How am I doing?” she asked after about an hour of this.
“Good, I guess.”
“Good isn’t good enough.” She sighed.
“It’s just cheerleading.”
“But it’s important. If I want to be noticed in high school, I need to get this right.”
“Christ, Bailey, you watch too much TV,” I said. “That is so not how it works. You can be noticed for a lot of different things in high school. You don’t have to wave a pom-pom for people to know your name.”
“Did people know your name in high school?” she asked.
“Some of them. But I went to a big high school.”
“How did you get noticed?”
I bit my lip. That wasn’t a question I particularly wanted to answer. Not in detail, at least. “I partied a lot,” I said. “So people started recognizing me.”
“That won’t work for me,” she said. “I don’t think I like parties.”
“There are other ways, too. And being noticed isn’t all that important. Trust me, sometimes it’s better if no one knows your name.”
She shook her head, as if I had no idea what the hell I was talking about.
“Fine,” I said. “Keep doing your backflips or whatever. But for the record, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting noticed. People noticed you at that party, didn’t they?”
She stared down at her feet. “I guess.”
“See? Your life won’t end if you don’t make the cheerleading squad.”
“I know.” She tugged on the hem of her T-shirt and cleared her throat. “But will you help me work on this more tomorrow?”
“We’ll see.” I got to my feet. “You coming to the Nest tonight? To celebrate being ungrounded?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t feel like it.” Bailey opened the front door, and I slipped inside after her. “There’s a movie coming on the Disney Channel tonight I want to see. But you and Harrison have fun without me.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
“Suit yourself, then,” I said, though I was a little worried about her as I watched her walk into the kitchen. I knew the last party hadn’t ended on the best note, but after being cooped up for so long, I thought she’d at least jump at the opportunity to listen to bad music and drink soda with Harrison and me. I guess I’d be mad at me, too, after the hangover she had, topped by two weeks of grounding. Was it weird that I was missing the old Bailey?
I walked upstairs and made my way down the hall toward the bathroom. I needed to get a shower before Harrison showed up. What would I wear? Hanging out with Mr. Fashion had me worried about my clothes all the time now. Maybe a pair of denim shorts with heels? I decided to confer with Harrison when he arrived.
I was so wrapped up in thoughts of my wardrobe that I didn’t even think twice about pushing open the bathroom door.
Of course, as my luck would have it, the room wasn’t empty.
“Hey!”
I was staring at a very wet, very naked Nathan, fresh from the shower and without a scrap of clothing covering him. Water dripped from his hair and gleamed on his shoulders… his broad, muscular shoulders. Those gym visits were definitely working.
“Oh, Christ,” I gasped. I pulled myself out of the bathroom as fast as I could, but it didn’t keep me from seeing everything. The door slammed behind me, and I hurried to the guest room, trying to shake off the weird daze.
Technically, I’d seen Nathan naked before.
I’d just forgotten how hot he was.
I ran my hands through my hair as I paced—pointlessly, I might add—around the guest room. Nathan and I had barely spoken since the morning after Wesley’s party. Dinners were civil but stiff. I was sure he was still mad at me about Bailey and the drinking, and I was busy seething about what he said that night and the fact that we’d be going to school together in the fall, not to mention trying to forget I’d slept with him.
There was no way I could forget now.
Graduation night, which had come back to me in bits and pieces, flashed through my mind again, as it had more and more over the last few weeks. His breath mingling with mine, his lips by my ear, his hands on my skin. Dear God, his hands made me go crazy. They had that night, and they had when he’d helped me put on the aloe vera a few weeks ago.
I shook my head. I had to stop thinking about this. I tried to think of something else, something disgusting. Anything that would be a major turnoff.
Like dead kittens.
Or spinach.
Yeah. None of that worked.
And it only got worse a few seconds later when the door swung open and Nathan—still wet, but with a pair of blue jeans covering his lower half, at least—walked into the guest room. The door clicked shut behind him. I could only assume he didn’t want anyone overhearing whatever he was about to say.