With one last smile, she reaches out. Squeezes my forearm. “Thanks. Again.”
Then she leaves. I’m left there like a… a fucking…
Like a fucking dimwitted hooligan.
With a growl, I slip the hair tie she’d left me with over my hand. Lean on the wall and count and breathe and snap the band against my wrist with each passing second. Give it enough time, so I can rejoin the party and no one will be any wiser I’d been about to throw Kennedy Fucking Walsh on her immaculate bedspread and rumple it—and her—until she had no choice but to speak words too dirty for anyone but me to hear.
I wait an absurd length of time before making it downstairs. In the kitchen, I fetch another soda, then decide, fuck Morris. I need something stronger.
I join Natalie’s side of the table right when Rowe bounces a ping-pong into a cup. When Mason lifts the cup, I grab it right out of her hand and gulp its contents down.
“All right, yes,” Natalie cheers, throwing her hands up, bracelets clinking. Pointing a challenging finger across the table at Gray, she says, “You’re fucking toast now, Einstein.”
“Is that how you’re supposed to say toast?” Gray directs the question to me. “Toasht.”
“Shut it,” she says. Only it sounds more like Ssshhut it.
“Fucking lightweight,” I shake my head and toss the ping-pong on the table. It lands in one of Gray’s cups, and he drinks it while flipping me off.
“Where’d you go?” Natalie asks me. “Boinking upstairs? You know, this is a housewarming party, not a bed warming party. No bedrooms.”
“Like I’d want to go anywhere near yours,” I grin, despite the fact she nearly guessed the truth. “I think I saw a cockroach crawl under the door.”
“I. Do not. Have cock—” She squeals as Gray launches the ping-pong into the cup nearest to her, the beer splashing her arm.
“Don’t have cock? Fucking gross, Mason. Save that for Morris.”
She shoves me, punching with two weak fists. “Spencer, you ass. Didn’t say cock, either—”
“Morris,” Gray calls into the living room. “Natalie’s talking about cock again.”
“Nat,” drawls Morris’s faint censure.
“Theooo,” Natalie sings back. Then, she hisses, “Grayson Einstein Rowe!”
“Not my middle name,” Gray points out. He nods at the cup with the floating ping-pong. “Someone drink up. I have one more to go. Unless you want me to describe, in minute detail, the long, yet fascinating history of alcohol. It’s interesting, really—”
Natalie and I both fumble for the cup, knocking over it, as well as the final cup, in our haste.
“Beautiful. I win,” Gray sweeps out his hands. Natalie grumbles that now she owes him ten bucks, thanks to my asshole-ness. Or, at least, that’s what I think she says. There’s an awful lot of slurring.
“Who’s next?” Gray asks.
Someone says they’re game. Natalie steps aside, and I move, too, grabbing one of Rowe’s full cups to take with me. A guy wearing fucking suspenders takes our spot. Kennedy follows behind him.
I stiffen.
So much for not knowing anyone at this party.
She comes to Natalie’s side. I sip from my cup, pretending to watch Gray and this new asshat set up a new game.
“Good fish?” Natalie whispers to her.
Kennedy replies after a moment, “Not a smelly one.”
The fuck are they talking about?
We watch Rowe in prime concentration mode, eyeing his battleground and catapulting his ammunition into the newcomer’s formation. Natalie trash talks on the side, linking her arms with Kennedy, who giggles when Suspenders ribs Mason for her own defeat. I drink.
“Need a refill?” Suspenders asks when Gray lands another ping-pong. He holds the cup out to Kennedy.
She looks down at the cup in her hand already. “I’m good with my soda.”
“Kennedy’s saving herself,” Natalie says, removing her arm from the redhead to wrap it around her shoulders in a half-hug.
Rowe, Suspenders, and I all look at Kennedy. She laughs and throws Natalie’s arm off her. “For my twenty-first.”
“Which is right around the cooorrnerr,” Natalie sings. “Sucks it’s during spring break. We have to have another party after. Or, ohhh, we can go dancing. You, me, and Rylie. No boys allowed.”
“No boys?” Suspenders says. “That’s a shame.”
Kennedy tips her cup to her mouth, hiding a smile. “Maybe we can make an exception.”
“Uh-uh, no way—” Natalie starts, but I don’t hear the rest.
My head roars with static thunder. I grip my drink too tightly, splitting plastic, a thin line of beer running over my palm. And just as I throw it back, chug down the rest, I hear a high shrill call my name.
“Spencer, there you are!” Tansy rounds the corner into the kitchen. Fuck.
The cheerleader hops past Kennedy, scoots Natalie aside. Wraps those clasping hands around my waist. I grab her shoulders, ready to push her away—
And the thought hits me.
Why?
Why the fuck should I?
It’s not like she gives a fuck. That undercurrent? That dumb fucking bullshit feeling?
Kennedy doesn’t fucking feel it.
She got what she wanted. A night to get over her ex. So she can move on to the next fucking idiot. One night, and we go back to hating each other.
And I…
Quickly, subtly, so neither Natalie nor Gray notice, I glance at Kennedy. There’s tension in her shoulders. Mouth a flat line. Chin tilted and blank stare pointedly not looking in my direction.
The ice princess. Returned to her throne.
…I don’t do fucking repeats.
With that one, final reminder, I pull, not push, and Tansy’s lips are on mine.
16
Kennedy
It’s almost the end of my Busy Beans shift when I get the email from my biology professor. Lecture’s canceled. Apparently, he’d caught a stomach bug making it’s way around campus, and now I have a block of free time in my Friday schedule.
Wiping down the counter (and ignoring my coworker, Dawn, who purposefully left sticky globs of syrup and congealed foam for me to clean up), I ponder what to do with
