Might potentially have a kissing friend. Yeah, tonight worked out pretty damn well.
I get out of the car eventually and Josey walks back from the porch, where she's left the door open and Lucas leaning against the doorway. He and Dominic look very awkward together without her. Josey gives me another wink and my wrist another quick squeeze on her way to the car, but she doesn't stop and talk to me.
Dominic says, “At least you're not as bad off as him.”
“I'm like eighty to ninety percent sober, seriously.”
He sighs. “I'll round up for you when I tell your mother.”
“Thank you.” I kick at the pavement a little. “I'm sorry.”
“He didn't drive, did he?”
I turn around to point at the car behind me, but they're already gone. “Uh, no. Got a ride from a friend.”
“Well, at least you made a friend.”
“Maybe tell my mom that part instead.”
“Can you help me set Lucas up on the couch? I don't know what I'm going to do about this...”
I should have stopped him from drinking so much.
I'm messing up already.
“Uh-huh,” I say, but as soon as Dominic steps inside, Lucas grabs me by the shoulder to stop me from following. “Ow, what?” I say.
“What the hell are you doing?” he says.
“What are you talking about?”
“You just made out with Theo Estival right in front of his girlfriend.”
So. Yeah. I'm messing up already.
3
“So do you think she saw you?”
“I don't know how she couldn't have.” I flop back on my bed and close my eyes. “I've never been so embarrassed in my life.”
“What about that time you peed on the nurse after you got your appendix out?”
“Thank you, Aanya.”
“You're welcome.”
I switch my phone to my other ear, where it has fewer piercings to rub against. This conversation is painful enough as it is. “Seriously,” I say. “I'm going to have to move again. I'm going to have to leave the country. Probably Lebanon?”
“Why Lebanon?”
“I don't know exactly where it is. Maybe anyone looking for me won't either.”
There's some mumbling on her end, then she says, “Jake says New Zealand.”
“Everybody knows where that is. Your parents let him sleep over?” It's like nine in the morning.
“No, I'm at his place, I came over for breakfast.”
“Cute.”
“His mom just walked in. Hi, Bev. Just Taylor. Bev says hi, Taylor!”
“Hi, Mrs. Katakas.”
Aanya says, “It sounds like your new town is pretty depraved. You should come home.”
“Well, we can't all be having sexfasts with our boyfriends' moms.”'
“Jeez, crotchety.”
“Sorry.”
“So what, you still like him?”
“Well, you have to admit it's intriguing.”
“He didn't tell you he had a girlfriend!”
“He didn't tell me he didn't have a girlfriend.”
“This is why the real world should be more like Facebook. In a relationship. Not in a relationship.”
“It's complicated.”
“Hmm, yeah.”
“I think real life is just a bunch of people walking around being it's complicated,” I say.
“It doesn't have to be like that.” She's chewing something. “Nice, straightforward relationships exist, and they're awesome. Me and Jake. Sara and Dominic. My parents.”
“Yeah. Lucas did tell me Theo was weird.”
“He didn't tell you why?”
“No, he admonished me for indiscriminate kissing and then passed out in his drool on Dominic's couch.”
“Your couch.”
I need to get used to that. “Right.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
“What, for the party?” I start scraping some dry skin off my legs.
“Uh-huh.”
“No, it wasn't my idea, I barely drank, and I negotiated us a way home. I'm Every Parents' Dream.”
“How about Lucas?”
“I mean the thing is that he's not Dominic's kid. Or even his ex-wife's kid. He's only been in the family for like six months.”
“So in other words you don't know.”
“Lucas said he was going to be in deep shit with his dad and Dominic says his ex will do her best to make it about her. They probably know better than I do. Dominic says he thinks I made him nervous and he was trying to impress me.”
“Ah, so it's all your fault.”
“Yeah, I didn't like that implication either.”
“Well, at least you know one thing,” Aanya says, “Lucas sure does know how to turn a girl on.”
“Right?”
“Nothing like drool on Dominic's couch.”
“My couch.”
Aanya laughs. “Atta girl.”
Aanya bringing up Facebook makes me wonder how on earth I've been conscious for two hours and haven't tried stalking Theo and Josey yet. Lucas accepts my friend request almost instantly—which suggests that he's at least not in too much trouble, which I guess is good—and I look through his friends for the ones with profile pictures that suggest they don't think about things like privacy settings, and one of them has about eight thousand friends. Theo is not one of them, but Josey is.
Josey Rosemann. Turned seventeen about a month ago. Her profile picture is some kind of artsy thing, where she's turned away from the camera and all you can see is her perfect top knot and a heavy mug cradled in hands that I just know are perfectly manicured.
She has flawless privacy settings, of course. Can't scroll through her other pictures. Can't see her interests, or how she talks to people, or how they talk to her. Can't look through her friends to see if Theo's there.
Can't see her relationship status.
But she doesn't seem like an it's complicated kind of person. She literally has every hair in place, and she's wearing a huge flannel shirt in that picture and making it look like someone designed it just for her. The angles of her profile are perfect, because she posed for this picture, and because she knew exactly how to do it.
My profile picture is me squeezing Aanya's dog goodbye the day before
