THE SUN STABS AT ME AS I ROLL OVER ON SUNDAY morning. Jett and I lie together in a tangle of blankets on the pullout couch in Layla’s pool cabana. I’m wearing the pajamas I packed for my sleepover. Jett is shirtless but wearing jeans and socks.
I sit up, and a groan escapes my lips. The blue-and-red punch broke my brain, and I’ll never be the same again.
“Good morning.” Jett smiles a sweet, sleepy smile as he rolls over to look at me.
I mumble a good morning and go back to contemplating the insides of my eyelids.
The night comes back to me in snatches. We took a ride on Jett’s bike; made it back to Layla’s; she and her pink-haired friend joined us soon after that; there was dancing, swimming, and then …
Oh my God. My eyes fly open and I turn gently onto my side.
“Did I throw up on your motorcycle?”
Jett sits up. I try not to look at his flat stomach or the ridges of his shoulder muscles. How does a guy whose main hobbies include watching documentaries and playing the trumpet get shoulders like that? And what would it feel like to run my fingers over them?
“And my shirt. After we went swimming, you were insistent we should go for a ride.”
“But then I barfed.”
“Then you barfed,” confirms Jett. “And I helped you get to bed.”
I bury my face in my hands. Kill me now.
“Is that all you remember?” he asks.
“Did anything else happen?” I say through my fingers.
Please tell me it didn’t. Please tell me I didn’t make more of a fool of myself.
“That’s pretty much it.” His voice is tinged with the teeniest bit of something that could be disappointment but is more likely amusement.
That’s a small mercy. Thank you, Kit, for not throwing yourself at Jett and ruining everything. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Jett says with an easy smile. “It was a good night.”
“Before I barfed on your bike.”
Jett smiles. “Before you barfed on my bike.”
Please bury me now.
I pull my hand away. “I’ll clean it up.
Is Layla here?”
“I took care of it already. And she’s in the house.”
“Alone?”
Jett shrugs. “I doubt it.”
I’m certain I would remember this, but I have to ask. “Did we do … anything else? Like things that would go against the Unbreakable Rules?”
Jett pauses before he speaks, as if he’s trying to decide how to answer. Finally he says in a goofy British accent: “I can assure you, my lady, our virginities—and our vows—are still well intact.”
I have to laugh. It’s a line from a seventeenth-century comedy we did in last year’s drama finals. I know for a fact that neither of us is a virgin. I lost mine in the world’s most awkward hookup at theater camp sophomore year. Jett lost his last summer to some out-of-town friend of a friend at Austin’s lake house.
“That’s a relief,” I say. “Not that I wouldn’t do that … well, I wouldn’t with you. Because of the Unbreakable Rules. And because you’re not into Serving Wenches. And, well, it’s you. And I’m me. But it’s a relief … that we didn’t … you know … while I was so drunk …”
He quirks an eyebrow at me, letting me dig myself deeper into the hole of my own words.
I’m clearly not helping this at all.
Stop. Talking. Kit.
“Let’s go get pancakes,” says Jett. “I’ll run home and get a shirt. You get cleaned up, and then we’ll go for breakfast. Everything else can wait.”
Ahhh, Jett. My breakfast food bestie.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror hanging by the cabana door and nearly scream. I look like a costume that should be at the bottom of a Halloween bargain bin. Half my hair is plastered to my head and the rest stands up like a cloud. All my makeup’s run down my face, like a melting clown, and my breath. Oh boy. My breath is roadkill bad.
“You’re asking me to breakfast, when I look like this?”
Jett tilts his head. “Do you look different than usual? I couldn’t tell.”
“Beastly man!” I grab a tasseled pillow from the floor and fling it at his head.
He dodges and steps closer to me. Even through my own stink, his coconut and lavender smell envelops me. “As your best friend, it’s my job to tell you that you’re beautiful every day. No amount of barf can change that.”
“Ugh,” I say, covering my stinky mouth. “Just give me a breath mint and get out of here already. I need to shower.”
Jett grins. “So, that’s a yes to pancakes?”
“Yes,” I say as I unwrap the red-and-white mint Jett hands me. He steals them by the handful from the candy bowls at the Castle, so his pockets are always full. Kind of exactly like my grandmother. I pop the mint in my mouth. “Wait, no. Rain check. I’ve got to get home soon and talk to my mom.”
I need her to un-ground me so I can train at Layla’s this week. And I’d like to ask her why she’s not been paying the mortgage.
“Okay,” says Jett, shrugging. “Text me if you want to talk about your documentary later.”
“Will do. And thanks for taking care of me last night.” I offer him my most grateful smile. “You’re seriously the best guy a girl could have.”
“Best guy friend,” he corrects gently. He offers me another mint and then he’s out the door.
There it is. The sound of me being put solidly and forever in the friend zone.
Outside, his motorcycle roars to life. I peek out the curtains as Jett races down the driveway. A little bit of my barf and a huge piece of my heart goes with him.
WHEN I FINALLY STUMBLE INTO THE HOUSE, LAYLA’S MADE COFFEE and is sitting at the breakfast nook table with her laptop open.
“You’re up to over three hundred thousand views in two days,” she says in lieu of a greeting.
“Are you serious?” I plop down into one of the fancy ergonomic chairs and try not to stare at the sun streaming in through the bay windows.
“Dead serious. Do you know how big a deal that is?” Layla dips a piece of bagel into her coffee and pops it into her mouth. She swings the screen around and points to the comments.
I read a few and then shrug, too tired and hungover to process them right now. My breath’s better thanks to the breath mint, but everything else still hurts. I unscrew the lid from a bottle of French vanilla creamer and take a long swig from it. It goes down sickly sweet, but since there’s not a bathtub of frosting to drown myself in, this will have to work.
“Gross,” says Layla, taking the creamer away and pushing black coffee and a piece of whole wheat toast toward me. “Eat that.”
“Where’s your pink-haired friend?”
“Maura? She left right after you and Jett went to bed.” Layla waggles her eyebrows at me, as if that will make details of my night emerge from my mouth.
I refuse to take the bait. “Are you going to see her again?”
“Maybe. We had fun,” she says. “But it’s not serious.”
“Jett knows all about that.”
“Uh-oh,” says Layla. She closes her computer. “That bad?”
“He told me he’s not into Serving Wenches. Which I’m taking worse than I thought I would.” I slurp some black coffee and nibble a bite of toast.
“He’ll come around,” she says. “You feeling okay about phases one and two?”
“I’m not feeling good about anything right now. Maybe once my brain stops ping-ponging around my skull, I’ll be capable of opinions again.”
“Poor baby drinker,” murmurs Layla. She gets an ice pack out of the freezer and plops it on the top of my head. After I finish my coffee and drink a bunch of water, she turns on the TV. I curl up on the couch beside her with a mumbled “Thank you.”
I don’t wake up until she nudges me. My head’s resting on a plump, satiny pillow, and there’s a line of drool soaked into it.
Ugh. I’m awesome.
“It’s three p.m.,” says Layla. She’s dressed in her work clothes. “I texted your mom earlier, pretending to be you, and told her we were still doing homework and you’d get a ride home with me. But she pretty much yelled at me through the phone. So, I think you better get home now.”
“You are the best. Friend. Ever. What do you see in me?”
Layla laughs. “Get moving, Wench.”
“I love you too.”