It was official. I got a full ride to Berkeley. A full ride. To my dream school. In California. I cried when I signed my national letter of intent. So did my mom. There was a lot of happy crying in the Hugheses’ household that week.
My family took me out to celebrate at my favorite fondue restaurant, which just happened to be the place I was going to take Kennedy on our date on Saturday. I even made reservations before my parents paid the bill to make sure we got the table right by the mini waterfall—because if I wasn’t old enough to order the best wine the restaurant had to offer, I was going to make sure I could make up for it with a white tablecloth restaurant and a freaking waterfall next to our booth.
Liam even surprised me by ordering a California state flag for my dorm room and joked how I can be a basic non-California girl. The gesture was so sweet, given the last few months. But it was nice to see the good parts of my brother finally appear again.
Even though I had a lot to be excited about, nothing compared to my plans for the weekend. I decided to throw a party. I told my parents that I wanted to have people over for a little party, and I hardly ever attended / hosted parties; I think they were beyond thrilled that I was going to be a normal teenager for once. Because they trusted me (way more than Liam), they decided to give me the house while they went out with their friends for a much-needed adult dinner date.
And then the next day, I would sweep Kennedy off her feet with our date.
It was going to be an awesome weekend.
I invited the usual people to the party on Friday: Madison, Gia, Meghan, Lana, Tanner, Erick, and even Riley, though I didn’t really expect her to show up. I even invited Gabriel since it had been a while since I hung out with him. He greeted me with the biggest hug when he walked through the front door, spinning me around a few times before putting me back down.
“You’re truly amazing, my queen,” he said with a bow. “I’m not worthy to be in your presence.”
“Yeah, I’ve known this for a while, but I wasn’t going to say anything.”
The plan was to eat a bunch of junk food, play some board games, and have a good time. Luckily, Tanner and Erick read my mind and did bring over alcohol, four six-packs of various beers, and my own six-pack of Guinness with a red bow on it. Okay, that little detail I didn’t mention to my parents, but I knew my friends. We didn’t go hard like Liam’s, and we were all going to be responsible, knowing that my parents were going to come home around one o’clock. I thought I was allowed to treat myself to a few beers. Getting a full Division I scholarship and getting three school records and a state record deserved a small celebration with close friends…and a few beers. Nothing too crazy. And everyone I invited knew not to get too crazy. It was just a low-key, chill night. That was all.
Thank you, Tanner’s sister, for buying us the alcohol!
For the first twenty minutes, we blasted music through the Bluetooth speakers. Erick prepped the Candy Land drinking game and insisted we play. I didn’t know Candy Land could be made into a drinking game, but leave it to Erick to find a way. Lana and Meghan vouched that the game was totally worth it. We all opened our first beers as Liam started a fifteen-minute power hour to songs about California. After those fifteen minutes, I already felt the beer, and suddenly, I became the target of multiple rounds of teasing since I was the first to surrender my body and mind to the alcohol.
It was nice to peacefully coexist with a wide range of people in various high school cliques. But like all good things, it came to a screeching end.
Right when I opened my third bottle of Guinness, the doorbell rang. The only person who I expected it to be was Riley, but even then, I would have been shocked if she showed up. She really wasn’t my biggest fan at the moment. Then I noticed a shadow when I headed to the door. Liam. He swerved around me, looking a little happy from the fifteen-minute power hour, and opened the door. Tom, Cassandra, and Jennifer each held their own alcohol and celebrated when Liam motioned them to come inside.
“Gabe! You, me, beer pong, now,” Tom called to Gabriel in the living room behind us.
Leave it to Liam to take advantage of my parents’ trust for me and ruin it with his partying friends.
“Um, what’s this?” I said to Liam.
Why did he have to ruin his week of friendliness with his friends crashing the party? Most importantly, Cassandra, Satan’s daughter.
“We’ll be in the basement,” he said. “Tom, our party’s in the basement.”
But Tom had already found his best friend chatting up Madison and Gia in the living room.
“That’s not a proper way to treat your guests,” Cassandra said so subtly.
“You’re not my guest,” I said.
Right as she opened her mouth to say more—because she always had to say more—Jennifer placed both of her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “She won’t be saying any more mean things to you—whose house we’re in. Right, Cassie?”
Cassie sharpened her glare at me, giving me one last nonverbal threat to get her “last word” in. She didn’t scare me. Not in the slightest.
“Oh, scary,” I said, and Jennifer pushed her friend farther into my house. Then I turned to Liam and his wide, smiling mouth. “What the actual fuck?” I attempted to yell through my clenched jaw.
“Oh please. You think you can be the only one to have people over while Mom and Dad are gone? We’ll be in the basement. Completely out of your hair. It’ll still be chill.”
“Liam, this is the one time I wanted to have people over for a good time. Mom and Dad trust us—they trusted me.”
“Yo, Liam,” Tom shouted from the living room. “Fix us up a beer pong table, would ya?”
Right as Liam headed downstairs to get a table to serve as the beer pong table, the doorbell rang. Again. My heart pounded just thinking of anyone who could have been on the other side of the door. It could have been Riley; it could have been the rest of Aspen Grove’s finest partiers. But what stood on the other side of the front door was something I never thought I would see in all of my years on Earth.
Melanie, Kennedy, and Riley. Together. Side by side. Looking at each other as if they were aliens. The girl who always ended up naked at parties, my girlfriend, who I didn’t invite, and my ex-girlfriend, who knew about the girlfriend but the girlfriend didn’t know that she knew.
I was thankful, in that moment, I’d just had fifteen shots of beer in fifteen minutes before I had to deal with the situation that I knew wasn’t going to end well.
“Oh fuck,” I said, the words slipping out like a wet bar of soap.
“Party’s here!” Melanie said and invited herself in, flashing her large bottle of Grey Goose like it was the ticket inside.
That left me with Kennedy and Riley. Both knew each other and all the history we had. And all that history came pouring down on me like a ton of bricks. I had no idea what to say. The two tried to avoid giving each other any eye contact, and I had no idea how to even address the ten points that probably needed to be addressed at the moment. So, I just stepped aside and let them into the house. Riley gave me a glare as she continued inside.
“Your ex-love seems like she needs a few drinks,” Kennedy said with a laugh as she stepped in, leaning really close to me when she said it, close enough for me to smell the peppermint gum with each word that left her mouth.
God, I needed to kiss her right then and there but controlled the urge when I heard Tom’s annoying cackle from the living room, reminding me that both of our worlds were already coexisting with each other in the same room, and the last thing everyone needed to know was that our kisses were secretly the bridge that connected the two.
“I’ve felt that way about her for the past month or so. I’m surprised she even showed up.”
Kennedy grinned. “She’s probably still in love with you.”
“That’s probably an accurate statement.”
“I can’t really blame her. You’re pretty hot and well-achieved for an almost eighteen-year-old. Speaking of well-achieved…”
In the hand not holding her Captain Morgan rum, she handed me a red envelope. “I got this for you, future Olympian,” she said. She slyly let her fingers trail my waistline as she headed into the house, and the feeling she left me with ignited my whole body and warmed my cheeks.
I stared at her handwriting for a few moments, my name partnered with the outline of the heart. Inside the envelope was a card that said in different fonts for each word: “you’re awesome, fantastic, a shining star, the sh*t, a boss, super de duper.” Inside the card, the last bullet point said: “simply the best” with a paragraph of her perfect handwriting taking over the rest of the card.
Quinn,
There are no words to describe how proud I am of you for all your accomplishments. For your full ride scholarship, for your state records, and for the success I know you’ll have at the world championships. Watching you achieve these goals these past few months has been so inspiring. I’m so excited for you and what the future has in store for you. I know you’ll continue to kick ass at everything you put your mind to. You’re an amazing person, and I’m so lucky to have you as my girlfriend.
Love,
Kennedy
My goal of the night: sneak away with Kennedy to show her how much I appreciated her and her support.
The boys were already in the beer pong game, and the party circled the table. Tom and Gabriel versus Liam and Tanner. Tanner stood there with a lazy posture as if he would rather be anywhere than at the table with his football teammates, and Erick snickered behind him as if it was the greatest thing he’d ever witnessed.
“With all those muscles, I expected you to do better,” Erick said to Tom after Tom missed his first throw.
“I’d like to see you do this, then,” Tom said.
“Nah, I’m DJing, and I’d rather look at you, Mr. Tight End.”
Meghan, Lana, Gabriel, and Liam roared with laughter.
“Shut the fuck up, Iglesias. You’re not funny.”
“Loosen up, Tom,” Tanner said, “and he is funny, and you’re not gonna talk to him like that.”
“Then tame your boy toy.”
“How about you fuck off?”
Oh great, the worlds are already fighting. Fuck me now.
Gabriel smacked Tom in the stomach. “Stop being a shit, Felix. Now, let’s win this.”
Erick winked. Tom frowned as he rubbed the pain from Gabriel’s smack out of his stomach.
I crept over to the fridge to get the third Guinness I hadn’t had a chance to drink yet and also hoped my presence in the kitchen would get Kennedy’s attention so I had a reason to talk to her because God, she looked so beautiful. Her hair was perfectly straight, messily parted down the right side, and I wanted to ruffle it with my fingers. Her eyes were outlined in a sweeping line of black mascara and eyeliner, and don’t even get me started on those skinny jeans rounding out her butt and legs and the off-white tank top flaunting her sculpted arms and collarbone.
“Oh, so you’re drinking now?” Riley said as she crept behind me, gesturing to my Guinness.
“I think I deserve it. Are you talking to me again, or are you still being an asshole?”
“If you’re still being an asshole, I’m still being an asshole.”
“Well, cheers to that.” I raised my bottle to the nonexistent drink in her hand and took a sip. “With this attitude, I’m surprised you even came.”
Just as her mouth opened to respond, Kennedy stepped in our circle. “Do you guys wanna shot?”
Kennedy held her bottle of her Captain Morgan up to Riley and me. The rum was already down a fourth of the bottle, and she had a wide grin on her face. Her glance alternated between the two of us, and I noticed the assessing look in Riley’s eyes, probably viewing Kennedy in a whole different way after finding out that we were together.
“She needs one,” I pointed to Riley, and it was her turn for the embarrassment to color her face. I hid my smile by drinking my beer.
“Well, then let’s fix you up a shot.”
Kennedy headed back to the kitchen island where Cassandra, Jennifer, and Melanie circled around. Riley shot me a what-the-fuck-did-you-just-do look. I motioned her to the island, and when the two of us joined, Kennedy came up right next to me, and her breeze of apples and flowers tickled my arm. I didn’t expect her to be so close to me in front of her friends, but there she was. Not as if any of her friends would have noticed. Melanie swayed her hips to the music like the drunken mess she already was, Cassandra typed away on her phone, and Jennifer watched Kennedy pour the rum in each shot glass, but she didn’t count. She already knew about us. And Riley watched us like a hawk.
“Here ya go,” Kennedy said and passed the shot glasses to all of us. She saved the last one for me, and when she slid me mine, her fingers purposely went out of their way to touch my fingertips.
Gabriel appeared between Melanie and Cassandra and pushed himself into the circle. He took Melanie’s shot from her. I might have been imagining it, but knowing that Cassandra had the biggest crush on Gabriel, I thought I noticed her cheeks turn the lightest shade of pink when his shoulders touched hers.
“Are we doing a round of shots?” Gabriel asked.
“Hey, that’s my shot!” Melanie said.
“We were just about to do a round. Gotta congratulate Quinn,” Kennedy said and raised her glass. “Cheers to our senior year and to everything you’ve accomplished, Quinn.”
“What did she accomplish?” Melanie asked. She sounded genuinely curious.
“Three school records, a state record, and a full ride to Berkeley; oh, and going to Russia for the world championships in July,” Kennedy said. I wanted to unleash the smile that was growing underneath my skin, but I held it in. It felt so good hearing my girlfriend brag about me to her friends, especially Cassandra. Hearing the list of accomplishments detailed her permanent scowl even more.
“How do you know all of this?” Cassandra asked with a tone and a raised brow.
“Because she told me. It’s called talking, Cassie.”
“The real question is: who doesn’t know all of this?” Gabriel said. “To my queen!”
That comment made Cassandra throw daggers at me with her eyes.
“Cheers, Quinn,” Kennedy said, and just as her friends concentrated on downing their shots, she flashed me a wink.
After I finished my shot, Gabriel came over to me and gave me his usual bear hug, picking me up and spinning me around as fast as he could. Just to annoy Cassandra, I wrapped my legs around his waist, and his spins grew faster. He smelled like the wonderful mix of his house, cologne, and freshly consumed beer and rum. When he put me down, he ruffled the top of my hair as I teetered from the spinning.
Riley sandwiched herself between Lana and Meghan, who were still watching the loud and intense game of beer pong. Cassandra’s defined scowl was directed at me, and the alcohol already making me cheery encouraged me to give her a wink. That really did it because she flipped me off and joined the boys at the beer pong table. Melanie followed Gabriel, and Jennifer followed Cassandra, leaving Kennedy and me alone in the kitchen.
“Want another shot?” she said quietly as if the open floor plan of my kitchen and living room had no effect on her. Her friends could have turned around at any time to see her talking to me as I gave her a flirtatious smirk and major heart eyes. It felt as if the two of us had been plucked out of this world and put in another because nothing else existed around us. “I have to admit, seeing you drink is a rare sight. I feel like I need to soak this all in.”
“Lucky for you, I’m such a pathetic lightweight and well on my way there. And yes, I want another shot. But no more after that. Can’t get too crazy when my parents trust me with the house.”
“I like that you’re a good girl.”
She wiggled her eyebrows and granted my wish of another shot. We gave each other solid eye contact, pounded the shots back, and let the awful taste of straight-up Captain Morgan contort our faces. We both laughed.
“All this alcohol is making me feel a little warm,” I said. “I think you should take off my clothes upstairs.”
Her eyes widened. “Wow. Someone gets really blunt when they’re drunk.”
“I’m going to disappear to my room now. The second I disappear, count to sixty, and then I’ll reward you for your superb counting skills.”
She was right on time. Sixty seconds later, my bedroom door slowly opened. Beauty tangled up in Kennedy came waltzing in my room. She quietly and delicately closed the door. But as conservative as she was sneaking into my room, all the things I wanted to do to her fell on the opposite side of the spectrum.
My waist pinned her against the door, and I pressed in the lock when my hands slid underneath that sexy tank top she wore. My lips latched on to the neck I’d been eyeing all night, and my aggressiveness sucked out the softest but sexiest murmur from her. As our rum-soaked tongues got reacquainted with each other, my right hand unbuttoned her pants and skated down her smooth skin until it reached its destination, and when I pressed her center, Kennedy’s nails dug into my back. Her body loosened, and I used my waist to secure hers in place so she didn’t tumble to the floor. We only had a few moments to take each other in before it started looking suspicious, and I was determined to get her off. And I did so in record time.
If I thought her body was relaxed when my mouth first sucked on her neck, then that was nothing. With her cries muffled into my neck, I caught her trembling body when she landed back on Earth after her visit from whatever planet I was able to send her to.
“Oh my God,” she breathed softly into my ear. “Oh my God.”
Oh my God was right. Her quivering, limp body relying on mine to stabilize her and the remnants of her moans dancing on my earlobe sent an intoxicating warmth through my body.
“I think we need to head back downstairs,” I said as I retrieved my fingers from her.
“God, no. It’s my turn.”
“How about we make a deal. You can save it for tomorrow night when we have our hot, steamy date. I drive, I pay, only if we can claim your house as our safe space.”
“Deal.”
“Now go back downstairs. I’ll meet you down there in a second.”
After I washed up and rejoined the party, I found Jennifer and Kennedy taking over the spot Tanner and Liam once claimed. It was no surprise the two lost to Tom and Gabriel. Riley helped herself to Tanner’s Bud Light in the fridge. I only joined her in the kitchen so I could treat myself to another beer to celebrate my growing list of accomplishments.
“You two were gone quite a bit,” Riley said. Her voice was suspicious.
“Wasn’t that long,” I said. I knew she purposely tried to call me out on my and Kennedy’s mutual disappearance, so I gave her a wink to let her know I gave zero fucks if she knew what we were up to.
Because she wasn’t my girlfriend. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. And her ongoing jealousy annoyed the crap out of me.
When I joined the party huddled in the family room, Erick, Tanner, Lana, and Meghan were deep in a conversation, guessing what number each person at the party was on the Kinsey Scale, and I began mentally preparing for my reaction when they got to Kennedy. Just act cool. Drink your beer. Or maybe get another one. Excuse yourself to the bathroom. Go interrupt Liam’s flirting with Madison and Gia.
“Melanie will totally sleep with a girl in college,” Meghan said with confidence. “Total spaghetti girl. She’d have her own fuck girl for a month or two in between guys. Maybe a sorority sister. And then forever live on the dark side of sexuality. The hetero side.”
“I don’t see it,” Lana said. “She’s way too straight. I think she’d make out with a girl when she was plastered and then wake up the next morning pretending like she didn’t know anything about it.”
“Or that would be her excuse for all her make-outs with girls,” Riley said. “I see her making out with a bunch of them but sleeping with one? No. She’s totally grossed out by vagina.”
“I agree,” Erick said to Riley. “Same with Jennifer and Cassandra. Jennifer was all about that Liam di—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence,” I said.
“And Cassandra has too much up her ass. Both are a hard zero. Madison Olivares, on the other hand, I wonder.” He tapped his beer against his cheek in deep thought.
“Nope, super straight,” I said. “I had a giant crush on her my sophomore year and was heartbroken when she started dating Corey Griffith.”
Cassandra went out to her car to grab more alcohol she had hidden in her trunk, and when she left, the stuffy air followed her outside. The beer pong game was now down to one cup for each team. In between turns, I caught Kennedy’s glances at me, and every time we caught each other, our cheeks mirrored the red blushing across our faces. The glances turned into winks we tossed each other from across the room. My hope was to get her to cave and blush. I totally won that game.
With the alcohol kicking in full swing, enough for me to say I was legitimately drunk, I wanted to give her eye contact to coax her to the best hiding spot in my house so I could have her again. Unfortunately for me, she was way too invested in that beer pong game to get that the constant glances were trying to get her to have sex with me.
“What about Kennedy Reed?” Lana asked the group.
Oh crap. Remain calm. Act like you don’t know anything.
Everyone studied Kennedy from head to toe. Her eyes were back in the game, focusing too much on Tom and Gabriel’s cup to see that half of the party was gawking at her, looking for something gay to pick out so we could analyze where she slept on the Kinsey Scale. She aimed the beer pong at the one lone red Solo cup on Tom and Gabriel’s side.
“A one,” Tanner said. “Only because she’s way too nice to tell a girl ‘no, I really don’t wanna make out with you.’”
“Seriously?” Erick said. “I’d give her at least a two or a three. She has the whole ChapStick lesbian vibe going on.”
Clearly, she was anything but a zero. The noises she’d made in my ear informed me of that just a half hour before.
“You’re all wrong,” Meghan said. “She’s a four.”
The group exchanged surprised looks. Riley and I continued sipping on our drinks, and I tried to be as invisible as I could. Maybe I was too hard on Meghan’s gaydar. Maybe every assumption she ever made was right, and there were a lot more queer people in Aspen Grove than I thought.
“Oh my God, Meg, not everyone is gay,” Lana said. “I can’t find anything that screams anything higher than a one.”
“Are you kidding me? Babe, your gaydar is awful. Everything about Kennedy Reed is gay.”
“How?” Tanner said. “I don’t buy it.”
“One, she has short fingernails. It’s the first thing I notice on hot girls—”
“Because you want all of them to be gay,” Lana said.
“Two, her arms. They’re, like, perfect arms.”
“Because she plays soccer.”
“Then why are they better than Cassandra, Jennifer, and Melanie’s? All of us ladies know that girls like arms, so we make sure we do our daily bicep curls. Which leads me to three, I see her working out at the rec center every day. She definitely does more arm workouts than leg workouts, and she’s always wearing cutoff shirts. How does that scream straight? No straight girl wears cutoff shirts. They wear racerback tank tops.”
She had a good point. When Kennedy watched my 500 on the track, she was definitely wearing a cutoff shirt.
“Four, she wasn’t even into Grant Turner at all like any straight girl would be. She looked super miserable at homecoming, if anyone noticed. And five, earlier, I overheard Cassandra and Melanie say she hasn’t been on a single date since Dominic Powell last year. Someone that hot would have been on at least one date…unless she’s into women, which she is. She’s a four.”
I hoped by taking another sip of Guinness that the cold beer would cool down the fire erupting on my cheeks as my friends picked apart my surreptitious girlfriend. My coordination teetered like a seesaw, and my whole body felt warm and satisfied. That was it. I was cutting myself off. Not a chance in hell I would be that girl puking at her own party. Plus, the night was still young, and I didn’t want to steal the toilet away from Melanie Krugel when she needed it. From her lazy, red eyes and wobbling knees, I’d say at her current pace, she’d be there in about two hours max.
Then Cassandra rejoined the party, but something was missing from her. Her pouty face. Instead, she stood in the entryway connecting the foyer and the living room, her face loosened in hurt and confusion. Her eyebrows rose, her eyes soft on me before falling on Kennedy. It took me just a moment to realize why she looked so concerned and shocked.
In one hand, her new Absolut Vodka bottle. The other hand, the red envelope.
I choked on my beer in mid swallow. It was the first time I’d ever seen her scowl uncoiled. She just stood there as all the words Kennedy wrote on that card soaked in her mind. My eyes completely froze on her. My body felt as if my veins had been filled with cement. I had no idea what to do for damage control. Casually stroll over to Cassandra and talk to her privately as if the card was no big deal? Or do what I really wanted to do and make a scene? Who the hell reads a card that doesn’t even belong to them? Of course, Cassandra Jones. Because she was the worst human being in all of Aspen Grove.
A pong ball flew over my way and rolled underneath the couch. As Tom and Gabriel searched the nearby ground for the ball, Kennedy caught Cassandra’s gaze in the entryway. Her eyes followed down to the card. Everyone else carried on drinking, chatting about the Kinsey Scale, and Gabriel came over to dig his hand underneath the couch where I stood. Cassandra, Kennedy, and I all glanced at each other, waiting to see who was going to make the first move.
I jumped out of my spot, and once she saw me darting over to Cassandra, Kennedy ditched her spot at the beer pong table. Together, we pushed Cassandra to the foyer where the card should have been.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled through my clenched jaw. “You think you can just come into my house and go through all my stuff?”
It was as if she wasn’t the Cassandra Jones that I had known for four years. She just stood there and let me push her into the wall without any resistance. Her dark eyebrows rose farther up her forehead, shocked, horrified, and concerned all at the same time. A part of me expected to be shoved back, but her whole body was limp.
“It was on the ground,” she said, completely defeated. It was the softest tone I’d ever heard come out of her. “I just picked it up and—”
I snatched the card out of her hand. “Read it? You thought because it fell on the floor that gave you reading rights?”
She looked at Kennedy. “You two are…together?”
The little streak of red that highlighted Kennedy’s face when she overcame embarrassment infected her whole face in dark red. I didn’t know I was worth a whole face colored in dark red embarrassment.
“Cassie, I—”
“You’re dating a girl? You’re…you’re gay?”
“No. Cassie, I—”
“Out of all the girls you could date, you’re dating…her?”
“Can we go outside and raise our voices out there?” I said.
Call me crazy, but with Kennedy’s new promise to be more open with us, I thought she would tell Cassandra the truth no matter how much she feared her best friend would retaliate. The closet door was propped open for her to waltz outside and own our relationship. Tell Cassandra that she was dating me, how it wasn’t a big deal, how Liam and Jennifer didn’t think it was a big deal, and what would have been a really awkward confrontation would dissolve into nothing.
But that didn’t happen at all.
Instead, the three of us found the whole party gawking at us in the entryway, staring at us like you would imagine if discovering that the most popular girl at school was dating a girl. Lana, Meghan, Erick, and Tanner found more amusement in it than we did, and I knew the smirk Meghan tried to hide was because she was absolutely right this whole time.
When my eyes fell on Kennedy, I could feel the embarrassment ripping her apart. I would have scooped her up in my arms and told her it was going to be okay if I could, but that was just adding alcohol to the fire.
“Dude, your sister is dating Kennedy?” Tom said to Liam. “Man, she must have a twin thing.”
“Shut the fuck up, Tom,” Liam snapped.
What the hell did that mean? After his comment, Kennedy looked even more mortified, as if she witnessed her life crumble right in front of her. I saw it too. The world we built together dissolving.
“What?” I said. My heart thudded. “What does that mean? What is he talking about?”
“She doesn’t know about homecoming or New Year’s?” Tom slurred, and I wasn’t sure if he realized everything he was spilling out.
“I swear to God, Tom,” Liam said and shoved Tom against the wall. Before he could lunge forward, Liam already grabbed his shirt in his fist.
“I dare you to shove me again,” Tom said.
“Learn to shut your mouth, you idiot.”
Gabriel quickly sandwiched himself in between them.
Kennedy’s eyes darkened on me, and I couldn’t tell if it was because her pupils sank deeper into the pools of tears or guilt. Everything started to collapse. My confidence. My relationship. My heart. I felt as if my lungs were being used as a stress ball.
Kennedy scurried out the front door, and I bolted after her, using the remaining strength my body had left.
“Kennedy!” I shouted and broke out in a full sprint to catch her running down my driveway. “Kennedy! Stop!”
I grabbed her shoulders and turned her around. She threw her face into her palms.
“What the hell?” I tugged at her wrists so she would stop hiding her face. She was going to look me in the eye and tell me if what Tom said was either true or false. She tried to move away, but I gripped her wrists tighter. “You hooked up with my brother? You fucking hooked up with my brother?”
She tried peeling my hands off her to no avail. “Stop it,” she cried. “You’re hurting me.”
I let go of her. What was happening to me? I experienced such an overwhelming sense of anger that I didn’t even feel like a real person. Anger and heartbreak were a lethal combination. I didn’t mean to hurt her. Jesus, I would never want to do that. She even looked at me as if I terrified her, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the truth she held in or if it was because of my reaction. Maybe it was a little bit of both. I was scared of myself too, if that meant anything. I didn’t like it at all. I felt like a monster.
“Oh my God,” I muttered, and I felt as if I was going to puke. “Oh. My. God. You slept with my brother?”
“It was one time, Quinn! At homecoming. At Cassie’s. It was before anything started happening with you—”
“Jesus! What about New Year’s?”
“It was a tiny peck, I swear. We were just standing there, and I really didn’t wanna kiss Grant so…”
“You kissed your girlfriend’s twin brother, the one you already slept with, and then just added to the secrets you were keeping from me?”
“It didn’t mean anything! Just a stupid little peck. Nothing with him meant anything!”
“You kissed him on New Year’s? After you slept with him too? You slept with him, became my girlfriend, kissed him on New Year’s, and then spent the night with me?”
“Quinn, all of this happened before you and I were something. All of this happened before I fell in love with you.”
“Fell in love?”
“Yes!”
It burned. My chest. My eyes. My whole body. So badly. The emotion swaddled me to the point it made it hard to breathe. Not even the perfect March air could loosen the grip. What was even worse was the girl who I cared about more than anyone else in my life stood in front of me feeling the exact same burning and agonizing pain I felt.
“I…I can’t stop picturing you with him,” I said, my voice starting to shake. The image of them together wouldn’t leave me alone. Fucking leave me alone!
“Don’t do that—”
“You really couldn’t have just told me? That’s all you would have had to do. ‘Hey, I hooked up with Liam once, but that was before us, and it didn’t mean anything.’ And then you kissed him at New Year’s and then just added that to all the things you were hiding from me? That wouldn’t have been a big deal if you weren’t lying to me.”
“I wasn’t sure how you would react.”
“Yeah, so lying about it is way better. Smart one.”
“Quinn, it didn’t mean anything. I was drunk and thought I wanted it, but when it was happening—”
“I really don’t wanna hear details of you sleeping with my brother.”
“I don’t want that to mess this up. I don’t want it to mess this amazing thing up.” She cried harder. “Please, Quinn. I know I messed up, but I’m so sorry.”
My brain told me to kiss her. Forget about what happened before you guys talked and just kiss her. But my heart hurt so badly. From Liam, from the Outing™. My heart wanted to find a compromise with my brain, but it wasn’t sure how. I couldn’t get past the lying, the secrets kept from me. Kennedy and I were supposed to have our own secrets with each other. She didn’t need the same secrets with my brother.
“We need to go back in there,” I said. “The only way for us to take back this outing so it can be in our control is just going in there and owning it. I think maybe if I have some space for a few days, I can get over the Liam thing, but I can’t keep hiding all the feelings I have for you. I want to act like your girlfriend at school, not watch you give some lame lie to your friends about why you’re talking to me. The only silver lining in this is that Cassandra just propped open the door for us to come out. I told you that you wouldn’t have to do this alone, so let’s do this together.”
All she did was shake her head. She glanced at the neighbor’s driveway, more tears stained her eyes, and her lips didn’t produce any answer to my non-rhetorical question.
I didn’t think it could hurt even more, but God, her silence ripped me in two.
“What? What are you doing?” I said. “You’re shaking your head to that? They already know, Kennedy! All we have to do is just take it back and act like it’s not a big deal!”
“It is a big deal,” she said. “It’s a big deal to me.”
“It’s a big deal to me not to go back in the closet. I can’t go back in there, Kennedy. I just can’t. If you truly love me like you claim you do, then you’ll do this. You’ll fight for us. You’ll stop lying to everyone. I’m willing to fight for us because I’m crazy about you. Let’s do it together.”
She just stood there in silence, looking utterly helpless. Since she’d moved back to Aspen Grove, she never felt so far away from me. The person you try to be is a stronger presence in the room than the person who you really are. Kennedy would rather be closeted and unhappy than the person who she really was—the girl who I fell for. The girl standing in front of me wasn’t my Kennedy. She was Kennedy Reed, Ms. Popular, Ms. Co-Captain of the soccer team, and Cassandra Jones’s best friend, a label that wasn’t at all flattering. Saying that she loved me was just empty words to make up for the guilt she felt. That wasn’t love. Not in my book.
“No,” she said so softly, I must have misheard it. She just told me she loved me so she couldn’t have just told me no. That wouldn’t make any sense.
“What”
“I said no.”
Her words felt like a punch straight to my stomach. “No?”
“This was supposed to be my decision. My control. My words. None of that was mine. I had no voice in that. That’s not coming out. That’s being exposed.”
“That’s why we go back in there and take our control back. I’ll be with you!”
“I can’t.”
I took a few steps back. I really just wanted to fall on my driveway, curl up in a ball, and sob. The girl I cared so much about refused to go to her friends and say she was proud of me—proud of us.
“I’m done,” I muttered, and the sound of my own words yanked my body apart even more.
“What? Just like that?”
“I have no idea what I have to do to be worthy of existing to you. You’re running away from us, from me. I’m not going to be your dirty little secret anymore. Not when we can easily take this all back in our control and fix it and be happy. But I guess you don’t want that, do you?”
The most painful part of the night wasn’t finding Cassandra holding that card in her hand. It wasn’t the whole party watching our confrontation from the living room. It wasn’t finding out that Kennedy had slept with my brother and never told me about it. And it wasn’t even me telling Kennedy that I was done with her. The most painful part of that night was watching her stand so still in front of me that I never thought she would leave that spot again.
I had no words for her. The hurt choked my lungs. A tear broke free from my eyes after holding back for so long. My hands trembled as I opened the front door to find everyone still in their spot. All eyes were on me, but I couldn’t even see them. I just stumbled up the stairs and let myself completely break when I plopped on my bed.
Underneath the sobs that collected in my damp pillow, I faintly heard Liam shooing everyone out of the house, telling everyone that the party was over. Minutes later, there was a knock on my door, and I heard it slowly open. That someone who came into the room sat by my bed and put their hand on my back. From the softness of her touch, I knew it was Riley, and I cried even harder knowing how much I’d hurt her and how she still stayed behind.
No matter how much I pushed her away, she never ran away from me.
I wept for the rest of the night, and she held me the way I wished Kennedy could hold me, so tightly that no one could try to take me away from her.
The whole week, I’d only been able to think about Saturday and the wonderful date we would have. The whole week I had this grand plan to sweep her off her feet without any restraints holding us back. I would have never guessed that both of us would instead fall on our faces.