I groaned. “I need you to never speak of that to me again.”
He laughed. “It was hilarious.”
“It was awful.”
“Awfullyhilarious,you mean. But fine. I won’t mention it.”
“Pinkie swear?” I demanded, as we approached the school.
Jamie opened the heavy fire door for me and ushered me into the cool darkness of the back hallway. Then he obediently held out his hand and linked his pinkie with mine.
“That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it, though,” Jamie warned. “Memories don’t turn off just because you want them to. Not even fortheParker Hoffstraeder.”
Then Jameson Burke—the baseball prodigy, the popular kid, the guy I’d just realized was the hottest person in all of O’Leary or possibly the world—winked at me, dorky Parker Hoffstraeder—all five late-blooming feet of me—like we were friends.
And I was really fucking glad that memories worked that way, and there were some things you could never forget, because I was never going to want to forget a single second of my friendship with Jamie Burke.
Chapter One
Parker
“Oh,my God, Ricky! Yes! Yes!Yesssss!” a woman screeched as the pounding from the other side of the wall picked up pace for the second time that night.
My eyes flew open in the darkness. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” I whispered, though I was fairly confident nobody up there listened to me anymore. “No, no,no. Doesn’t anybodysleeparound here anymore?”
The clock radio on the nightstand, an ancient relic that had probably been the bee’s knees back in the eighties when I wasborn, read 12:22 a.m., and I whimpered. I’d been out for less than an hour after the last round of sexcapades next door, and I was fuckingtired.
Tired of ten days stuck in this tiny room with its lumpy mattress and shitty internet.
Tired of trying to smile and pretend to be strong and patient when I was actuallyneither.
Tired of not being able to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch before bolting upright with the scent of smoke in my nose and the absolute conviction that something, somewhere was on fire.
And above all, tired of the fact that nothing in my life was under my control.
You’d think the one good thing about returning to my hometown—the tiniest, sleepiest town in all the land, where even the grocery store closed promptly at seven—after over a decade in Boston would be the ability to actuallysleep, right?
You’d be wrong.
“Ricky! Love me forever. Don’t ever stop!”
Please, Ricky. Please make it stop.
I grabbed my pillow and pulled it over my face.
“You’re incredible, Ricky! Sofuckingincredible!”
Ricky indeed seemed fucking incredible. Or at least incredible at fucking. So incredible, in fact, that I’d been exposed to more explicit content over the past two evenings at the Crabapple Bed and Breakfast than I’d ever heard on an N.W.A album or in a low-budget porn. (Not that I’d know anything about that, since I had very specific taste in porn. I hadstandards, okay?)And, not to sound like my mom or whatever, but hadn’t these two ever heard ofdiscretion? This was a family-friendly establishment. Wasn’tsomeonethinking of thechildren?
I was sure Ricky and his lady were a lovely couple, really. You’d better believe I’d checked them out this morning from across the breakfast room, expecting them to look like… I didn’t know what, exactly. “Porn star” tattooed across their foreheads? Skin-tight leather? Horns and pitchforks, because only the morally bankrupt could have fulfilling sex lives?
Okay, so Iwaspossibly becoming my mother.
But in any case, Ricky and Mrs. Ricky had seemed sweet. A typical thirty-something suburban soccer mom and dad who’d chosen to celebrate their ten-year anniversary in exciting, cosmopolitan O’Leary, of all places. Not remotely the kind of folks you’dthinkwould be given to shouting, “I wanna fuck you against the window so everyone can watch!” and making noises like they were mutated dolphins stranded in Upstate New York attempting to locate the rest of their pod. Honestly, not the kind of people you’d imagine had thestaminato attempt to knock through the wall using the headboard as a battering ram not once, but four times, a night.But it just went to show that you could never judge based on appearances, right?
And good for them. Glad someone was getting some action, since I sure as hell wasnot. I just wished their action didn’t have to take place inches from my head when I really, really, no-but-reallyneeded to sleep before I killed myself or someone else.
Oh,sleep. We used to be such good friends. Where did it all go wrong?
