I nod as Isla says, “Duh. Confess. Let it out. Tell the world!” She spreads her arms out wide, throwing herself back into the couch cushions.
The room smells like the most expensive amaretto and vanilla candle known to man that sits in the corner of the room; the scent, along with the company, immediately relaxing our tired muscles from a long week of working on our feet—or in Isla’s case, crouching like a shrimp on the floor as she paints.
“Okay,” Briar groans, defeated. “Tony—” thesound of retching fills Briar’s family room as we all react to her asshole ex-husband’s name being spoken out loud for once. Her big brown eyes send us a scolding glare before melting, a hint of a smirk playing at her lips. “Are you guys done?”
“Fuck that guy,” Heidi murmurs from the other side of me.
Zara leans back to look around me. “He was the fucking worst.”
“There’s a lot of cursing tonight,” Briar smiles, giving up playing with her hair and tucking it behind her ear. “Well,” she pauses, wincing. “Wait, are we talking about like, broken hymen? Because simple. Tampon.” She shrugs and throws the card down.
“Youknowthat’s-s not what we’re talking about,” Isla slurs, sucking down the rest of her Moscato.
“Fine. Tony wanted to go get pizza one day. Borrowed his dad’s truck. It was absolutely filthy. Had sex in the back seat in the parking lot of a Park and Ride.”
Zara groans. “It was disgusting. He’s all tongue, and not in a good way. Trust me. I had to deal with the two of them for far too long.”
Briar flinches and nods, shooting back her drink in what I can only assume is an attempt to forget the memory for good.
“Okay, your turn.” She gestures to the card I’m still holding, and I drop it into the middle.
“Do I have to?”
Heidi slams her drink down on the table. “Can we stop asking that aftereverycard, guys?”
The game is Confess, and if I must confess something, it’s that I hate it. Well, I hate it when I’m sober—which isn’t a problem at the moment.
“I lost my virginity behind the bleachers,” I tell her with a sigh. “They were cold. My leg got scratched. It lasted literally about thirty seconds.”
Zara and Briar stare at me, but the others have heard this story before. They were there for it.
Mila finally speaks, prying her eyes away from her phone. She has a pink flush over her nose and cheeks from her vodka soda, and if I didn’t know any better, I would think she was maybe, just maybe, talking to a man. “I lost it behind that trampoline park,” she shrugs in an attempt to make us feel a little less bad.
I’ve always pretended not to know why the story bothered me so much.
But I do know. I spent my whole life until that moment thinking it would be another way, with another man. And even then, if I was being honest with myself, I pictured him.
“The one I’ve been taking Elara and Juniper to?” Briar gasps, her pink lips forming a perfect O. I’m actually pretty sure that’s where the two girls are right now. Briar had Emmett—the hot single dad Heidi hooked up with last year and decided to keep around, and Leo’s teammate—take them for the night so that we could have a girls' night without little ears around.
“Yeah.”
Zara cocks her head. “Out in the open?”
Mila shakes her head. “Nope. In the trunk.”
Briar’s jaw drops open as Heidi and I giggle. Isla hides behind her third glass of wine, a shit-eating grin stretching across her face.
“Mila, this was…” Zara looks at me from the corner of her eye, her brows creased in concern.
“It was consensual!” Mila throws her arms up. “Unfortunately! We tried it in the back of the car and he couldn’t—” she trails off again, taking a sip of her vodka soda as her left eye flickers like a doll at the memory.
“He couldn’t what?” Isla chortles.
Mila frowns. “He couldn’t find the hole, okay? Couldn’t do it. Made me get out and stick my head in the trunk.”
“Did he find it that time?” Zara probes.
“He found it for about two seconds. Jackhammered in, immediately pulled out too much, and spent the rest of the ten seconds going to town on my thigh.”
