Isla laughs so hard that water flows from her eyes, her wine nearly spilling onto the couch multiple times. Briar keeps her eyes on it as she holds back a laugh in an attempt to be far more considerate to our friend than we have ever been since getting the call the night it happened.
Mila was the last to lose her virginity in our group. It all happened fairly fast. First, it was Isla, then Heidi, me, and finally Mila. She had been dating the guy for a little over two months, and although we all told her she deserved someone a little better, she didn’t want to wait any longer before losing it.
“Virginity is a construct, anyway.” It’s the same thing I tell myself every time I think about it for too long.
“It is, but it didn’t feel like it back then.”
Two things can be true at once.
“Who's going next?” I ask, pushing the deck of cards together.
Mila rolls her eyes, leaning forward to grab a random card from the pile, and I silently pray it’s an easy card so I can get it over with.
The way the game works doesn’t quite make sense, and I don’t think it really has to. It’s meant for drunk women to play together over wine or tequila, depending on how spicy we want it to get. It’s probably best that there are no real set rules.
“Okay. Easy one. One person you hate.”
Cooper Henry,I think to myself.
But they don’t actually know that.
“Miles Teller,” I tell her, sitting back against the TV console. Thank god, it’s over.
Zara cranes her neck in my direction. “Are you going to explain that one?”
Shaking my head, I tighten my long ponytail of curls. “No—pe.” I pop the “p.”
Isla eyes me suspiciously. Out of all of them, she’s the only one who has confronted me about my lack of interest in the Baltimore Cobras football team. Or rather, my lack of interest in socializing with the men on the team.
While I love all of their significant others, I won’t lie. I hate going to Lulu’s—the bar down the road around the inner harbor—on Mondays.
I hate seeing his face.
It was easier before he got drafted here. It was easier when I could pretend as if he never existed in my life at all. As if he were a distant memory that I didn’t think about daily. As if I didn’t shed a river of tears over Ben & Jerry’s for a few months after he stopped talking to me.
But admitting it to them would mean telling the whole story, and that’s just simply too painful.
And besides. They technically do know of him, in a way. They just don’t know it. They know of a boy who hurt me, and they may have even known his name at one point. But by the time Cooper was drafted to the Baltimore Cobras, telling Isla that her brother’s teammate was the piece of shit who broke my heart a million years ago would only cause stress.
Mila holds the card to her chest, her eyes tipped up to the ceiling as she thinks. “Mmm, I think I hate Tony.” Her eyes shoot to Briar, her grin growing.
“To hating Tony!” Briar cheers, holding up her glass. It’s been a long time since she’s had to deal with him. Leo made sure of that. But we still take every opportunity to curse his name.
The man deserves the worst in life, that’s for sure.
The game goes for another hour or so before Briar yawnsdramatically, signaling she needs us to get the hell out of her house for the night and go home.
I look at Mila. “I’m bringing you home?”
She nods sleepily, pulling herself off the floor as Isla stumbles around the couch.
“I don’t know if I brought my keys with me,” Isla mumbles as she pats the pockets of her jeans.
Briar sighs. “Your spares are in my office. Want me to get them?”
Isla smiles thankfully as Briar heads off. “I thought you requested the keys back?” I ask her.
Her shoulder raises in a half-hearted shrug. “I kept locking myself out, so I entrusted Briar with them.”
