“Well, I thought I was dreaming.”
Susanna is next. “Why?”
“For cripes’ sake. Shut the hell up.” I can tell Patsy’s on her last nerve.
“Fuck you, Pats,” growls Susanna.
Attempting to stop the sister fight that’s about to erupt, I keep going. “When he came into view, I know I must have gasped, because on my laptop was the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen.”
Susanna raises her hand, waving it about like she’s in third grade and she’s got the right answer. “Wait. I thought you said there were two guys?”
“There were, but at first it was just the one guy.” The hottest one. “It took the other one a minute or two to get into the frame.”
“What’d they look like?” asks Robbi.
“They were both shirtless,” Patsy whispers.
“Hey!” Susanna protests. “You—”
“Nope. Not a shirt in sight. I could really only see from their faces to about here.” I place my hand right under my breasts so they can get a visual. “They were both good-looking. The one in the back, the one who came onto the screen second, had short dark hair and eyes. He seemed smaller than the main guy but still muscled.”
I look around the group. None of them are speaking, so I continue. “The guy in front was big, blond, and beautiful.”
“You make him sound like a girl,” snarls the only person I don’t know in the room. I ignore her.
“He was definitelynota girl. He had tattoos on both arms. I couldn’t tell what they were, but they came up over his shoulders.” I stare at the faces around me. They’re all rapt with attention. “So anyway, the guy said, ‘Oy, he’s got a bird.’”
“Oy?” Susanna giggles. “Did he really say that?”
I nod.
“I love it when British guys call girls ‘birds.’ So cute,” sighs Lindsay—our resident romantic, apparently.
“I do too. So, I just stared at the screen until the one in front said, ‘Get our mate for us, will you, love?’ or something along those lines.”
I choose to leave out the part about my bedhead, and I still don’t know what baps are. That’s unimportant.
“Oh, I love it when British guys call girls ‘love.’ So romantic.” Lindsay again.
“Yeah, that’s cute. So, I just stared at the screen because I had no idea what was happening. I was half asleep. So then the one in front, the hot one, asked me again, ‘Love. Can you wake our mate?’ Since I had no idea what he was talking about, I asked, ‘Your mate? Your girlfriend or wife’s not here.’”
“Yes. ‘Mate’ means ‘friend’ in British,” Lindsay says with a nod.
“You didn’t figure that out before then?” I look to my left at the girl I’ve never seen before. “Everyone knows what that means.” I stare at the girl and do my best to hold my tongue. It doesn’t pay to argue with someone like her. Though I should have, because she’s not done. “Likeyou’djust get some random call from two hot guys.”
Patsy steps in. “Don’t, Kara.”
“Yeah, don’t be that way.” That came from Susanna. I still don’t know who Kara is.
“Youinvited me over here, Sus. You told me you wanted me to vet the new roomie. Well, I’m here vetting and she”—Kara points to me—“thinks she’s hot shit.”
I feel my face burn. I know it’s got to be red as a tomato. It always does that when I’m embarrassed. Thank you, Irish ancestry. “I do not.”
“Just ignore those two,” Patsy says, patting my knee. “Finish the story.”
It’s not a story. It really happened. I just want to go to my room, so I choose to swallow all of my emotions and finish it up lickety-split. Nodding to Pats, I finish. “They asked for Maxwell Quinn, so I told them my name was Quinn Maxwell and that they had the wrong number. They said good night, and that was it.” I pause, hoping that can be the end of it. The mean girl, Kara, is glaring at me.
“Well, that’s rather anticlimactic,” says Robbi. “Are they in the States? Are they coming to visit?”
