“Well?” Julia smacks his arm; her eyes are wide and she’s feigning shock. “You better say the best kiss you ever had was with someone is in this room!”
She’s talking about her, and Nate’s face blanches as his head snaps up and looks straight at me. “Yeah, definitely the best kiss I ever had was with someone in this room.”
“Aw, why thank you, handsome,” she says drunkenly falling over laughing.
But Nate doesn’t notice or help her up because his eyes are still locked on mine.
Chapter 16
It’s almost midnight when a soft tap knocks at my door.Is it Nate?What a horrible thought. For me to get my wish to come true, my friend would have to get her heart broken.Why can’t I just stop wanting him?
I don’t bother to look through the peephole, and I open the door a little too excitedly in anticipation. In my head Nate is sneaking over to profess his love for me after he saw how brokenhearted I seemed when I rushed out of the dinner party. The fantasy starts with him carrying in flowers and sweeping me up into his arms to carry me to bed. We wouldn’t come out for days. Julia doesn’t mind because in my fantasy she falls insanely in love with Silvia and leaves the rest of the adult male population alone for us straight single women.
Unfortunately, my dreams shatter and crumble all around me when I stand eye to eye with the jackass who is in reality on the other side of my door.Dex,the door-knocking dickass.
“What the hell do you want?” I demand, crossing my arms over my chest, and becoming suddenly very aware I’m wearing a pair of boy shorts and a tank top without a bra.
Dex’s eyes don’t know where to look first. Face, boobs, belly, legs, boobs, face, legs, it makes my skin all warm and weird.
“How do you act fine when you’re falling apart inside? And put some clothes on, I…you…look all,ugh.” He storms into the room and throws his coat on my chair. “Seriously, tell me.”
“Tell you what?”And what does “I look all ugh,” mean?I look down over my sleepwear and twist around to peek at my bottom.Do I look fat? Does “ugh” mean I look fat?
“I was there, you know, at the game. You on the kissing cam. I saw it. And byitI mean you were kissing your best friend’s boyfriend in front of the world and now he’s giving you goofy lovesick eyes and saying the best kisser he’s had was in the room, but not naming the girl he’s with—which, if you remember,isJulia.” He sets himself in a menacing pose, and folds his arms over his very broad chest.
“This can’t be happening to me right now,” I say under my breath. “Dex, get out of here. I don’t want you in my apartment. You’re going to infest it with your assholeness.”
He doesn’t budge. “Are you sleeping with him? Because if you are, that’s great. Tell Julia what a lying prick he is andyoucan have him.”
“And what, you get Julia?” I ask, with a laugh.
“Well, yeah.” He says the words, but the thing is, he doesn’t look so sure.
My arms unfold and my hands drop, dangling loosely at my side. I guess Dex Vanstone and I have something big in common; we’re both in love with the wrong people. “I’m not sleeping with Nate,” I sigh, staring up at him. “And I didn’t know Julia and he were a thing when we were at the game. I don’t think they were dating seriously then. They were just getting to know each other. And she doesn’t know. And—”
“Really?” he asks, cutting me off. The skin around his eyes softens and his eyebrows pull together as if he’s trying to figure it all out.
“Yeah, really. And I feel awful about it, so if you say anything to hurt her I will—”
“But you like him, though, and he likes you, no?”
“No, he doesn’t, Dex. He doesn’t like me. He wouldn’t. I mean he’s got Julia, he wouldn’t waste his time on someone like me.”
“That’s true,” he says, low.
“Well, fuck you.”
“Yeah, well, we kinda already did that, didn’t we?” He smiles crookedly when he says it, but it’s not an arrogant smirky smile, it’s more like a bashful sweet one. Ugh, I should stab my eyes with a fork so I never have to look at him again. Him or his suddenly sweet stupid smile.
I plop down on the couch too embarrassed to speak.
He sits down on the opposite side of the couch and shakes his head in disbelief. “And Heath is gay? I mean what the fuck happened there?”
“Yeah, that surprised me too,” I admit. “If I knew that, I would have never—we would have never, you know?”
Dex nods, and a flush creeps across his cheeks. He looks down quickly, to his hands, which he’s folded on his lap. Every time someone has mentioned what happened between us, he blushes. I guess it was humiliating for him as well. I’m probably the last person on earth he wanted to sleep with. My chest tightens and aches. I drag the afghan that drapes over the arm of my couch around the front of my body to hide myself. I feel vulnerable, naked, and absolutely full of flaws and horribly ugly. I fight back tears.
“I want to punch Nate in the face,” he says. “But it’s not his fault. It’s driving me crazy.”
