Meredith smirked. “Did I not mention that?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Healsoknew you were going to pull something like this.” She whipped around and locked eyes with none other thanme. “Madeline!”
My smile slipped off my face right as my heart slipped into my stomach. “Yes?”
“Truth or dare?”
Blood pounded, pounded, pounded in my ears. I liked a good dare, but there was no way I was going to risk Katie and her embarrassment countering Meredith’s dare by instructing me to draw on her grandfather’s face with lipstick or send me over to Wawa for snacks. (That walk didn’t scare me, but it was past 1 a.m. and I hadn’t packed my pepper spray.)
“Truth!” I basically shouted. “I pick truth.”
Katie’s shoulders slumped; she’d definitely had a dare planned. “Um…”
“I have one,” Reese said when Katie couldn’t come up with a question. “Mads, which guy are you hooking up with?”
My mind went blank. I had zero clue what she was talking about, even though Katie’s cousins both exclaimed, “I was wondering that too!”
Reese could tell. “You were hanging with two guys in the kitchen earlier,” she said as if I had amnesia. “The dude washingdishes, and the lax bro stuffing his face at the island. Which one are you with?”
It clicked.
Oh.
My.
God.
Too much cheese curdled in my stomach. “Neither!” I all but vomited. “Ew, neither. Connor and I have been friends forever, and hisgirlfriendwas also there tonight.”
“Is that why you aren’t with him?” Reese asked. Her voice somehow poked me. “Because he’s taken?”
I ignored her. “And we went to high school with Marco. He goes to Princeton now.”
“Ooh…” Amanda raised an eyebrow. “APrincetonman.”
“Never in a million bazillion years!” I exclaimed.
“Okay, okay, we get it.” Courtney gestured for me to lower the volume. “You are not romantically linked to either of them.”
“But are you romantically linked to someone?” Yasmin asked.
Meredith chuckled. “Yaz, she’s seventeen!”
“Says the person who started dating her high school boyfriend atfourteen!”
“Yeah, and he turned out to be a total shithead,” Meredith said, shrugging. “I’m just saying that you have a lot on your plate at seventeen, and maybe Mads doesn’t have time for a love life.” She glanced at me. “Please tell me to shut up if I’m off base.”
I shook my head. I liked Meredith—I actually liked hera lotbut couldn’t help wondering why she was the one sticking up for me rather than Katie. BecauseKatiewas the one who’d known me for more than several hours. “You’re not.”
She nodded in confirmation, but just when I thought that was the end ofthat, Katie cleared her throat. “Mads,” she said. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”
Have you ever kissed anyone?
The question felt like someone was tugging my heart up from my guts, back to my chest where it belonged and could rattle around in my rib cage.
The answer, of course, was now obvious.
No, I hadn’t had my first kiss. I was seventeen yet hadn’t done more than hug a guy. Which barely counted because the only guy I’d hugged besides my brother was Connor, and hugs with Connor were more like football tackles.
