“Hey, Parker. What’s going on?”
“Scarlett and I are done,” he says.
“What happened this time?” I ask, referring to all the other times they’ve broken up. It usually only lasts a day or two, and then they’re back together.
“She fucked another guy.”
“Seriously?” I say, pretending to be surprised, but I’m really not. I assumed she was cheating on him. Scarlett demands constant attention, and if Parker doesn’t give it to her, she’ll get it from someone else. “Who was it?”
“Some college guy. She went to a frat party last night and met these guys and hooked up with one of them.”
“How’d she get into a frat party?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t fucking care. I was done with her anyway. The bitch has probably been cheating on me for months. You know how many times I could’ve cheated on her?But I didn’t because I was trying to be a decent guy. Fuck that. From here on out, I’m using girls like Scarlett used me.”
“If it makes you feel better, I never liked Scarlett. I always thought you could do better. So how’d you find out?”
“Finn’s brother was at the party. He has a friend who lives in the frat house. He wasn’t there long, but it was long enough to see my girlfriend fucking another guy.”
“He saw them?”
“They were doing it in the upstairs hallway. She must’ve been really drunk, which she’ll use to try to get me back. She’ll say she didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Would you take her back?”
“Hell no. Not after she cheated on me.” He pauses. “What do you think about Ella?”
“What about her?”
“You think she’s hot?”
I feel myself tensing up. “Ella Quinn?”
“I know we hate her but the past year she’s gotten kinda hot. Tight little tits. Round ass. And I like the way she’s got her hair longer now.”
“What the hell are you saying? You want to go out with Ella?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, we’re all stuck with this fucking secret and it’d be a hell of a lot easier to be with someone who knows what’s going on than to be with someone else. All last week Scarlett kept yelling at me for not listening to her and not texting her as much as I used to. If she knew why, she probably wouldn’t have fucked some other guy. She only did it to get my attention.”
“You arenotdating Ella,” I say, louder than I intended. I’m so fucking angry he’s even considering this. If anyone’s getting Ella, it’s me, but I can’t have her, and neither can Parker. “Pick someone else. There’s plenty of girls at school who want to be with you, and they won’t fucking care how often you text them.”
“Scarlett will turn them against me. You know how jealous she gets. If she can’t have me, nobody can. She’ll go after anyone who even shows interest in me. But Ella wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t let Scarlett tell her what to do.”
“Ella would never go out with you. You call her Trailer Girl and give her shit as much as I do.”
“Yeah, but now everything’s changed. Now we’re all in this together. She might see me differently.”
“Why? Just because we were all in the car that night? That doesn’t mean you’ve changed. You’re still the same asshole that bullied her and made her an outcast.”
“So are you, and you two haven’t argued all week. You even spent last night with her. You spent a Friday night with Ella Quinn. If that doesn’t prove things have changed, I don’t know what will.”
“Ihadto meet with her. It was an assignment. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Yeah? So how’d it go? Was she a bitch?”
“She was okay. We just did the assignment and went home.”
It was so much more than that. I actually had a good time, the best time I’ve had in I don’t know how long. Ella was easy to talk to, which explains why I told her stuff I shouldn’t have, like that stuff about my mom. I regret it now, but at the time, I wasn’t even thinking. Maybe it’s like Parker said, and sharing this secret is somehow making us all feel closer.
