Page 35 of The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly

“Is that all you remember?” he asks.

“Did anything else happen?” I say through my fingers.

Please tell me it didn’t. Please tell me I didn’t make more of a fool of myself.

“That’s pretty much it.” His voice is tinged with the teeniest bit of something that could be disappointment but is more likely amusement.

That’s a small mercy. Thank you, Kit, for not throwing yourself at Jett and ruining everything. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jett says with an easy smile. “It was a good night.”

“Before I barfed on your bike.”

Jett smiles. “Before you barfed on my bike.”

Please bury me now.

I pull my hand away. “I’ll clean it up.

Is Layla here?”

“I took care of it already. And she’s in the house.”

“Alone?”

Jett shrugs. “I doubt it.”

I’m certain I would remember this, but I have to ask. “Did we do … anything else? Like things that would go against the Unbreakable Rules?”

Jett pauses before he speaks, as if he’s trying to decide how to answer. Finally he says in a goofy British accent: “I can assure you, my lady, our virginities—and our vows—are still well intact.”

I have to laugh. It’s a line from a seventeenth-century comedy we did in last year’s drama finals. I know for a fact that neither of us is a virgin. I lost mine in the world’s most awkward hookup at theater camp sophomore year. Jett lost his last summer to some out-of-town friend of a friend at Austin’s lake house.

“That’s a relief,” I say. “Not that I wouldn’t do that … well, I wouldn’t with you. Because of the Unbreakable Rules. And because you’re not into Serving Wenches. And, well, it’s you. And I’m me. But it’s a relief … that we didn’t … you know … while I was so drunk …”

He quirks an eyebrow at me, letting me dig myself deeper into the hole of my own words.

I’m clearly not helping this at all.

Stop. Talking. Kit.

“Let’s go get pancakes,” says Jett. “I’ll run home and get a shirt. You get cleaned up, and then we’ll go for breakfast. Everything else can wait.”

Ahhh, Jett. My breakfast food bestie.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror hanging by the cabana door and nearly scream. I look like a costume that should be at the bottom of a Halloween bargain bin. Half my hair is plastered to my head and the rest stands up like a cloud. All my makeup’s run down my face, like a melting clown, and my breath. Oh boy. My breath is roadkill bad.

“You’re asking me to breakfast, when I look like this?”

Jett tilts his head. “Do you look different than usual? I couldn’t tell.”

“Beastly man!” I grab a tasseled pillow from the floor and fling it at his head.

He dodges and steps closer to me. Even through my own stink, his coconut and lavender smell envelops me. “As your best friend, it’s my job to tell you that you’re beautiful every day. No amount of barf can change that.”

“Ugh,” I say, covering my stinky mouth. “Just give me a breath mint and get out of here already. I need to shower.”

Jett grins. “So, that’s a yes to pancakes?”