Page 24 of Rent a Bad Boy

In my head—which, to be fair, gets most of its social reference points from movies I watched alone in my bedroom on Friday nights—a college party involves a house shaking from the bass, red Solo cups littering every surface, someone doing a keg stand in the backyard, and at least one person crying on the stairs. There’s supposed to be chaos. There’s supposed to be a DJ, or at a minimum a speaker system that could shatter glass. Someone is supposed to be wearing a toga for reasons nobody can explain.

Instead, Everett pulls up to a regular-looking house on a regular-looking street and leads me inside. There are roughly fifteen people spread across a living room that smells like weed and pizza, sitting on couches and beanbag chairs, talking at a volume that wouldn’t even get a noise complaint.

“This is the party?” I whisper.

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. More... debauchery?”

He gives me a look. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not disappointed. I’m confused.” I need to adjust my expectations, obviously, as I follow him deeper inside. I need to look like I belong here. That’s a stretch, considering I’m wearing a sweater that has a tiny embroidered chicken on the pocket. I thought it was subtle when I bought it. Now I realize it is very much not subtle at all.

A few heads turn when we walk in. Some of them I recognize from the dining hall. Football players big enough to make the furniture look like it was built for children. A couple of girls are curled up at one end of the sofa. Somebody’s rolling a joint on the coffee table with the kind of focus I usually reserve for midterm prep.

“Yo, Stone.” A guy with red hair and a neck roughly the width of my torso nods from the recliner. “You actually came.”

“I said I would.”

“Yeah, but you never do.” The redhead’s eyes slide over to me, and I watch the exact moment recognition hits. How do I know? His eyebrows go up before he nudges the guy next to him. That guy also looks, and now there’s a ripple of it moving through the room. People glancing over. Noticing me. Specifically, noticing me next to Everett and clearly trying to do the math on how those two things go together.

“Wait.” A guy on the couch—I think he was at the lunch table, though they all kind of blur together when they’re not in uniform—sits up and squints at me. “Is that the girl from the cafeteria? With the glasses?”

“Pickel,” somebody else helpfully supplies. “Like the food.”

There’s a laugh. It’s not exactly a mean one, and I do know the difference. It’s more like the involuntary kind, the kind that happens when something catches you off guard. But it still lands, the way it always lands, right in the center of my chest, where I keep the collection of every time someone has found my name funnier than I am.

I open my mouth. I don’t know what I’m going to say. Maybe I’ll remind everyone it’s actually a German name, which is the response I’ve been trotting out since seventh grade with zero success. Before I have a chance to get a word out, Everett moves.

He reaches out, grabs the guy on the couch by the front of his shirt, and pulls him forward until their faces are about three inches apart. The room goes silent.

“You want to say that again?” Everett’s voice is low and calm in the way calm stops being reassuring and starts being a warning. “Because Tyler just healed up from the last time he said something stupid. You want to match him?”

The guy’s hands come up in surrender. “Nah, man. We’re good.”

“Good.” Everett lets him go, and the guy sinks back into the sofa like he’s trying to merge with the cushions. Everett looks around the room slowly. Thoroughly. Making sure everybody heard. “She’s with me.”

That’s all it takes. Three little words, one syllable each.

Somebody scoots over to make room on the sofa. Red Hair nods at me like we’ve been introduced properly. One of the girls gives me a little wave that seems genuine enough.

She’s with me. He said it the way you’d say the sky is blue. Like it’s a fact.

I sit down with him on the sofa with my head spinning. Somebody hands me a joint. “Want a hit?” It’s Red Hair, holding it out across the gap between the couch and the recliner. He’s looking at me with an expression that seems friendly enough, if a little curious. Like he wants to see what happens.

I’ve never smoked weed. I’ve never smoked anything. The most rebellious substance I’ve ever consumed is a gas station energy drink I bought during finals week that made me see sounds for about forty-five minutes. Everyone else in this room is enjoying themselves, and Everett just publicly claimed me as his girlfriend in front of his teammates. Something about that makes me want to prove I can exist in his world without being a complete disaster.

“Sure,” I reply, taking it from him with what I hope is confidence, but what is probably closer to the energy of a librarian handling a live grenade.

I put it to my lips. I inhale. And then I cough so hard I’m pretty sure something ruptures inside me.

This is not a delicate cough either. It’s the kind of violent, full-body, eyes-watering, snot-threatening cough that makes everyone in the room look over and then politely look away. Somehow, that makes it worse. I double over, hacking into my elbow. Everett’s hand is on my back, and I can feel his shoulders shaking, which means he’s laughing, which means I’m going to murder him later when I can breathe again.

“Oh my god,” I wheeze when I’m capable of wheezing again. “Why do people do this recreationally?”

“Here.” One of the girls, the one with dark hair and a nose ring, and the kind of effortlessly cool energy I will never possess, comes over and holds out a brownie wrapped in a napkin. “Try this instead. Same result, no coughing.”

I take the brownie because at this point, I’ve already committed to this path. Eating a brownie is something I actually know how to do, at least. It tastes like chocolate with a weird aftertaste. Sort of earthy, like licking a lawn. Not that I’ve ever licked a lawn, but I can imagine. I eat the whole thing in about four bites because I’m nervous, and I eat fast when I’m nervous. I figure the faster I eat it, the faster I’ll feel whatever I’m supposed to feel, and then I can stop feeling like the weirdest person in the room.