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“Come here,” Chase says, seeing my trembling lip. He swipes one of the fluffy towels from the stack. “I’d be happy to dry that off for you.” He gives me such an earnest look that I can barely keep my glower in place. When I glance over and see Lindsey mirroring my own expression, we both lose it.
Then we’re both laughing, and everything’s okay again.
“I figured you’d suggest one of us take off her jeans,” Elaine says to Chase. “Maybe ‘accidentally’ pull down her underwear with them, and then we’d have to all do the same so she wouldn’t be embarrassed.”
“Oh, and then maybe bend over to search all the dresser drawers for new pants before giving up and having a naked pillow fight.”
“Y’all watch too much porn,” he says, shaking his head and grinning.
“If y’all didn’t suck in bed, I wouldn’t need to,” Daria shoots back.
“Who’s ‘y’all’?” Chase asks.
“It’s fine,” Lindsey assures me, taking my elbow. “You can borrow some of my jeans. I think I have a pair my aunt gave me last Christmas that was too big… Not that you’re big! You’re just tall. You’re so skinny for your height.”
“It’s fine,” I assure her this time, since Lindsey seems to think she offended me by pointing out the obvious. In truth, I wish I had more curves, but she thinks being skinny is the ultimate goal in life. “Nothing you have will fit me. You’re like a size zero.”
“Double zero,” she mutters, digging through her drawers. I hold up a pair of her jeans, and we both laugh at the ludicrousness of me fitting into her clothes. They’re at least three sizes too small and six inches too short.
“I could grab you a pair from my brother’s room,” she offers.
I suppress a shudder and focus instead on the embarrassment of needing men’s clothes. I used to steal Dad’s jeans or buy guy’s jeans at the mall because I like the way boyfriend cut looks on me anyway, but I left those behind with the Converse and band t-shirts.
“I’ll just get in my PJs early,” I say after an awkward moment of silence.
“Me too,” she says with a sympathetic smile, obviously just changing to make me feel better.
After we’re in our PJs, Daria and Elaine duck into the bathroom to follow suit. It’s an unspoken rule that whenever Lindsey does something, everyone else has to do it too. She’s the Queen of Faulkner High, the trendsetter, and everyone wants to be like her or gain entrance into her circle.
Sometimes I forget how lucky I am that Chase remembered my words on the beach last summer, that he really listened. He heard me when I said no one would notice if I wasn’t there, that I only whisper into the abyss. And more than that, he heard the things I didn’t say—that I wanted to be someone, to have friends who cared about me, to be seen instead of invisible. He made that happen. How can I resent him for the other things he’s done?
“Since I’m one of the girls now, shouldn’t I be able to watch them change?” Chase asks, nodding to the bathroom door, where we can hear Daria’s raucous laughter. “Or change with them?”
“You’re so annoying,” Lindsey snaps. “No one wants you here.”
I fiddle with my phone, pretending I don’t notice the painful, brittle silence in the room. I hate when they fight around me, but they do it all the damn time.
When the bathroom door swings open, breaking the tension, I sigh with relief.
“What about you, Chase?” Daria asks. “You should be in your jammies too.”
“Didn’t bring any,” he says. “I sleep in the nude.”
“Mine would probably fit you,” Daria says, stretching the elastic waistband of her pink fleece pants with silver crowns stamped on them.
“Yeah,” Lindsey says, pretending the snappish comment never happened. “You have to wear pajamas too. This is a slumber party.”
He starts unbuttoning his jeans. “Are you trying to get me naked? Because I’ll do it.”
“No, stop,” Lindsey says, jumping on him and knocking him back on the bed. They wrestle around laughing while Chase steals kisses.
Now I’m officially the only one Chase has not been flirting and rolling around with tonight. I shouldn’t feel bad about that, but it’s hard not to feel like an undesirable loser when the only guy here is more interested in everyone else.
Lindsey pushes him off, straightening her mussed hair, and then goes into the bathroom to straighten up.
“It’s not like we haven’t seen it all before,” Elaine says, smirking at Chase, who’s still on the bed. My face warms at the thought of seeing him undressed. At the thought that Chase has felt me, but I haven’t felt him the same way. I wonder what it feels like, what it looks like.
“Oh, right,” Elaine drawls, peering down her nose at me. “Except Sky. Supposedly.”
