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Great. They must have been talking about me, and now she’s forcing this apology from him. I feel as big as a gnat. But the only way to save face is to play it off, so I try to sound blasé about the whole affair. I shrug and slide off the stool. “No biggie. I overreacted anyway.”
“No, you didn’t,” Chase says, stepping closer and gripping me gently by the shoulders. “I like that you’re sensitive. I’m just not used to being around anyone who’s still…innocent.”
I scoff and look away from him. I’m beginning to hate that word and all that it implies. I’m annoyed that he thinks of me that way. I wish I was brazen like Elaine, or crass like Daria and just not care. But the only person offering me experience is Lindsey’s brother, and I’d rather stay naïve and stupid than voluntarily subject myself to lethal levels of toxicity.
“Hey,” Chase says, tipping my chin up so I have to look at him. “I mean it. I think you’re amazing.” He brushes my nose with the knuckle of his first finger, a gesture I’ve come to associate with his sweet moods, when he’s serious but trying to be light. He gives me a small smile, searching my gaze. “In every way.”
Damn him. My insides get all soft and warm, and I can’t stay mad at him, especially when he was just joking around with me the way he does the others, which is what I wanted. Especially when he’s asking forgiveness in his own way.
His crystal blue eyes hold mine for a moment too long, and I feel that moment pass, and my gaze drops his lips involuntarily. My heart is pounding slow and hard.
I’m very aware of how close Chase is standing. I can smell him, soap and roses and nail polish and a masculine scent that doesn’t have a name but would never come from a girl. I can see each dark eyelash lining his now uncertain eyes, hear his breath coming shorter and quicker than before. I resist an impulse to reach up and brush a wave of hair off his forehead.
And then suddenly I’m aware that Lindsey is standing right there, a few feet behind Chase, and that no one has said anything for about ten seconds, although it feels more like a hundred years. I glance at Lindsey, and Chase must realize she’s there then too, and he steps quickly backwards.
“So, uh, right,” I babble. “Should we go back upstairs or something?”
Chase breaks into his sunshiniest smile, and I’m momentarily dazzled. I almost breathe “wow,” and melt onto a puddle on the floor in the brilliance of that smile, but I catch myself at the last moment, before I make an utter fool of myself.
Chase bounds up the stairs in front of us, while I try not to freaking die of shame when Lindsey asks in her sweet, soft voice, “Sure you’re okay?”
No, I’m not okay, because I’m in love with your boyfriend and that makes me the shittiest friend in the universe but I can’t seem to make it go away, and your brother isn’t a nuisance, he’s a monster.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, forcing a smile before dropping my guilty gaze from hers.
In Lindsey’s room, Daria and Elaine are blasting music and jumping around.
“Kiss and make up?” Daria yells.
“What do you expect?” Chase yells back. “I’m with the four hottest girls in the world. I’m just trying not to imagine you having a pillow fight in your underwear right now!”
Of course the only thing to do is to pummel him with pillows, which we proceed to do. In minutes, the scene in the kitchen with Preston and the moment with Chase is forgotten as I giggle and shriek with the other girls, chasing Chase London around the room with a pillow.
seven
Now Playing:
“All I Really Want”—Alanis Morissette
After the pillow fight, we all collapse onto the bed, laughing and hot from all the running and jumping and hitting with pillows. It was just what I needed to release the tension of the evening’s events.
As we’re lying there catching our breath, a text chimes on Elaine’s phone. She bounces up and looks at it. “Jared,” she says with a pleased expression on her smug little face. “Look at that. Texting me on the same night I gave him my number.”
“You gave him your number, not yourSnaporOnlyWords?” Daria asks. “Damn.”
“Not surprised,” Chase says, folding an arm under his head. “Elaine’s approach has always been, shove it in with no foreplay.”
“You’d know,” Daria says, flopping down beside him on Lindsey’s pillows.
I glance at Lindsey, who’s gone pink. “I think that’s enough,” she says.
“Foreplay is overrated,” Elaine says. “Why waste time when I can be coming?”
“Not everyone is blessed with a hairpin trigger,” Daria says with a scowl. “Some of us need the foreplay or we’ll never be coming.”
“Sucks for you,” Elaine says smugly. She turns to me and smiles triumphantly. “Guess I’ll take this outside so I don’t rub it in your face.” She flashes her phone screen at me before stepping out of the room and pulling the door closed.
“What was that about?” Chase asks, looking at me.
