Page 26 of Gilt

“Like a slumber party?” Josie asks in confusion, which quickly shifts to disbelief. “Did you two freeze each other’s bras and practice kissing?”

Considering that I cost her a night’s sleep and called her for a jail pick-up, I probably shouldn’t have hit her with any more of the bizarre details of the last twenty-four hours so quickly. “I didn’t stay with Monroe.”

“Oh, this is getting good!” she squeals.

“Eyes on the prize! For all you know, I’m a murderer,” I remind her.

“I know for a fact that you aren’t.”

“How?” I ask, barely catching a drip of ice cream before it melts on my skirt.

“Because I know you,” she says dismissively, “but you definitely were up to no good last night if you wound up at the police station. Just not murder.”

I wish I had as much faith in myself as she has in me. Maybe I didn’t kill anyone, but I might have kissed someone who did. But the worst part is that after seeing him at the station, I know I would spend the night with him all over again in a heartbeat if I had the chance, no matter the outcome. I’m not as innocent as she believes.

“It sounds like they’re going to be pulling in everyone that was at the party,” I say, not ready to delve into the psychological quagmire that my impromptu rendezvous has left me in.

“What?”

She pales a shade or two, so I hurry on. “I don’t know for sure. It would take them forever, and they already have a suspect.”

“Okay, you need to start sharing the details right now.” It’s a demand, but the edges are brittle. Josie’s nerves are clearly shot, and I’m not helping.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I hedge. Maybe going to her with this isn’t the best idea. My best friend is as vibrant and carefree as a butterfly, but she’s delicate like one, too.

But she’s having none of it. Her lips purse before she releases a deep sigh. “How about you start with why you wound up spending the night at the Wests’?

“I met this guy.” I have to force myself to say it.

“How come stories of poor life choices always start that way?”

“More of your stories than mine,” I remind her, even though Poor Life Choices should be my new band name.

“True. Continue.”

“He was funny and sexy and a little arrogant, but it didn’t turn me off.” I might as well work through my feelings if I’m going to rehash all the details of last night.

“You can say that again,” she says with a smirk. At least talking about a boy is distracting her from all the worrying.

“We didn’t do it,” I clarify. I’d given myself a nice checklist to meet before I got back in bed with a guy after my disastrous decision to lose my v-card to Hugo. At the very top of it: fall in love first. Cheesy, I know. But my mom is right about a girl having standards. “We just kissed and skinny-dipped and cooked.”

Josie snorts at this revelation. “So you didn’t do it, but you cooked? You have a weird idea of what is supposed to happen during hook-ups.”

“Thanks for the reminder. I’ll ask your expert opinion next time—if I can find you!” I know she doesn’t get why I keep my knees together, but it doesn’t really matter what she thinks on that topic.

“So what went wrong?” she asks, a note of impatience coloring her tone.

They accused him of murdering his father. I might need to break that to her a bit more carefully. “Apparently, I really have a thing for bad boys.”

“You’ve lost me again.”

“Hang on.” I pull out my phone and do a search for Jameson West; Google knows just who I’m talking about, I realize with a rush. I can’t pinpoint if it’s fear or excitement. I tap images, and dozens of pictures flow onto my screen. Thanks to his father’s high profile in business and his sister’s brush with reality show fame, the Wests are Internet fodder. I hold up the phone so that Josie can see the photo. “Meet my latest poor decision.”

“He’s about twenty years too young for my taste, but I’d hardly call that a poor decision,” she says with approval.

“Look at his name,” I prompt. “I didn’t know who he was.”

“Wait, so if he’s Jameson West and he was at the party, that makes him…Monroe’s brother? Did we even know she had a brother?”