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She never goes out with any guys was a nice touch, as was the detail about Syracuse. I felt Kevin relax beside me.
Then he turned into a dick.
“Yeah. You and Shanna date?” he asked, a peculiarly gleeful tone in his voice, and I knew he was about to try to stab my roommate in the back.
Derek looked amused. “Well, there was that one night I came home with her.”
“Oh.” Kevin’s plan deflated in front of his eyes… and then he looked at Derek’s body with rising panic, and I knew exactly what he was thinking:
THIS guy was naked just a few feet away from my GIRLFRIEND?!
“But you didn’t stay,” I added hastily.
Derek smiled playfully, and I thought for a second he was going to say to hell with it and push the plunger on the dynamite.
But he played it cool.
“Nope.” He turned to Kevin and said in a man-to-man voice, “Chick passed out on me, drunk off her ass. What’re you gonna do, right?”
“Yeah,” Kevin agreed with a laugh.
As if he’d ever been in that situation before.
“Well, anyway, tell her I came by,” Derek said, then waved to Kevin. “Nice meeting you, man.”
Kevin did his best to give Derek a cool nod. “Yeah, you, too.”
And then Derek walked into the stairwell without even a single look behind.
Something inside me felt like it was dying. I wondered miserably if I would ever see him again…
…and then wondered if I was a horrible person for feeling like that as I stood next to my boyfriend.
Kevin snorted in derision.
I looked over at him. “What?”
“That’s the kind of guy Shanna likes?”
I looked at him with a twinge of guilt. “Yeah?”
Kevin shook his head in an oh-so-superior way. “Figures. Your roommate has terrible taste in men.”
I narrowed my eyes angrily as he walked back to the bed.
If you only knew.
Then I spent the rest of the night feeling awful that I’d thought it.
39
Shanna was getting ready for another night out when we came back from dinner. She was freshly showered and sitting in front of her closet door full-length mirror, putting on eye makeup.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just getting ready and going back out.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, kind of hoping she would stick around and I could use her as a buffer. “I don’t want to make you – ”
“Naaah, it’s cool. I actually like the guy I hooked up with last night. We’re gonna go get trashed and then go back to his place again.”
“Wow. Classy,” Kevin sneered.
Shanna glared at him in the mirror. “ORRR, on second thought, I could just hang out here with YOU all night.”
Kevin blanched. “Sorry.”
“Tell her thank you,” I prompted him.
“Thank you,” he said, with a good dose of sincerity.
“Yeah, you better thank me,” Shanna muttered as she went back to putting on eyeliner. “We both know Kaitlyn’s too straight-laced to fuck with somebody else in the room, so the only reason you’re gettin’ some is ‘cause I’m gettin’ some.”
“She is pretty straight-laced,” Kevin teased me.
It was a transparent attempt to get back in Shanna’s good graces – and it didn’t work.
“Pot and kettle, dude,” she muttered. “Just sayin’.”
He tried again, which was kind of pathetic to watch. “Who’s more straight-laced, do you think? Me or her?”
Shanna got a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Oh, her, definitely. Like Ferris Bueller said, if you stick a lump of coal up her ass, you’d have a diamond in a week.”
She grinned and shot me an impish look in the mirror.
I just glared at her.
“By the way, some dude came by to see you,” Kevin said.
Shanna frowned. “Who?”
“He had a bunch of tattoos.” He turned to me. “What was his name? Derek – yeah, Derek.”
Though a player in her own right, Shanna wasn’t quite as fast on the uptake. She actually turned around, she was so surprised. “Derek came by to see me?!”
“Yeah, he said he was checking in after that time he came home with you and you passed out on him and he left,” I said as fast as I could, ratta-tat-tat like a machinegun.
Now she got it.
She wasn’t nice as Derek was, though.
She twisted the knife – and enjoyed it.
“Ohhhhhhh yeeeaaah,” she said, as though just now remembering. “What happened after I passed out, exactly?”
“He left,” I said icily.
“Ohhhhhh,” she said, visibly amused, and went back to her makeup. “I wouldn’t know. I was passed out. Next time he comes back, I’ll try not to pass out again.”
