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“What?” I frowned. “How many have you slept with?”
She’d had a few boyfriends by then. Christian had happened, bunch of the other fake ones. I had assumed…
“One.” She blinked and my heart fucking dove off a cliff.
“No.” I shook my head, feeling scared, feeling like I was losing her somehow. “You’ve slept with more people than that.”
She pressed her mouth together and dropped my eyes. “Just you.”
“Christian?” I asked, but it almost sounded like a beg. Like I needed her to have fucked him so I wasn’t such a fuck up myself.
She shook her head. I could tell she wasn’t lying about it. Think she would have rathered she had. I would’ve rathered it.
I felt sick. Pressed my hand into my mouth, shook my head. “Well, I’m not telling you now.”
“Why not?” she growled, drunk.
I waved my hand at her. “Because you’ll cry.”
“I will not!” She shook her head, indignant.
“No, Parks.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please!”
“No!”
“Why?” She banged her hand down on the table, knocking over a drink. “Why do you never tell me anything?” she yelled.
Now, in that moment — she didn’t know yet that it was Paili, and — you might remember — that the mystery of ‘who’ was our number one issue. My biggest fear was her finding out that I did that with her best friend, and I would literally do anything to appease her enough for her to drop it. Anything. Even if I knew it would hurt her in different, new ways.
“Hundreds,” I told her and pressed my hand into my mouth, trying to steady myself. And then it was like she tried to take a breath she couldn’t find. I’d winded her.
Deadlocked on each other’s eyes, both our faces were portraits of grief.
Her losing me to hundreds of different people, me losing her to them too, I suppose.
“Are you okay?” I asked, a bit nervous.
“Yeah!” She blinked back tears. “Fine.” She nodded, swallowing heavy. “Thank you for telling me.”
She pinched her top lip as hard as she could — one of her anxiety tells. Done it since high school.
I said nothing and just watched her, trying to work out how to fix whatever I just fucked up.
“So.” She scratched her hand absentmindedly. Another nervous tell. “You just pick up girls?”
“I guess?” I shrugged, uncomfortable.
She nodded along. “Show me.”
I did a big blink, couldn’t believe my ears. “What?”
“Show me,” she said, voice shaky. “How you do it? P—” Couldn’t even get the words out. “Pick up a girl.”
