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Thankfully, some of the awkwardness of Ian’s presence diminished as I devoured pizza. We still had another hour before we had to get ready, and all I had left was to put on a dress. When the guys teased me like they were gonna give me a kiss, I fended them off.
There was no way I wanted to mess up all the work Carol had done with my hair and my face. Sitting on the floor, legs crossed though, I kept studying them one at a time. Between what Maria had told me about someone roofying her and the other girls, and the fact that she’d mentioned Cheryl in the same breath as one of the girls who’d…
Yeah, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t spend the whole night wondering which of them Cheryl had slept with. IlikedCheryl. Arguably, I had liked a lot of them, but Cheryl had been going out of her way to be my friend, and the idea she had sex with one of the guys and they’d never mentioned it just turned my stomach inside out.
Fuck, did I want a list?
As nauseating a concept as that might be, I kind of did.
“Guys…” Yeah, there was no way I wanted to spend my night turning myself inside out. I was already biting my tongue about Maria. She’d confided in me something that was really personal and horrible, but the other…
One by one, they focused on me, and some of the humor fled Coop’s expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Just want to ask something straight up.” I glanced down at my drink and then set the can on the coffee table. There was a bit of glitter on the carpet, but I didn’t want to focus on that. “Um… I’d prefer a straight answer, too. No sugar-coating.”
Scratching his jaw, Archie eyed me. “You’re going to ask us about a girl.”
“Pretty much.”
Exhaling, Jake set his own can on the table. “Shoot.”
Ian frowned, but he didn’t say anything to dissuade me. Which was good, he’d been all about telling me uncomfortable stuff, including the points thing.
“Was Cheryl one of your points girls?”
The immediate distaste on Archie’s face sent relief through me. Coop opened his mouth, then shut it with a grimace.
“No,” Jake answered swiftly. “Hell no.”
Dropping his shoulders, Ian ran a hand over his face and then shook his head with a short, but firm, “No.” I couldn’t tell if the answer relieved him or not.
“Babe,” Archie said, blinking as though he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the question. “One, she talkswaytoo much.”
“Two, she has no filter,” Coop added. “And she’s…”
“Sweet,” Jake intoned that word like it was a bad thing. “The kind of too sweet that rots your teeth. Three, she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body and…she and Mitch were already hooking up.” Though he glanced at Ian for confirmation. “Right?”
“Far as I know, I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were doing—they wereata lot of the parties. But she was there with the other girls first, he started showing up later.”
Had they been at Ian’s birthday? A lot of that night had been laser-imprinted on my brain, but it was more in sharp relief as to where the guys had been and who they’d been with. Everything else was kind of a background blur.
“Frankie,” Coop captured my attention. “I’d have told you before the dress shopping. I swear.”
“I didn’t know about the points before the dress shopping,” I reminded him. Ian winced, and Jake shot him a dirty look before focusing on me again. “I didn’t want to think about it, I’ve spent the last few hours telling myself it didn’t matter…”
“…but it does,” Jake finished for me, and I nodded. “Baby girl, we’re assholes, but we’re actively trying to not be dicks. I wish I could tell you we hadn’t screwed around as much.”
“But we did,” Archie said, owning it. “Cheryl, however, was never on that list. And at the risk of painting myself as a bigger asshole, I’ll say it was because we wanted a challenge and she would have been too easy.”
That was a horrible thing to say, yet, I had to be a horrible person, too, because I was grateful to hear it. “You swear?”
“Yes.” Four, solid, unflinching answers. Even Ian. Looking at him, I tilted my head. Of the four of them, he’d probably show every ounce of that guilt on his face.
“No lie,” he said, spreading his hands. “Why are you asking?”
“It came up today.”
Aggravation flashed across Jake’s face. “Who the fuck brought it up?”
