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I was in a good fucking mood.
“Remember when I met you for the first time?” I said, turning to face her.
She nodded. “Yeah. You were checking out my door.”
“Well, I was heading to that ice cream social thing, and I met this guy there.” I held up a finger before she could ask for a name. “I’ll tell you one day. Anyway, I kind of liked him, or so I thought, and he was feeling me, too. But then Vivian, my roommate,” I said, clarifying for Kenny, “brought me to that party at Powell. The dude was acting like a complete bitch, ignoring me, which was when I went outside and ran into, well, you.”
Kenny nodded in approval. “And then we lived happily ever after.”
“More or less,” I snickered. “I was bawling my eyes out about the dude from the ice cream social—let’s just call himVinny—and he basically told me to follow my heart and go after him. Which I did—”
“Andthenit was happily ever after,” Kenny interrupted. “Sorry. I mean, you’re welcome.”
“He was fucking my roommate,” I said slowly, watching as Tara struggled to hold in her laughter. “Yeah. Plot twist.”
“Oh, shit,” Kenny coughed, setting down his blunt. “I’m sorry. Bad advice.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m over it.”
“Butheisn’t,” Tara added, winking at me. I raised an eyebrow at her in return. “Come on,” she laughed. “Vinnymyass. I heard you guys talking after you left my room. Don’t know how you managed to rope in Eric Lamont, but it’s obvious—he wants yousobad.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You were eavesdropping, too?”
“Too?” Tara cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
The fact that I’d just emerged from some haute cocktail party with my panties soaked through like a sponge crossed my mind, then the fact that I probably didn’t want to explain how or why I’d gotten to that point in the first place.
“Never mind,” I said, waving it off. “You know Eric?”
“Hell yeah, I do,” Tara giggled, her voice reaching her highest possible pitch. I had to admit, getting used to her on weed was going to take some time. “I used to have afatcrush on him in high school.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “Isn’t that funny?”
Despite her love for pot and my affinity for dark color schemes, the similarities between us didn’t seem to end.
“Let me guess,” I continued, leaning toward her, resting my chin in the cup of my palm. “He was popular, you weren’t, and he just so happened to brush past you in the hall one day with that look in his eye.”
“How romantic,” Kennymonotoned. “Can we playSorry!,now?”
“Close,” Tara said, ignoring her friend. “He was a semi-nice jock I’d just so happened to be put in a summer camp with.”
“Semi,” I repeated, shaking my head at her. “Right. I forgot, he’s a Jersey boy.”
“And I’m a Cali girl,” she said, and that shy smile I’d come to know so well on her resurfaced, just for a moment. “Something tells me you don’t really care about him.”
I let out a snort. “I care about him as long as his affection for me keeps Vivian foaming at the mouth.”
“Hm.” Tara sat back against her bed, and let out a long, thoughtful breath. Smoke curled up around her head like a halo. “I see.”
Something I’d said must’ve set off the mood, because her smile drooped a bit at the corners. Kenny glanced from me to her, as if he expected me to be the one to break the silence. Squinting at Tara, I tried to read the expression in her gaze. If the human body had a lie detector, it’d be in the eyes.
Then it clicked.
“You don’t…” I began, piecing it together as I spoke, “still like him, do you?”
Tara lowered her blunt, resting her wrist across her knees as she drew them up to her chest. “Maybe.”
I smiled at her. “I don’t like him, you know. Seriously.”
