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“What happened tonight?” Elena asked.
Another sobbed ripped through me, so deep and gut wrenching, it nearly rendered me in two. It wasn’t for Theo. He hadn’t torn me apart. But his blow was the last in a line of vicious pummels that just kept coming. Worse, because when he punched, I hadn’t been prepared, so it hurt on a deeper level than all the others.
“Theo. He found out.”
Elena pushed herself up behind me and peered down at me. “He found out what? That you stripped?”
I nodded. “He couldn’t even look at me.”
“Are you telling me you're crying over a boy?” She sounded incredulous, like the very idea was preposterous.
“I’m crying over everything. Not just him.” But the tears were already turning to salt on my cheeks.
“Wow, okay.” Elena leaned down so her face was inches from mine. “Here’s the first rule of bad bitches: we don’t cry over unworthy boys. Theo is hot, I’ll give you that. But worthy of tears? No, bitch. Not even close.”
“He’s too good for me,” I whispered, the words burning in my throat like acid.
Zadie gasped. “He’s not. You’re too good for a guy who would leave you in this state.”
Elena’s clear blue eyes turned to fire. “Are you kidding me? Did you literally just say that?”
“Elena,” Zadie admonished. “Be nice to her.”
Elena stared down at me, fury pinching her pale brows. “Theo is a pussy-whipped little boy. His ex told me all about him. His dad controls him, and he lets it happen. He seems like a nice guy, but that’s only to get what he wants. If you think that kind of dick is better than you, then you’re not the girl I thought you were back in high school when you intimidated the hell out of every soft boy you passed in the halls.”
“She’s sad, El. Let her be sad,” Zadie said.
“I’m letting her be sad over her dead friend. I refuse to allow her to cry over Theo fucking Whitlock. He’s hot, but he’s proven himself unworthy. Helen is a warrior. Theo is bullshit.”
They bickered back and forth while I sank into my heartache. I knew it wasn’t for Theo. Well, not just for him. These tears belonged to Mads and stress and the cruelty that was life. The fight in me ran deep, but some days, it was too much, even for me.
“Let me be sad tonight. When I wake up, I’ll be over him.” I swiped at the mostly dried tears on my cheeks. “Just give me tonight.”
Elena lay back down behind me and curled around me. It was all kinds of disconcerting, but Penelope had told me more than once there was a different side of her cousin she rarely showed other people. I had a feeling this was the side Pen had been talking about.
“Fine. Tonight is yours to wallow. Even bad bitches deserve to pity themselves for a few hours.” Her fingers combed through the back of my hair. “But if I catch you crying over this kid again, I will sneak into your room while you’re sleeping and chop off all your pretty hair.”
Zadie’s hands flew to her mouth. “Elena! You can’t say that.”
“I can and I did. Helen knows me well enough not to test me.” She kept finger-combing my hair even as she threatened to chop it all off. “Do you have any idea how much I could get for pristine hair like this if I sold it?”
“Oh my god,” Zadie mumbled.
A bubble of laughter swelled into the aching places in my chest, pushing the hurt aside so it could fall from my lips. I barked a loud laugh, and then smaller ones, until my shoulders were shaking and Zadie let out a tentative giggle.
“You’re not selling my hair, Sanderson,” I said between laughs.
Elena gave it a light tug. “Try me, Ortega.”
Lying there between my two roommates, I still hurt, but I didn’t feel like I was seconds from walking into the ocean with stones in my pockets. This sad girl wasn’t me. I’d never get over losing Mads, but Theo was a different story. By tomorrow, I’d forget he ever existed.
Forgetting someone existed wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Staring at the back of Theo’s stupid head for an hour on Monday during class hammered that point home. He was still alive and breathing the same air as me. Whether he deserved that privilege was debatable.
Lock tipped his chin toward me. “Are you okay?”
I jerked from where I’d been hunched over my notebook, digging my pen into the paper. “I’m...fine. But do you think you could walk with me today?”
His nostrils flared as his eyes traveled toward Theo, then back to me. “No problem.”
