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“No,” I told him out loud. “Not yet.”
4
Chelsea
The November air nipped at me through my denim jacket. It was going to be too cold to spend any length of time outside soon, and given how much beer tended to spill with Flipcup, it couldn’t be played indoors. My friends and I were trying to stretch out the season as long as possible. Once we stopped for the year, we wouldn’t play again until the spring.
We were doing a practice round to start off, so I poured Deanne a red plastic cup from the keg in the corner of Ivy’s yard. She was the only one of us who had her own house—I was at home, and the others were in apartments.
As I brought the cup over to the table, Lora nudged me in the ribs, making the brown liquid slosh around in the cup. “Have you given in and gotten some dick yet?”
I might’ve been annoyed if I weren’t already buzzed. We were drinking a crisp, hoppy dark beer with stone fruit notes. I’d picked it out, obviously—I was a beer snob. My friends would’ve gone for the cheap stuff if they had their way about it.
“It’s been two weeks,” I laughed. “I think I can handle it.”
“Two whole weeks.” Lora shook her head slowly, her eyes already glazing over. “It’s a miracle.”
“Talk to me when you’ve gone without it for twenty-one years.” Ivy pouted.
She was the virgin of the group. She complained a lot about not getting male attention, and the problem was, it was true. She wasn’t ugly or anything, she was just as pretty as the rest of us. The thing was that she got shy around men. She could get to the point of making out on the dance floor, but when they asked her on a date, she froze up. I’d never understood it.
Deanne was the only one in a successful relationship. She’d been with her boyfriend for almost three months now, and I had to admit I was jealous. He wasn’t just hot, he had a good job too. He was the exact kind of guy I wanted to land for myself—but in a year.
Lora’s love life was more like mine. Well, most of the time. She did the drunken hook-ups and had a friend with benefits here and there, like I did. But she’d had long-term relationships, too. Her longest was more than six months. I didn’t know how she did it.
I set the cup on the table, where Deanne drained it in one long gulp. She let out an “ah” and threw her shoulders back, then set the cup on the edge of the table. With a flick of her wrist, she sent the cup into the air so that it arched over and landed on its lid.
“She’s getting too good at that,” I said.
“We all are.” Ivy took her place at the table. “This game is easy, but it sure does the trick. I’m well on my way to white-girl wasted.” That was her favorite expression, even though she was actually East Asian.
“We could play cowboy style. We haven’t done that one in a while. Or what about Ultimate Flipcup?” I headed back to the keg, filling a cup for her and one for me. “I thought of some more rules to add, so we’d have to try it and see if they work.”
“Chelsea just loves rules lately.” Lora sniggered.
“Go to hell.” I put my finger in my cup and flicked beer at her. “You guys all know I’ve been looking for a relationship since day one. It was never really about sex.”
“Then why would you have hooked up so much?” Ivy asked suspiciously.
“I thought falling in love could start with hot sex, but maybe I was wrong.”
I leaned a hand on the table and watched as she took her turn. When she flipped the cup successfully, we all cheered.
“Chelsea, honey, real talk?” Lora said. “You never acted like you wanted a relationship. The minute you saw a hot guy, you’d be all over him. It didn’t matter who he was.”
Deanne nodded. “Even that guy you’ve been obsessing over, Alex…”
“Alec,” I muttered.
“He wasn’t even your type, and you know that,” Lora said. “You told us yourself it wouldn’t have worked. It was just about sex, and you got your feelings hurt when he stopped putting out. You never wanted to date him.”
“It was about dick,” Deanne added. “Good dick… but dick.”
They didn’t get it. “I know we weren’t right together, but I still had feelings for him. Sometimes that happens, okay?”
We’d hung out outside the bedroom, which had made me think it was more than a friends with benefits situation. I had fun with him. And then there was the way it had ended. He didn’t have the balls to tell me he’d met someone—I’d had to find out by seeing him kissing her and holding her hand.
I tried to be happy for him, even though a small part of me still asked why I hadn’t been good enough. He seemed over the moon with his new love, and she was more age-appropriate. Him being older had never mattered to me, but I guessed it mattered to him.
