The Ex Games(17)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Liz and Chloe nodded. Chloe motioned for me to hurry up with my story.

“I thought he was going to kiss me, and I stopped him.” I put up a hand to Chloe’s chest just as I had to Nick’s. Then, when I realized what I was doing, I hastily jerked my hand away. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to feel you up.”

“It’s quite all right,” Chloe said.

“Why did you stop him?” Liz shrieked impatiently.

I rubbed my temple. My headache from the cold shower hadn’t quite dissipated. “I don’t know. It seemed like that was all he wanted, and I couldn’t let him take advantage of me.”

“Maybe he thought that’s all you wanted from him,” Chloe suggested.

I frowned at this disturbing possibility. “Maybe. It’s hard to have a heart-to-heart with someone who throws stuff at you and calls you a fire-crotch and a bitch.”

“Is that all that happened?” Liz prompted me. “You stopped him from kissing you, and he called you a bitch?”

“No,” I admitted. “I told him I didn’t want to kiss him because he hadn’t asked me to the Poseur concert. He hadn’t asked me about winning the competition. He acted like I was just a convenient catch because all of y’all are dating. I told him we had irreconcilable differences.”

Chloe gasped. “Like in a divorce? Hayden, why did you say that?”

I supposed it did sound ugly, now that I thought about it. But not that ugly. “We were both making divorce jokes in the hall last Friday. He started it.”

“Hayden.” Liz leaned forward and took me by both shoulders, bracing me for the bad news she was about to break. “Nick’s mother left his father on Sunday.”

“What!” I hollered, jumping off the bed to pace the floor.

“He told Gavin and Davis,” Chloe said, “and they told Liz and me. Nick must have thought you knew. If I were him, and you blew me off and made divorce jokes, I guess I would have called you a bitch, too.”

I stopped pacing and put my hands in my hair to keep from throttling her. “Jesus, Chloe! Why the hell did you invite him over here in the middle of his family troubles?”

“He’s friends with Gavin and Davis,” she said. “He needed to get out of the house and forget about it for a night. He needs all our support right now.”

Guilt trip.

“And you didn’t have a date tonight because you broke up with Everett,” Chloe said.

I took my hands out of my hair so I wouldn’t tear it out. “Everett and his mama broke up with me, thank you very much.”

“You shouldn’t have made out with him in his mother’s scrapbooking room,” Liz said sagely.

“We’re seventeen,” I snapped, “and Everett and I had been dating for two months when that happened. What were we supposed to do, eat dinner with his family and keep our hands on the table where everyone could see them? I mean, you and Davis are Mr. and Mrs. Polite Reserve, and even you were macking in the hot tub an hour ago.” I picked up a pink fuzzy pillow that had fallen from the bed onto the floor and threw it at Liz.

“You were?” Chloe gushed. “You what? Hello, I need the details of Liz and Davis.”

“Hayden!” Liz squealed, ducking behind Chloe. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have made out with Everett. I’m saying you shouldn’t have done it in his mother’s scrapbooking room. Location, location, location. You might have disorganized her supplies. Some people are very particular about their chipboard getting mixed up with their cardstock.”

I closed my eyes, inhaled through my nose, and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body.

“Watch out,” Chloe whispered to Liz. “She’s doing yoga.”

My eyes snapped open. So much for controlling my temper. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me Nick’s mother left before I went into the sauna with him?” I hollered at Chloe.

“We didn’t know he was here!” Liz came to Chloe’s defense.

“And if we’d warned you about him before he got here,” Chloe explained, “you would have known he was coming. We didn’t want you to leave. The two of you are surprisingly hard to throw together, let me tell you.”

“I’m not buying it,” I informed Chloe. “You were distracted. You had your mind on taking inventory.”

Liz giggled, turned red, and fell back on the pillows.

“Taking inventory requires enormous concentration!” Chloe said with a straight face, but she was blushing, too.

I was glad for them, really. I was happy they’d had fun with their boyfriends, at least for a little while, and I hoped they didn’t push this bet too far.

At the same time, I was very angry with them for contributing to this terrible mix-up with Nick. As supportive as Chloe and Liz usually were to me, I couldn’t help thinking at that moment that I had Very Bad Friends.

Liz sat up again and wiped her eyes. “Do you want me to tell Davis to tell Nick that you didn’t know anything about his parents when you were in the sauna with him?”

I shook my head no. “It sounds too much like a debauched game of Telephone. This whole thing seems very seventh grade. Besides, it’s actually good this happened. Nick is a smooth talker. It took him getting furious for me to find out how he really feels about me. I don’t want or need a boyfriend who thinks so little of my snowboarding skills and questions the very relevance of women’s athletics. I’ll admit, I may have carried a torch for him all these years. He just blew it out. So consult me the next time you want to play Cupid for me. And don’t choose me a boy with four or five girls in a holding pattern. Nick Krieger is all wrong for me. Stop throwing us together.”

Chloe and Liz stared at me from the bed.

“Okay?” I prompted them.

“Okay,” they agreed, way too agreeably. Even after tonight’s disaster, I got the feeling they were not through with Nick and me yet.

“I’m glad this happened, too,” Liz said quickly. “It’ll give you the push you need to get over your fear of heights.”

“Yeah, about that bet.” I rubbed my temple again, massaging away the headache that throbbed harder than ever. “I’m sorry, y’all, but there’s no way I’m going off that jump. I’ll buy the Poseur tickets for you.” I had been saving for another snowboard—they didn’t last forever, the way I abused the half-pipe—but fair was fair.