True (True Believers #1)(14)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Licorice suddenly closed the gap between us and licked my face.

“Thanks, buddy.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I sat up a little so I could pull it out. I had a notification of a social-networking friend request from Tyler Mann. Was that my answer? Was that literal or metaphorical?

I would need him to interpret it, and I wasn’t about to ask him.

I hit Ignore for now and went back to sliding my fingers through Licorice’s silky, thinning fur.

Chapter Five

As we walked down the street to the house where the Halloween party was being held, I was already starting to question my choice of costume. Jessica, Kylie, and another friend, Robin, and I had gone shopping Friday night, and in a rare moment of confidence in showing my inner snark to the world, I had decided to go as a Toddlers & Tiaras pageant princess. At the store I’d bought a crown and white ruffled socks and white Mary Janes. I’d borrowed Kylie’s homecoming dress from the year before, and it was showing both more leg and more shoulder than I was used to. With curled hair and a sash that I had written across with a glittery fabric pen, I was definitely not going to blend into the background, which was my usual choice. But at least I hadn’t bowed to the sexy pressure and wasn’t walking across broken sidewalks in fifty-degree weather in sky-high heels the way my three friends were.

Robin, who had lived in the room next door to us the year before, was a sexy kitten. Jessica was a Playboy bunny. And Kylie had spent an hour fretting her way across the costume shop until finally she had settled on a sexy banana costume that had a zipper down the front so her banana could be peeled. I was trying not to judge, but it was hard to understand how she could have eyeballed at least fifty costumes and decided that she wanted to be a yellow fruit. She seemed to be wondering the same thing herself because she was worrying the whole walk.

“The yellow on these shoes is off,” she said, lifting her foot up, then grabbing me for balance. “I should have just gone with black, like that little end thingie on a banana.”

“I think you’re fine,” I told her. “You look amazing.” She did. She had a banging body, and her hair and makeup were flawless. “Nathan is going to drool, big time.”

“You think so?” she said, looking completely unsure of her.

“Of course.”

It was interesting that even someone as secure in herself as Kylie could have moments of self-doubt, and I started to wonder if maybe she wasn’t as disinterested in Nathan as she made it seem. Or liked to think.

“Fuck, it’s cold out here!” Jessica rubbed her arms and said, “We should have made those ass**les pick us up. Tyler has a car. Why are we walking?”

“Because it’s only two blocks,” I said. “And we wouldn’t all fit in Tyler’s car anyway.”

“I could have sat on Nathan’s face,” Kylie said, with a giggle. “Then we would have fit.”

Jessica snorted. “I hope that Sebastian guy is here, you know the one from my International Relations class. He plays soccer with Jake, who lives in the house. Sebastian is so hot, and I would definitely like to get to know him better.”

I wanted to say “What about Tyler?” but I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself and specifically to myself regarding him. So I kept my mouth slammed shut.

The party was at a house off campus that had formerly been the showroom for a plumber and bathroom remodeler, and when they had pulled out of the business, they had, for whatever reason, left three toilets in the front display window of the old house. The backyard was also a graveyard of toilet parts, with broken tanks and bowls leaning precariously on their sides. The house had been nicknamed the Shit Shack by the guys who lived there, and when we approached the front door, there was a toilet seat hanging from a rusty nail and someone had written Welcome to the Shit Shack with a Sharpie on it.

Promising.

Jessica laughed.

Robin made a face, tossing her black hair over her shoulder. “These idiots better have a big keg because this week was ass. I bombed my Spanish mid-term.”

After the weekend before, I personally wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a keg, but as we entered the house, the smell of beer smacked me in the face, and I recoiled a little. This wasn’t going to go well. I could practically still taste the vomit in my mouth.

Jessica disappeared immediately, her bunny tail bouncing as she clicked down the hall toward the kitchen, scanning the room with predatory skill. Robin went left, swallowed into a crowd of sexy referees and slutty cheerleaders. Kylie took my hand and said, “Let’s get a drink.” She started weaving across the sea of bodies clad in a wide range of costumes from Edward Scissorhands to Mario.

I never really understood the girls-holding-hands-at-parties thing. Kylie was very fond of doing it, and while I suspected it was a confidence booster, a sign to everyone that she had a friend at her back, she insisted it was for my safety. But I also thought the trend was some kind of attention-getting faux-lesbian signal to guys. Hey, look at us. We’re good friends and we hold hands . . . get us drunk and we might make out for you. It made me uncomfortable. Because I was never going to make out with Kylie, and because I didn’t think that we needed to throw out sexual promises and innuendos to guys to get attention.

But then again, who was a virgin and who wasn’t? Who could have a boyfriend if she wanted, and who spent her time with books and shelter dogs?

Yeah.

Besides, I knew she was feeling insecure about her banana, so I held Kylie’s hand and obediently followed her to the keg, deciding I wouldn’t mind a beer after all.

“OMG, look at the keg, that’s awesome.” Kylie pulled a plastic cup off the stack and filled it with the spout of beer shooting up out of the toilet the guys had perched on top of the keg. It was like a frat boy bidet.

Charming.

Praying that toilet had never been used in any capacity other than as a makeshift beer bong, I filled a cup for myself and took a sip of the flat, cheap beer and tried not to sigh.

Half an hour later, I still had two-thirds of my beer, and I was standing there feeling bored and self-conscious. Kylie had long ago abandoned my hand, and she was fending off the third guy to try to unpeel her banana, his hand teasing on her zipper while she laughed and swatted at his wrist. Nathan was across the room, looking bitter and miserable, wearing a flight suit and aviator sunglasses. Every three seconds he glanced over at Kylie, while still maintaining a firm grip on a girl in a gingham crop top and Daisy Dukes. There was clearly some dynamic going on between Nathan and Kylie that I really didn’t want to be in the middle of, some pheromone-driven power struggle.