True (True Believers #1)(20)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Staying still under the covers, I kept my eyes closed and tried not to move, breathing as slowly as possible. I was curious to hear what their true opinion about it was. Especially Jessica’s.

I had fallen asleep almost immediately after Tyler had dropped me off, which had surprised me, and I had no idea what time it was. I had woken up so easily I suspected I’d been asleep for a while and we were cruising toward morning. They obviously thought I would still be at Nathan’s, cozied up with Tyler. Hardly. I had fallen asleep all alone, as usual.

“I know. I didn’t think she would go through with it either. She was kind of freaking out on me in the bathroom.”

That was an exaggeration. I had just been making sure Jess wouldn’t care. Her voice now sounded tired and almost as slurred as Kylie’s, making me think that she’d gone on to drink some beer after the Vicodin pill.

“Damn it, my feet are swollen.”

I could hear Jessica sink down onto her bed, which was positioned to form an L with mine. I knew she was going to notice me any second. Probably the only reason she hadn’t was because my bed was under Kylie’s loft, and I was in the shadows. “I wish more people understood how f**king smart and sweet Rory is.”

Aww. That was nice to hear. I was about to roll over and announce my presence when Kylie said, “No, shit. I really think this thing we’ve set up with Tyler is going to help her confidence.”

I stiffened and stifled a startled exhalation of air. What did that mean? I did not like the sound of set up.

“She’ll be able to put herself out there more once she’s gotten over this whole ‘I’m a shy girl virgin’ role. Because I don’t think that’s her. Well, the virgin part was I guess, until tonight. But the shy thing, that’s what I mean.” Kylie was fumbling around on her desk, knocking stuff over and shoving her chair against the wall. I could easily picture her, trying to unzip her banana, drunk, losing her balance and colliding into everything within a three-foot range.

“Totally. I’m glad Tyler finally got his head out of his ass. I was starting to wonder what the hell was taking him so long. I was starting to wonder what he was doing. He never put that much effort into getting me into bed.”

Kylie snorted. “Like it was hard with you.”

Jessica laughed. “Good point. But seriously, he was being weird about the whole thing. You’d think he’d be all ‘time is money’ and try to get the deal done as fast as possible.”

Now my heart was racing and my fingers twitched beneath the covers. It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep my eyes closed. Time is money? There was a deal between my roommates and Tyler? To do what?

I had a sneaking, awful, craptacular feeling I knew exactly what that deal was.

“For a hundred bucks, you’d think he’d be motivated.”

Oh. My. God. I sucked in my breath. I couldn’t help it. My roommates had paid Tyler to have sex with me. For whatever creepy, misguided reason. And he had been willing to take it.

I went still again, praying they wouldn’t notice me, spots dancing behind my eyes from clamping them shut so hard. I would die, I would literally die from pure mortification if they knew I had heard them. I couldn’t deal with it.

Tyler didn’t like me. He wasn’t even attracted to me. He had feigned interest in my life, had studied with me, had taken care of me after I puked from drinking, because he had an end goal in mind. It was all intended to bring down the defenses of a naïve virgin so that she would drop her clothes and let him use her. For money.

Use me. For a lousy hundred bucks.

For a second, I thought I was going to throw up and I actually gagged, horror and bile and disbelief clogging my throat like backed-up sewage, and I couldn’t stifle a little cough.

“Rory?” Kylie asked in amazement.

I let my eyes flutter, knowing there was no way out of it. “Hey,” I said, putting as much sleepiness into my voice as possible. “You just get back?”

“Yeah.” She leaned over me, sticking her face right into mine. She searched my face, looking excited. “How was it?”

“Good,” I said, because it had been. Until it hadn’t. Tyler had gotten me off and so in that regard, he had earned his money. I didn’t want to go into anything else with them. Ever.

She hugged me, an awkward embrace, given she was shitfaced and I was lying down, her br**sts dangling in front of me. “Yay! I love you. You know you and Jessica are my best friends ever.”

“Me, too,” I said, because I couldn’t form a coherent sentence. I rolled back over toward the wall and closed my eyes, wishing I could shut her words out as effectively as the sight of her.

“I can’t believe he brought her back home,” Kylie whispered to Jessica in what was definitely not a whisper by sober standards. “He could have at least let her sleep there.”

“Douche bag,” was Jessica’s opinion.

All I could think was that he was definitely more than that, none of it good.

When I was ten years old, I was invited to Ashley Goldman’s birthday party, and while I was excited, I was shocked, too. We weren’t friends and she was the most popular girl in fifth grade. It made me suspicious to get the invitation, like it was either a mistake or I was going to be a joke of some kind, but my dad kept insisting that Ashley must like me and want to be friends, that it was a chance for new beginnings and some other such bullshit. The day of the party, I was so nervous I had diarrhea all morning and begged my dad not to make me go. But he did, and when I, gift out, stupidly optimistic, timidly approached Ashley, she ripped it out of my hands and tossed it on the table with, “I only invited you because I had to because your dad is my mom’s boss.”

I spent the whole party in a corner of the backyard playing with the Goldmans’ cocker spaniel and hating my father for his good intentions.

That was how I felt now.

An hour later, when I was still wide awake and my roommates were passed out, deep in sleep, I got up and went into the bathroom we shared with our suitemates. Stripping off my pajamas, I got into the hot shower in my panties and let the tears come. As the water streamed over me, I scrubbed my face, too ashamed to be fully naked, wanting a protective layer between me and the memory of Tyler’s touch.

I sobbed, for the little girl I had been, who had never understood why I didn’t just fit in, and for the realization that I never would. That my life was meant to be walked alone, with a thin plastic barrier pulled taut between me and everyone else, my thoughts never capable of running parallel with the majority of human beings. In the world of Stellas and Stanleys and Blanches, I was destined to be Harold, the guy who’s never in on the joke and wants everyone to like him, and never has a freaking clue what is really going on. When Harold finds out that Blanche is no virgin, and in fact she’s the opposite of pure, he’s stunned, and we all think he’s stupid.