After dessert, Devi ran through the details of tomorrow’s wedding ceremony with me—and with Brody and Jude, who were also in the wedding party but had missed the rehearsal. Because of me. Which was horribly uncomfortable, since Brody was dead to me and all, which apparently meant he wasn’t talking to me or even acknowledging my existence.

Fun.

At least I could thank God for small favors when I learned I wasn’t paired up with him in the wedding. He’d be escorting Katie’s sister, Becca, down the aisle, while I’d been paired up with Zane.

When that was done, Devi and Becca hustled all the ladies under thirty-five off to Jesse and Katie’s luxury cabin, which they’d decorated for Katie’s stagette. The cabin itself was huge, with a loft for the master bedroom and a wraparound deck—a weirdly fitting combo of rustic and posh, with exposed wood, giant windows, designer furniture and a giant, three-tiered deer antler chandelier, dripping with crystals, in the center. If Kanye West had a cabin in the great white north, this would be it.

“Wow,” Roni remarked as she sauntered into the middle of the room and gazed up at the glittering chandelier. “There are a lot of rubber dicks in this room.”

There were. Aside from the penis-shaped balloons that were dangling on ribbons from the chandelier, there was an anatomically-correct male blow-up doll laid out on the dining table, serving as a sushi platter, penis party trays filled with snacks, and penis drinking straws standing in the cocktail glasses along the bar.

There was also a handsome gentleman with slicked-back hair and large, perhaps steroid-induced biceps, standing behind the bar in a sleeveless tuxedo shirt, mixing drinks.

Devi rolled her eyes a little. “You can thank Becca for that.”

“You’re welcome,” Katie’s sister said. “I put myself in charge of penis-shaped party favors.”

“Katie’s just kissing her man goodbye,” Devi informed us, “which could take a while, obvs. When she comes in, the order of business is girl talk and drinking.”

“And not necessarily in that order,” Becca put in.

“Where’re the strippers, though?” Roni turned in a slow circle, like she expected a bunch of oiled-up, g-string-clad hunks to pop out of the woodwork any second. “Please tell me you got strippers.”

“Katie wants girl talk,” Devi said as she started handing out cocktails, “so that’s what we’re going to give her. Tomorrow will be a little difficult for her, so get yourselves lushed up and let’s make her feel the love.”

Difficult?

Why would it be difficult?

Before I could inquire about that, Roni asked, “Where’re the guys going?”

And I was glad she did, because it was kind of killing me that I didn’t even know where Brody was and Amanda most certainly did. She’d probably just kissed him goodbye.

I glanced at her face, like I might see traces of him there, evidence of the kisses he’d given her only moments ago. She caught my eye and smiled.

I tried to smile back.

Holy hell, this was going to be awkward.

But I could fake my way through it, right? I was pretty much a professional faker. Act like these ugly-ass panties are the hottest undies ever designed? No problem, I’m your girl. Look happy and sexy while frolicking in the waves on an ice-cold beach? Do it all the time.

Pretend it’s no biggie to share some girlie bonding time with the woman who’s sleeping with the man of your dreams tonight?

Easy-fucking-peasy, right?

Fuck.

“The guys are hopping into helicopters,” Devi was saying as I sipped my frothy strawberry daiquiri through a penis straw. “They’re taking off up the coast to some remote rescue service cabin. Some guy Brody knows is letting them use it.” She waved her hand in the air, like this was redundant. “You know, Brody knows everyone.”

“They’re gonna chop fire wood or throw logs or some such shit,” Becca explained. “You know, be manly.”

“We should’ve gone up there,” Roni said, shooting me a look over her drink.

“You,” Devi said, pointing her finger at Katie’s niece, Sadie, “get one drink from the nice bartender man, and then you’re going to bed.”

“Why?” Sadie whined.

“Because,” Roni answered, “after that your mommy and aunt Katie and aunt Devi are gonna talk about penises, and they don’t want you to hear it.”

“Yucky!” Sadie cried.

“Roni,” I warned her.

“What?” Roni shrugged. “She’s like ten. She knows what a penis is.”

“She’s seven,” Becca said, “and yes, she does.”

“Why are you talking about penises?” Sadie asked her mom, horrified.

“Because sometimes,” Becca said, handing her daughter a virgin cocktail, “that’s what mommies do.”

* * *

“Have any of you hooked up with a member of Dirty?” Becca asked, all giggly and flushed. “I mean, besides Katie.”

I bit my lip and made a weird hiccuping-gagging noise before bringing my penis straw to my lips and sucking on my daiquiri.

Everyone looked at me.

We’d all been lushed up with a few drinks by now. Sadie had been carried off to bed by her mom a while ago, and Becca had quickly returned, jubilant to be kid-free for the night. Then all seven of us had changed into our bikinis, which Devi had instructed us to bring, and piled into the massive hot tub in front of the big, round window overlooking the cove, frosted cocktails in hand, and got to drinking.

Roni suggested we go in naked, but the rest of us vetoed that.

Beck’s “Dreams” was getting us in the party mood as it pumped over the surround sound system, and spirits were high. The nice bartender man was keeping the open bar, courtesy of my brother, flowing. And even though he seemed to be keeping an eye on us—because really, seven bikini-clad girls drinking in a hot tub—as did the big dude Jude had assigned to stand inside the front door and look surly, we forgot about them, more or less, and got to the girl talk.

It started on a casual note, chatting about how happy we were for Katie and her big day tomorrow, about our dresses and how we were going to wear our hair… which led to those who didn’t know the scoop asking for the details on how Katie and my brother hooked up… which led straight to sex.

“Yeah, I really don’t need to hear about my brother’s sex life,” I’d put in, which was probably a mistake. I would’ve much rather heard about my brother’s sex life than answered Becca’s question.

In the wake of that question, everyone had gotten really, really quiet, and Katie’s eyes went wide.

Devi looked intrigued.

Maggie looked like she needed another drink.

“Oh, this night just got interesting,” Roni said.

Katie eyed me across the hot tub. I avoided her gaze, suddenly fascinated with the sugar crystals on the rim of my daiquiri. “Jessa?” she asked sweetly. “You ever hooked up with anyone we might just love to know about?”

“Hooked up? What do you mean, hooked up?” I tried to look as incredibly blank as possible. Or possibly drunk. So I couldn’t be expected to keep up.

“Hooked. Up. It’s a universal definition,” Becca said. “Meaning any part of his body down your pants.”

“Or up your skirt,” Roni added.

Okay. Safe there.

“Wrong,” Katie said. “Kissing is hooking up. I’m the bride here. I make the rules.”

Uh-oh.

“We know Jesse’s out,” she added with a grin when I didn’t respond. “So that leaves Zane or Dylan.”

“Or Elle,” Roni put in helpfully.

Yup. That girl was all kinds of helpful. Which was kind of why I liked her; Roni nudged me out of my comfort zone. If she had to, she’d kick me the hell out of it. Right now, though, it was a little more than inconvenient.

“I don’t think I’m her cup of tea,” I offered.

“Please,” Roni said. “Bikini model much? You’re everyone’s cup of tea.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Does Brody count?” Amanda inquired, sipping her drink and not looking at me.

“Brody’s not in the band,” Devi pointed out.

“Hells yes, Brody counts!” Maggie put it. “I need some dirt on that man. If any of you besides Amanda have hooked up with Brody, I wanna know.”

“As do I,” Amanda said, sounding half-intrigued, half-apprehensive, and still not looking at me.

“C’mon Jessa.” Katie’s words were starting to slur. “’Fess up. Any Dirty romances in your past? Or present?”

Now everyone was looking at me again.

Even Amanda was looking at me.

“I hooked up with Zane,” Roni announced. This news was greeted with a collective gasp of delight, tinged with perverse curiosity.

Roni didn’t know much about my history with Brody, though obviously she’d picked up on something tonight, and maybe she’d felt the need to save me. Or maybe she felt like bragging. Maybe she was just bored and trying to get this chat moving along. But I wasn’t exactly relieved she’d spoken up.

Not when I caught the look on Maggie’s face. She tried to hide it behind her giant cocktail glass, but it was there in her eyes—the same thing I felt when I saw Brody with Amanda.

Stone cold envy… and just that little bit of loathing.

Maggie and I had been friends for a long time. I knew she had a crush on Zane, years ago; or at least, she pretended it was years ago. But I’d seen the guarded way she looked at him tonight, and I’d suffered enough longing over the years, over a man who wasn’t mine, to understand that look. And while I knew Maggie wasn’t really the type to act on that attraction, or whatever it was, because of how seriously she took her job with the band, I knew it couldn’t exactly be fun for her to come face-to-face with women who had acted on their attraction to Zane… which I was pretty sure she did on a regular basis.

Zane had always been a slut.

“Was it… good?” Katie inquired.

“Of course it was good,” Becca said. “Look at him.”

“Shit, yeah, it was good,” Roni said, thrilled with her rapt audience. “He does this thing with his tongue and his middle finger—”

“Jessa had a crush on Jude.”

Shit. My gaze swung back to Maggie; never saw that one coming.

“Jude!” Katie exclaimed.

Sorry, Maggie mouthed at me, looking guilty for throwing me under the bus.

“It was a long time ago,” I explained, before the blushing bride got all excited about the prospect of Jesse’s best friend and I getting hitched and our babies playing together.

“I would so do Jude,” Becca said.

Katie rolled her eyes at her sister. “Um, married much?”

“If I wasn’t married,” she clarified. “Do you think he does couples?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Katie groaned. “TMI.”

“Whatever.” Devi shushed them. “I want to know what happened with Jessa and Jude.”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “From what I gathered, I wasn’t his type.”

Roni rolled her eyes. “Again. Everyone’s type.”

“What’s his type?” Becca asked.

“Well… back then, he was fourteen years old and as far as I could tell, his type was voluptuous sixteen-year-olds. I was ten. I definitely never caught his eye.” I shrugged. “That was such a long time ago… I almost forgot about it.”

That was true, more or less.

And while Roni proceeded to regale the girls with detailed accounts of the other famous guys she’d had sex with—there were several of them, apparently—I zoned out, recalling exactly what it was that made me forget my crush on Jude. I could remember the day, the very moment Jude was forgotten.

The moment Brody came back into my life.

I was half-in and half-out of my new bra. It was my first bra, which my brother had discovered I needed after the first day of fifth grade, when Zane walked me home from school and bluntly announced, in typical Zane fashion, “You’d better get your sister’s tits under wrap or you’re gonna have a world of problems on your hands this year.”

Hence a particularly embarrassing shopping trip with my fourteen-year-old brother to get my first bra.

I was trying to put it on, attempting to untangle the straps and figure out how I was supposed to do it up behind my back—or was I supposed to do it up, then spin it around?—when someone walked into my bedroom. I looked up, and there was Brody.

I was ten years old, so it’s not like what I was trying to put in my new bra was all that impressive, but still. Naked boobs were kinda hard to miss, especially if you were a teenage boy. Which was maybe why he was staring at me.

I hadn’t seen him since that day on the playground two years before. I never really expected to see him again. To my imaginative young mind, Brody Mason was an entity as magical and illusive as a unicorn, a fire-breathing dragon, or Eddie Vedder.

But there he was.

In my room.

“You’re supposed to knock!” I cried, covering myself with my skinny arms.

“Why would I knock on the bathroom door when it’s open?” he said, belatedly covering his eyes with his hand.

“Because it’s not the bathroom!”

“I see that, princess. Maybe close the door next time you decide to get naked.”

Princess?

He remembered me?!

“I’m not naked!” I shouted. “And you’re supposed to knock on a bedroom door! Even if it’s open!”

“I thought it was the bathroom!”

“Unless you plan to take a piss in my My Little Pony Show Stable,” I screamed at him, “get the fuck out!”

Yes, in my panic, I’d dropped an F-bomb. It was the first time I’d ever done it, too. Because my brother and his friends used the F-word all the time I’d taken a stand against it, but not even my brother had ever made me that mad—or embarrassed. And yes, I had a My Little Pony Show Stable. It was faded and pink and sat at Brody’s feet; before he’d died, my dad had often scavenged such treasures for me on his daily route as a trash collector.

It never had a pony to go with it, but I liked it anyway.

Brody’s hand dropped from his face. He stood there in his faded Wheezer T-shirt, his ripped jeans and dirty sneakers, and grinned at me.

I would later find out that despite how he dressed, Brody came from a wealthy family. His father was self-made, the CEO of some plastics empire who was too busy battling environmentalists, counting his millions and managing his multiple affairs to find time for his son. His mom was little more than a trophy wife, too busy popping pills to care. As a boy Brody acted up in school, probably in an effort to get their attention, and even though he was so smart he’d ended up flunking sixth grade at his posh private school. His parents then dumped him into the public school system, which in their minds was probably some sort of punishment. And big surprise, he just kept disappointing them. The incident at my school, where he’d made a couple of fifth-graders eat shit (I would’ve sworn it was mud, but no one bothered to ask me at the time) was the final straw. After that, his parents yanked him out of school and sent him to a military academy on the other side of the country for the next two years.

He’d just returned to start ninth grade with my brother’s class, already had a tattoo, and since he was obviously totally badass (and not just because he had a tattoo), Zane had immediately recruited him to their group.

None of which was knowledge to me in that moment.

I just stood there freaking out, completely at a loss as to why the universe was punishing me by depositing the coolest boy I’d ever met in my house, in my bedroom, when I had my new boobs out.

“See you around, princess,” he said. Then he turned and sauntered out.

I ran after him and slammed the door behind him as hard as I could.

To my surprise, after that day, I did see him around. A lot.

And my crush on Jude?

What crush.

I’d never known a crush until fifteen-year-old Brody Mason sauntered back into my life, smiled at me, and called me princess. From that day on I was ruined, ruined for every other male on the planet.

I was his.

Even if he didn’t know it.

I took a breath, took a sip of my daiquiri, and decided not to share that particular story with the girls in the hot tub. Even if Amanda wasn’t here, I wouldn’t have shared that story.

My memories of Brody, good or bad, were mine. They were all I had, but at least they would always be mine; even if I had nothing else.

Memories, and a T-shirt.