Mayhem

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Can you come pick me up?

The morning after my epically failed hookup with Adam, I’m desperate for an escape plan. I woke with his arms around me and his stubbly face smothered against the back of my neck, but I felt so nervous about how things would be between us that instead of falling back asleep in the only place my heart wanted to be, my stomach tossed and I felt like I was going to throw up.

Dee’s response is immediate. She knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t ask unless I needed her, and right now, I need her more than ever.

On my way.

With Adam and Shawn still asleep, and Joel nowhere to be found, I sit on Adam’s couch gnawing my cuticles to bits since my fingernails have long since met their maker. I’m saying silent prayers that Adam won’t wake up and find me out here and want to talk about why I snuck out of bed, or why I’m using my best friend as a getaway driver, or why I practically begged for him to take my virginity last night after almost telling him I loved him.

He did me a favor. He still wants to be friends.

Friends . . . Unless in the light of a new morning, he realizes we are so far beyond that and one of us—the one who has never had and never wants a friend like that—will never be able to go back.

My thumb is bleeding and my foot is bouncing up and down when a key turns in the lock and Joel strolls in ahead of my thoroughly tousled best friend. Her chestnut locks are pulled up into a haphazard ponytail, and Joel’s normally meticulously styled blond hair is all over the place in the most sexed-up bed-head I’ve ever seen. I raise my eyebrow at Dee, but she tugs me to my feet before I can even ask.

“Let’s go get breakfast.”

She and I are almost out the door when Joel catches her hand and pulls her into a not-meant-for-still-virgin-eyes kiss that makes my toes curl in my already-tight flats. Dee’s hands flutter to his chest, and his wrap around her arms. Mine hold onto the doorknob because if they take this show to the couch, I don’t plan on hanging around to watch. I’ll have to steal Dee’s keys because there’s no way in hell I’m staying in Adam’s general vicinity, but that shouldn’t be too difficult if Joel keeps her distracted.

Fortunately for me, their lips break apart, and Dee is left just as speechless as I am.

“I’ll call you,” Joel says, his voice like melting sugar.

Dee takes only a second to recover, and smirking at him, says, “I never gave you my number.” She consoles him with a light pat against his chest, and then she leads me out the door.

As soon as we’re in the elevator, her hands clamp onto my shoulders, her eyes full of concern. “What happened last night?”

“You first,” I say, trying to buy myself some time. I definitely do not want to hear the details of what she did last night, but I’d rather talk about that than the disaster that happened in Adam’s bedroom.

Dee tries and fails to prevent a smile. She lets her hands drop and shrugs a shoulder, but then her fingers drift to her lips and I can tell last night wasn’t as ordinary as she’s trying to pretend it was. “Joel came back to my room with me.”

Yeah, no kidding. When all I can do is frown, she says, “What?”

“Joel’s not like the other guys you’ve been with, Dee . . .”

The other guys she’s been with worship the ground she walks on. She’s a siren; once they’ve had her, they always want more. She thrives on their undivided attention, and if they don’t give it to her, she does what it takes to get it. Then, as soon as she has it, she doesn’t want it anymore.

The problem is, Joel isn’t going to be that guy. She’s met her match in him—I just doubt she knows it yet—and I have no idea how she’s going to handle it when she’s not the center of his world.

“And I’m not like the other girls he’s been with,” she replies with a confident smirk, her high heels clicking onto the lobby floor as soon as the elevator dings open.

We cross the quiet parking lot together and I pause at her passenger-side door, staring at her over the plum-purple hood of her Civic. “You realize he’s kind of a rock star . . .” A rock star, a sex fiend, a groupie hoarder. A name forgetter, a phone number discarder, and hopefully not the guy who detonates my drama-bomb best friend.

“Oh, he’s a rock star alright.”

“Oh my God.” I slide into her front seat before she starts spilling the details of her sexcapades with my couch-dwelling roommate, hoping that Macy was able to stay with Leti last night or the poor girl is going to be traumatized for life. Memories of a senior year camping trip when I had to sleep in a tent next to Dee and Matt Anderson still haunt me to this day.

Dee laughs and slides in next to me, and on the ride to IHOP, I attempt to distract myself from my own train wreck of a love life by stressing about hers instead. I know she’s right about Joel never having been with a girl like her before—because there is no one like Dee—but I can’t help the sinking feeling I get when I think about them together.

“If you and Joel go south,” I warn after she finishes scolding me for not telling her about a nipple ring I’d have no way of knowing about, “I don’t want to get dragged into it, okay?” Thanks to me, things are already messed up between me and Adam; I don’t need them getting messed up between me and Joel too. If he and Dee end up going atomic, I know I’ll get caught in the blast.

She scoffs at me. “How could things possibly go south?”