The Play
Originally this was supposed to be girls only, but TJ sounded glum when he realized he couldn’t come, so I told him he could join us as long as he honored the rules of Girls’ Night. AKA ordering lots of brightly colored drinks.
“What’s going on with you guys, anyway?” he asks curiously. “It seems like it’s evolved from just hanging out…”
“Um yeah,” Pippa answers for me. “They’re frickin’ married.”
TJ looks stunned. “For real?”
A snort slips out. “No, not for real. But we do spend a lot of time together.” I pick up my obnoxiously pink drink with its gaudy purple umbrella. “I guess that means we’re dating. I’m not entirely sure, though. We haven’t even had the exclusivity talk.”
“You haven’t?” Pippa raises a brow. “It’s been months, D. What if he’s having sex with other women?”
“He’s not.”
“Of course he is,” TJ says, rolling his eyes.
I scowl at them both.
Pippa objects. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t say he was. That’s all this one.” She pokes TJ in the arm.
He raises both hands as if surrendering to enemy soldiers. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Of course he’s sleeping with other people. I’m telling you this as a college dude who lives in the dorms surrounded by other college dudes. If you don’t make it clear to a guy that you want to be exclusive, I guarantee he’s seeing more than one woman.”
“I mean…TJ has a point,” Pippa says slowly.
“And he was out with all those girls, like, a week ago,” TJ goes on. “He’s definitely hooking up with other people.”
A chill runs up my spine. “What girls? And how do you know what he was doing?”
“I saw something on Instagram.”
“You saw something on Instagram,” I echo uncertainly.
TJ nods. “I follow a shit ton of Briar people. Someone posted a picture of the hockey team at a party, not sure where it took place. Davenport was in the picture kissing some chick.”
Bullshit, I want to retort.
But doubt creeps into me like strands of ivy and tightens around my throat. Hunter did go to an after party last week that I didn’t attend, but that doesn’t mean anything. Moreover, we’re not even an official couple.
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard. The pain triggered by my teeth doesn’t even compare to the shooting pain in my heart. My stomach lurches. With shaky fingers, I flip over my phone. The last text from Hunter was a kissy face.
I ignore it. Suddenly wondering how many other kissy faces he’s sending and to whom.
“I took a screenshot for you,” TJ admits, “but I deleted it.”
“What! Why?” Pippa thunders.
Misery clouds his eyes as he looks at me. “Because I didn’t want you to think I was trying to cause trouble. I remember how much it annoyed you the last time we talked about Hunter behind his back.”
“Thomas Joseph,” Pippa snaps. “Get your phone out and recover the picture from the deleted folder. I bet it’s probably still in there.”
My heartbeat is erratic as TJ scrolls through his photo roll. I’m almost hoping he doesn’t find the picture. I don’t want it to exist. I want it to be a figment of TJ’s imagination.
“Here it is!” he says, and my stomach plummets like a shot-down missile.
TJ slides the phone toward me. Pippa practically drapes herself over the sticky tabletop to get a good look.
The photo features half a dozen guys and a few girls. I recognize several faces: Matt Anderson, that Jesse guy, and I think that’s Mike Hollis in the corner but it’s hard to tell. Matt has his arm around a smiling redhead, and Jesse is posing next to a girl I think might be his girlfriend Katie. But I don’t see Hunter—
Oh. There he is.
TJ’s right. Hunter is in the photo.
And he is absolutely kissing someone else.
35
Demi
My heart jumps to my throat in horror, tightening my windpipe and making it difficult to breathe. In the photo, the blonde’s mouth is fused to Hunter’s in a frozen kiss captured for all of eternity. Permanently documented for me, Demi Davis, to see.
Jealousy and anger form a pretzel in the pit of my stomach. I’m allowed to feel the former, but not the latter.
“D?” Pippa says.
I paste on a careless expression. “We never had the are-we-exclusive talk.”
She sees right through me. “Oh, babe. We don’t know when this was taken,” she points out.
TJ speaks up. “It was posted like six days ago.”
“That doesn’t mean it was taken six days ago,” argues Pippa.
“Why would someone post an old picture?”
“Are you serious? People do it all the time! Throwback Thursday? Flashback Friday? Way-back Wednesday?”
“The caption doesn’t use any of those hashtags,” TJ counters.
“Maybe they forgot. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?” a third voice joins in.
I glance up at Corinne’s arrival. She’s wearing an oversized sweater and skinny jeans, her curly hair pulled back with a yellow scrunchie. She climbs into the booth beside me, and now it feels even more cramped.
“We’re just arguing about this picture of the guy Demi is dating,” Pippa explains.
“Hockey boy?” Corrine asks.
“Yeah.” That awful cold sensation keeps fluttering through my body.
She picks up the phone. “Which one is he?”
I point at Hunter and the blonde. They’re still kissing in the picture.
Dammit. I was kind of hoping I’d look at it again and they’d be standing on opposite sides of the frame.
Corinne studies the image. “This is the guy you’re seeing?”
“Yep.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She seems genuinely upset on my behalf. Or maybe it’s just pity. Poor Demi, the girl who keeps getting shafted for other chicks.
Pippa grabs the phone again and spends an inordinate amount of time examining the screen. “No, this is definitely an old picture,” she finally announces. “I recognize this girl.” She taps the face of the redhead beside Matt Anderson. “That’s Jenny.”
“Who’s Jenny?” asks Corinne.
“She was in one of my acting classes freshman year.” Pippa appears both relieved and triumphant. “It’s an old picture, D. I promise.”
“How can you be sure?” I’m almost embarrassed by the balloon of hope rising in my chest.
“Because she doesn’t go here anymore. She transferred to the drama program at UCLA more than a year ago.”
“Seriously?”
“How do you know it’s her?” TJ asks. “It’s not the clearest shot. Or maybe she’s in town visiting friends, you don’t know.”
“Hold on. Let me find her Insta account so we can compare pics. Amuse yourselves for a minute, girls and boy.” She bends over her phone, a woman on a mission.
I try to focus on Corinne as she chats about her new classes this semester, but when Pippa gives a shout of satisfaction, my focus ricochets back to her in an instant.