Carter and Cartwright come walking over, their male gazes on our touching hands. “You two over here gettin’ friendly? Shit, invite us to watch next time.”
Brianna rolls her eyes. “In your dreams.”
“In many of my dreams,” Cartwright agrees. “You’re mud-wrestlin’ in bikinis, too. Damndest thing.”
“Ugh,” Brianna mutters, uncapping her water and taking a sip. Regarding Carter, she says, “I need a shower, can you drop me off first?”
Carter nods. “I was planning to anyway.”
Cartwright and Brianna don’t kiss or even hug goodbye. I try to reconcile that with the knowledge that they had sex last night, but there are no social cues indicating it happened. I wonder if that’s what it was like between her and Carter—just some extremely casual thing? It didn’t seem to bother Carter at all that someone he had been intimate with was being intimate with someone else.
My head hurts too much to ponder Carter’s sex life at the present moment. I slide into the backseat with Brianna so she can paint my nails on the way to her house, but when we drop her off, I climb back up front with Carter.
Silence falls and I can’t tell who’s initiating it. I stop myself a few times from stealing glances over at him in the driver’s seat, but ultimately give in to the temptation. He still looks tired, his hand on top of the wheel. He’s wearing his letter jacket. It’s not cold out, but it is still that grayish hue of morning, before the sun fully lights up the sky.
Carter feels me looking at him and his dark eyes snap to mine.
Finally, he asks, “How do you feel this morning?”
“Tired,” I tell him.
He nods his agreement. “I’ll stop and grab us a couple coffees on the way to your house.”
That’s probably a bad idea. If anyone sees us there this early in what are clearly yesterday’s clothes, they’ll know we spent the night together. Then if by chance Carter fucks me over today, people will run their mouths even faster about what a ho I am.
Oh well. I’m probably going to need to some coffee if I want to make it through this morning without falling asleep at my desk.
Carter and I stop at Grace’s favorite coffee shop. He buys me an iced coffee, himself a black coffee, and we both get muffins—chocolate chip for me, banana nut for him. Not that we actually have the time, but Carter leads us over to a table so we can eat here before he takes me home.
I check my phone real quick. Apparently noticing, he asks, “Your mom?”
I glance up at him and shake my head. “No, I was just checking the time. I’m going to have to take the quickest shower of all time.”
Instead of asking if I’d even wanted to sit for breakfast, he smirks. “That’s all right, I kinda like knowing I’ll still be on you when I see you later today.”
I widen my eyes at him. “That’s… I don’t know how to respond to that.”
Breaking off a piece of his muffin, he asks, “You’re coming to the game tonight, right?”
I still have no desire to go to a football game, but I guess if I’m going to be his girlfriend, I should do the supportive thing and show up. At least, I think I’m his girlfriend. We definitely discussed it prior to his decision to remove the obstacle of my virginity, and I think that’s where we landed.
My fears got the best of me while I slept, though. In my dreams, I was standing at my locker getting out my books for class, and Carter came up behind me. He held up a bouquet of Longhorn blue flowers and said, “For my beautiful girlfriend.” Flushing with pleasure, I naturally assumed he meant me, but when I went to take them, Erika appeared out of nowhere and grabbed them away, saying, “You wish, freak.” Then they both laughed at me. His arm slid around her waist, she leaned into him and smelled her flowers. With a sinking stomach, I realized it had all been an incredibly cruel joke, that they were just playing me, and there was no limit to the levels of their corruption.
“Where’d you go?”
My gaze jerks back to Carter. “Hm?”
He’s watching me get lost in the memory of that awful dream, so I shake it off and take a drink of my coffee.
Since I can’t tell him what I was thinking about, I ask, “Are Brianna and Cartwright a thing?”
Carter shakes his head, taking a sip of his coffee. “Not really. Only when they’re bored or lonely. Sometimes when they’re both single, they hook up.”
“Was that how it was when you guys…?”
“More or less.” He smiles faintly. “We’re not as sexually reserved as you are.”
“Yes, I noticed,” I agree.
“Does that bother you?” he asks.