He sighs when he pulls away, resting his forehead on mine. “I was trying really hard not to be that guy.”
I frown. “What guy?”
“The guy who fingers you in the Kmart parking lot.”
I reach up to touch his jaw, fingers rasping on the day-old stubble there. “Better than Martha Langford’s bedroom.” We share a quiet laugh, and I feel boneless and fizzy by the time he pulls away.
“What can I say?” He turns the keys in the ignition, fixing me with a deadpan smile. “I’m a romantic.”
“You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” I grouch, resting my face on the art table. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
As I say it, there’s part of me that wants Sydney to ask why, to question why I didn’t get any sleep, to declare I look different, more mature, less…virginal. And then I can tell her that I got fingerbanged. Twice. By easily the hottest, most off-limits guy in school. And then I can finally tell someone about this thing that keeps growing in my chest, every time I see him. It’s heavy and hungry, but it’s also full of excitement and delight. I think I know the name for it, even if I’m too cowardly to say so.
But she doesn
’t ask.
In fact, what I notice the most about Sydney these days is that she never asks me about myself, at all. She never wonders what I’m doing or what’s going on in my life. I realize now that she never did. It took me having something to tell to really recognize that our friendship has always been about her social life—the gossip that swirls around her, the boys that like her, or wish she would like them back.
My relationship with Sydney is completely one-sided, and now that I have more going on in my life—real stuff, with an actual, albeit secret, boyfriend—the reality of it sinks heavily in the pit of my stomach.
Sometimes I wonder if she even really likes me, or if this has always been about the spectacle of it all, nothing more.
“I texted you at midnight,” she says, suddenly, pulling out her sketch pad. We start each day with a pen and ink sketch of an object on the front table. Today it’s a stuffed owl. “If you were awake, why didn’t you answer?”
I blink at her. “I uh—well, I had my phone turned off.” I pick out a good pen, averting my eyes. “You know they suggest turning off all screens when you’re having a problem sleeping? The light is bad for you.”
“Mmhmm.” She starts drawing the owl at the beak. Syd isn’t a bad artist—she’s just kind of sloppy and rushed. Much like she is with everything in her life. “That’s weird, though.”
“What’s weird?”
“That your phone was off. Because I was scrolling though the location feature of ChattySnap and your phone was…well, here.”
“Here?” I’m unsure if it’s an accusation or a question or what. Maybe Syd has been paying more attention than I realized.
She turns to look at me. “Yeah, here. And interestingly, it wasn’t the only phone showing up on campus. Emory. Aubrey. Caroline…” She watches me intently. “Even Reyn.”
“That’s, uh, really weird.” Screw ChattySnap and its stupid tracking features! “Because there’s no way I’d be on campus in the middle of the night.”
“That’s what I thought. Especially with Reyn—who, you know, is not allowed to be near you.” This isn’t actually true—not anymore—but I don’t bother to correct her. She adds an eye and some details. “But then I thought about it some more, and you’ve been distant lately. And not in that ‘too much Oxy’ kind of way, either.”
“Shhhhh!” I glare at her before making sure no one overheard. Our table is to the side of the room, but Syd’s voice has a way of carrying. “What the hell, Syd?”
She puts down her pen, turning to me, and through the firmness in her eyes, I can tell there’s also some hurt. “No, Vandy, what the hell is going on with you? You’ve been ditching me at lunch, blowing me off for getting our nails done, and something is obviously up. I’m not stupid. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed your phone isn’t where you say it is.”
I gape at her. “Are you seriously stalking me now?”
“No. I’m trying to figure why my best friend is keeping secrets from me.”
“I’m not.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes, “Yeah, okay. Sure.”
I push past the panic I’m feeling. I need a way out of this. She can’t know about the Devils or Reyn or any of it. “I’m just…having my own life for once. I’m not sitting at home alone and feeling sorry for myself. I’m…” I glance around the room, buying time. “I’m working on something for the newspaper.”
Her eyebrow raises. “Your article?”