“Yes, please.” I nod and it worries me that something so minute as knowing my drink order makes my heart flutter and I can sense my guard flying down with ease.
It’s why I’d asked for space. Demanded it. Everett knows how to suck me back in. He knows how to make me love him. He’s been doing it since the fourth grade. I’m staring after him with an almost dreamlike expression when a nightmare takes form.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I turn my head to see two girls that look like literal clones of Alli sizing me up and down. They’re both dressed in almost identical miniskirts and matching tops and I fight the urge to call them Thing One and Thing Two. “Our friend is pregnant with his baby. He doesn’t want you.”
I narrow my gaze. My knee jerk reaction is to snap, to argue, to yell. But I realize this is probably only to get a rise out of me. I attempt to take the high road, with a flick of my hair over my shoulder. “You don’t even believe that.”
“Oh really? Then why are he and Alli trying to work it out?” Blonde number one says. She takes a dramatic sip of her drink and blinks her eyes at me several times.
“Okay, and if you expect me to believe that, then you’re dumber than I thought.” I put a hand on my hip. So much for the high road. I begin to walk away, despite the fact that I wanted to wait for Peyton. But I just need away from the blonde spawns of Satan.
“Why else would he be staying here for the summer?” Blonde number one asks as she picks at her nail beds as if she’s bored with this conversation. My heart slams into my chest and I find myself getting short of breath at her question. He’s…what?
“He’s staying here to be there for Alli and prepare for the baby,” Blonde number two interjects. A smirk finds her face, and I’m sure they’re both thrilled to have successfully ruined my night.
“I don’t buy that for a second.” He’s staying here? Like in DC? I know Alli is from Virginia, but what about his home? What about…me?
“Ask him then.” Blonde number two sasses before they sashay away.
The two tequila shots I had suddenly feel more like ten, and they’re swirling around my stomach and my brain and I feel like I need to expel them from my body. I watch as Everett makes his way towards me with a smile on his face, though I watch as it falls as he gets closer to me. “What’s wrong, baby?”
My heart skips a beat. There’s that word, baby. I can’t tell if I’m happy to hear him call me that, or sad because it reminds me of the literal meaning of that word. A small child that he’s having with another woman.
“I need to use the bathroom.” I’m away from him and beelining for the ladies’ room before he can respond. I push my way through the door, grateful that there’s not a line and move into the stall, closing the door behind me. I put my hands on each wall to brace myself from the vomit desperate to leave my body.
He promised he wasn’t going to play house with her.
He said he wanted me.
But you told him you didn’t want him,my mind responds. My thoughts are interrupted by two high pitched giggles.
“Did you see the look on her face?” one voice says. “Too bad Alli wasn’t here to see that, she would have been so satisfied.” Hot tears bubble inside of me as I realize that it’s the girls from earlier and they’re talking about me. I sit on the toilet and raise my feet up to give them the sense that they’re in the bathroom alone. Though I’m sure they’re too drunk to notice or care if they did.
“Did you tell her that Everett’s slutty ex is here?”
I put a hand over my mouth to muffle my cries. Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. Actually, I’m not a pot or a kettle. I’m not a slut. I’ve slept with one guy!
MY FUCKING GUY.
I ignore the pesky voice in my head that told me that Alli was technically dating him while I was fucking him meaning I might be straddling that slutty line. Pun intended.
“No, it’ll just make her upset, I’ll tell her later.”
“Are they really trying to work it out, though? I thought he was only staying here for an internship, and even then, he’s still on the fence.”
“Oh my God Hannah, can you get with the program? I wasn’t going to tell her that. She needs to get the picture that they’re over. Or else this would have all been for nothing.”
My ears perk up and I lower my brows hoping that it’ll help me decipher whatever code they’re talking in. What would have all been for nothing?
“Yeah, well I didn’t know Alli getting pregnant was part of the plan.” One of them snorts. “I thought she didn’t even fuck him.” I put my hand over my mouth to drown out the scream bubbling in my throat when I hear the door open.
No no no no! I want to hear them! The loud shrieks of drunk girls enter the bathroom and I can’t hear their voices over the noise. My feet find the ground and I try my best to peek through the door but I can’t tell if they’re still there. My phone lights up with a text message and I immediately know who it’s from.
Everett: You okay in there?
Me: Yes…please don’t leave. We need to talk.
Everett: Of course, I’m not leaving. I haven’t talked to you in a month. I miss my girl.