She drags Chase off without another word, though I hear him protesting as she drags him away, “I didn’t say she should do it on his dick.”
“Well, that was awkward,” I say, glancing nervously at Officer Gunn, who’s appeared behind the bleachers. He’s engrossed in his police radio for the moment, and I don’t want to change that.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, grabbing a hand of both of my companions and hurrying across the parking lot towards Dolly’s huge pink truck. “We can deal with the consequences on Monday. I want to celebrate tonight.”
“Yeah,” Dixie says as we pile into the cab. “I can’t believe we went through with it!”
Dolly starts up the truck and guns it out of the parking lot. “Where to, ladies?”
“Ice cream,” I say, still high on the adrenaline and feeling invincible. Even calories can’t stop me now. “This definitely calls for ice cream.”
“Shouldn’t we go home and change first?” Dixie asks, adjusting her shorts.
“Girl, you look hot as fuck,” I say. “If anyone says otherwise, they can come talk to me.”
She giggles from the back seat. “You are so crazy, Crystal. Next thing I know, you’re going to shank someone.”
I laugh. “Not my style. I prefer to operate with more subtlety.”
“I don’t think what we just did was very subtle.”
“True,” I say. “Some bitches are too dumb to understand the subtle approach, so you’re forced to do something drastic. But you gotta use that shit sparingly, or it won’t have the desired effect.”
Dixie sighs and leans back in her seat. “I want to be you when I grow up.”
I laugh at that and turn to Dolly. “You okay? You’re awfully quiet over there.”
“I thought you liked Devlin,” she says quietly, frowning at the road ahead.
I swallow hard. Even though I’ve been with him, I’ve never said I liked him. But I do, and these aren’t the kind of friends I want to lie to. “I do,” I admit at last, feeling as vulnerable as if I were telling Devlin himself.
“Then why did Chase say you were after Preston?” she asks. “Don’t fuck with that boy’s head, Crystal. He deserves better.”
“Oh, that,” I say, laughing. “It’s a long story, but basically a misunderstanding. Don’t worry. Preston is all yours.”
“What?” she says, sounding startled.
“Oh, right,” I say. “We’re not supposed to talk about that. But trust me, I have zero interest in anyone but Devlin. And if there were something going on, your secret would be safe with me.”
“There’s not,” she says, pulling up outside a tiny shop. There’s a big sign in the shape of an ice cream cone with the wordsTwo Scoops of Lovepainted on it. Dolly shuts off the engine and turns to me. “I’m with your brothers. I wouldn’t do that to them. They deserve better than that, too.”
“Okay,” I say. “Your past is your business. My lips are sealed.”
She nods and climbs out of the car. “Now, as far as what Dixie said, I have to agree,” she says as we make our way inside. “You’re really something, Crystal. I’d never have done something like that if you hadn’t come along. You opened my eyes to things I’d always just taken at face value. Like taking the cheer squad’s word that I wasn’t cut out to be a cheerleader.”
“You know they’re all jealous as fuck,” I say. “Look at you, Dolly. You’re a bombshell. If you were on the field with them, not one guy would look at any one of them. They’d all be looking at you.”
“I think it’s more that they hated me for being the only girl to ever date Devlin,” she says, giving me a quick glance, like I’ll be pissed to find out they used to date.
We take a minute to order off the chalkboard menu above the counter, ignoring the curious glances of the couple working tonight. We have the place to ourselves courtesy of the football game, so we don’t even have to worry about other people staring. I get my two scoops, a raspberry with white chocolate chunks and a chocolate with dark chocolate chips, and take the booth in the corner with my friends.
“I just have to say one more thing about those bitches,” Dolly says, setting her bowl of bubblegum and cotton candy on the table. “Then I won’t speak of them again tonight. You have no idea how much shit I took for breaking up with Devlin. It’s not like I was the Darling Dog or a pariah or anything. But all my friends basically told me I was too stupid to live. I got pissed at them, and told them that if they wouldn’t support me, we didn’t need to be friends. So, we weren’t. I used to be on cheer in middle school, but after that… I think mostly they were all hoping they’d get to date Devlin now that he was single, and who wants to be friends with your boyfriend’s ex?”
It takes about ten seconds of silence for me to look up from my ice cream. She and Dixie are both staring at me.
I set down my spoon. “I do,” I say. “I mean, I won’t lie, it’s hard as hell sometimes. I’m so jealous I want to die when I think about you and him, so I try not to think about it. Yeah, you did that, but it’s not who you are. But knowing you were his first time, and his first love, and probably his first kiss… You’re childhood sweethearts. You have all this history with him that I’ll never have.”
“Crystal,” she says. “It’s not like that. I mean, it is, but not the way you think. Yeah, we did that stuff, but Devlin and me, we were never that romantic fantasy everyone wanted us to be. Even when we were together.”