Faking Perfect (9 page)

“Okay, cranky,” Emily said as all three of us stepped out of the car and walked toward the house. She stumbled as her high-heeled boot hit a patch of slush in the driveway.

I grabbed her arm to steady her, and then grabbed Shelby’s arm, too. Falling could be disastrous for her. Plus, it was dark and spooky with the mammoth trees and weird howling noises coming from the woods in back.

Dustin Sweeney answered our knock and ushered us into his warm house. The place was already packed with bodies, and I took a cursory glance around for Ben. Emily had mentioned earlier that he was going to be there, which made me even more anxious to get there myself. Ben rarely went to parties, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him drink more than one beer. He was too mature and responsible to cut loose on a Friday night, unlike his cousin. Emily may have been a little uptight at school, but she wasn’t opposed to slamming a few drinks on the weekends.

As for me, I’d been looking forward to this party all week. One night—that was all I needed. One night of deafening music and mindless conversation and the obliterating sensation of a good buzz. Just for tonight, I wanted to forget about my not-dead father and Teresa’s tears and the folded paper in my snake book, still untouched and un-Googled five days later. I’d be Smiling and Confident Lexi, the girl my friends saw, the girl who didn’t have a father but was fine, fine, fine, regardless.

“Did you get our Corona?” Em asked Dustin as we shrugged off our coats and added them to the pile in the corner.

She and I had decided to go splits on a case of beer. Whenever Dustin threw a party, he’d collect drink orders and money at school a few days beforehand and then get his older brother to buy it for us.

“Of course,” he said, unveiling his cute, dimpled smile. He was one of those likable, friendly, well-known people who got along with everyone and had zero enemies. His house was well-known, too, mainly for its secluded location, outdoor hot tub, and lack of parental supervision. I’d participated in my fair share of drunken hook-ups in and around his house during my high school career, a few of them with Dustin himself.

Five minutes later, I was sipping on a frosty bottle of Corona and leaning against the kitchen counter, talking to Gisele Hargrove, a girl I barely knew from my English class. Shelby had disappeared to hunt for Evan, who was back to being a doting baby daddy this week, and Emily’s whereabouts was anyone’s guess. As Gisele made small talk with me, I kept one eye on the crowd.

After a while, I spotted Ben’s other half, Tori, in the dining room. She was talking to one of her friends, gesticulating wildly as if to illustrate a crucial point. She was so into her conversation, she barely even reacted when Ben came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and laid his cheek against her hair. She just rested her hand on his and kept talking, taking his presence for granted in a way I could never imagine myself doing if I were in her shoes.

I shifted a few inches to my right to see them better—sometimes I couldn’t help torturing myself—and Gisele stopped talking mid-sentence to stare at me. She probably thought I was hitting on her.

“Sorry,” I told her, tearing my eyes from Ben and Tori and backing away. “I gotta . . . go to the washroom.”

But instead of heading down the hallway to the bathroom, I grabbed a couple beers from the fridge, made my way down to the cooler, less crowded basement, and plopped onto the sectional couch. In one corner of the room, three guys and a girl threw darts at an electronic dart board. The plasma-screen TV was on, showing a car race that no one appeared to be watching. I folded my legs up on the couch and downed my second beer, which was followed closely by the third.

“
Here
you are,” said a voice somewhere above me, and then all of a sudden, Dustin was beside me, his arm circling my shoulders. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Why?” I said sullenly, resting my bottle on the arm of the couch.

“Because.” The word came out garbled so he tried again. “Because.” He was totally hammered.

I inched away. “Have you seen Emily?”

“She’s in the hot tub. You wanna go in the hot tub? You don’t need a . . . one of those things.”

“A swimsuit?”

His gaze landed on my cleavage. “Yeah, one of those.”

“No, thanks. It’s cold out.”

“The air is cold but the water is boiling. ’S nice.” He rested his head on my shoulder. “You’re so pretty, Lexi. I want us to get back together.”

I sighed. I wasn’t drunk enough for this. “We were never together, Dustin. We just kissed a few times last year. Remember?” We’d done a little more than kiss, but I didn’t feel like reminiscing at the moment.

“I remember,” he said, tilting his head until his lips grazed my neck.

A shiver went through me and I closed my eyes.
Maybe I’ll let him kiss me again,
I thought.
Maybe I’ll let him . . .

“
Yo! Dustin! You got company, man.”

Dustin stopped nibbling my neck and my eyes popped open. I blinked a few times, trying to focus on the faces in front of me. I saw Colin Hewitt, Dustin’s friend and the owner of the voice we’d just heard, and then my eyes shifted over to the guy standing next to him.
Tyler.

At first, I thought I must be drunker than I actually felt. Or maybe hallucinating. I couldn’t think of any logical reason why Tyler Flynn might be standing in Dustin Sweeney’s basement. Looking at me. Looking at Dustin’s hand, high up on my thigh. But I wasn’t that drunk, and he was real.

“Oh hey, dude!” Dustin said, taking his hand off my thigh to wave at Tyler. Like they knew each other.

How did they know each other?
Dustin knows everyone
, I reminded myself,
even the stoners
.

“Come on in and have a drink.”

Tyler shook his head and lifted his chin ever so slightly, a gesture I recognized as
come here
. While Dustin lurched to his feet, Tyler’s gaze shifted to me again.

I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face. It was just . . . vacant. Closed off. I looked away and took a drink of my Corona. The guys disappeared upstairs together while I stayed there alone on the couch, reeling from my sudden buzz and the fact that Tyler had just witnessed another guy putting his lips and hands on me. Good thing he wasn’t the jealous type. Guys like him didn’t care enough to get jealous.

Dustin didn’t return to the basement until my beer was almost gone. He dropped down next to me, practically on my lap, and slid his hand over my stomach. “Now where were we?” he said in my ear.

I pulled away. I didn’t feel like letting him kiss me anymore. “Nowhere.” I stood up, drained my bottle, and carried my empties with me back upstairs.

The upper level was still bursting with people. Music shook the house, the heavy bass thumping through me like a heartbeat. Familiar faces floated by, sweaty and laughing, but none of them belonged to my friends. I rounded the corner to the kitchen to dispose of my bottles and almost collided with Ben, who was leaning against the stove and talking to some guy I didn’t know. Tori stood beside him, arms crossed, a pissed-off expression on her face. Before I had time to contemplate that, I grabbed another beer and slipped out the front door. I needed to be by myself for a few minutes, in case I decided to cry over the total clusterfuck that was my life.

I wandered around the front yard for a while, sucking in the pine-scented air and listening to the crunch of snow under my feet. In fact, I was so distracted by the sound, I somehow failed to notice the figure of a man lurking in the shadows near the side of the house.

“Hey.”

I screamed and dropped my bottle, splattering beer all over my shoes. “What the
hell
?” I looked from my shoes in the direction of the voice, which my alcohol-soaked brain had finally registered as Tyler’s. I stormed over to him, all set to give him hell for startling me and making me drop my beer. The next thing I knew, my back was pinned against the house and he was kissing me with a ferocity that turned my chilled body into liquid. I kissed him back, my anger dissolving as I melted into him.

But only for a moment. Then I pushed him away and delivered a swift kick to his right shin.

“Jesus!” he yelped as he staggered backward, almost falling into the barren flower garden beside us. “What was that for?”

I waited until he righted himself and then shoved him again. He was prepared and kept his balance.

“You can’t just creep around in the dark and scare people, you asshole,” I said, fuming.

He didn’t respond with a smartass comment like I expected. He just stared down at me, breathing hard, that dark, intense gaze of his burning into my face. I broke eye contact and glanced around the yard, making sure we were alone. Luckily, all I saw were trees, bushes, and more trees.

“Don’t worry,” he said, his tone dripping sarcasm. “None of the popular kids are watching. You’re safe.”

I looked back at him. “What are you doing here, Tyler?”

“Having a smoke.”

“No, what are you doing
here
? At Dustin’s house?”

“What do you think?” he said, patting his jacket pocket.

Ah. His “honest living.” Parties were good for business. He’d probably made a fortune tonight.

“Well,” I said with a sigh. “You made me drop my beer.”

He looked over at my empty Corona bottle, lying on its side a few feet away in the snow. “My apologies,” he said, his eyes on me again. The fire in them made my heart pound even harder than it had when he’d scared me. “Why don’t you go inside and ask Sweeney to find you another one? I’m sure he’d be more than willing to share with you.”

The air suddenly felt very cold against my face. “What do you care?” I said, matching his scornful tone with one of my own. “You and me, we’re not even . . . we’re just . . .”

“Fucking?”

I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back against the house, putting some distance between us. “Right,” I said quietly. “Aren’t we?”

Again, he chose not to respond. He turned and walked away, moving toward the front yard and the dark road beyond. When he came upon the empty Corona bottle, he kicked it hard, sending it careening into a nearby shrub. Without turning around, he said, “Have fun with Sweeney.”

Anger and confusion and the leftover sourness of beer bubbled up in my throat and, not caring who might be in hearing distance, I yelled, “I will!”

Back inside, I avoided Dustin and his roving hands and joined some people doing tequila shots until I could no longer hear my thoughts or feel my limbs. Then I curled up somewhere—I found out later it was the laundry room floor—and went to sleep.

The rest of the night seemed to happen in fragments. Emily’s voice, repeating my name over and over. Small arms around me, pulling for what seemed like hours. Then bigger, stronger arms, lifting me easily. Cold air on my face and the scent of fresh-cut grass and summer strong in my nostrils. Smooth fabric under my cheek and Shelby’s voice muttering a grudging, “thanks.” A deeper voice, Ben’s, answering her. “Watch her head.” The hum of tires on the highway. And then a long stretch of nothingness that ended when I woke up the next morning on my bathroom floor, sick and humiliated and wishing I was dead.

Chapter Nine

T
he
wish-I-was-dead
feeling held on for the rest of the weekend, most of which I spent in bed, wrapped up in my grandmother’s quilt and trying not to think. Sleep helped, so I let myself drift into it for as long and as often as I could. In fact, I was right in the middle of a lovely Sunday afternoon nap when my bedroom door opened and jolted me awake. I cracked open one eye and then shut it again as my death wish rushed back with a vengeance.

“Enough of this, Lexi. Get up.”

I opened both eyes and looked at them. Nolan in a faded
Star Wars
T-shirt, a scowl darkening his usually pleasant face. Amber, standing a little behind him, the colors in her clothes and jewelry and hair so vibrant they made my eyes water. She seemed embarrassed, either for me or for her inexplicable presence in my room. I buried my face in my pillow and groaned. “Go away.”

“Not happening.”

I listened as he crossed the room and started yanking on the window lever, grunting when it wouldn’t dislodge. Finally, it loosened and I caught a whiff of balmy spring air. “It’s like summer out there today,” Nolan said over the creak of the window hinges. “Time to get up, get a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed . . .”

The mere thought of doing all those things exhausted me even more. “I’m sick,” I said, my voice coming out gravelly from disuse.

“Yeah, I bet. I can still smell whatever it was you drowned your sorrows in the other night.” His hand closed around my ankle through the quilt. “Seriously, Lex. Get up or we’ll dump a bucket of cold water on you.”

I shook his hand off and glanced at Amber, who gave me an encouraging smile. What the hell was she doing here? What had Nolan told her? I didn’t mind him seeing me like this—he’d seen me in worse condition—but why drag his girlfriend into the insanity along with him? What would she think of me now?

“Lexi, come on,” Amber said, her voice light and much gentler than Nolan’s. I felt the bed sink as she sat down next to me, a brave feat as I couldn’t have smelled too pretty. “I’ll run the shower for you while Nolan makes you something to eat. Okay?”

My stomach rumbled at the mention of food. I’d wolfed down a cereal bar at some point yesterday when I was in the kitchen retrieving Trevor’s weekly mouse, but I hadn’t eaten since. My mouth felt like the inside of a bowling shoe. Slowly, I flung my quilt aside and got up.

“Good girl,” Nolan said, like I was a dog who’d done an impressive trick. He exchanged a victorious grin with Amber and then left to rustle me up some food.

I wondered if my mother had bothered to buy groceries this week. She hadn’t been around all weekend, as far as I knew. Things with Latte Guy must have gotten serious or they’d broken up and she was back to her binge-drinking, game show-watching self and hiding out in her room like me.