Sloth

  “Celebrate good times,” Miranda deadpanned, and suddenly, in sync, they both burst into laughter. “Did all that really happen?” Miranda sputtered through her giggles. “Or was it just some mass hallucination?”

  “I wasn’t hallucinating the smell,” Harper gasped, waving her hands under Miranda’s nose. “I washed them ten times back there, and they still stink.”

  Miranda wiggled away, trying to focus on the road. “Don’t even talk to me about smells,” she groaned. “It’ll just remind me of. . .”

  “Don’t even go there,” Harper cautioned her. “You’re just going to make us both sick.”

  “Again.”

  They shook with hysterical laughter, and Harper closed her eyes, soaking in the moment. It may have been the most disgusting night of her life, but things between the two of them were actually starting to feel back to normal. There was a time when Harper had feared they would never be close again; mostly because of the things she’d done and said, and all the things she couldn’t bring herself to say. I’m sorry. I need you. But somehow, they’d found their way back to their bickering, bantering norm, and that meant that the long ride, the many detours, and the adventures in raw sewage had all been worth it.

  Well, almost.

  When they finally found the hotel, they pulled into the lot without registering much of the medieval tackiness of the garish white tower. It was nearly two in the morning, and they could only focus on two things: a hot shower and a soft bed. Both were now, finally, in reach.

  They checked in, ignoring all the other Haven High seniors who littered the hallway—it seemed half the school had hit Vegas for the long weekend, and they were all staying at the Camelot, less for its bargain-basement prices than for its widely renowned attitude toward its underage denizens: Don’t ask, don’t tell.

  Usually Harper would have lingered among the admiring crowd; she never let a moment in the spotlight go by without putting on a suitable show. But the fewer people who saw—and smelled—her in this state, the better. The girls trekked down a dingy hallway and arrived in front of room 57. Harper swung open the door to discover a small, squalid room with two full-sized beds and little else. Miranda immediately dropped down onto the one closest to the door, stretching her arms with a satisfied purr. “1 could fall asleep right here, right now.”

  “Perfect, because I call the first shower,” Harper said, dumping her bag and rushing to the bathroom before Miranda could object. She could feel the stink and filth crawling over her skin and needed to scrub it away before she could enjoy the fact that she was finally, after a lifetime of waiting, spending a weekend in Las Vegas.

  And after nearly drowning in misery for three months, she planned to enjoy the moment as much as humanly possible.

  She opened the door of the bathroom, stepped inside— and screamed.

  Adam grabbed a towel and tried to cover himself, but it was too late. Harper had seen everything. Every tan, muscled, gleaming inch of him. She felt faint, and it was all she could do not to lunge across the bathroom and sweep him into her arms, perfect body and all. But she forced herself to stop and remember: she and Adam were no longer best friends, as they’d been for half their lives. They were no longer in love—lovers, she told herself, her mind lingering on the word—as they’d been for far too short a time. They were . . . nothing. And she intended to treat him as such.

  “What the hell are you doing in our room?” she snapped, trying to regain her equilibrium. Don’t look at his chest, she told herself. Don’t look at his shoulders. Don’t look at his arms. Don’t look . . .This was maybe not the most effective strategy.

  “Your room?” Adam tugged the towel tighter around himself and took a step forward, as if to escape the bathroom—which would mean his half-naked body brushing right past Harper’s, a fact he seemed to realize just in time. He stopped moving, and Harper refused to allow herself a moment of disappointment. “This is our room. We checked in hours ago!”

  “And ‘we’ would be . . . ?”

  “Me. Kane. We. Our room.”

  And then it all made sense. From the sour look on Adam’s face, Harper could tell he’d figured it out, too. “Very funny, Geary,” she muttered to herself. “Very cute.” When Kane had offered to pay for her and Miranda’s room for the weekend, Harper had figured it was just an uncharacteristically gallant gesture, an extravagant birthday present for Miranda. (And not that extravagant: According to the website, rooms at the Camelot went for sixty dollars a night.) She should have known better.

  “Harper, look,” Adam began, “since you’re here, maybe we can—”

  “I’m out of here,” Harper snapped. Adam refused to let it rest. He couldn’t get that if he didn’t want a relationship with her, she wasn’t about to accept the consolation prize of his friendship. Not when she knew what he really thought of her. But he just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and kept forcing her into these tedious states of the union talks without realizing the torture they inflicted on her. As if she didn’t want him in her life, desperately. As if it didn’t kill her to remember all the things he’d said when he’d broken her heart, how he hated her, how he could never trust her again, all because she’d made a few not-so-tiny mistakes. And then his belated and halfhearted offer of forgiveness, just because of the accident, just because she’d gotten hurt and Kaia had—

  No. She’d resolved not to think about any of that this weekend. She was taking a vacation from her pain and her guilt and everything else that had been weighing her down. Kane knew that, and was still pulling this crap? Unacceptable.

  Harper backed out of the bathroom and, without a word of explanation to Miranda—who was already half asleep—rushed out of the hotel room in search of her target.

  “Harper, wait!” Adam called down the hallway. She glanced over her shoulder and, sure enough, he was standing in the hall wearing only a towel, flagging her down. She didn’t stop—but grinned to herself when she realized that he’d let the door slam and lock behind him.

  Just before reaching the elevator, she heard a loud thud and a shouted curse.

  Sounded like he’d realized it, too.

  Kane sighed, and reluctantly tore himself away from the stunning blondes to answer his ringing phone. He allowed Harper about thirty seconds of ranting before cutting her off. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in five,” he promised, snapping the phone shut again before she had a chance to respond. He had been expecting her irate call and, though the face-off could easily be avoided for hours, he preferred to get all potential interruptions out of the way now. The blondes could wait.

  After all, this weekend was too important, and his plans too delicate, to risk interference from a wild card like Harper. And from the sound of it, she was about to get pretty wild.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” she raged, as soon as he came into sight.

  “Nice to see you, too, Grace,” Kane said dryly, spreading out on one of the Camelots threadbare couches. (The pattern had likely once been intended to resemble a medieval tapestry, but now it just looked like Technicolor puke.) “Have a good drive?”

  “Lovely, thanks for asking.” As if the sarcasm had sapped all her energy, she sank into a chair beside him. “Seriously, Kane, what’s the deal?”

  “The deal with ... ?”

  “Adam? In my room? Taking a shower? Any of this ringing a bell?”

  Kane smiled innocently. “Adams up in our room— yours, mine, his. Ours. Think of it as one big happy family.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to mention that this was the plan?”

  Kane shrugged. “Did you think I was going to pay for two hotel rooms? I’m not a bank, Grace.”

  “I—” Her mouth snapped shut, and he knew why. Given that he was footing the bill for the trip, it would be pretty tacky of her to complain about the lodgings. And Harper Grace was never tacky. “I just would have liked some advance notice, that’s all,” she said sullenly. “You didn’t have to ambush me.”

&
nbsp; “If I’d told you ahead of time, you wouldn’t have come,” Kane pointed out. Adam and Harper had been on a monosyllabic basis for a month now, and Kane was getting sick of it. Not because he felt some Goody Two-shoes need to play peacemaker, he told himself. Just because there weren’t too many people in whose presence he could tolerate; it was troublesome when they refused to share breathing room.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked, a hint of a whine entering her voice. “Make nice and pretend like nothing ever happened between us? Not gonna happen.”

  “That’s not my problem, Grace,” Kane told her. “Speak to him, don’t speak to him, I don’t care.” Not much, at least. “But this is the only room you’ve got, so unless you don’t plan on sleeping or bathing this weekend—and, no offense, but I think you’re already overdue on the latter— you should probably get used to it.”

  “But—”

  “Gotta go,” he said quickly, bouncing off the couch. “Allie and Sallie are waiting for me in the casino. Twins, if you can believe it.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and, miracle of miracles, she cracked a smile. “Now, your mission, and you have no choice but to accept it: Chill out, shower, and then grab Miranda and meet me down here in one hour. We’re going out.”

  Harper checked her watch and rolled her eyes. “Geary, it’s the middle of the night, and some of us have been on the road for an eternity.”

  Kane shook his head. “Grace, this is Vegas.” Why was he the only person capable of understanding this concept? “Night doesn’t exist here. It’s a nonstop party, and we’re already late.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Since when does Harper Grace turn down a party?”

  He knew perfectly well since when, and that was why he’d insisted she come this weekend, and why he’d dragged Adam along for the ride. Harper had been on the sidelines long enough—it was time for her to get back into the game. Whether she wanted to or not.

  It was good pot—strong, smooth, decently pure—but not good enough to help Beth sleep through Fish and Hale’s impromptu jam session. (Featuring Hale’s off-key humming and Fish banging Beth’s hairbrush against the wall for a drumbeat.) After an hour of tossing and turning, she’d finally given up on trying to sleep—only to discover that Reed was wide awake, lying on his side and staring at her.

  “What?” she’d asked, giggling at the goofy expression on his face.

  “Nothing.” He’d given her a secretive smile, then a kiss. “Let’s get out of here.” And, still clad in her T-shirt and purple pajama shorts, she’d followed him out the door. They’d gone downstairs in search of the pool, running into half the Haven High senior class on their way.

  Beth didn’t care who saw her or how she looked. Only one person’s opinion mattered to her these days, and only one person s presence made any difference.

  Make that two.

  Beth saw her first, and tried to dart down a hallway before they were spotted, but it was too late.

  “Well, this is just great,” Harper said, lightly smacking her forehead. “As if my weekend weren’t perfect enough.”

  Just ignore her, Beth told herself. She couldn’t afford to get into a fight with Harper—not only because she’d inevitably lose, but because she’d promised herself she would stop hating Harper. Yes, she’d done her best to ruin Beth’s life—but Beth’s attempt at revenge had nearly succeeded in ruining Harper, permanently. Just as she would always bear the guilt for Kaia’s death—don’t think about that, she reminded herself, as she constantly needed to in order to make it through the day—she would always know that Harper could have just as easily been the one who died. That Harper was the one who’d landed in the hospital, gone through painful rehabilitation, emerged pale, withdrawn, and the object of too much curiosity and not a little scorn. They were more than even, although Harper would never—could never—know it.

  But forgiveness was easier said than done. And even the sight of Harper still made Beth’s stomach twist.

  “Hey, Harper,” she said softly Reed pressed a hand against her lower back, as if sensing she needed physical support to keep herself upright.

  Harper’s eyes skimmed over Beth without stopping and zeroed in on Reed. “Having fun with the new girlfriend?” she asked, disdain dripping from her voice. “Guess it’s easy for some people to forget.”

  Harper tried to push past them, but Reed’s arm darted out and grabbed on to her. Just let it go, Beth pleaded silently, wanting only for the moment to end quickly, without bloodshed. But she could tell from the look on his face and the tension in his body that he’d already been wounded.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” he told Harper, in a low, dangerous voice. “Kaia would have—”

  “Don’t say her name,” Harper ordered him, her voice tight and her face strained. “Don’t say anything. Just enjoy yourself. I’m so sure”—though it wouldn’t have seemed possible, her tone grew even more sarcastic—”that’s what she would have wanted.”

  A moment later, Harper was gone, and Reed was the one who needed support. But when Beth tried to touch him, he stepped away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, knowing he wouldn’t understand what she was apologizing for.

  “It’s not you.” He wouldn’t look at her. “It’s nothing.”

  When they first met, he had talked about Kaia nonstop. But something had changed—Beth never knew what, and never wanted to ask. Reed had kissed her, and, after that, had never spoken of Kaia again. There were moments when his voice drifted off and his eyes stared at something very far away, and she knew then that he was wishing for something he couldn’t have. But he never said it aloud, almost as if he had to force himself to forget Kaia, in order to allow himself to be with Beth.

  Or maybe she was just projecting, because the only way she could be with Reed was to force herself to forget. Kaia had died because of her—no, phrasing it that way avoided the truth—she had killed Kaia. Accidentally, maybe, but killed nonetheless. And now, reluctantly, guiltily, but undeniably, Beth had taken her place.

  She wrapped her fingers around Reed’s, half fearing he would pull away He didn’t—but he still wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Let’s go find the pool,” she murmured. He nodded, and she squeezed his hand. He felt so solid, and so safe. He wouldn’t disappear, she reassured herself. He would never leave her alone.

  Unless he found out the truth. Then he would be gone forever.

  “Down to business,” Kane said, rubbing his palms together in anticipation. “How should we kick things off? Blackjack? Poker?”

  Miranda didn’t want to admit that she didn’t know how to play any of the standard casino games—though she had a vague idea, courtesy of Ocean’s 11, that roulette wouldn’t actually require anything other than choosing a color. She’d rented the DVD in anticipation of the big trip, but had been too distracted by George Clooney to glean much more information than that.

  She also didn’t want to admit that she would be happy enough to spend the whole weekend without coming face-to-face with a dealer, since surely they’d take one look at her height (or lack thereof) and sallow baby face, and show her the door. Or whatever it is they do in Vegas when they bust you for having a fake ID.

  But she didn’t want to seem timid or clueless, not in front of Kane—and especially not when he was giving her that lascivious, anything-goes smile—so she shut up.

  Fortunately, Harper, who frequently argued that Kane looked more like an over-tanned weasel than he did a Greek god, didn’t have any such qualms. “We’re not in Loserville anymore, Geary,” she reminded him, “and the bouncers here aren’t blind. No one’s going to believe we’re twenty-one.”

  Kane shrugged. “Didn’t have any trouble getting served earlier, did we, Morgan?”

  Adam’s face was a purplish shade of red. “Let’s hit the slots,” he said abruptly, turning away and stalking toward the dollar machines. The rest of the group followed behind, two-thirds confused and one-third triumphant.


  “What’s that about?” Miranda whispered to Harper.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” she said shortly.

  Harper had been in a pissy mood ever since the Adam encounter, and Miranda knew better than to press the issue. She was just feeling her way back to normal with her best friend, and Adam was too much of a hot-button topic to broach—at least at three in the morning. Besides, she was afraid that if they started talking about sharing a room with the guys, Harper might see through Miranda’s commiseration act and realize the truth: she loved the idea. Sharing a room with Kane? Even if there were two beds and two other people, even if Vegas was filled with far flashier women to catch Kane’s eye, even if it was almost a statistical impossibility that anything would happen, Miranda couldn’t help but hope.

  This was Vegas, after all, which meant that anything could happen . . . which meant that, despite the odds, something might.

  All the action was happening over at the tables—the slots seemed the sole territory of the blue-haired old ladies and a few caved-in old men with bad toupees and giant plastic buckets, all waiting for their big payoffs. Miranda dug into her pocket and pulled out a fistful of quarters, plugging them into a rain forest—themed machine that touted itself as the “Green Monster.” She put her hand on the long silver lever, then sucked in her breath as a warm, strong grip closed over hers.

  “Feeling lucky, beautiful?” Kane murmured from behind her.

  Miranda bit down on the corners of her mouth in a pointless attempt to suppress a smile. Was he, too, thinking about the last time they’d been in a casino together, the last time—the only time—they’d kissed?

  Probably not. For Miranda, it had been the culmination of five years of hoping, dreaming, waiting; for Kane, she knew it had just been a fast way to liven up a slow afternoon.

  Still, he was here, so close that she could feel his chest just grazing her back, and she knew that all she’d have to do was step backward, and she would be in his arms.

  She stayed where she was, and pulled the lever.