Mandy made it to Eric's room, figuring she would just burst into tears when she got there, but it turned out she was all out of tears. Instead she just lay facedown on his bed, pulled his pillow to her, and inhaled.
Ah. Eric scent.
The room stopped spinning and Mandy realized how utterly exhausted she was. She closed her eyes and began to drift off.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard the sound of the door opening and clicking closed. Footsteps crossed the room toward her and then she felt the warmth of a hand on her back. Mandy smiled slowly and looked up into Eric's eyes. She was somewhere between dreamland and reality and she struggled to hold on, knowing somehow that if she woke all the way up, bad thoughts would flood her mind and heart.
"Hey, sweetness," Eric said. "Everything okay?"
Those two words were all she needed for everything to come rushing back to her. Every time someone asked her if everything was okay, if she was okay, she wanted to scream.
No! No! No! Everything SUCKS!
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"Fine," Mandy said groggily.
Eric made a sympathetic face and slid down until Mandy was cradled in his arms, her cheek resting on the little space between his shoulder and his breastbone. She listened to his heart beating, reveled in the soothing rising and falling of his chest. This was good. This was nice. Now if she could just shut off her brain . . .
"It's gonna be okay," he told her. "Everything's going to be fine."
"I know," she said, even though her heart felt like it had shriveled to the point of no return. She looked into Eric's eyes and kissed him quickly. She didn't just want to be held. She wanted to get lost in him.
She placed her hand on his cheek and turned him to face her, her pulse pounding in her ears. When she kissed him this time, she made sure it was long and hard so that he would get the message. This was what she wanted. She wanted to feel him. Feel something else.
When Eric drew her closer to him, she clung to him like she was afraid to let go. When he started to undress her, she found that all thoughts of her father and her mother and the money and the scholarship and her friends were obliterated. When he produced a condom from under his mattress, all Mandy could hear was the sound of her own breathing and the pounding of her own heart.
Then she heard herself saying yes, heard him telling
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her he loved her, and she lay back on his bed, waiting. Waiting to feel that connection she'd been dreaming about. Wanting to feel anything but pain.
Eva spotted Kai in the corner with Andres and wove her way through the crowd toward them, trying to put as much distance between herself and her utter humiliation as possible. She was sure Riley had come back inside by now and was off on the other side of the house, telling people what a psycho tease she was. It was kind of funny, actually. Eva Farrell a tease.
Funny in a totally unfunny, awful kind of way.
"Kai! I need to talk to you," Eva said under her breath when she finally made it to her friend's side.
"I'm going to get myself a drink," Andres announced before loping away.
"I'm not finished with you!" Kai called after him.
"Mixed signals, bonita! " Andres called back.
"Ugh!" Kai groaned, clenching her fists. "Okay, what can I do for you?" she asked Eva.
"What's wrong?" Eva asked.
"Nothing at all!" Kai shook her head. "What's wrong with you?"
"Um . . . well ... I think Riley just tried to kiss me and I freaked out and bailed," Eva said, twisting one finger with her other hand.
"You think he tried to kiss you, or you know?" Kai asked, lowering her chin.
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"I know," Eva said, liking the way the words felt on her tongue. "I know he tried to kiss me."
"Eva, can I ask you a question?"
"Yeah," Eva said warily.
"Is Riley your first-kiss-fantasy guy?" Kai asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Um . . . yeah."
"And he just tried to kiss you?" Kai said.
"Um . . . yeah," Eva said, reddening.
"Then what the hell is your problem?" Kai asked, throwing her arms out. "It sounds to me like the man has made his decision. The triangle has been flattened into a line. You're at one end, Riley's at the other, so get off your ass and make your move. Grab him by his cute little ears and shove your tongue down his throat already!"
Eva blinked. She straightened her back and smiled at Kai. No matter how indelicate the advice, what Kai said was true. Riley liked her. She liked him. She could do this! "Okay," she said. "I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna find him and I'm gonna kiss him."
"Yes! You go on with your bad self!" Kai said with a quick nod. She reached out and squeezed Eva's arms, then returned her attention to Andres's every move.
Yeah, Eva thought as she turned around again and started her search for Riley. Go on with my bad self. That's exactly what I'm gonna do.
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"Mandy, what? What is it? What'd I do?"
Mandy's chest heaved painfully, the sobs racking every bone in her body. She gasped for breath, choked on the air, and kept trying again with the same result. She couldn't breathe or think. She couldn't do anything but bawl her eyes out.
"Did it hurt? Are you hurt?" Eric knelt next to her on the bed, his jeans recently pulled on but still unbuttoned at the waist.
Mandy crossed her legs against the burning sensation that seemed to be growing between her thighs and hugged the bedsheet to her. She wanted to tell Eric that it wasn't him, but she wasn't sure about that. She wasn't sure about anything except that she felt like the whole weight of the world was collapsing in on her.
She had thought that having sex with Eric would make her feel better. She had thought it would feel right and good and pure and that it would take her away from all the confusion and pain. But all it had done was compound everything and brought her already delicate protective walls crashing down.
"Mandy, please talk to me," Eric said, kneeling at her feet now and clasping her hands inside his. He looked so desperate and sad and scared.
"I ... I... I can't," Mandy said between painful gasps. "I can't."
What she meant was that she couldn't stop crying. That she couldn't handle it anymore. That she just couldn't. . .
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be. Not like this. She felt like she couldn't exist anymore with so much heart-wrenching pain.
"You can't talk to me? Why?" Eric asked. "God, Mandy, if you didn't want to, all you had to do was say it."
"Don't be mad," Mandy heard herself say.
"I'm not," Eric said, sounding on the verge of panic. "I'm just... I don't understand."
Of course he doesn't understand! You just had sex for the first time and you're having a mental breakdown all over him! Pull yourself together!
But Mandy couldn't calm down. There were too many emotions whirling around inside her. She couldn't even understand them.
I'm supposed to be happy. I'm supposed to be ecstatic and in love right now.
It was all too much. There was too much going on in her head. She had to sort it out. Somehow.
"Eric, I just. . . need to be . . . alone--"
"Alone. Of course," Eric said, standing. He quickly buttoned up his jeans and grabbed his shirt from the floor. "That's all you ever want anymore, isn't it? You won't talk to me, you won't tell me what I did. We just made love and you won't even look at me--"
Mandy turned away from him and buried her face in his pillow.
"You know what, fine," Eric said. "You want to be alone, you got it."
The door slammed and Mandy felt it in her chest, as
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if it were slamming on her heart. Trying to stop crying only made it worse somehow, so she just let herself go.
She knew she should go after Eric and try to explain. They needed to talk. He was right. They'd just had sex . . . made love . . . for the first time. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be special and
romantic and sweet and perfect. Not like this, with all the knots in her chest and the tears and the yelling.
No matter what Mandy did lately, she just couldn't seem to get anything right. She was sure there was some proper way to react to her father's being hauled off to prison, but she had messed that up royally. She was certain there was some good way to handle her first big fight with Kai, but she'd tanked on that, too. And now she'd managed to screw up what arguably should have been the most monumental moment of her life and she'd done it with the greatest of ease.
Mandy used to be the girl who did everything right. Now she couldn't seem to avoid getting everything wrong.
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Chapter 23
Kai had let Andres off the leash for too long. She could tell by the crowd he was starting to draw on the other side of the room. They all looked just a little too intrigued, a little too interested in whatever it was Andres was saying. Kai approached the group and was about five feet away when she heard Andres say, clear as a bell, "President of the V Club? That cannot be right!" Suddenly Kai had her hand on Andres's arm. She didn't even remember traversing those last few feet.
"Okay, Andres. Time to go home," she said with a dismissive laugh.
"Bonita! Did you hear what this girl has said?" Andres asked, his glassy eyes wide. "She has said you are president of some club for the virgins!" "Yep! That's right! Now you really need to get home and start sleeping this off," she said cheerily. She looked around
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at Andres's audience, rolled her eyes, and mouthed the words, "Messy drunk."
A few of the kids laughed and started to drag Andres away.
"I am confused," he said, pulling away from them and staggering slightly. "You would have to be a virgin to be president of the Virginity Club, yes?"
Suddenly everyone in Kai's immediate vicinity seemed to be salivating like a wild pack of dogs, hungry for this juicy slab of gossip they sensed was about to be tossed their way.
"Andres, don't," Kai said through her teeth, under her breath.
There was a spark in his eyes, though, and Kai knew it was over before he even opened his mouth.
"I do not know what the definition is of virgin in the States, but where I come from, Kai is definitely not one," Andres said, turning back to his new friends and raising his red plastic cup. "I made sure of that two summers ago in the field behind my parents' ranch."
The guys started high-fiving Andres and patting him on the back. The girls looked at her in shock and amusement. Kai shut her eyes and willed them to leave, willed the room to disappear, willed Andres to get sucked directly into hell by a freak Pennsylvanian sinkhole, but none of it happened. When she opened her eyes again, Andres was getting graphic.
"She was much more soft back then," Andres said now, eyeing her. "Not so tall and athletic."
"Okay!" Kai said, throwing her hands up. "I think
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they've heard enough, Andres." She clutched both his shoulders and shot the crowd a look as she steered him away. "Hope you all had fun. The eight o'clock and ten o'clock shows are completely different than the early bird."
"Bonita, why do you do this?" Andres called out, riling the amused bystanders even more. "Why are you so ashamed that we shared the beautiful act of love? Do you wish you were still a virgin, bonita? You can't go back, you know."
"No, Andres," Kai said, turning to him. "I don't wish I was a virgin. I don't regret having had sex. I don't even regret having sex with you--or at least with the person I thought you were at the time."
"What does this mean?"
"It means, Andres, that back then I thought you were my friend. I trusted you. And I also thought you were all sophisticated and poetic and deep," she told him. Andres smiled cockily at his spectators and it was all Kai could do to keep from punching him in the face. "But now I realize I was just caught up in the romance of it all. Either that or there's some kind of hallucinogen in the water over there."
A couple of people laughed. Andres glared back at Kai, but his gaze was growing more and more uncertain.
"Now I realize, Andres, that you are a slimy, egotistical, smelly liar who used me. Not original, but there it is," Kai said, getting up in his face. "If there's anything I regret, it's the moment . . . the very nanosecond . . . you stepped back into my life."
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The crowd around them oohed again and took a step back, itching for Andres's reaction.
Kai watched as Andres's face shut down, and she knew she had gotten the last word. He stared at her, his expression a mixture of anger and hurt so vivid that Kai's heart actually responded with a thump. But she was not going to feel guilty. He'd tried to humiliate her first. All she'd done was return the favor.
Eva slid past Danny Brown and his friends, who were all gathered around the keg in the kitchen, grasped the handle to the sliding glass door, and held her breath. This was it. This was her moment. She was not going to mess it up this time.
She threw open the door, stepped out onto the patio, and turned toward the table and chairs. A huge round of laughter exploded from behind her at the exact moment her heart was ripped free from her veins.
Right there, right in front of her, was the most horrible thing Eva had ever seen. Debbie was sitting on top of Riley, her arms locked around him, her head moving back and forth as she mauled him with her lips. But even worse, Riley's eyes were closed, his hands were on her back, his fingertips pressed into her sweater like they were just itching to get even closer.
Eva told herself to move. She told herself to run and get the hell out of there before someone spotted her. But she was still standing there when Riley's eyes fluttered
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open. The moment he saw her, he pushed Debbie away from him and then Debbie turned too, her lipstick all smudged and her eyelids all heavy.
"Eva--"
And then Eva ran.
"Eva, wait!" Riley called out.
But there was no way Eva was going to wait. No way in hell. Eva tore through the bushes and skidded as she rounded the corner of Eric's house. But Debbie, athlete that she was, caught up with her quickly. Before Eva could get to the front drive, which was a pointless destination anyway since she didn't have a car, Debbie grabbed her arm.
All Eva needed was to feel her touch on her skin and something inside her exploded.
"What is wrong with you?" she shouted at the top of her lungs as she whirled around. The tears burst forth along with her words.
Debbie stopped, taken aback, and for a split second she looked like her five-year-old self getting scolded for eating paste.
"Eva--"
"No! I don't even want to listen to this," Eva said, her feet walking her backward.
"Eva, come on. It's not that big of a deal--"
"Of course it's not! Not to you! To you he's just someone to add to your list!" Eva blurted. "But it is a big deal to me."
"Eva, calm down," Debbie said.
"God, Debbie, all you had to do was leave one guy, one
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guy for me," Eva said, bringing her hand to her chest. "Do you have to kiss everybody? Did you have to kiss him}"
"Omigod, it's Riley, isn't it?" Debbie said. "Riley's the one. The daydream guy you always used to talk about."
"Yeah, all right, you got me!" Eva said, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Riley's the one. Or he was. Now he's just one of your many. Now he's just one of your frogs."
Then, before Debbie could say anything else, Eva turned and disappeared into the darkness.
Just find Kai, Eva told herself, walking back into Eric's house through the front door. She just wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. Kai was her only hope for a ride.
Eva stepped into the living room and somehow, right in the midst of all those people, the first eyes she met were Riley's. Her heart plummeted and she turned instantly, ready to head anywhere that was away.
Unfortunately, Eva had no place to go. At the foot of the steps to her lef
t two people were making out like there was no one else in the room. Directly in front of her were four football players, blocking the door to the dining room. If she went right, she was outside again and that was going to get her nowhere. Eva dove into the crowd in the living room and made her way along the wall, looking for Kai. "Come on, Kai," Eva whispered. "Where are you? Where are you?!" It was slow going, however; the party was packed. She had to move quickly or Riley was going to catch up with her any second.
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She came to the fireplace, which had a few people in front of it, barring her way. Eva said "excuse me" about ten times, but no one even blinked. Her skin was in the process of turning beet red when a hand closed gently around her arm.
Eva looked directly into Riley's eyes. Her heart was pounding.
"Eva, that wasn't what you think," Riley told her.
"Let me go," Eva whimpered, hating how pathetic she sounded. She knew she must look atrocious and pitiful with the tears drying against her blotchy red skin.
"Not gonna happen."
"I thought you said you liked me," Eva told him.
"I do!!" Riley said vehemently. "I wanted to kiss you! "
Eva's mouth dropped open. Some part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms just for saying that, but the much larger, logical part of her was beyond offended. "Oh, well, I'm glad Debbie was there as a quick replacement."
"I didn't mean it that way," Riley said. He brought his hand to his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Eva took the opportunity to try to make her getaway. She brushed by Riley and slipped through a sudden space between a gaggle of girls and a gawky boy who was dancing comically for his friends.
Where the hell is Kai ? Eva wondered, struggling to keep the tears from welling up again.
"Eva, please just hear me out," Riley said, catching up with her again. Eva's progress was blocked by Hiro Wakasuki, the biggest linebacker in three counties, who
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was standing with a drink in his hand, retelling the story of his latest, greatest running-back hit.
"Okay . . . what?" she said, surprised by her own harshness. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling like everyone was watching her.