"I ... I thought . . . when I tried to kiss you and you pulled away ... I guess I thought... I was totally confused. I mean . . . you said you liked me and then ... I don't know, I thought you were telling me I had no chance," Riley told her. "And I know that doesn't mean I should just go and kiss someone else, but . . . but she kissed me and I was still ... I don't know . . . confused by what had just happened with you . . . and I... I mean--"
As Eva listened to him babble, something inside her started to give. Her shoulders relaxed slightly and her defenses turned to mush. Riley Marx was babbling. He was babbling to her. Mr. Self-assured. A guy she'd never seen with so much as a blush on his face.
Suddenly Eva found herself starting to smile. She didn't understand it, but there it was. She'd never felt so hurt in her life, but somehow he was still making her smile. And then his skin started to flush, growing darker and darker as he went on, his hands gesturing as he tried to explain. He was acting somehow so familiar. He was acting just like her.
Eva felt something warm inside her. Riley Marx was flusterable.
I, Eva Farrell, am causing major fluster!
"God, I'm so pissed at myself I let this happen," Riley said
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finally. "I'm sorry. Just forget it." He started to turn away and Eva realized that if she didn't do something right now, she was going to regret it for the rest of her natural-born life.
"Riley!" Eva said loudly. Loudly enough that a few people around her did turn to look. "Just . . . wait," she said when he faced her again.
He raised his eyebrows, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his pants and looking almost vulnerable. Eva thought quickly. Could she deal with this? Could she be with somebody who had kissed her best friend? Did she want her first kiss to be with someone who could be labeled Debbie's leftovers?
"It didn't mean anything," Riley told her as if reading her mind. "It's never going to happen again, I swear."
Eva looked down at her hands and swallowed hard against a lump lodged somewhere between her throat and her heart. She still wanted him. She always had and she still did. It didn't matter where his lips had been.
It wasn't about Riley's lips anymore. It was about his heart. Eva wanted his heart. And she had a feeling she had that. All to herself.
"It's okay," she said finally.
Riley's eyes lit up like he'd been sinking in quicksand and she'd just tossed him a rope. "Really?" he asked. Then his brow furrowed. "Wait. What's okay?"
"Um . . . most of it, I guess," Eva said. "I mean, I understand what happened. Kind of."
Riley looked around at the noisy room, gathering
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himself--still confused. "So does that mean you could . . . that maybe you still. . . you know--"
"I still . . . you know," Eva said with a small smile. "But I'm not gonna kiss you," she added, holding up a hand.
Riley's face fell. "Understood," he said, nodding. "But just so we're clear--are we talking tonight or ever?"
"Tonight," Eva said. "We'll work on ever."
"I can accept that," Riley said, crossing his arms over his chest and looking out at the melee the party was quickly becoming. He stood so close to Eva their shoulders were almost touching. "I'm a very hard worker."
Eva smiled, biting her bottom lip and reveling in the possibilities. Things were about to change. Really change. And it was as if the air around her was dancing with supercharged fireflies. She wasn't afraid. She was, in fact, excited.
As Eva fought to contain her grin, Mandy appeared at the edge of the crowd, unsteady on her feet. Eva knew something was wrong the moment she saw her friend. She started toward Mandy and Mandy practically fell into Eva's side.
"Mandy? What is it? What's wrong?" Eva asked, supporting her weight.
"I really think I need to go home," Mandy said weakly.
Then she stood up on her own, closed her eyes, and went limp. Eva let out a shriek and Riley caught Mandy before she could hit the ground. The crowd that had seemed impermeable just moments before now backed away, forming a little circle of open air around the trio on the floor.
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"Mandy?" Eva called out, scared out of her wits. "Mandy, wake up!"
"What happened?" Kai asked, appearing out of nowhere.
Riley looked up, Mandy's head in his lap. "She's unconscious," he said. "I think we need an ambulance."
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Chapter 24
Debbie Patel was pond scum. She didn't just feel like pond scum. She was pond scum. She'd made mistakes in her life before, there was no doubt about that. But she was not the type of person who knowingly hurt the people she loved. Not her friends. Not her best friends. What was wrong with her? She slid open the glass door to the kitchen and pressed her way into the crowd. She hadn't gotten three feet when Danny Brown noticed her.
"Yo, Patel. If you're done with the Boy Scout, let me have at it!" he shouted, rubbing his hands together, causing the entire room to crack up laughing.
"Oh, yeah," some girl said under her breath, eyeing Debbie up and down. "She's gonna win the Treemont."
Debbie turned and looked at her reflection in the sliding glass door. Her lipstick was smeared and her skirt
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was bunched up on one side from the awkward position she'd taken in Riley's lap. Sucking in a deep breath, Debbie straightened her clothes and dragged the back of her hand down her cheek.
"God, she's such a slut," she heard someone whisper.
"I have a question for the room." Debbie asked loudly. This was going to end. Now. "What makes you all think I've had so much sex?" she asked, her voice clear and steady.
More laughter. "Everyone knows it," Melissa Bonny said from her perch on the kitchen counter.
"Yeah, it's, like, a total fact," Melanie Altarescu called out from over by the door.
"Interesting," Debbie said. "So I guess that means that I've had sex with at least one person in this room?" She looked around and saw Danny staring at his feet. Mitch Mascarenhas turned away, suddenly mesmerized by a bag of pretzels on the counter. A couple of other guys avoided her gaze, one of whom she'd never even talked to.
They expected her to just drop it. To just walk away. Play the victim. But that wasn't Debbie Patel's style.
"Danny, have we had sex?" Debbie asked.
A bunch of people shifted their weight, looked at each other nervously. She was making them all uncomfortable. Well, good.
Her heart pounded as Danny looked up. "Sure," he said with a shrug and a smile. "Lots of times."
He reached over and knocked fists with a couple of buddies. Debbie felt the back of her neck get hot. He
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was lying about her. Just standing there and lying right to her face.
"And Mitch?" Debbie said. "When, exactly, did we have sex again?"
"We don't need all the gory details," Liana said, tossing her hair. "Ew."
" Mitch?" Debbie said through her teeth, staring Liana down. "After the homecoming party," Mitch told her. "Backseat of my car."
"Riiiiight," Debbie said, nodding as if she were dimly recalling the scenario. "Now tell me, 'cause I'm a little fuzzy on the facts. Who else in this room have I had sex with?"
Slowly, guiltily, a few other guys raised their hands. "Great. . . good," Debbie said, taking a moment to savor the bomb she was about to drop. "Okay, so if I've had so much sex with all of you, maybe one of you can tell me what the tattoo is that I have right here."
Debbie pointed to the spot just to the right of her hip bone. No one said anything.
"Come on, Danny," Debbie said, crossing her arms over her chest, feeling more and more confident by the second. "We've had sex lots of times, so you've seen me naked lots of times, right? You must know what the tattoo is."
"Yeah," Danny said, recovering himself. "Yeah . . . right. Right."
He swallowed hard and looked into Debbie's eyes with desperation. He was asking her to bail him out.
For a split
second Debbie faltered.
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But she needed to put these assholes in their place.
"It's a heart!" Danny said finally, raising his cup and looking triumphant. "Of course it's a heart!"
"Yeah!" Mitch agreed, nodding cockily. "Nice one, Deb. Nice try." Quickly all the other guys agreed, jumping on the bandwagon. A heart. A red one. Small. Simple.
Debbie smirked. She unbuttoned the top button of her black denim skirt, slowly, deliberately, even sexily. Then she opened the second, then the third, causing hoots and howls to go up all over the room. Melissa was so offended she grabbed her purse and stalked out to the living room, but Debbie just kept going. She lowered the waistband on her red panties, looked up, and waited.
All eyes focused on her yellow honeybee with the pink, yellow, and purple streaks of movement swirling around it. A design that could never be mistaken for a simple heart. Danny looked like he was about to throw up. Once again the room fell silent. Debbie glared at all the guys, waiting for someone to say something. For someone to admit they were wrong and apologize. But then she realized their silence was enough. They were snagged. They knew it, she knew it, and all the girls in the room knew it.
Debbie had just broken the tattoo rule in front of a couple dozen people and it was totally, completely worth it.
She reached down to button up her skirt, feeling suddenly invincible. Like maybe she could even find Eva
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and apologize--maybe even beg for forgiveness. But before she got to the top button, Kai ran into the kitchen, her face ashen.
Her eyes found Debbie's and Debbie's heart constricted before Kai even spoke.
"What?" Debbie asked.
"It's Mandy," Kai said. "We have to go."
In the hospital emergency room waiting area, Eva looked down at her hand, which at some point had found its way into Riley's. She was holding hands with a boy for the first time and she barely even noticed it. This wasn't the way these things were supposed to happen.
"We should have seen this coming," Debbie said for the hundredth time. "Has anyone seen the girl eat in the last week?"
"Try the last two weeks," Kai said, walking back and forth in front of her friends, gnawing on her thumbnail. "And we did notice it, remember? We tried to talk to her--"
"Well, we should have made her listen," Debbie put in, sounding nearly hysterical.
"You can't make people listen to you," Eva said quietly. "People only hear what they want to hear."
She looked from Kai to Debbie, then back at her shoes.
Riley's grip tightened on Eva's hand and a shot of warmth radiated through her.
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Please just let Mandy be okay, Eva thought, watching the second hand on the clock across the room slide around and around. That's all that really matters.
The curtain behind the counter slid open and Eric walked out. Eva thought he looked older than he had that morning. More like a man than just a guy. He was in charge here, and they all felt it.
Debbie stood up and Eva and Riley sat forward in their seats as Eric approached, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans.
"She's gonna be fine," he told them, causing a universal whoosh of relief. "It was just . . . her blood sugar was really low, so they've got her hooked up to an IV."
"Can we see her?" Kai asked, surprising Eva by being the first one to ask it.
"The doctor says not tonight. He says she needs to rest," Eric said. "But you can come see her tomorrow."
"What about her mom?" Eva asked.
"She's on her way. I talked to her," Eric said. "She sounded freaked."
"Obviously," Debbie said under her breath.
"So what do we do now?" Eva asked, looking around at them.
"Go home, I guess," Kai told her.
For a moment nobody moved and Eva had a feeling they were all sensing the same thing she was. This wasn't enough. It was anticlimactic somehow. Something was missing.
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Riley stood and picked up Eva's jacket. "Want me to drive you home?" he asked.
Eva looked at Debbie, whose face was unreadable, then at Kai. "We'll see you tomorrow," Kai told her.
'"Kay," Eva said.
Then they all hugged Eric, one by one, and left the ER, heading off in separate directions.
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Chapter 25
The sky was rapidly lightening as Debbie finished off the last seam on her father's sherwani suit on Sunday morning. Her eyes stung from strain and her fingers shook as she pulled the needle through the soft, silky fabric. She tied off the thread, sat back in her chair, and sighed. It was beautiful. The silk shantung draped perfectly, and the gold piping around the collar, sleeves, and cuffs of the legs contrasted perfectly with the burgundy fabric. It was regal. And her father would love it, that much she knew. When it came to the rest of her questions, she'd just have to wait and see.
Debbie pulled out a piece of the personalized stationery her parents had given her for her sweet sixteen--ivory colored, with her name written in purple across the top--and wrote a note to her father. No need to get into all the details of her internal arguments and
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stresses. After what had happened with first Eva and then Mandy last night, Debbie felt a huge desire to just keep it simple.
Dear Dad, I made this for you for Nirav's wedding. This is what I want to do with my life. I want to design clothes. I'm good at it. And I want you to be happy with my decision, but if you're not, that's okay. It's my decision. But no matter what, I love you.
Love, Deborah
Debbie placed the suit on a padded hanger and pinned the note to the collar. She tiptoed downstairs to her father's study and hung the hanger over the drapery bar on the window by his desk. She stepped back once more to admire her work. There was no going back now. Once her father got up, he would know everything.
It was going to be a fight to the finish. Right there in the Patel living room.
And Debbie could accept that. She was even ready for it But if she was going to be killed in battle in a few short hours, there were two things she had to do first. She headed back to her room and pulled her kiss list out of her bedside drawer. She hadn't added Riley to the list and she wasn't going to. For the first time in her life, she respected a guy too much to make notes about him.
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Debbie pulled an old boot box out of the back of her closet and pulled off the rubber bands that held the top down. Inside was every note she'd ever gotten from her friends and from various guys, every letter Mandy had ever sent her from summer camp, and every issue of the Ardsmore High literary magazine with Eva's poems earmarked. Debbie dug down to the bottom of the box and shoved the kiss list under all the other papers, then stashed the box back on its shelf.
She didn't need the kiss list anymore. It was fresh start time.
Debbie sighed. Just one more thing to do. She grabbed her bag and keys from the floor where she'd dropped them on returning from the hospital and headed out. She knew she was going to wake Riley up, but this couldn't wait. She had something she needed to tell him and he needed to hear it--as soon as possible.
Mandy woke up in the hospital on Sunday to find that her mother had fallen asleep with Mandy's hands in hers, her head down next to Mandy's legs. The sight of her mother resting, holding her, made Mandy smile. She lay there awake for half an hour without moving so she wouldn't disturb her mother's slumber.
The second visiting hours began, the door opened and Eric walked in, struggling with a balloon bouquet that was far too big for the door. The commotion woke
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up Mandy's mother and they both watched him, giggling until he finally made it inside.
"Hey," Eric said, flushed. "You're awake."
"How could I not be?" Mandy asked.
"Oh . . . sorry." Eric tied the balloons to the bottom of her bed. They were a combination of Get Well Soon designs and Happy Birthday designs and a couple of Snoopy characters thrown i
n for good measure. Flashes of bright blue, yellow, white, purple, green, pink, and gold lit up the bare room.
"Well. I am going to go get some coffee," Mandy's mother said, smoothing her hair down on one side. "I'll see when they're bringing you breakfast, sweetie," she told Mandy before sweeping from the room.
The second she was gone, an uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Eric rolled back and forth on the balls of his feet and Mandy looked down at the IV tube running into her arm. She felt better this morning, rested, not so hungry, a little less weak. But she still had no idea what to say to Eric about what had happened the night before.
Too bad they didn't have an IV that could feed her the right words.
"How are you feeling?" Eric asked finally.
"Okay . . . better," Mandy said. "You can sit."
Eric looked relieved. He sat down on the edge of her bed and reached for her free hand. His touch sent a skitter of warmth up Mandy's arm and she smiled.
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"What?" Eric asked.
"I just . . ." She looked up into his eyes for the first time since he'd entered the room. "I just love you."
"OhthankGod," Eric said as if it was all one word. He brought his free hand to his forehead. "I thought you were going to hate me forever."
'Why?" Mandy asked, her brow furrowing. She moved her head to the right on her pillow so she could see him better.
Eric stared down at their hands, his shoulders hunched as he spoke. "Come on, I mean, after what happened last night . . . and then we fought and then you ended up here. . . ."
"Eric, I'm not here because of you!" Mandy said simply.
"I know," he said quickly, glancing at her. "I mean, I guess ... I don't know."
"Eric, come on, look at me," Mandy said. Eric tipped his head back, shaking his bangs away from his eyes, and did, finally, look right at her. "I haven't been able to eat for two weeks. That's why I'm in here."
Taking a deep breath, Eric struggled to maintain eye contact with her. Mandy felt his pain and confusion in her own heart.
"I just handled everything wrong," Eric admitted. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," Mandy told him.
"And I don't want you to regret last night," he said, sending another shiver through her. "I don't know what I would do if--"