Winter Break (Chasing Chase London #6)

six

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“Hey Man, Nice Shot”—Filter

“Dude, you could hook up with one of them,” Meghan says later, as we lie on the living room floor one more night, this time without my sister. She’s been checking her phone all night. I guess that’s her version of being stupid for a guy. “One for you and one for me, remember?”

“What about our boyfriends?”

“What happens at the lake stays at the lake,” she says with a sly grin.

“Meghan!” I protest. “You can’t cheat. Besides, Todd’s such a good guy, and I think I’m finally starting to like him.”

“I’m totally convinced,” she says, rolling her eyes.

But if he’s resisting Elaine, who he loves, surely I can resist some guy I just met, no matter how cute he is. Besides, being alone with him seems like a bad idea.

“What do you even know about these guys?” I ask. “They could be serial killers.”

“That’s the vibe you got?” she asks, snickering.

“Come on, I’m serious,” I say. “What happened to stranger danger, don’t leave your drink unattended, and all that? Do you even know his last name? Or how old he is? If you’ll ever see him again? He might go back to Ireland after the break.”

“Exactly,” she says. “He said he was old enough to buy us beer, so I told him you were in college with me, in case his brother wants to go out with you.”

“No you didn’t!”

“The point is, we don’t need to know any of that stuff. And neither do they. You can be whoever you want to be here. You don’t have to be Sky, the uptight virgin from Connecticut. You can be Sky, the cool music chick who goes to Dixon with me.”

“That’s true,” I muse, trying to picture anyone thinking I’m cool, or appreciating my band t-shirts for that matter. I stopped wearing them to school since Lindsey didn’t approve, and because it felt good to put away something Dad got me, even if I did it out of spite. But I still have them. Maybe Oliver would appreciate them.

Not that I should care. But for some reason, I keep thinking about it, wondering what music he listens to and if he’s heard of Buffalo Tom or the Screaming Trees. Would he think I was a slob if he saw me in ripped jeans, a Sublime tee, and Converse, or a snob if he saw me in my school clothes with a designer bag? There’s something freeing in the clean slate of our history. He doesn’t know about my past, my fucked up family, or my drunken mistakes. He doesn’t know me, and I don’t want him to.

Like Meghan said, I can be whoever I want with him. I can be myself, or the girl who earned Lindsey’s stamp of approval, or someone completely new. I can wear a white dress on the shore at sunset even when the air is freezing cold and damp from the mist rising off the water, like I did this evening when I took a walk with Meghan, both of us glancing around and pretending we weren’t looking for them the whole time. I can give him whatever version of myself I want, and he’ll take it home with him in his memory, and a piece of me will get to be that girl forever.

Meghan shrugs inside her sleeping bag. “Whatever,” she says. “Your business. But I’m gonna bone on New Year’s Eve.”

“Meghan Louise!”

She laughs. “What? If you don’t want one, maybe I’ll shoot my shot with both of them. Guys love threesomes.”

“Shit, I used your middle name too soon.”

We both break down into giggles. She recovers first. “For real, though,” she says. “If they’re down to hang again, you wanna go?”

“I can’t,” I say with a sigh. “Mom wouldn’t let me. She won’t even let me go out with my own boyfriend, let alone someone I just met.”

“We can just tell her we’re bored and want to go into town. She could drop us at the movies. Totally innocent.”

“Is it, though?”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s the point. She thinks it’s innocent. We know the truth.”

“I can’t believe I let you corrupt me this way.”

“Oh please,” she says. “Those bitches you hang out with are way worse than me. It’s just a movie, Sky. You hide your face in his chest and let him feel manly while the killer chases heroine into the woods, and he puts his arm around you and doesn’t take it back for the rest of the movie…”

“That doesn’t sound like you. Holy shit. Wait, do you have moves? I thought only guys had those.”

She glowers at me. “Don’t worry, there’s zero chance you’ll fall onto his knob and accidentally pop your precious cherry.”

“So now you’re trying to convince me it’s innocent? Have I suddenly become my mom?”

“I don’t know, have you?” she challenges.

“I have a boyfriend, Meghan.”

“Again, no one expects you to bounce on a virtual stranger’s dick in the middle of the movie theater.”

“Says the girl who lost her virginity in a Pizza Hut bathroom.”

“It was a Pizza Palace,” she says with mock outrage, and then we’re both laughing again, the momentary prickliness melting away.

“I’ll go, but only because you’re my cousin and it’s crazy to go somewhere alone with a guy you met once, who’s not even from here. He could be, I don’t know, some kind of human trafficker luring you to another country so you have no protection.”

“And you’re going to protect me?” she asks, snorting with laughter.

“Hey,” I protest. “Safety in numbers.”

“Okay, then it’s settled. You’ll go,” she says, pulling out her phone. “I’ll tell him right now.”

“Just to hang out,” I warn. “As friends. I’m cuddling up to anyone.”

“Except your Toddy Bear ,” she says, pretending to gag at the nickname. “Got it. No dick bouncing or chest cuddling. I’ll let them know.”

“Don’t you dare,” I say, swiping for her phone.

She rolls away, cackling evilly. “I already asked him to bring Oliver so you wouldn’t be a third wheel. I have to make sure he knows what to expect. Though for someone so dead set on losing your virginity, you’re using this opportunity to impress him very well.”

“I’m not losing my virginity to a stranger.”

“Come on, when will you have this chance again? They’re hot, they’re horny, they’re Irish. You don’t even live on the same continent. You’d literally never run into them again.”

“Yeah, but I said I was ready to sleep with my boyfriend . That’s different. I know he’s a good guy. I just met these guys.”

“Girl, who cares if they’re good guys? As long as they have good dick, they’ll serve their purpose.”

“And how exactly would you know that? You spent five minutes with the Rogue.”

“Who?”

“The Rogue,” I say. “I didn’t get his name, so that’s what I call him. Dimples and the Rogue.”

“Sounds like a band from the fifties,” she says, snickering. “But hey, if you want the Rouge, we can trade, since you’re going to be boning one of them. Nobody wants to fuck someone named Dimples. Except maybe that dude who gets caught wanking in the audience of one of those creepy child beauty pageants, and it turns out he doesn’t even have a kid there.”

“Meghan,” I groan. “Stop or I’m not going.”

“Fine, you can fuck Dimples,” she says. “Just saying, I might nickname you Pedo afterwards.”

“Pretty sure he’s the pedo, since he’s in college and I’m only fifteen.”

“Eh, doesn’t count if he doesn’t know.”

“I’m not sleeping with either of them,” I say, shaking my head. “So I don’t care which one I sit by at the movies. Take your pick. I’ll even sit at the end of the row by myself if you’d rather.”

“Maybe take Dimples with you,” she says. “I might give the Rogue a handy with the popcorn butter.”

“Oh my god,” I say, pulling my sleeping bag up over my head to hide my secondhand embarrassment. “I’m going to go to sleep now and pretend I never heard you say that.”