and his musical talent and his lips that kissed like he was trying to put out a fire and his smirk and his tattoos and his hips and his hands and…
Stupid, stupid, stupid boy.
***
“I’ve missed you so much. Is that weird? I know I just saw you a few days ago, and we talked on the phone, but it feels like forever and I’m just really glad you’re back,” Lottie said the second I walked into our room and dropped my bag. Damn, I’d even missed her verbal vomit.
My face cracked into a smile before I realized what I was doing.
“So how were things at casa Hallman?”
“Faaaabulous,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I managed to piss my mom off at least once a day.”
“Yeah, well I thought Trish and Will were going to kill each other over a simple game of Monopoly, so I get it.” No, she didn’t. Everyone loved Lottie. Even when she wouldn’t stop talking. It added to her adorably awkward personality.
I shoved aside my problems and we caught up. God, I’d missed her so much.
“So what happened with Stryker? With the whole apology thing?” I had been vague on the details of my little Thanksgiving stunt. Especially since it ended up blowing up in my face.
“I drove my ass back to his apartment and cooked him dinner in the middle of the night. Then we went to bed and when we got up he said he didn’t want to see me anymore, which is dumb, because we weren’t dating.”
Her expression was confused. I hadn’t told her I was dating him, but I hadn’t told her I wasn’t. It was exactly as Stryker said. I didn’t want her to think less of me.
“You weren’t?”
“Not really.” I sunk back into the mountain of pillows on my bed. I’d missed that too. There was nothing quite like falling into them after a shitty day.
“So you guys weren’t dating, but you broke up?”
“I guess. All I know is that he doesn’t want to see me anymore. So I’m not going to see him anymore.”
“By see him you mean…”
I started laughing again.
“I don’t even know what that means either.”
A loud and frantic knock put pause on that conversation. Audrey and Trish burst in, Will, Simon and Zan following along behind a little less enthusiastically.
I was hugged and I couldn’t help but hug and smile back. I’d missed them. I didn’t know how much until I saw all of them standing in front of me. Even Zan, who gave me a semi-hug and a smile. I almost asked him about Zack. Almost.
The words drowned in my throat and I wasn’t going to bail them out.
We all ended up sitting on our floor, passing around the leftover pies Audrey brought up, eating straight from the pans, all our forks fighting for the best bites, and swapping holiday stories. I sat back against a pile of my pillows and listened. It was such a relief to fall back into this life, into this place where I was surrounded by people who cared about me and missed me and wanted to share things with me.
Not that my family wasn’t like that, but this group was different. They didn’t have to like me. They chose to spend time with me. They showed up at the hospital and sat and waited for me. I still wanted to cry every time I thought about that.
“So what did you do to my brother?” Trish said, scraping the last bits out of one of the pie pans. “Because he’s like, so emo right now, I’m afraid he’s going to start painting his nails black and only listening to really crappy music.”
Every set of eyes swiveled in my direction and every voice went quiet. Fantastic.
“I didn’t do anything to him.” I readjusted the pillows behind my back so I wouldn’t have to focus on them all.
“Well, something happened because he drunk-texted me late last night telling me that he loved me. Actually, he said he “lobed” me, but that’s beside the point. Stryker never uses that word unless he’s wasted. So. What happened?”
“Trish,” Lottie said, making her name two syllables. “This probably isn’t the right venue.”
“Oh, whatever,” Trish said, tossing the fork in the pie pan and setting it on the floor. Will cleared his throat and Simon looked around, as if the room was really interesting. Zan just kept rubbing Lottie’s back. Audrey gave me a sympathetic look and I wanted to melt into the floor and sink into the