if we didn’t change up my song, which was still on repeat. I told them, “Twenty One Pilots, Our Last Night, Highly Suspect, that’s all you get to play. Remember, I’m sad.”
“Highly Suspect,” Xander said, and Matt put on “Look Alive, Stay Alive.”
“Matt. You’ve got good taste in music,” I told him, recalling his vortex playlist. “You and me, we shoulda hooked up.”
Matt came over and sat down on the floor next to me, bumping his shoulder to mine. “But we didn’t.” He gave me a sympathetic look and handed me a fresh glass of wine.
His warmth against me felt way too good and I felt so stupidly drunk, the idea of spreading my naked body on almost any warm male felt disturbingly alluring.
So I decided to make sure that didn’t accidentally happen somehow. Because every one of the males in this room was off-limits to me, for one reason or another.
Or several reasons.
And anyway… I didn’t want any of the men in this room.
I was in love with Cary Clarke. The one man who was currently not even allowing me to see his face or speak to him.
Fuck.
“By the way,” I told them all, raising my voice over the music, “you all need to get the fuck out sometime soon so I can pass out on the couch. This is my bedroom tonight.” True. This apartment had only one bedroom and as close as we were, I wasn’t snuggling in with my best friend and her husband tonight like a sad, drunken cockblock.
More drinks circulated, but I didn’t have any. I didn’t even finish my wine. It wasn’t going down so smoothly anymore. There was dancing and jumping around, but I stayed where I was on the floor. Until someone—Matt?—scooped me up and put me on the couch.
The next thing I knew it was quiet and semi-dark. I was alone.
I dragged myself off the couch and stumbled to the guest bathroom in the hall.
I heard voices from the hallway, and poked my head into the bedroom, where I found Danica and Ash—with Matt. I’d assumed everyone who didn’t live here had gone home, except me. Wrong.
Danica was lying on her stomach on the bed, talking quietly to both of them, giggling and telling a story or something. The guys were sitting on the floor, a few feet apart, drinking beer as they listened. Ash had a guitar in his lap and was playing idly, a drunk smile on his face.
They didn’t see me. Maybe they went in there to let me sleep, like I asked them to.
I went into the bathroom and for some reason, I slammed the door. Maybe I was annoyed with Danica. Maybe I was annoyed with them all. Maybe I was annoyed with Cary Clarke and myself and the whole damn world.
I went pee and swished some toothpaste and water around in my mouth because it tasted like vodka and pickles, and not in a good way anymore. And I just tried not to be angry for no reason.
I fucking knew it, though.
Usually, Danica told me everything. Which was why it was bugging me, maybe, that she wasn’t telling me everything about what was going on with Matt. I mean, I knew almost everything.
But not… everything.
And I knew Danica. She told me way more than she even told her twin sister. I knew that if there were things she wasn’t telling me, she had her reasons. We’d been tight since we were thirteen. The day we met, we did a pinkie swear to be best friends forever.
With some people, it was definitely instalove.
Maybe I would’ve asked/pushed/begged her to tell me more, but I had my own problems to deal with. And currently, I was busy drowning them in vodka.
To be fair, I really hadn’t told her every little detail about Cary. Maybe because I wanted her to like him and not tell me not to see him anymore?
I wondered if that was the same reason she hadn’t been totally open with me about Matt.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and checked it, actually half-expecting to find something from Cary.
Nothing.
I stuffed the phone away and stumbled back out into the living room.
“Taylor?” I heard my best friend call after me as I went searching for the vodka.
I rifled through the kitchen and found enough clean glasses, and carried them into the bedroom with the vodka. They all stopped talking when I walked in. I sat down next to Ash on the floor. I handed