switcheroo,” she whispers, holding her finger to her lips for full effect.
Crap. I take off and enter the room to my left with a light foot in the event Scar Scar frightens easily and I find a knife planted in my neck, and with the way she feels about me, I might anyway.
Instead, I find Scarlett sitting in the middle of a double bed with nary a second mattress around.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I glance over to a round contraption that might work as a chair, but there’s no way my body could hope to balance on it—in a fetal position no less. That, right there, is the nightmare that benchwarmers are made of.
“You’re sleeping with me, sweetheart,” she drags it out slow—no sugar, just the way I did earlier, and I can’t help but smile.
“Is this the part where you tell me I brought this upon myself?”
“This is the part where I tell you a night on the walnut hardwood will really straighten you out.”
Crap. I glance to the floor and shake my head. “No way, Lady Godiva. I’m taking my pillow and hitting the couch downstairs. My back needs to be in top condition for next season. I’ve got practice all summer, and it’s going to end real quick the second I fall asleep on that petrified forest.”
No sooner does my hand hit the doorknob than a pillow lobs me from behind.
“You can’t leave!” she hisses in a panic. “She’ll know we’re just a lie!” I turn around to catch the whites of her eyes as they glint in the dimly lit room, and she squeezes them shut for a moment. “Please stay. I can sleep on the floor.” She tosses her pillow down with the enthusiasm reserved for the guillotine, and my stomach turns.
“Don’t move.” I head over and lie as close to the edge of the bed as possible.
“Are you sure?” Her voice fills the air like a nervous hummingbird.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She crawls under the sheets and flops the comforter over me. “Thank you for staying—and for doing that thing you did. That was pretty nice.”
The air grows stale in the room for a moment as I wait for the dig, but it never comes.
“You’re welcome. I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”
“Not on your life, Sexy Rexy.” She kicks me from under the sheets, and my chest thumps with a laugh.
“At least you say it like you mean it.”
“Right. Keep dreaming and scheming to make me yours. It’s not happening. I’m a free agent, and that’s exactly the way I’m going to stay.”
“Suit yourself. It’s you who’s missing out in the end.” The sound of our breathing clogs up the silence, quickly replaced by the sound of a squeaky mattress from the other side of the wall. Thank God our parents are safely tucked downstairs, because so help me God, if I heard even the slightest rattle… I shake the thought out of my head. “Can I ask what happened?”
“What do you mean ‘what happened’? You were there. You made it happen. You scared off my plan A. Colin made good on his last name and baled.”
“Not that.” I roll over onto my back, staring blankly at the ceiling. An anemic stream of moonlight curves its way in through the curtains, adding just the right amount of midnight blue to make this feel even more like a mindbender. “What happened with you and that nudist next door? Why is he dunking his toothpick into your sister when he could have had you?”
A hard swat comes over my chest. “First of all, eww. And second of all, double eww. I don’t care about Duncan. I don’t care if he runs around naked all weekend or how hard he and my sister are jumping on that bed. So help me God, you try to tell me different and I might vomit.”
A dull laugh strums through me, and the mattress gives a soft bounce. “Okay, if you say so, they’re jumping on the bed. You wouldn’t happen to feel like making some mattress music yourself, would you?”
Another swat comes at me, this time striking a little too close to the face.
“I’ll take that as a no. And watch the moneymaker, would you?”
“Moneymaker,” she scoffs. “Let me guess who your biggest customers would be. The entire WB cheer squad?”
“The cheer squad and I get along. You got a problem with that?”
“Only if the fact that you get along with the cheer squad