We Don't Talk Anymore (The Don't Duet #1) - Julie Johnson Page 0,2

up, battling back the slight stammer he had as a little kid.

Pressing the pillow harder over my face, I scream into it — a good, long one — until I run out of air. People are always doing that in movies and TV shows, as if it somehow releases the rage and pain pent-up inside. All it does is make me feel like I’m suffocating.

I can’t quite explain why I’m in so much agony. It’s not like I didn’t know this would happen eventually. What did I expect? That he’d stay a virgin forever? Join a monastery? Become a priest? Abuse his right hand until he got tendonitis from excessive self-gratification?

Obviously, at some point, Archer was going to make that much-lauded thrust from boydom to manhood. Most seventeen-year-old boys on the baseball team are already well on their way to a half-dozen conquests — if not more. It’s all they talk about. Which girls they’ve already screwed, the ones they still want to nail, how hard they’ll hammer them when they get the chance.

Who knew so much carpentry was involved in copulation?

My point is, everyone (myself most definitely excluded) is doing it. It’s only natural Archer would do it, too. I just didn’t know it would be tonight. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have time to steel myself against this new reality. That’s the only reason I’m so upset.

Right?

I should be glad Archer is getting some action. A best friend would be happy for him. Punch him lightly on the arm with a sly atta boy and roll my eyes as he relays the gory details. Listen with the attentiveness of a good pal.

His bestie.

His buddy.

His BFF.

But as I lay here blinking back tears, hands bunched into fists, heart pounding twice its normal speed… all I know is, if they carry on much longer, I think my ribs might crack under the strain.

“God! Yes! Oh, Archer!”

Squeak.

Squeak.

Squeak.

“Yes!”

A tear leaks out onto the pillow.

What the hell is the matter with me?

The sound of the door swinging open startles me upright. I yank the pillow off my face in time to see a couple stumble into the bedroom where I’ve taken refuge from the party still raging outside. They’re a blur of roving hands and drugging kisses, their mouths fused as tight as their bodies as they stumble across the threshold. They’ve nearly made it to the bed by the time they realize they aren’t alone.

I lock eyes with the girl, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. She doesn’t look embarrassed, though — annoyed would be a more accurate description.

“Uh, excuse me?” I bleat. “This room is occupied.”

She sighs, like I’m the biggest inconvenience of all time. I recognize her from the cheerleading squad. Candi Ciccirelli. When she signed my yearbook last summer, she dotted every lowercase i with a ridiculous little heart.

“Can’t you, like, find somewhere else to…” She gestures vaguely at me, flipping her glossy fall of raven hair over one tanned shoulder. “…have whatever emotional breakdown you’re currently experiencing?”

Only slightly mortified, I scrub the tears from my face with the sleeve of my sweater and slide off the bed. Escape isn’t the worst idea. Staying here and listening to Archer and Sienna’s final act sounds about as appealing as a root canal.

I grab my iPhone off the nightstand and head for the door, studiously avoiding eye contact with the couple as I walk out. Not that they even notice — they’re already resumed their primal grope session.

Thirty seconds of overeager, over-intoxicated humping commences in five… four… three… two… one…

I sigh and step into the hall.

Chapter Two

ARCHER

“Oh, Archer!”

Acrylic fingernails rake across my chest. Bottle-blonde hair, stiff from too much product, falls over my bare thighs in a curtain. It’s a scratchy distraction from the work her mouth is doing.

“You’re so big,” she moans around my shaft, like a line she lifted straight out of a porno. Her whole approach to sex is so overblown — puns intended — I wouldn’t be surprised to look up and find a production team pointing cameras at us.

Take 2! This time with more fake moaning, okay? And… action!

It isn’t how I imagined it. Sex, I mean. Maybe that’s because I’ve always imagined it with a different girl. With…

No.

I shove that thought from my brain with brute force, a metal gate slamming down to keep it out permanently. I will not think of Jo. Not now, not here, not during… this. If I let myself remember that look in her eyes when she saw me walk