“Yep,” he says, beaming down at me. “Ninety-two percent.”
Without thinking, I lock his face between my hands, and his smile gets even wider. “Adam! Oh my God, that’s awesome!”
“Grades got posted this morning,” he says, laughing as I pull him into a strangling hug. “You should check yours. I bet I beat you.”
He didn’t beat me, of course, but I’m still super proud of him, and Adam decides to throw a party to celebrate. Later that night, I’m sitting across from him in a big circle on the living room floor. Low music is playing from the speakers nearby, mingling with the faint sounds coming from the video game that Mike and Macy are immersed in at the other side of the room. The rest of us are playing the drinking game Kings.
I’m glad Dee was able to drag Macy along, but we’ve barely worked Macy up to being relaxed enough to come to a party—getting shit-faced with a bunch of rock stars isn’t exactly in her comfort zone. Mike seemed to pick up on her apprehension, asking if she’d like to play a video game with him instead. He said he was just happy to have the excuse to play, but I know it was more than that; he’s sweeter than he likes to let on.
“Okay,” Dee says, wiggling her fingers over the card pile since she enthusiastically volunteered to go first, “how do I play this game?”
She’s sitting to my right, and Leti is to my left. Joel, Shawn, and Adam are playing too, along with two skanks from the ground floor that Joel took the liberty of inviting. Kayla and Zoey. Kayla is by far the more outspoken of the two, with long black hair, deep blue eyes, and fake boobs for days. Zoey is a tiny little thing with choppy bleached-blonde hair and, judging by the looks of her, an entire pharmacy’s worth of diuretics.
Shawn hands Dee his phone, which displays a glossary of what each card means. “Pick a card and tell us what it is,” he instructs, and Dee flashes him a shamelessly flirtatious smile as she plucks her first card.
“Okay, a five,” she says, “so that means . . .”
The sound of six hands loudly slapping the hardwood floor surprises me into slapping mine down too, and all of the guys bust up laughing.
“What the hell?” Dee says, her nose scrunched with irritation.
“Last one to slap the ground has to drink!” Joel exclaims. He’s dressed in dark denim jeans and a neon-yellow band T-shirt that highlights the blond spikes forming a runway down his head.
“That’s no fair! I didn’t know the rules!” Dee looks to me for backup, but I just shrug. After an aggravated huff, she picks up her cup. “Fine, but you guys are assholes.”
All of the guys smile at her appreciatively, but with a body like Dee’s, I’m pretty sure she could say she’s a Satan-worshipper who eats babies for breakfast and they’d still smile at her the same way. Ever since she arrived wearing curve-hugging skinny jeans and a backless black top, Joel hasn’t been able to take his eyes off her.
We each take turns picking cards and taking drinks, until Kayla—also known as the black-haired skankopotomous sitting between Adam and Shawn—picks an “I never” card.
“Oh, yay!” she exclaims, sitting back on her knees and tugging on her black mini-skirt. She wouldn’t have to fight with it so damn much if she had worn something sensible. To Dee’s disdain, I’m still dressed in a navy-blue T-shirt and the light gray leggings Adam drew all over this morning when we were curled up on the couch. I was sitting by the arm and he was sitting next to me. He randomly tugged my legs into his lap, bit the cap off of his blue marker, and asked if he could draw on me. In that moment, with my legs stretched over his jeans and his hands on my thighs, I wanted him to do a hell of a lot more than write on me, but I managed a silent nod of my head.
“Hm,” Kayla continues, tapping on her lips in an obvious move to draw attention to them, “I neverrr . . .”
There are so many ways she could finish that sentence. I never: read a book whole way through, passed a class with an A, closed my legs for more than five minutes, had an intelligent thought.
“I never had a threesome,” she finally finishes with a sly smile in Zoey’s direction.
I don’t buy her ‘confession’ for a second. The sultry look she gives Adam screams that she has been in a threesome and already has another tentatively penciled in for tonight. Dee discreetly elbows me, breaking me from my glowering. My eyes are positively twitching in my poor attempt to keep them from narrowing into laser-shooting slits.
“Sure you haven’t,” Leti says, and if I thought I couldn’t adore him more, I was wrong.
In a high-pitched voice that she apparently thinks is cute, Kayla adamantly insists that she really hasn’t, while Adam, Shawn, Joel, and Zoey all take drinks.
I’m not surprised Adam has to drink on this one, but I am a little jealous—which doesn’t make any damn sense at all. Why would I be jealous of Adam’s threesome? I am in no way interested in having one. But the idea of him sleeping with not one, but two girls at the same time . . . it makes me want to snatch his hand from the card pile and drag him back to his room to make him forget all about past threesomes and future threesomes and every girl who isn’t me.
Which is just insane. If Dee and Leti were really good friends, they’d have me committed.
Adam chooses his next card while I’m still having a heated internal debate with myself. “I’m the question master,” he informs us, tossing the queen of diamonds onto the messy “discarded” pile. “That means I can ask any of you a question, and if you answer it, you have to drink.” He immediately looks my way. “Need any clarification about that?” I shrug, refusing to fall into his trap, and he smiles approvingly at me before turning his attention to Kayla. “What about you? Any questions?”