Faking Perfect (20 page)

“Beer?” I suggested the minute we emerged into the clearing where the cottage stood, quaint and cozy-looking in the darkness. A line-up of around two dozen people trickled up the yard and onto the deck, where I assumed the kegs were located.

“Who owns this cottage again?” Emily asked as she threaded her arm through Dustin Sweeney’s and started in the direction of the beer line. Ever since Dustin had asked her to the prom last month, Emily kept insisting they were going as friends, but I’d caught them holding hands several times. Colin Hewitt and his girlfriend Mara followed closely behind them, and Ben and I brought up the rear, neither speaking nor touching, the gloomy finish to an otherwise cheerful convoy.

A lot of people had changed out of their formal clothes and into shorts and T-shirts at some point between the prom and the cabin, but the three of us still wore our dresses. Mara, stunning in a long, ice blue strapless gown and Emily in the short white dress with the sweetheart neckline that Shelby and I had helped her pick out last winter. I wished Shelby could see her in it, but she’d skipped the prom for several reasons—she couldn’t find a dress to fit, Evan was still being an ass, and her due date was less than two weeks away and she didn’t want to risk having the baby at the prom.
How cliché
, she’d exclaimed.

“Leila Acker,” I answered Emily as we got in line. “You know, the girl with the curly brown hair who hangs out with Bianca Sykes.”

Her nose wrinkled. Bianca Sykes had a reputation for being—in Emily’s words—“a total skank.” Meaning, she went through guys like Kleenex and shamelessly slept around. She was the female version of Tyler, who, predictably, she’d gone out with a few times last year.

When it was my turn at the keg, I filled my red plastic cup to the brim and immediately started downing it. When it was gone, I got back in line for another. I knew Ben would disapprove, but he was already pissed at me so I thought what the hell, I’d have two beers. Maybe even three. It was prom night, after all, and he was off somewhere anyway, probably practicing his valedictorian speech for an audience of unsuspecting squirrels in the woods.

The second beer shot straight to my bladder, so I went inside in search of a bathroom. Of course there was only one, and of course there was a line for that too, even longer than the keg line. When I was finally done in the washroom, I made sure my dress was positioned properly on my hips and returned to the kitchen, hoping for a glass of water. But instead of water, I got something else I’d been thirsting for: Tyler Flynn.

You have
got
to be kidding me
, I thought when I turned the corner and saw him leaning against the ancient yellow-gold stove and talking to some guy with a lip ring I’d seen around but didn’t know. They both glanced up as I entered the room, and then the guy turned back to Tyler and continued talking, oblivious to the abrupt shift in atmosphere. Tyler regarded me with the same deer-in-headlights look he’d worn in the convenience store parking lot a couple months ago.

I should have turned around and walked away right then, but dammit, I was thirsty. So I squared my shoulders, dug out a plastic cup from the bag on the counter, and filled it at the sink. The entire time I could feel Tyler just a couple of feet away, his eyes searing my skin. After another minute or so of one-sided conversation, Lip Ring Guy excused himself and departed through the sliding doors to the deck, leaving us alone in the kitchen.

My water was lukewarm and slightly bitter, but I kept drinking, drinking, soothing my parched throat and filling my stomach with a sloshy heaviness. When my cup was completely drained, I suppressed a burp and looked over at Tyler, who was watching me with a mixture of amusement and apprehension.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, depositing my cup in the sink. “You weren’t even at the prom.”

“I don’t do proms,” he said, moving closer to me. The base of my spine tingled when I caught his scent. The simple act of standing near him produced more of a reaction in my body than when I was full-on making out with Ben. “But I
do
do after-prom parties.”

“Oh?” I crossed my arms over my chest and pretended not to notice when his eyes dropped to the swell of my breasts. “Someone told me you, uh . . . stopped being an entrepreneur.”

His lips curled at the reminder of our rum-and-coke-fueled banter on my bed a while back. “I did stop,” he said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his shorts. He and Ben were a study in contrasts—Ben, stiff and formal in a tux, face clean-shaven, hair neatly combed, Tyler, relaxed and casual in a T-shirt and shorts, jaws bristly with stubble, hair tousled as usual. Light, dark; good, bad; summer, winter. Opposites in every way.

“Why?” I asked. “Too many late nights? Long hours? Sucky benefits?”

“Not exactly.” He leaned around me to flick an ant off the counter and for one dizzying moment I was surrounded by the familiar scents of smoke and beer and maleness. “I just thought, you know, unless I want to do another shitty year at that shitty school, I’d better get my act together and focus on graduating.”

“And you are, right? Graduating on Tuesday?”

He smirked. “Well, I’m not
valedictorian
or anything, but yeah, I managed to squeak by.”

Teasing me about Ben, just like old times. I let myself smile. “Good.”

We stood silently for a moment, our bodies angled toward the kitchen window, which faced out onto the lake. The moon was big and bright, reflecting on the calm, inky water below. A drunk, laughing couple, both stripped down to just their underwear, danced clumsily together on the edge of the wharf, prom clothes in a messy heap beside them. They looked happy. Free.

“Lexi.”

I tore my gaze away from the couple and focused on Tyler’s face.
I miss kissing you
, I thought.
I miss the scuff of your cheek against mine and the delicious weight of your body as you brace yourself above me. “
What?” I said, the word squeezing past my throat.

“I like your hair like this.” He reached up, captured a smooth, flat strand between his fingers.

Heat bubbled in my stomach, the water inside rising to a boil.

“But I like the curls better,” he said, burying his fingers deeper until they made contact with my scalp. I closed my eyes as my body slanted toward him, caught in his magnetic pull.

Thwack
. The screen door flew open and Emily stumbled in, drunk off her ass. I jerked away from Tyler, but not before my friend saw how close we’d been standing to each other, Tyler’s hand tangled in my hair.

“Oh my God. Oh my
God
.” She slapped a hand over her mouth, her body swaying a little to the side. “I knew it,” she said, taking her hand away. She looked like she’d just walked in on her parents having sex. Horrified. “I freaking
knew
it. The way you always stare at him at school . . . I
knew
there was something going on between you two, just like I knew you had a crush on Ben since, like, forever. Oh my God.”

“It’s not—” I started to explain, but the words had barely left my mouth before Emily straightened to her full height and strode purposefully to the door and outside, slamming the screen behind her. “Oh shit,” I muttered. I knew exactly what she was doing and exactly who she was getting. I slumped against the counter.

“It’s okay,” Tyler told me just as the screen door slid open again and Emily marched back in, followed by an utterly perplexed Ben.

It was so
not
okay.

“What the hell is going on?” Ben asked no one in particular. His gaze skipped between each of our faces and then landed squarely on Tyler, who stood motionless beside me, hands back in his pockets. “
This
guy?” Ben’s confusion morphed into disgust as he looked back to me. “You’re cheating on me with a fucking
drug dealer
?”

The crowd from the bathroom line had steadily begun seeping toward the kitchen, hungry for drama. Ben so rarely raised his voice or showed any emotion other than calm, poised confidence, obviously something big must have been going down. From the corner of my eye, I could see Tyler’s body stiffen at Ben’s words, but he kept his hands in his pockets and to himself. He was dead serious about not messing with his chance at graduation.

“I’m not cheating on you, Ben,” I said, shooting a look at Emily.

She sneered back at me, sobered up and out for blood. She’d suspected me for months, saw right through my lies and duplicity, and it was finally time to see justice served.

“I’ve never cheated on you. God, I haven’t been with Tyler since the beginning of April,
weeks
before you and I started dating. I swear.”

“Wait. So you
were
with him at one point?” Ben let out a short laugh and shoved both hands through his hair, messing it up. “Seriously, Lexi? Jesus.”

“Well, there’s definitely something going on,” Emily piped up before I could respond. “I mean, he freaking punched Brody Wilhelm in the face because he made some crude remark about Lexi’s ass when she walked past them. Why else would he do that?” When everyone looked at her, she shrugged and added, “Dustin told me.”

Ben frowned at that news, and I could almost see the pieces clicking together in his brain. He listened to school gossip. He was aware of Tyler’s reputation, he knew a girl didn’t just “spend time” with a guy like him without sex being involved somehow. Obviously, I wasn’t the inexperienced little virgin I’d portrayed myself to be. I wasn’t
anything
I’d portrayed myself to be.

“So . . . what? You had sex with him?” He actually looked kind of hurt. “Is that it? Or are you ‘just friends’ with him, too?”

It was strange the way they kept referring to Tyler like he wasn’t even in the room. They did the same thing whenever Nolan was around. Like he wasn’t good enough for a simple acknowledgment. Like he was below them. Trash.

I looked down at the well-worn floor, avoiding the many sets of eyes on me. It seemed as if the entire party was lurking by the kitchen, watching us like we were the night’s entertainment. Once again, I felt the sensation of being on a stage, acting out a role in a play. Only my costume was being ripped from my body in front of everyone, my nakedness revealed for all to see. The girl buried beneath all those layers had finally been exposed, and half the senior class had a front row seat.

And then Ben, taking my silence as confirmation, decided my public unveiling wasn’t quite done yet. “I guess it makes sense, you being attracted to a piece of shit like him. Your mother has a thing for douchebags too, right? It’s in your genes.”

My head snapped up and I gaped at him, imploring him with my eyes to shut up.

He ignored me. Ignored everyone. For the first time since I’d known him, he didn’t seem to care that people were watching. Humiliation had blinded him. “Crackhead father,” he continued as my eyes filled with hot tears.

He’d promised . . .
swore
he wouldn’t tell anyone.

“Lets his kid move across the country instead of raising her like a real man . . . then ignores her for thirteen years while he goes off and starts a new family. What a winner.” Ben made a scoffing sound in his throat. “And you let everyone believe he was
dead
. You let
me
believe he was dead. Like we had this huge thing in common. Dead parents. Nice, right?”

I looked away, swiping a thumb under my eyes. His contempt for me was a physical ache; I could feel it in my bones like a flu virus. Beside me, Tyler resembled a marble statue, his body tensed and rigid in his effort to control himself.

Ben moved a few inches closer to me, his face flushed an angry red. The room was deathly quiet, a collective holding of breath. Waiting. “You’re not the person I thought you were, Lexi. Turns out you’re an even bigger whore than your friend Shelby.”

Tyler lost it then. He lunged toward Ben, fists clenched and ready. I quickly stepped between them, pressing a palm against Tyler’s chest. Luckily, it was enough to stop him. I couldn’t let them fight. Tyler would get in trouble and possibly spend graduation day in jail, and Ben would most likely end up in the emergency room, nose broken for real.

“Tyler.” I pushed against his chest, trying to get him to focus on me. But his eyes were glued to Ben, who glared back at him in a
Try it, I dare you
kind of way. “Tyler, stop. Just leave the room, okay? Walk away. Please.”

The
please
seemed to snap him out of his all-consuming rage. He backed away, hands raised, and then turned and slipped through the door to outside. A tremor went through the floor beneath us as he pounded across the deck and down the stairs at the side of the house. Once he was gone, probably heading for the woods to punch a tree, the room seemed to exhale in relief.

Ben left next, choosing an alternative route through the living room. Emily fled shortly after, too appalled and disappointed to even look my way as she walked past me to the kitchen door. Excitement over, the gawkers began dispersing, too, murmuring amongst themselves as if discussing a movie they’d just seen.

Shaky and exhausted, I escaped to one of the cottage’s tiny bedrooms and lay down on the narrow, musty bed. I hid out for an hour or so, alternately crying and panicking, and then tentatively made my way back outside. After a while, I found a designated driver, a girl named Destiny from my English class who hadn’t witnessed the fiasco in the kitchen, and hitched a ride back to Oakfield with her.

My house was a mess when I walked in—beer cans everywhere, pizza congealing on the counter, drawers hanging open—but none of it really registered. Downstairs in my room, I peeled off my prom dress until it was nothing but a shiny pink puddle on the floor and then climbed under my quilt.

Chapter Nineteen

I
didn’t have Nolan anymore to barge in my house and force-feed me soup, so I stayed in bed well past noon the next day. My cell had started dinging at around ten and didn’t stop for the next several hours, texts from people wanting the dirt on last night. Just like the last time I’d crashed, I couldn’t bear to face the morning-after consequences.