Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters (20 page)

After a long, delicious while he whispers, “We should go back to the party, huh?”

“Yeah, definitely,” I sigh, but we kiss some more instead and then he laughs and I laugh and it’s … amazing. I feel the prettiest I have ever felt in my entire life.

He guides me over to sit on the bed, still kissing, and leans me back against the pillows. I feel so excited and romantic, and so what if I’m on a bed with a boy I’ve known for an hour? It’s just a bed. He’s just a boy. Sam slides his hand under my shirt and strokes my stomach and my rib cage, and then the side of my chest—like right along the edge of my bra. It’s very tingly and I definitely like it … even though I’m also thinking we’ve been in here awhile now and it’s kind of rude to ditch Em and JoJo for so long and maybe I should find them in case they’re looking for me.

Then he starts grinding up against me with his hips and trying to slide his hand
inside
my bra, which I know I should be cool with because it isn’t a big deal, and part of me really wants to let him …

But I’m sort of not cool with it. I mean, I’ve known him for about five seconds. And it’s only my second kiss ever. And I don’t want him to think I have any intention of going further than that, for sure. I pull away a little and whisper, “Can’t we just, um … kiss some more?”

Sam whispers, “But you’re so sexy … and it
is
my birthday …” He has his other hand on the top button of my jeans now, fiddling with it.

I sit up a little, easing him off me. “I know, and, um … but can’t we just slow down for a sec?”

“Are you serious?”

“Uh … yes?”

Sam takes his hand out from under my shirt and gives me a totally disgusted look that makes me want to die. “Maaaan, I knew I should’ve gone for your friend instead. I bet
she’s
not a prude.”

Then he just gets up and leaves.

31

I fix my shirt and take a couple of deep breaths. I’m totally stunned. What the hell just happened? Am I really a prude, or is he a jerk? Does he hate me? Why do I care what he thinks? And what friend was he talking about, anyway?

My face feels raw from Sam’s chin rubbing against mine, my throat is tight and constricted—tears again?
Seriously?
I just want to find my friends and get the hell out of this stupid party that I didn’t even want to come to in the first place.

I really, really want to go
home
.

I’m about to open the door to leave the bedroom when it opens from the other side. A couple enters the room, whispering intently. Well, that’s just
perfect
.

I try to sneak around them and out the door, but there isn’t enough room, so we end up having a minor collision, which scares the girl half to death.

“Sorry! I was just leaving,” I stammer, totally embarrassed. Great—now I’m a prude
and
a peeping Tom.

“Wait a sec,” the guy says. “Kelsey, is that you? What are you doing in here?”

I look up from the floor, where I had been politely directing my gaze, and discover that the couple is comprised of Ben the Paper Guy and a really pretty dark-haired girl with enough self-confidence to wear glasses in public—exactly the kind of ultra-modern specs I would love to wear but can’t pull off.

Why, why did it have to be him?

“I, um … Lexi invited me. So, I, uh …”

“No, I meant what are you doing in Sam’s room, alone in the dark? Are you okay?” He’s looking at me without a trace of his usual irony, like he’s some kind of concerned big brother. Which makes me feel even worse.

No, not really. But thanks for asking.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry to break up your, um—”

“Ben, maybe we should go?” the girl says. She looks annoyed. I don’t blame her.

He chuckles. “No, it’s cool. Kelsey, this is Valentina. Val, Kelsey is blah blah newspaper blah,” but I’m barely listening. It just occurred to me that Ben said “Sam’s room” before, which means he knows Sam well enough to know this is his room. Which means they will probably end up talking about this whole thing later and Sam will be like, “Oh my God, that little dork wouldn’t even let me feel her up!” And Ben will think I’m a baby and a loser—more than he already does—and I will perish from an acute case of humiliation. And not because of some dumb picture in a school paper this time, but because I actually
am
a huge loser who will never have a normal hookup and will be alone forever.

“Listen, I’ve got to go, so, um, have fun.” I push past the two of them and shove through the crowded party, desperate to find my coat and my friends and not make eye contact with anyone. Em and JoJo are both MIA, and there’s no way I’m going back to the terrace to find Lexi—Sam might be out there. I just want to
leave
.

I head back into the living room, and there’s Cassidy sitting on the couch with some guy. I’d rather do anything than talk to her at the moment, but I have to tell
someone
I’m leaving. So I go over to the couch and yell over the music, “I’m leaving, bye,” and turn before she can say anything back. I’ll just text Em and the others once I’m safely in a cab on my way home.

But Cass grabs my arm and shouts, “Wait, are you okay?”

“Like you care,” I snap back over my shoulder, wrenching out of her grasp. I have to get out of here this second. I untangle my coat from the pile on the floor and book out of the apartment as fast as I can.

I’m waiting for the elevator, trying to keep the tears from coming while I’m still where anyone can see me, when Cassidy comes running into the hall, clutching her coat and purse.

“Kelsey, what happened? You can’t just run off if something—”

“Go away, Cassidy!” I pretend to be looking at my phone.
Ugh, why won’t the elevator come?

“Come on, I’m serious. What’s going on?”

I spin around to face her. “Oh, so you’re talking to me now?”

“Am I
talking
to you? Kelsey, I’m asking if you’re okay!” The elevator doors open and I dash inside. Cassidy follows me.
Dammit. Why can’t she just leave me alone with my misery?

“Cassidy, can you please not
follow
me right now? Nothing is wrong. I just want to go home,” I insist. “And you’re pretty much the last person I want to be with right now, anyway.” The elevator stops and some man gets in.
Awesome. An audience.

“First of all, I don’t believe you,” Cassidy stage-whispers as the man looks at the ceiling. “And second, I’m trying to help you. I didn’t start this fight, you know—you’re the one who was, like, mad at me for hooking up with Jordan when you never even went out with him or anything! That’s so unfair!”

I cannot believe the Jordan showdown is finally happening and it’s in an elevator in front of a strange man on the newly upgraded worst night of my life. And since I’m still reeling from the Sam situation, I can barely even care about stupid Jordan at the moment. Also, the man is sweating. Like, a lot.

I blurt out, “Cassidy, you
knew
I liked Jordan since
forever
. We talked about it a million times! Do you have any idea how I felt when I found out you were hooking up with him behind my
back
?!”

“Kelsey, it doesn’t work that way—you can’t just claim a guy! And anyway, it’s not like I rubbed it in your face.”

“You
totally
rubbed it in my face! What do you call—”

“And then you were
sooo
happy to tell me about Lori Soler, weren’t you?”

The elevator finally stops at the lobby and Cassidy stomps out. This time I follow
her,
leaving the sweaty guy behind me, shaking his head. I’m seriously pissed off, which is an excellent diversion from being devastated about the Sam thing. “I was telling you the
truth
!” I practically shout. The doorman looks over at us warily. I lower my voice but get right in her face. “I was trying to be a good friend even though you basically stole my dream guy, and you didn’t even listen. You said I was pathetic and stopped speaking to me!”

The doorman has one eye on me as he says something into his walkie-talkie. I don’t even care, I’m so mad.

“Cassidy, you’re supposed to be one of my best friends, but you treated me like some complete stranger you couldn’t care less about. You were a
total bitch
for no reason—you could’ve talked to me about it in the beginning instead of sneaking around. And now what? You think you’re going to suddenly win a prize for friendship after months of not talking to me because you followed me out of a party when I told you to leave me
alone
? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not going to happen!”

Cass opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but then she shuts it. She looks at the floor. The doorman stares at his clipboard.

Then Cass says quietly, “You’re right. I
was
a bitch, and I did go behind your back. I was just, like … I don’t know. I really liked him, too. And then I thought you were trying to get back at me with the Lori thing, and when I found out you were right about that … I felt like an idiot. And it was too late. But I’m really, really sorry. And I
do
want to make sure you’re okay. Okay? So … are you okay?”

Cassidy looks all teary, and that makes the tears I’ve been holding back spring up to the surface. I sort of choke out, “No, I’m not okay. Can we get out of here?”

I start crying really hard as Cassidy puts her arms around me, and she leads me outside to get a cab. Through my tears, I tell her I’m so sorry I didn’t find a way for us to talk sooner—I should have. She’s one of my besties, after all. Then I give her the rundown on the whole Sam thing and how stupid I feel.

“This Sam guy sounds like a total d-bag, Kels,” Cass says firmly. “And don’t feel dumb. You told him to get off you and he acted like a jerk. He was trying to make you do stuff you didn’t want to, and that’s
not
okay.”

She’s stroking my hair, which is very soothing, and I’m finding it much easier to breathe without choking on sobs. Which is good, because the cabdriver keeps looking at me in the rearview mirror warily, as if he thinks I’m going to puke. I stick my tongue out at him, which is incredibly immature and makes me feel a smidge better.

She continues, “Guys think they can do whatever they want. You have to be, like—”

“But didn’t you have sex with Jordan?”

Oops. Well, I guess that’s out there now.

Cass gasps—literally, her mouth drops wide open. “Kelsey,
no.
God, I mean, come
on
. Did you really think that? Does anyone
else
think that? I mean, we hooked up a lot. And I
thought
about it. But that is
it
. I can’t believe you thought that!”

For a second, I think she’s pissed at me and maybe we’re back to being in a fight, but then she starts giggling like crazy. Which makes me laugh, too, even through my leftover tears.

I can’t believe how relieved I am; I mean, either way it wouldn’t really affect me and yet I feel so good just knowing the truth after all these months of speculating about it. So maybe there
isn’t
all this behind-the-scenes heavy action going on then, at least not in my grade. Not among my friends, anyway. Which means maybe I’m not a total loser after all—well, not in terms of guys.

But I still feel completely awful about the Sam experience. I just can’t help it.

32

It’s been almost a week, but despite one repaired friendship and two halting but complete run-throughs of
Fiddler on the Roof,
all I can think about is what happened at the party. What I said, what Sam said, what he did, everything. Is there something about me that makes it impossible for things to work out with the guys I like? And how, I’d like to know, am I ever even going to get past first frickin’ base if everyone I kiss acts like a
total jerk
five seconds later and doesn’t even give me a
chance
?

I’m trying so hard not to be depressed over some stupid guy I barely know who dissed me. Em says that obviously there is absolutely nothing wrong with me, and Lexi says if she had known what was going on she would’ve punched Sam in the neck. JoJo and Cassidy keep insisting that it’s never too late and we should go back to his building with baseball bats and crossbows.

The worst thing is, even though he’s a total jerk, I still wish it had ended differently with Sam. I could be getting cute texts from him
right now,
but instead he and his friends—including Ben—are probably still laughing their heads off about it. Thank God he doesn’t go to our school. Lexi swears that Robby hasn’t mentioned a thing about it to her, but … I think she’s just saying that to be nice. And no matter how hard I work to focus on other things—the show, school, my annoying family—Sam keeps sneaking back into my thoughts and I feel lousy all over again.

Friday afternoon during a free period, I’m sitting in the hall with Em, quizzing her on French verbs. She tosses her flash cards onto the floor next to her. “I hate French. I’m never going to need to speak French. I don’t even like French
food
! Why do I have to learn this stuff?” she laments.

“You’re asking
me
? I take Latin, for crying out loud. It’s literally a dead language.”

“Yeah, but that’s only because your mom made you for SAT vocab prep. I
chose
French.” Em takes a pack of gum out of her pocket and offers me a piece, which I delightedly accept. “So … Kels. Have you considered, you know, going to talk to that Ben guy again? Lexi keeps saying that he really—”

“Em, I am totally and completely done with guys. Especially any guys connected to Sam. Besides, ‘that Ben guy’ was supposed to make sure no more pictures of me—ugh. Never mind. Can we talk about something else? Please? Or go back to French verbs?”

“Okay, okay. But will you think about it? Because—”

“
Reluire
?” I pronounce horribly, reading off an index card.