Page 60 of Little Do You Know

Blake runs her hands over her face. “I’m such an idiot.”

I shake my head, laughing. “No. I hold that title. I teased Bash for weeks and then got mad when he hooked up with another girl. That same night, I stole his car and then asked him to have sex with me at a later date because I thought that fucking Sebastian would help me get over him. Jokes on me.”

“I still cannot believe you stole his car. You’re insane!” Her face scrunches up as she thinks harder about the timeline. “Wait—is that what you were so excited about the day Owen and I looked at my internship? I was your cover, and you didn’t even tell me what was happening! I thought you told him you changed your mind—actually, no. I’m torn between wanting to ask questions or plugging my ears so I have plausible deniability when your brother asks if I knew.”

I shrug, grinning stupidly. “Fine. I won’t tell you anything other than he conceded first by asking if it didn’t have to be a one-time thing. What can I say? I must be pretty mind blowing in bed.”

It at least gets Blake to crack a smile and laugh. “You two are a disaster, but I think you’re good together based on what I’ve seen. When are you telling Owen?”

“After my birthday in three days. I currently have a love-hate relationship with our bubble,” I say, considering the possibility that popping the bubble too soon will kill the relationship faster than anything. I can’t think that way, or I’m going to self-sabotage. I like Sebastian. I want to be with Sebastian. It doesn’t matter how badly my brother flips out. “We’re not done talking about you. We can talk about Bash later; I want to know if you’ll be okay?”

She cringes and shuts her textbook, finally accepting that I won’t let her get any studying done. “I’ll be fine. It sucks because a part of me misses Thomas, even though I’m the one who ended it. It’s all so confusing. I can’t make sense of any of it.”

“You’ll figure it out. I have faith,” I reassure Blake confidently. If Bash and I can make it work after every reason we have not to be together, then whenever Blake is ready for something with Owen, they’ll make it work too.

“I blame you for this. If you hadn’t run into me, I never would have been at your apartment and met your brother. Owen wasn’t kidding when he said you were a force of nature.”

I grin at the thought of him saying that to her because it’s what my parents used to say about me when we were kids. “Funny enough, that’s not the first time I’ve been told that.”

“I can believe it.”

~

Jake and Penelope are hitting it off rather well. Landon brought a Kappa he met last weekend while we danced after Bash and Owen’s football game. I was pleasantly surprised by both, but I’m more surprised by how much of my night I’ve spent with Vera. The Vera I’m with tonight is the one I remember before leaving. It’s only succeeded in further confusing my brain about what is going on with her. I held my tongue at the bar last weekend, but if she says something remotely close to that again, I’m not sure how much more I can take before I snap.

“Lia, do you remember when we were at the library for a project when we found a bottle of vodka hidden behind the biography of Abe Lincoln? We stuffed it in your backpack to go back to your house to try it.” She doubles over in laughter before she can finish the rest of the story of the first time we got drunk.

We were so stupid. “Yes! The guys found us wasted in the basement.”

Vera grins widely at me. “I thought they were going to tell on us, but all they wanted was the rest of the bottle.”

“I can’t believe that happened. Those were the days,” I say wistfully, thinking back. We used to have quite a bit of fun. Everything seemed so simple back then. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I’m simply making things up and seeing things that don’t exist.

“They were.”

Vera takes a drink of her beer, and I do the same, even though I despise the taste of it. Sober me wouldn’t be able to face Vera without asking what went wrong with our friendship and why she’s being so manipulative.

Penelope’s been giving me weird looks all night that I’m doing my best to ignore. I know exactly what she’s thinking, but I hope whatever was going on with Vera before might be over now. Is it wrong of me to want things to go back to how they used to be? Things haven’t been the same; maybe they aren’t supposed to be. I could take my own advice that I gave Blake yesterday when I told her that sometimes people outgrow each other.

What if all I’m doing is clinging to the memory of a person that no longer exists?

“I wonder how the game’s going? Owen said it was going to be a tough matchup,” I say, replacing Sebastian’s name with Owen’s as Penelope slides into the open seat beside me.

Today’s game was all Sebastian would talk about before they left because he was nervous. I told him whether they won or lost, there were lessons to learn no matter what the outcome was. It was the right thing to say because he finally shut up about football and kissed me.

Penelope looks at me with a knowing smile. “I don’t think it was Owen who said that. Must have been that boyfriend of yours,” she teases me in French. I roll my eyes, but I can’t stop the smile from forming. It’s nice hearing someone else call Sebastian my boyfriend.

Vera looks confused, so I switch back to English. “Sorry, she was just saying something about Owen being too cocky for his own good.”

“She has a point. It wouldn’t surprise me if he stared in a mirror daily to tell himself what a pretty boy he is.”

“At least he finally shaved his awful beard. It was driving me nuts.” I pretend to gag, and Penelope giggles.

“It was terrible,” Vera agrees. “Why did he even bother growing one in the first place?”

Shouldn’t she know the answer to that? Owen said that she hung out with them quite a bit.Stop. You are reading too much into this. I can’t look at Penelope, or Vera will ask why I’m being weird. “Who knows? It was there when I got back from France.” I try to shake off the strange feeling I have.

Then she says another thing that throws me for a loop. “Do you know who Bash is seeing? He said something the other night about seeing someone.”

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