Page 31 of Destined To Fall

“Okay, I’m sorry,” I splutter some more as I catch up.“I’m good.” He raises a brow, and I chuckle again.“Your education at BU was lacking.”

“Indeed, it was. Yours wasn’t?”

“Not at all. Very in-depth. I was an honor student, top of my class and all that.”

“I bet you were,” he says with a curve of his mouth.“But what about high school?”

I raise a brow.“Are you asking if I was a good girl, Jer? Because I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that.”

“Yeah, I think I do,” he says with a soft chuckle.“Did you just call me Jer?”

I shrug.

“Seems only fair.”

“Yes, it does. I can’t imagine you in high school, though. You don’t seem like the jock or the geek type.”

“You’d be correct.”

Hmm. I think back to the little Jeremy’s told me, and one thing grabs my attention.“You met Luke in high school, right?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“You seem like an odd pairing, is all. He’s all arty-farty and you seem more mainstream. Wait, were you the emo kid? No, no. The drama kid?”

“Yeah, I guess we are,” he muses,“and I was neither. You think I’m mainstream?”

I shrug.“So, how did you two become friends? The loners at the lunch table? Because I can’t picture that either.” Jeremy has this…magnetism I can’t deny.

“Nothing like that. It’s kind of a long story.”

“That’s all I get?”

He shrugs.

“We have two blocks. Talk fast.”

He chuckles halfheartedly.“He slept with my girlfriend. We’ve been friends ever since. So maybe it’s not that long a story.”

My eyes go wide, and I stumble a step.“Say what? How does that even work? And what a ho of a girlfriend.”

He laughs.“Yeah, it turns out she was.”

“Okay, I’m going to need the long-winded version.” It possibly explains a little about his reaction at the gallery.

He sighs.“We were fifteen, crazy in love and all that.” He rolls his eyes.“We were also doing the whole wait-for-prom thing, which was in six weeks. But apparently, she couldn’t wait.”

“She lost her virginity to Luke? After waiting for you? What a bitch.” What a moron.

“Not exactly. There was a house party. Someone’s parents were out of town, and it turned into this big keg thing. I couldn’t go, was on, uh…babysitting duties, but truthfully, I didn’t want to. It wasn’t really my scene, but Marti did that whole girl-pout thing, really wanting to go instead of being stuck inside with me. I would never say no to her, so she went alone.”

My eyes narrow, knowing where this is going.

“She got wasted. Onething led to another.”

“Yeah, for hoes,” I mutter.

He chuckles.“All weekend, she didn’t say a word.”

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