Page 75 of Rewrite the Rules

Reese peeks up from her curly blonde mane. Reese really is just all hair. She is nestled into my living room sofa downstairs and has a magazine spread across her lap as she sips from one of my mugs.

“How long have you been here?”

“I got here like thirty minutes ago. You were snoring like a lumberjack so I didn’t want to wake you. I was in the building when you texted me.”

“Eli?” I ask. Reese’s lawyer friend happens to share my building. On more than one occasion she’s done the walk of shame up two floors to my apartment.

She doesn’t offer an explanation, she simply shrugs before setting down her mug and climbing the rickety stairs. She crawls to the other side of my bed making the springs under my tired old mattress creak in complaint. I’ve had this bed since college. I’ve had my favorite bra since college. I have my same best friends from college. I’m the same Adler that I was when I was seventeen years old. Until tonight.

Until everything changed.

Reese fluffs the extra pillow and tucks it under her head. She pats my pillow and I lie back down. Her face is a few inches from mine. This would be borderline awkward for anyone else, anyone who didn’t share a tiny bedroom for the majority of four years.

“How do you feel?”

“Tired.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Sort of, but I think I’m out of words.”

“Well, that’s not like you at all.” Reese’s eyes bulge as she teases me.

“I don’t feel like me right now.”

“Did you and Joel go all the way tonight?”

I nod.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you tell him it was your first time?”

I shake my head against my cotton pillowcase that still smells like my sweet amber-scented fabric softener. “It didn’t come up.”

She rolls her eyes. “He probably would’ve treated you differently if he knew.”

“That would’ve been ideal.”

Reese’s brows furrow and she sits up. “Did he hurt you?” she hisses. “Because I’ll kill him. Actually, I’ll do worse. I’ll sic Quinn on him.”

I tap her pillow, asking her to lie back down. “Easy girl. He was a perfect gentleman. He was kind and considerate andgenerous.”

“What an asshole,” she scoffs before scrunching her nose. “Why are you crying?”

“Because it was just…I don’t know. We did everything and then I just ran out of there. I came home and barricaded under my covers. I have so many feelings weighing me down I can’t move. I didn’t even shower. I just collapsed.”

“And here I thought that was marshmallow fluff in your hair.” Reese pulls a disgusted face. My hand instinctively flies up to my head. “Made you look.” She laughs. “But since you nominated me for this talk—an honor which I’ll be rubbing in all the girls’ faces tomorrow, by the way, I have to ask…”

She doesn’t have to ask. “Yes, we used a condom.”

“Good girl.”

“Pieces, did I make a big mistake?”

“What do you mean?”

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