Page 67 of You're so Bad

We pile out of the car and head inside. There’s not much in there. Just a small bed that my feet are going to hang off of, plus a little table that looks like it’s made of matchsticks and a couple of chairs to match. If one of them doesn’t fall apart by the time we leave tomorrow, it’ll be a miracle.

On the table is a little wicker basket—the kind of thing that’s useless for anything but giving gifts people probably don’t want—filled with different pompoms. The one at the center is enormous, bigger even than the one Shauna gave Bianca last night.

“Looks like someone’s enjoying this game, Tiger.” I throw the central pompom to her. “But she won’t be enjoying it for much longer.”

ChapterEighteen

Shauna

Group text:The Evans Sisters Want the Goods

Mira:You’ve been shortchanging us.

Delia:Leonard hasn’t told Burke anything. Are you at the sleepover camp? Is there only one bed?

Me:Yes, and we plan to make use of it.

Mira:I hope you don’t only mean for sleeping. It would be a real tease if you’re just talking about sleeping.

Me:Nope. Sleep is the last thing on my mind.

Delia:Have fun! ;-)

Mira:Remember, let him rock your body but DON’T fall for him.

Delia:She can if she wants to, Mira. Stop being bossy.

Mira:Trust me. The first time I saw Byron with his guitar, I knew I wanted to fuck him. If I’d left it at that, I wouldn’t have had to pour bleach in his laundry this morning.

Me:I’m pretty sure no one made you do that.

Mira:He brought a woman home last night.

Mira:It’s a one-bedroom apartment, and he forgot that it was my turn to sleep in the bed. They literally fell on me while I was sleeping.

Me:Okay, maybe he DID make you do that.

This party should be boring. It should beoutrageouslydull. Dinner is a buffet of food, the courses alphabetically arranged, on the picnic tables lined up against the back wall of the big front cabin. The soft jazz Colter—and probably no one else—loves is playing softly over the speaker. The collection of beer is subpar since Bianca made a point of saying not all beer is camping beer, whatever that means. But it isn’t boring…because ofhim.

People have been gravitating toward Leonard from the moment we walked in, me still in my cutoffs, him in those shorts I pulled down to have my way with him. Some of them were probably sent over to us as Bianca’s spies but not all of them. Leonard has this gift that I didn’t let myself fully acknowledge before now—an unreal ability to draw people out and get them to cut loose.

He’s the one who issued the ABC food challenge after Bianca rang the bell to announce dinner—trying one food for every letter, including X, Y, and Z, which have the fewest offerings.

“Won’t you get sick?” Shelly asked with genuine horror. She’s obviously scarred from the whole hotboxing incident, but much less scarred than she would have been if she’d known what I was doing in that car.

I hadn’t planned on taking him into my mouth again. I don’t know what possessed me, other than that it turned me on to listen to him carry on a conversation while I was driving him crazy with my mouth. I liked the feeling of his hand in my hair, of his dick rising up to meet me because he couldn’t completely control himself.

“Oh no,” Leonard told her with a wink. “That’s all been sorted.”

Ten of the thirty or so people present took him up on the challenge, one of them Melly, the blond woman who was eying him up at the pompom party last night. She finally introduced herself. Leonard and I are making our way down the alphabetical buffet, followed by her. The first few people have ravaged the buffet, knocking a few of the cutesy signs over. Bianca’s muttering under her breath to Colter in the corner closest to the buffet. They look like Barbie and Ken in the camping set my mother refused to buy me when I was kid, him wearing a flannel shirt and her in cut-offs and a checkered shirt that ties above the waist.

“Is your kitten okay after last night?” Melly asks Leonard. Her gaze darts toward Bianca, then she adds in a hushed undertone, “I felt so bad about what happened. It looked like Bee was going to throw her clear across the room.”

Salt meet wound.

Her friend is trailing after her, looking bored and holding a Bud Light like it’s the only thing that will save her from falling asleep. It’s obvious she’s not that into the Bianca show.

“Yeah,” Leonard says, but I notice the way his jaw is flexing. When I checked my phone earlier and answered the Evans sisters’ texts, I noticed that my grandmother had already sent us at least ten photos of Bean. In one of them, the kitten’s wearing a hideous dayglo yellow sweater.

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