First Morning

First Morning

The next morning, I woke up to a loud knocking.

Something I Hadn’t Remembered:
Kay was due to come back the night before. She would have, undoubtedly, heard the story.
This was certainly her, knocking on the door.
She would be pissed.

Wearily, Craig rolled out of the bottom bunk and opened the door. I kept my eyes closed tightly and pretended that I didn’t exist. It wasn’t an easy thing to pretend, let me tell you.



Sure as spitting, I was right about the identity of our early-morning visitor. “Tell me Sloan is in there,” Kay snarled, murder in her voice—presumably in poor Craig’s face. I winced. This didn’t look good for me.

But, to his credit, Craig kept his cool. “Are you going to yell at her?” he asked with more politeness that Kay perhaps deserved. “Because she sort of had a rough night—actually, we all did, if I’m being honest, here—and I don’t think she deserves to be yelled at right now. She’s sleeping.”

If I knew Kay, and I did, her face was probably turning an attractive shade of red as I listened. “Here’s the thing, buddy,” she snapped. “I honestly don’t give a shit if she’s had a bad night, right about now. I came home last night to find out that the marriage of my two best friends had basically dissolved in the three days I’ve been gone. And—I know you’re listening, Sloan”—everyone was listening, by now—“Ian got completely shitfaced and won’t tell me what happened. But since you’re here and your annoyingly straight-edged husband is completely pissed, and Pete is hanging out back home and not with his girlfriend, and Mark is too scared to tell me anything, I had to assume it was bad. And then I had to freaking clean up Ian’s puke and then drag my sorry ass over here to find out what happened. And if you don’t come out and talk to me right now, I’m going to punch a baby, okay?”

I was no idiot. I didn’t move.

And so the next thing I knew, I was being grabbed by the hair and shaken rather violently. Kay never did have any problem with violence when it suited her. I opened my eyes to see Craig clutching his middle and gasping for breath. Apparently Kay had punched him in the stomach. Brutal. That was simply brutal.

“Wake up,” she ordered sternly. And then she shook me some more.

Clawing at her wrists, I rolled out of bed. Keel had lent me a pair of old sweats for the night, and so I was clearly looking my best for this confrontation. It was a simple fact of life that it was easier to deal with an uncomfortable situation when you looked your best. At least then you were at some sort of advantage against your average self. Studies did show, after all, that attractive people did reap all the benefits.

When I was fully on my feet, she released my hair. “Talk,” she ordered.

As far as Kay and I went, I had never, ever worn the pants. It was disappointing, but it was true. She could always get whatever information out of me that she wanted. And that was how we lived, basically. Kay wanted, Kay received. She found out when I had my first kiss, when I lost my virginity. She was the very first one to know that I was engaged, that I’d gotten my period, and that my dog had died. She could tell when I was upset, when I was lying, when I was telling the truth. In short, she knew everything about me. This thing with Kyle was probably the first secret I had ever kept from her.

So I simply sighed. “What do you want to know?” I asked. Avoidance had always been my only option.

Kay looked hurt. Maybe she wasn’t even hurt for herself. Maybe she was hurt for Ian. And maybe she was hurt for me. I couldn’t really tell. “Why?” she asked. Apparently we were down to monosyllables.

I looked around. Everyone else was pretending to mind their own business—except Craig, who made no pretense to be doing anything but staring and Kay with unadulterated animosity in his eyes—but I knew they were listening. “Let’s go outside,” I invited. I didn’t need my shame to be witnessed by this new group of friends I was pulling around myself.

Because they didn’t see me as the adulteress. I was just some girl who had wound up with their friend. What the hell did they care, anyway, if I had been married? Who fucking cared? I was just another girl, another unimportant notch in the lipstick case, the girl who, if she disappeared, was only a fling, anyway.

Which was sort of distressing in some ways, but amazingly liberating in others. They didn’t care about my past, or my future. Only one of them had even the slightest investment in me. Only one of them. If I left Kyle, Keeley wouldn’t come looking for me the next morning with hell in her eyes, and punch the boy who stood between us. We didn’t have that kind of connection.
And, for now, at least, I wanted to keep it that way. So I pulled Kay outside to talk to her. Let the dirty laundry air in familiar quarters, at least.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. I was sorry. I was sorry that I had hurt everyone. It was too soon to tell if I was sorry that I had done it. But I was definitely sorry that I had upset her.

She sighed a sarcastic scoff. “Then why the hell did you do it?” Now I was worried—Kay wasn’t yelling at me, and she wasn’t angry. She sounded sad.

She sounded so sad that I had to look away from her face. My feet were bare against the damp dirt of the morning. I traced a circular pattern with my bare toe. “I was lonely,” I mumbled. Spoken aloud, it sounded like a terrible excuse. But I had been so lonely that I could hardly stand it. It had killed me, practically, how lonely I was. I had been unhappy and alone and lonely and it had sucked.

Sucked, sucked, sucked.

Maybe, if I was lucky, Kay hadn’t heard me.

She had.

“How do you figure?” I could tell that she was making a concentrated effort to keep all her tone neutral, not accusing. It was probably difficult. I could tell that it was difficult. And I appreciated the effort. I didn’t know if I could take more screaming.

Or maybe screaming would be better. I sort of wished that Ian had screamed at me the night before. Maybe it would have been easier if he’d yelled at me. Maybe if he’d hauled off and hit me, or something. But no. Instead he’d just gotten that disgusted tone, like nothing I could do or say would serve as any sort of explanation—and it probably couldn’t.

Instead of answering, I asked another question. “Was Ian really drunk?” I fretted. Ian did not drink. And, ever since I had been with him, I hadn’t really done any drinking, either. His abstinence was so strong that it was catching. He really believed in it. And I had abstained for him.

If Ian was drinking, that meant something very, very bad. If Ian was drinking, I had really hurt him. That was not acceptable.

Kay shook her head. No? “Completely trashed,” she informed me, dashing my hopes hopelessly. “And I couldn’t even get anything good out of Pete, because he was equally shitfaced. It was kind of scary, actually. I’ve never seen Ian like that. When he got back, he started crying, and then he started puking, and that was the first time anyone would tell me that anything was actually wrong, and he kept saying your name. I fucking thought you were dead or something, Sloan. I hope you appreciate all the worry you put me through.”

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t give a crap about Kay’s feelings at that moment. I was significantly more concerned with Ian and his well being. “Is he okay now?” I asked worriedly. Kyle would not have been happy to hear such concern. This was such bullshit.

Kay tilted her head curiously, like there was finally something she couldn’t quite figure out about me. “He’s okay,” she said slowly, softly, assessingly. “He’s asleep. He’s going to have one hell of a headache when he wakes up, but he’ll be okay, I think. I mean, physically. Given the whole piss drunk thing, I have a feeling it’s going to be kind of hard for him emotionally.”

“Oh my God,” I murmured.

Kay had apparently forgotten her original mission of gleaning an explanation, and seemed equally content to rattle off a trail of information that, yes, hurt a considerable amount. “Yes. I really think you fucked him for a good one, Sloan. I hope you’re happy. It would have been way kinder to just not marry the guy, you know. I mean, it’s better to at least be honest that you don’t love him, instead of sneaking around behind his back.”

Now I looked up at her sharply. “I do love him,” I snapped, perhaps a bit too loudly. If nothing else, I had to worry about my current living situation. “I love him.”

That sad smile was back on Kay’s face. She was as talented as Rae as far as manipulation went. I should have never even thought that she didn’t understand what I was about. She was merely playing me. Gosh damn but those pants she wore sure were nice. Embroidered and made out of a classy material. Metaphorically.

“Then why did you do it?” she asked again. It was almost as if she was trying to make me see something here. Not for nothing was Kay a psychology major. She was one hell of a mind trip.
And this time I really had no choice but to sigh. “I don’t know.” I guessed that I didn’t know, really. It hadn’t exactly been my best decision of all time, the whole Kyle thing. But it probably hadn’t been my worst decision of all time, either. And maybe it wasn’t completely my fault. No, it definitely wasn’t completely my fault. Ian had pushed and pushed and pushed and, sure, maybe I hadn’t had to take the bait, but he’d really, really pushed me to it.

Yeah, it was equally my fault and Ian’s. Or at least close to equally.

“You don’t know,” Kay repeated sarcastically. “Well, that’s a damn good reason, Sloan, let me tell you.”

She said it as if I didn’t already know it.