Bad Girl Reputation by Elle Kennedy

Heidi: The usual.

Meaning Evan and Cooper’s house. The place is loaded with emotional landmines.

Me: I don’t know if that’s a good idea.

Heidi: Come on. A couple drinks then you can bail.

Heidi: Don’t make me come get you.

Heidi: See you there.

Me: Fine. Bitch.

I stifle a sigh, as my tired brain tries to work through yet another pitfall to consider. Settling back into town, I was excited to reconnect with old friends and spend more time with others, but trying to dodge Evan makes that more complicated. I can’t very well draw a line down the center of town. And no part of me wants the summer to devolve into tests of loyalty and calling dibs on our tight web of friends, ties crossing and overlapping. It isn’t fair to either of us. Because as much as I know nothing good comes from letting Evan back in, I have no intentions to hurt him. This is my punishment, not his.





CHAPTER 5

EVAN

All the freaks come out at night. Under a full moon, we’re the hidden images of ourselves, revealed in silver light. It’s the Bay turned wild with inhibition and mischief, everybody hot and bothered and aching for a good time. Any excuse for a party.

On the beach, dozens of our friends, and more than a few random tagalongs, surround a bonfire. Our house is set back just beyond the dunes and grassy tree-dotted lawn, its outline evident only in the orange porch lights. It’s a good time, kicking back with a few beers, smoking a bowl. A couple people with guitars haggle over song requests while a nearby group plays strip glow frisbee. Whatever it takes to get laid these days, I guess.

“So this clone is wasted, right,” Jordy, an old high school friend of ours, says to those of us gathered around the fire, sitting on a driftwood log while he rolls a joint. Dude could do this shit with his eyes closed and it’d still be the tightest, neatest roll you’ve ever seen. “And the guy stumbles into our table. Like knocks right into us. He keeps calling me Parker.”

We laugh, because it’s such a clone name. Those collar-wearing pansy-ass Richie Riches who go to Garnet College are nothing if not predictable. Can’t hold their liquor and making it everyone else’s problem.

“For like twenty minutes he’s talking to us, holding on to the table to keep from splattering on the floor. No idea what the hell he’s babbling about. Then suddenly he’s like, hey, come on, bros, after-party at my house.”

“No,” Mackenzie says, eyes flashing wide and dread in her voice. “You did not.” She’s keeping Cooper in a better mood tonight, sitting in his lap with her tits shoved up in his face. Got him well occupied, which is a relief. I was getting sick of his tantrums.

Jordy shrugs. “I mean, he insisted. So the four us, right, are pretty much having to carry this guy out of the bar. Then he hands me his keys and says, you drive, it’s the blue one. I press the button on the fob, and this Maserati SUV flashes its lights at me. Like no way, right? That’s a hundred-thousand-dollar car. I’m pretty sure I stepped in piss at some point in that dirty bar bathroom, but sure, guy.”

“Just tell me he still has his kidneys,” I say with a grin.

“Yeah, yeah. We didn’t chop him or the car for parts.” Jordy waves his hand, then lights the joint. “Anyway. So the guy goes, Car, take me home. And the thing is like, okay, Christopher, here’s your route home. At that point I’m thinking, well, shit. So I rev that baby up and start driving. About a half hour later we get to his stupid-huge mansion down the coast. I’m talking iron gate and topiaries and shit. So we make it there alive and the dude’s like, hey, want to see something cool?”

Always the famous last words. Like the time our buddy Wyatt tried the knife trick from Aliens and had to get thirty-seven stiches and have a tendon reattached. Come to think of it, that was one of the last times Genevieve and I hung out. Which, until all the blood, was a pretty good time. Can’t say for sure how we ended up on the sixty-five-foot Hatteras sportfishing boat out in the middle of the bay, only that we had a nightmare of a time getting it to the dock and somehow still managed to come ashore about ten miles from where we were aiming. Navigating gets a hell of a lot harder in the dark after a few Fireballs.

I can’t believe I’d almost forgotten about that night. But I guess I’ve done a lot of forgetting over the last year. Or tried to, at least. For a while, I expected Gen would show up as if nothing had happened. Like she overslept for six months. Then seven, eight months—a year gone, and I’d finally trained myself to stop thinking about her every time this thing or that reminded me of another time when. So of course, just when I’ve almost got her out of my system, she’s back. A fresh, unfiltered shot straight into my bloodstream when I was damn near clean. Now all I taste are her lips. I feel her nails down my back every night while I’m lying in bed. I wake up hearing her voice. It’s infuriating.

“This crazy bastard thinks he’s Hawkeye or some shit,” Jordy says, passing the joint around the circle. “Running around with a bow, shooting flaming arrows all over his backyard. I’m like, nah, white boy, I’ve seen this movie. The guys and I are gonna bail but, oh, right, we drove this dude’s car and we’re stuck out here behind an iron gate.”

I can’t help glancing toward the house. I keep expecting Gen to come walking out of the shadows. I feel Mackenzie giving me the eye and realize she’s caught me looking. Or rather, caught me hoping. Because I know Heidi or one of the girls will have invited Gen, and if she doesn’t come, it’s because she’d rather hide out at her dad’s place than chance seeing me again. The notion seriously grates.