Bad Girl Reputation by Elle Kennedy

“Hey.” Heidi, who’s seated across from me at the high-top table, snaps her fingers in my face, waking me from my bitter stewing. Of all the girls in our group, I’m closest with Heidi, who’s probably the most like me. With her platinum bob and razor-sharp tongue, Heidi’s a total badass, a.k.a. my kind of girl. She also knows me far too well.

“You alive in there?” she adds, eyeing me with suspicion.

I answer with a half-hearted smile, ordering myself to be more present. Although we texted often when I was gone, I haven’t hung out with my friends in ages.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly. I stab at the ice in my virgin cocktail with a straw. Nights like this, I could use a real drink.

“You sure you don’t want something stronger?” Alana asks, temptingly holding out her glass of tequila with just the lightest mist of lime and simple syrup.

“Leave her alone.” Steph, ever the defender of the weak, throws herself between me and peer pressure. “You know if she has a drink the convent won’t take her back.”

Okay, so she isn’t all that nice.

“Yes, Sister Genevieve,” Heidi says with a sarcastic smirk, speaking slowly like I’m an exchange student or something. An attempt at a crack on how long I’ve been away. “It must be overwhelming with all these lights and loud music. Do you remember music?”

“I moved to Charleston,” I tell her, throwing up my middle finger. “Not Amish country.”

“Right.” Alana takes another sip of her drink, and the salty-sweet smell really does make me thirsty. “The notorious dry city of Charleston.”

“Yeah, no, that’s funny,” I say to their teasing. “You’re hilarious.”

They don’t get it. Not really. And I don’t blame them. These girls have been my best friends since we were kids, so to them there’s never been anything wrong with me. But there was. An uncontrollable destructive streak that drove my every decision when I was drinking. I wasn’t making good decisions. Couldn’t find the middle ground between moderation and obliteration. Other than a regrettable lapse last month on a trip to Florida where I woke up in a stranger’s bed, I’ve kept pretty well to sobriety. Not without effort, though.

“Then here’s to Gen.” Heidi raises her glass. “Who may have forgotten how to have a good time, but we’ll take her back anyway.”

Heidi’s always been good for a backhanded compliment. It’s her love language. If she’s not insulting you at least a little, you might as well be dead to her. I appreciate that about her, because there’s never any confusion about where she stands. It’s an honest way to live.

But she throws me for a loop by softening her tone again. “Welcome home, Gen. I really did miss you.” Then, as if realizing she’d actually—gasp—revealed a sliver of emotion, she scowls at me, adding, “Don’t ever leave us again, bitch.”

I hide a smile. “I’ll try not to.”

“Welcome home,” Steph and Alana echo, raising their glasses.

“So fill me in,” I say, because I’d love to talk about literally anything else. Between the funeral and moving back home, all anyone does is ask me how I’m doing. I’m sick of myself. “What else is going on?”

“Alana’s banging Tate,” Steph spits out with too much enthusiasm, as if the declaration has been nervously pacing in the wings all night, waiting for its entrance. While Heidi and Alana are notoriously tight-lipped, Steph’s a huge gossip and has been since we were kids. She gets off on the drama, so long as it doesn’t involve her.

“Jesus, Steph.” Alana throws a cardboard coaster at her. “Say it a little louder.”

“What? It’s true.” Steph sips her drink with an unrepentant sparkle in her eyes.

“How’d that happen?” I ask curiously. Our friend Tate gets around, to put it mildly. Even among the more promiscuous in our wider circle of friends, he’s notorious. He’s not usually the type Alana goes for. She’s … well, particular, is a way of putting it.

Alana shrugs in response. “Darndest thing. I was stumbling around in the dark one night and, whaddya know, I tripped and fell on his dick.”

Interesting. Tis the season for summer hookups. Good for her, I guess.

Heidi rolls her eyes, unamused with Alana’s evasiveness. “More like hooking up since last fall.”

I raise an eyebrow. Since last fall? I’d never known either of them to be interested in long term. “So is this a thing, or … ?”

She gives another noncommittal head tilt that fails to convince. “An irregular occurrence of one-night stands. Of the extremely sporadic sort.”

“Then there’s Wyatt,” Steph adds like she’s sitting on a secret, all dumb smiles and arched eyebrows.

“Wyatt?” I echo in surprise. This revelation is even more baffling than the Tate one. “What about Ren?”

“You know how they’ve been doing the on-again/off-again dance for like three years? Dumping each other every other week? Well, it finally backfired,” Heidi reveals with a smirk. “She dumped him over something stupid, and he moved on.”

Wow. I definitely didn’t see that coming. Lauren and Wyatt were similar to me and Evan in that way, constantly breaking up and making up, but I never expected them to end it for good.