He threw a pillow at me. “You know you all think I’m sexy.”
“Whatever,” Jamie teased, tossing a scarf at him as she rolled her eyes. “You know you’re trying to impress Vanessa Austin with that new hair.”
He flipped his head to the side, brushing the ear-length blond hair from his eyes. “I don’t care what Vanessa Austin thinks about my hair, believe it or not. It’s not like she'll notice me anyway.”
“You never know,” I told him, crawling across the floor until I was sitting in front of him. “This could be your year, Sam.” He stared at me strangely, his eyes darting back and forth between mine as if he wanted to say something, but before he had a chance, Jamie spoke up.
“It could be all of ours. I, for one, am fully planning to get my first kiss this year. And Cait’s going to, too.”
“What?” Sam scowled. “How do you know?”
I groaned, covering my face. “We made a pact.” I leaned my head back on the bed, staring up at him, then shrugged. “It’s stupid, I know, but it’s the plan. You want in?”
“Who’s to say I haven’t already had my first kiss?” he asked.
“What?”
“No way!”
He smirked. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”
“Good thing you’re not a gentleman, then,” Jamie said, patting his leg forcefully. “Come on, are you being dumb? Who was it? Penny?”
His upper lip curled in apparent disgust. “Yeah, right. Why the hell would I kiss Penny?”
“You’re always texting her,” she said, swatting his phone. “Always hanging out…” She winked.
His frown grew more exaggerated. “She’s always texting me. There’s a difference. And I hardly ever hang out with her. She’s my neighbor and we have a ton of classes together. That’s it. She’s not even our age, she just skipped two grades.”
“I thought that’s what you liked about her. She’s all brainy, like you,” I joked, tapping my fingers on his head as I moved to sit on the bed next to him.
“No. She’s too weird,” he said firmly. “Besides, I like someone else…” His eyes fell to me for a split second, then darted away.
“Who?” Jamie pressed.
His cheeks were pink and he seemed to regret having said anything. “She goes to another school.”
“Who is it?” I asked, a heavy feeling in my stomach. Sam had never mentioned another girl to us, and we told each other everything… Didn’t we?
“You don’t know her.”
“We know who you know,” Jamie argued. “Come on, tell us. Why the secrecy? We tell you when we like someone.”
“Yeah, unfortunately,” he groaned, grabbing the plastic basketball on my floor and tossing it to the ceiling and catching it again.
Refusing to let the conversation be dropped, Jamie asked, “What’s her name?”
“Just forget it,” he said, still tossing and catching. “I was joking. And I haven’t kissed anyone, either.” He caught the ball a final time, tucked it under his arm, and ran a palm over his face.
“I knew it,” she said happily. “Welcome to the pact.”
“Pact?” He scowled. “No, I don’t want to be in your stupid pact.” His phone buzzed on the bed and, without checking it, he shoved it into his pocket.
“Suit yourself.” Jamie shrugged, looking at me. “I, for one, refuse to turn sixteen without having my first kiss.”
Sam looked doubtful. “I think you need someone else to agree to kiss you before you can just make that decision.”
“I have options,” she said defiantly, a fist on her cocked hip. “I’m holding out.”
“Holding out for what?”
I grinned. “For whom,” I corrected. “Jamie thinks she’s going to kiss Grant Du Bois.”
“What?” Sam asked, his voice breathless with shock. He fell back on the bed with uproarious laughter. “Yeah, right. Grant Du Bois doesn’t even know you exist.”
“Wrong,” Jamie said firmly. “We had English together last year. He was my partner for the Edgar Allan Poe thing, remember?”
Sam apparently didn’t, but I did. I remembered everything when it came to Grant and the rest of The Populars. I knew they were out of our league, severely out of mine and Sam’s, but Jamie had always been well-liked. If any of us were going to get to kiss Grant Du Bois, I had no doubt it would be her.
She wasn’t popular, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she was pretty enough, with long, wavy dark hair, freckles, and otherwise porcelain skin. Her parents could afford to buy her new clothes every school year and she’d had braces to straighten her teeth when we were in junior high.
“What about you? Are you planning to kiss one of the losers from Planet Popular, too?” Sam asked, eyeing me.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “In what universe?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Jamie scolded, dropping down on the floor next to me. “This is our year, Cait. I’m telling you. This is the year everything changes.” Her eyes were filled with hope as she said it.
She was right, of course.
Just not in the way any of us thought.
Chapter Three
Present Day
Some days, the words came easily, gliding from my brain as if a hot blade against ice. Other days, the words came to me slowly, each one as if I were having to invent it in my brain before I could use it. This was a slow day. I’d erased and rewritten the same sentence more than seven times and my dialogue was falling flat.
Nothing was working, and I knew it was partially because I couldn’t seem to find my focus. When I’d originally planned to return to Spider Lily, and Hotel Lilith in particular, I’d told myself I could put the past behind me and move on. That things would be different, everyone would be different—myself included—and I’d be able to sink into my work without obsessing over everything that happened.
Besides that, with a looming deadline, the idea of writing during the day, writing with complete silence, was impossible to pass up. Since the twins had been born, I’d been home with them, crafting most of my novels late at night after the house had gone quiet. Grant and I had tried a nanny in the beginning, but I found myself distracted—worrying and missing them so much that it did little good. Since their arrival, I tended to write in short bursts at night once I knew they were safe and sound in their beds or when Grant was home from work.
Now that my editor was on my case about finishing this novel and I was set to begin my latest press tour in just a few short weeks, I no longer had that luxury. This was my one chance to buckle down and get it done.
Apparently, I’d vastly overestimated my ability to ignore things. I never could’ve imagined just how hard it would be for me to work in this place. I knew it wouldn’t be a cakewalk, but time away had muddled my memory and washed away some of the pain. Here, it was back, and I was remembering why I hadn’t set foot in Hotel Lilith since I was eighteen years old.
I’d attended prom that night filled with hope for my future, and in a split second, everything had changed. I thought the night was supposed to be the best of my life, though it had turned into anything but.