“You kissed her. Again?”
“Ah, come in, why don’t you. You know, it was a good thing I wasn’t mid-wank.”
“Ew.” Her face screws up unattractively. “Why would you even… so gross.”
I stare at her, waiting for her to get to the point.
“You kissed Poppy on New Year’s Eve?” she screeches.
“Keep your voice down, Har. I don’t need the whole street knowing.”
“That had better not be because you’re ashamed of it.”
“Keep your panties on, Har. It was a game, we kissed, end of.”
Her chin drops. “Are you really saying this to me?”
“It’s the truth. Would you rather I lie?”
“I know the truth. Poppy told me the truth.”
“Did she?” I smirk.
“Did she tell you how she was like putty in my hands?”
“You’re a fucking dog. Stay away from my friends, Zayn. I mean it.”
“Too late, lil’ sis. I’ve had a taste of both.”
“You fucking…” She flies at me, her arms flailing around as she tries to hit me but she’s no match for me and in seconds I have her wrists in my grasp and her pinned to the bed.
“You really want to do this?” I ask, thinking of all the fights she’s lost against me over the years.
“Fuck you, Zayn. Stay away from my friends.”
“I try, Har. I really do,” I lie.
“Pig,” she shouts, fighting to get away from me.
After a few seconds, I release her and push her from the bed. She lands on the floor with a thump.
“I fucking hate you,” she seethes, picking herself up and smoothing her hoodie down.
“Aw, I love you too, Har-Har,” I say softly, using the name I used to call her as a kid.
Her lips purse and her tiny fists clench. I just about refrain from laughing at her. If she’s trying to look menacing then she needs to try harder.
“You need to learn to fight. Maybe that’s what we could do this weekend. Hell knows there are enough kids in that hellhole that could use a punch or two.”
“You want to teach me to fight?”
“Sure, why not? You should be able to look after yourself. Impressing an attacker with your cheer moves isn’t going to get you out of trouble.”
She raises a brow.
“Did you want anything else?”
“No. Just…”
“Stay away from your friends. I’ll see what I can do.”
I wink and she groans as she storms out of my room as fast as she entered. Just to be a bitch, she leaves the door open.
7
Poppy
“So…” Ruby says, her gaze trained on me as we place our trays down on the table we’ve just taken over in the window of our favorite diner in the mall. “A little birdie told me something interesting yesterday.”
I don’t need her to say anything else, I already know the words that are about to fall from her lips and I’m already groaning internally. I guess my hopes for Harley to keep the gossip to herself was a big ask.
“You kissed Zayn!” she all but squeals, earning us a few unimpressed stares from the others around us.
“Yes,” I mutter. “I’d been tagged, so he was just seeing it through.”
“And you kissed him knowing you were a tag?”
“No, I had no idea. I kissed him because… I’m an idiot.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “No, you kissed him because you’d heard how good he is.”
“Trust me, knowing that every other girl in school knows just how good he is, is not the reason I did it.”
“So why did you?” she asks, focusing her attention on her lunch.
“Because… I don’t know. It was a serious lapse in judgment, that’s all I know.”
“Really? You’re sticking with that lie?”
“It’s not a lie, it shouldn’t have happened.”
“Oh, so you haven’t been craving a repeat ever since his fifteenth birthday?” She raises a brow.
“No, I haven’t.”
“That’s just bullshit and you know it.”
“Why are you so keen for me to kiss him? I thought you wanted him for yourself.”
“Meh,” she mumbles around a mouthful of food. “I’ll have him to play with if you don’t want him.”
“You have already played with him,” I remind her.
“Not really. It was mostly Laurie, I was just… in the room.”
“But—” I start to argue, remembering a little too well how she described that night to us after the event.
“I may have exaggerated a little.”
“A little?”
“Yeah, I mean, I kissed him. Touched a bit. But nothing really happened.”
“But you want it to?”
“Not if you want him.”
“I don’t want him,” I argue.
“So he’s not the one you fall asleep at night thinking about then?”
I damn near spray her with the soda I’ve just taken a sip of. “No, no, I do not.” Big fat lie.
“Sure. And I’m guessing you’re going to try to tell me that you haven’t thought about that kiss after the event, what could have happened had it not come out that you were a tag, what might have happened if he took your hand and led you up to his bedroom.”
My cheeks burn with the truth but despite the fact I know she can see it, I still insist on trying to plead my innocence.
“No. It was just a kiss. I wasn’t going to… you know.”
“Fuck him?”
“Shush, Ruby. People can hear you.”
“And? It’s okay to talk about sex, you know.”
“Oh yeah, and when exactly did you decide that?”
She pales at my question and I mentally kick myself for going there.
Ruby was probably the most innocent out of the three of us, and that was saying a lot seeing as Harley and I are pretty innocent. But then he barreled into her life and in just a few short days, he changed her. Gone was the sweet and innocent Ruby, and in her place was a girl who wanted to do anything to help rid her of his memory.
It took us weeks to get her to talk, for her to tell us about her stepbrother’s visit and the things that went down between them. I can’t really blame her for wanting to erase it, but I’m not sure suddenly working her way around the football team like the other cheer sluts is the best way to go about it.
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she argues, but the quiver in her voice says otherwise. After she told us about what happened, she made us promise never to talk about it again. She wanted to forget he ever existed. I got it, although I’m not sure that locking it all up in a little box is the healthiest way to deal with it but she was adamant that it was over and that he was gone for good, so we had no choice but to do as she asked.
“So?” she asks, turning this back on me.
“So what?”
“You want him, right?”
I sink down in my chair and blow out a breath. “No.”