Page 141 of On His Mind

He goes still beneath me.

“There’s a party this weekend,” I add.

“Right.”

“Maybe my new roommate will want to come.” I nod against his chest. “The girls will love her. I’ll call her tomorrow.”

I don’t call her the next day.

I tell myself it’s the work, and there is a mountain of it, everything I’ve let slide while I’ve traded sleep for stolen midnight hours. But the truth is I need one more day to hold the room empty, even knowing it’s finished. One more day.

When I finally call Melly, she’s so thrilled she moves in that same afternoon, boxes and all. Mara’s here when she arrives, mid-download on the weekend’s gossip about Lucy and Benson. That they might make their debut as an actual public couple at the Hawthorne party tonight.

Mara, being Mara, invites Melly along before she’s even set the last box down.

“Oh — I don’t know,” Melly says, and she glances at me like turning it down might wound me.

I give her a small, easy smile to let her know it wouldn’t.

Mara keeps working on her anyway, and Melly says something about her boyfriend coming over, and Mara — no filter, none — asks straight out if he’shot.I go quiet, because I didn’t know Melly had a boyfriend. Not that it matters, it’s just that I’d been picturing a night of only girls, no boys dragged into the daylight of it. There’s a pause before Melly answers Mara, a small careful pause, and something about the pause of it makes me hope, quietly, that he’s a good one. That her hesitation doesn’t mean what pauses like that usually mean.

That night, Mara and I get ready at Gianna and Lucy’s.

Mara warns me on the drive over that the two of them are still tense with each other, but she’s being dramatic, because the second I step through the door, Gianna’s got 90s music shaking the walls and Lucy’s right beside her at the mirror, the two of them passing a mascara wand back and forth like nothing was ever wrong.

And because Mara can see the tension’s gone, she takes it as license to talk, at length, about how unfairly hot Benson Reeve is.

“Would you stop.” Gianna scoffs into the mirror. “He’s my brother. And now he’s her boyfriend.”

“Oh — so it’s official?” Mara swings around to look at Lucy, then at me, like I’m somehow part of this situation.

Lucy goes pink. Gianna rolls her eyes.

“Yes,” Gianna says. “It’s official. Will youstop.”

The warning bounces right off her. Mara just moves down the roster instead, cataloging every good-looking boy at Hawthorne, then on the hockey team, and when she lands on Drew Faulkner and Theo Marsh, I laugh before I can help it.

“What’s funny?” Mara’s eyes cut sideways, gleaming — a woman who’s just scented blood in the water.

“It’s nothing.”

“No.” She sets her drink down. “Do you have a crush?”

“God, no.” I shake my head.

“Penelope would literally never,” Gianna says.

I tip my head to one side. “I actually did. For a minute.”

All three of them stop what they’re doing and turn to look at me.

“Theo,” I admit. “Briefly. And it was only ever sex.”

Mara’s mouth drops open. “Just sex?I didn’t know you had that in you.”

“You’re joking.” Gianna stares. “Theo?Marsh?”

“I know, I know.” I’m laughing now. “My old roommate was hooking up with Drew, so it was forced proximity, I guess.”