Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [84]
And I was right.
The by-product of unburdening myself of B.S. has been one huge, hemorrhoidal pain in the ass that started with Scotty and shows no signs of clearing itself up.
Proving that her Len loyalty only goes so far, my mom waltzed Scotty right up to my bedroom yesterday even when I told her I was too exhausted from bonding with my peers to socialize with anyone until I went back to school.
“Look who it is, Jessie!” Mom stood in back of him so he couldn’t see her mimicking a bodybuilder and mouthing the words: HE’S STILL A CATCH.
“Jess, we’ve gotta talk about what happened last night,” he said when my mom shut the door behind him.
A lot had happened, yes. But nothing that could explain why Scotty was in my bedroom.
“We were getting pretty close last night. You know, dancing and hugging and stuff.”
“Is this about Manda?”
“Sorta.”
If my skull wasn’t being held together with Scotch tape and a prayer, I would’ve laughed. Manda had some nerve to be jealous. What about the way she was shoving her hooters in Marcus’s face?
“She of all people should never accuse anyone of flirting too much,” I replied.
Scotty laughed. “Oh, I don’t give a fuck about what she thinks. I know I’ve been pussywhipped, but not anymore.”
I had no idea where he was going with this. “So what’s this all about, then?”
He swooped down next to me on the bed. He smelled like Right Guard and the leather sleeves of his varsity jacket.
“I’m still into you.”
“Uh . . .” I picked up the shattered pieces of brain matter off the floor and put them back together again. “What?”
“I’m as serious as a motherfucker,” he said oh-so-poetically as he slipped his jacket off his shoulders. Scotty has muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. He has subcategories of muscles scientists and personal trainers haven’t classified yet.
“Scott,” I began.
“Scotty,” he said, stretching his meaty arms over his head so his T-shirt scooched up and revealed his happy trail and the bottom third of his six-pack. “Call me Scotty like you did last night.”
“Uh, okay. Scotty . . .”
He flashed what my mom would call a winning smile, but to me it was too rehearsed, too cheesy—a game-show-host grin. He put one bulky limb around me and I lost track of what I was going to say.
“We connected last night, Jess. You felt it, too.”
True, Scotty and I had a moment. It was the first time since sophomore year that I had been able to look at his face and see the old Scotty, the sincere, sweet stud-in-the-bud with a crustache, bedhead, and boogers in his nose. That gawky little boy was far more appealing than His Royal Guyness.
“It was just some really potent stuff,” I said while sliding out from under his weight. “It wasn’t me, it was E.”
“I’ve done E a dozen times and it never made me feel like that.”
I saw what was going on. His “relationships” have been so devoid of any substance that he was mistaking our drug-induced bonding as something more than it really was. It was kind of pathetic, actually.
This is what I was mulling over when he grabbed my face with his hammy hands and tried to kiss me. I leapt across the room like a character crafted by Industrial Light and Magic.
“Scotty! What the hell?”
“Oh, that’s right,” he said dismissively. “You don’t want to cheat on Len.”
To be honest, Len was the furthest thing from my mind. I was just reflexively repelled by the idea of re-creating the nasty kiss that sounded the death knell for our eleven-day eighth-grade relationship. But I used his excuse, as it was less likely to piss him off.
“Right! I can’t cheat on Len. My boyfriend.”
“That’s why I’m here,” he said, too busy watching himself flex his pecs in the mirror to look at me. “Now that you know how I feel, you can do something about Len.”
“What do you mean ‘do something about Len’?”
“Break up with that choad,” he said.
Break up. All day I had been debating that very course of action, yet hearing it from Scotty made it sound like the least desirable thing on earth.
“You think I’m going to break up with him just because