Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [87]
And I was thinking, Oh, now that you know me, you would never sleep with me?
“I didn’t know that you and I would become friends, Len, or that you two would be so right for each other. So please know that whatever Jessica said about me has nothing to do with what’s real, and how she feels about you. I happen to know for a fact that she’s into you. Isn’t that right, Jessica?”
His question caught me by surprise. Marcus was right, wasn’t he? It was right, me and Len. We were right.
Right?
I looked at Len’s pale, china-smooth skin, eyes as green as Heineken bottle sea glass, and delicate, guitar string–callused fingers. Geek cute to the bizillionth degree. If Len were going out with anyone but me, I would be madly, passionately in love with him. Or, at the very least, madly, passionately obsessed with him to the point where I’d fill, then flambé, a journal devoted to him and only him. I just know it.
“Right,” I replied, hoping to make it so.
Len leaned over and kissed me for a little bit, which was rare for us because we are against PDAs.
Len is against them because he feels it is an inappropriate breech of etiquette to let your hormones and emotions get the better of you in a public setting. I am against them because I usually can’t handle seeing anyone I know get physical with anyone else I know. I get all skeeved out. So why should I be any exception?
I’d like to think Len kissed me in front of Marcus because he was moved by the power of our reconciliation. Most likely, he did it to mark his territory—me. And it worked, I guess, because when my eyes flickered open, I caught a glimpse of Marcus watching us with what I swear, I swear, I swear, I swear was a moist glint in his right eye. A tear.
A tear?
One that was gone a few seconds later when Len and I broke away. One that I’ve since decided must have been a figment of my imagination, a drug-induced flashback hallucination maybe, and was never, ever there at all. Just another one of my delusions.
I live a lie. I really do. The pathetic thing is that I thought I’d been doing a pretty good job at being real ever since I wrote that editorial “Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace: Just Another Poseur” last year. After all, I stopped being friends with the Clueless Two, quit the cross-country team and the bogus newspaper, applied to my number-one school even though I know my parents won’t approve, etc. But my E-scapade revealed that when it comes to love, I’ve been as big a bullshitter as ever.
Since the summit, I’ve been devoting as much energy as I can toward this relationship, to really give Len a chance. If I open myself up and let Len in emotionally—the way I haven’t allowed myself, the way I let Marcus in when I didn’t know better—there won’t be a need to white-lie about the depth of my feelings anymore. I’ll really be feeling them.
Right?
the fifteenth
Suicide Tuesday” is the term used to describe the malaise that kicks in a few days after a weekend E spree. For me, it’s turning into “Suicide January.”
I’ve been vaguely concerned about what would happen when the next edition of Pinevile Low hit in-boxes. After all, it was the first time that the Mystery Muckraker had Darling dirt to dig up.
Scotty assured me that he was keeping quiet about it so as not to get Manda’s tits in a snit.
“Oh, I’ll keep doing her until you come around,” he said in a rare moment when Manda wasn’t on his lap or in his mouth or otherwise attached to him. “You can’t deny what we have.” Scotty said that last sentence in what I know he thinks is his “sexy voice.” Ack.
I was pretty positive that Marcus wouldn’t say anything, if only out of respect for his best friend. Though when it comes to Marcus, I never seem to know anything.
When I casually mentioned to Len that I didn’t think anyone else was privy to my idiocy, he, well . . . let’s just let the conversation speak for itself.
“Um. My mom knows.”
“WHAT?!”
“Um. I told her about it.”
“WHAT?! WHY?!”
“I tell my mom everything.