Finding Cinderella(7)

Her eyes narrow and she grabs her purse off the console and pulls it toward her. “Oh, that’s nice, Daniel. Insult my perfume to get back at me. See what I mean? You’re the epitome of immature.” She opens the car door and unbuckles her seatbelt.

“Well at least I’m not asking you to change your perfume,” I say mockingly.

She shakes her head. “I can’t do this anymore,” she says, getting out of the car. “We’re done, Daniel. For good this time.”

“Thank God,” I say loud enough for her to hear me. She slams her door and marches toward her house. I roll down her window to air out the perfume and I back out of the driveway.

Where the hell is Holder? If I don’t get to complain to someone about her, I’ll fucking scream.

• • •

I climb into Sky’s window and she’s sitting on the floor, rummaging through pictures. She looks up and smiles as I make my way into her room. “Hey, Daniel,” she says.

“Hey, Cheese Tits,” I say as I drop down onto her bed. “Where’s your hopeless boyfriend?”

She nudges her head toward her bedroom door. “They’re in the kitchen making ice cream. You want some?”

“Nah,” I say. “I’m too heartbroken to eat anything right now.”

She laughs. “Val having a bad day?”

“Val’s having a bad life,” I say. “And after tonight I’ve finally realized I don’t want to be a part of it.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, yeah? Sounds serious this time.”

I shrug. “We broke up an hour ago. And who’s they?”

She shoots me a confused look, so I clarify my question. “You said they were in the kitchen making ice cream. Who’s they?”

Sky opens her mouth to answer me when her bedroom door swings open and Holder walks in with two bowls of ice cream in his hands. A girl is following behind him with her own bowl of ice cream and a spoon hanging out of her mouth. She pulls the spoon from her lips and kicks the bedroom door shut with her foot, then turns toward the bed and stops when she sees me.

She looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t place her. Which is odd because she’s cute as hell and I feel like I should probably know her name or remember where I’ve seen her, but I don’t.

She walks to the bed and sits down on the opposite end of it, eyeing me the whole time. She dips her spoon into her ice cream, then puts the spoon back in her mouth.

I can’t stop staring at that spoon. I think I love that spoon.

“What are you doing here?” Holder asks. I regretfully take my eyes off the Ice Cream Girl and watch as he takes a seat on the floor next to Sky and picks up a few of the pictures.

“I’m done with her, Holder,” I say, stretching my legs out in front of me on the bed. “For good. She’s fucking crazy.”

“But I thought that’s why you loved her,” he says mockingly.

I roll my eyes. “Thanks for the insight, Dr. Shitmitten.”

Sky takes one of the pictures out of Holder’s hands. “I think he’s actually serious this time,” she says to him. “No more Val.” Sky tries to look sad for my sake, but I know she’s relieved. Val never really fit in with the two of them. Now that I think about it, she never really fit in with me, either.

Holder looks up at me curiously. “Done for good? Really?” He sounds oddly impressed.

“Yeah, really, really.”

“Who’s Val?” Ice Cream Girl asks. “Or better yet, who are you?”

“Oh, my bad,” Sky interrupts. She points back and forth between Ice Cream Girl and me. “Six, this is Dean’s best friend, Daniel. Daniel, this is my best friend, Six.”

I’ll never get used to hearing Sky call him Dean, but her introduction gives me an excuse to look over at that spoon again. Six pulls it out of her mouth and points it at me. “Nice to meet you, Daniel,” she says.

How in the hell can I steal that spoon before she leaves?

“Why does your name sound familiar?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe because six is a fairly common number? Either that or you’ve heard of what a raging whore I am.”

I laugh. I don’t know why I laugh, though, because her comment really wasn’t funny. It was actually a little disturbing. “No, that’s not it,” I say, still confused as to why her name sounds so familiar. I don’t think Sky has ever mentioned her in front of me before.

“The party last year,” Holder says, forcing me to look at him again. I’m pretty sure I roll my eyes when I have to look away from her, but I don’t mean to. I’d just much rather stare at her than at Holder. “Remember?” he says. “It was the week I got back from Austin and a few days before I met Sky. The night Grayson pummeled you on the floor for saying you took Sky’s virginity?”