Slow Burn(34)

    He looked me up and down.

    “Seriously, Griffin, do you have fashion talents that I don’t know about?”

    He shrugged. “I noticed that you look good in blue. And, I, uh, I like that dress.” He was still taking me in.

    As his gaze swept my body, I felt a little tingle every place his look settled. I drew in a breath.

    “You should buy it,” he said.

    I nodded. “I think I will.” And then I stood there gaping at him like an idiot until Stacey came out of the dressing room to gush over the dress too.

* * *

    Thanks to Stacey, being sober wasn’t boring in the slightest. I spent most of my time with her and Jack. Griffin seemed to like them too. At least he didn’t complain. I didn’t go out trying to score cocaine. I didn’t have crazy, wild parties. I went to bed at a decent hour, and I got up with plenty of sleep. I went to class. I ate lunch with Stacey and Jack at school. I came home and did class work. Sometimes, we went to their place for dinner or to hang out. Sometimes, I asked them to come to my apartment.

    My party was scheduled for the end of spring break, which was when I’d have been sober for a month.

    I could hardly believe so much time had passed. It had gone quickly, and it had been easy.

    A lot of that was because of Stacey.

    She was my best friend. If I was honest, I hadn’t had a best friend since elementary school. I didn’t know how it happened exactly, but I’d somehow missed out on having friends that were girls. I remembered that my last best friend had been named Jackie. We’d been thirteen when Jackie stopped speaking to me.

    It was over a boy.

    She liked this guy. I don’t even remember his name. But he was the heartthrob of our class. Everyone liked him. The way I saw it, it wasn’t like she had any kind of dibs on him.

    But she still got mad when I made out with him.

    I don’t even know why I did it. I guess it seemed like it would be cool.

    But whoever that guy’s name was had only made out with me because I let him feel me up. It didn’t go anywhere. I kind of thought it would. I always thought guys were going to be more interested in me than they were.

    I’m not saying that I used sex to try to get the attention of guys.

    Well. Maybe I am. I was pretty young when I lost my virginity, and the guy I did it with—Aaron—was a few years older than me. He didn’t care that I was fourteen, though. He was a senior in high school. I was a freshman. It wasn’t like he was taking advantage of me. I knew what I was doing. But it was kind of the same thing.

    I gave it up.

    And then he promptly lost interest.

    It wasn’t always like that. I did have several boyfriends in high school and, of course, there was Eric in college. So not all the guys were jerks who were just after one thing. Some of them were really nice guys. (Of course, I wasn’t always nice back. I had some issues in high school.) But there were enough of them only interested in sex that I should have learned my lesson. I should have realized that having sex with a guy was not the way to make him like me.

    But I guess the problem was that it did kind of make them like me. Not always for a very long time. But for at least a few minutes, sometimes a few weeks if it took a while for them to get bored. When they were having sex with me, they weren’t paying attention to anything except me. That was a cool feeling. I liked that feeling. So, I guess I had sex with a lot of guys.

    I sort of got a reputation.

    And for some reason, I didn’t have a lot of friends that were girls after that. They all thought I’d steal their boyfriends, or at least make out with them.

    The sad thing was, they were probably right.

    When Stacey talked to me about doing everything in her power to get noticed, I identified. I hadn’t pierced my tongue. I’d spread my legs. You couldn’t see what effect that had on me on the outside, not like Stacey’s piercings. But...all in all... I thought piercings might have been a tad healthier than what I’d done.

    I was glad to have her around. She was awesome, and I felt better than I had in a long time. Almost... normal. Which is weird, because here we were, two chicks who’d both done scads of cocaine and spent our adolescence doing whatever we could to get people to pay attention to us. We were the opposite of normal.