“He's smoking a fucking cigarette just outside the door.”
“Then let's just chill here until he leaves,” Tobias whispers back, and the door closes. It's an awfully tight space to be trapped with two towering dudes. The twins are tall as hell, and they smell good, like fresh rainwater mixed with tart cherries and vetiver. My heartbeat picks up speed, but it's just my body reacting to their nearness. I'm too broken and sad inside to actually get turned-on or truly appreciate the moment. Some wicked subconscious part of me files away these feelings for later. Note to self: consider being the juicy middle part of a twin sandwich, with two slices of hunk for bread.
Eww.
That was sort of a gross metaphor, huh?
“You guys aren't going to pity fuck each other tonight, are you?” Micah whispers, and my head snaps up so quickly that I bump his chin and he curses just quietly enough that I hope derpy Nathan doesn't hear.
“That's more your style, isn't it? The pity fuck?” Tobias snaps back in a hoarse whisper.
“Yeah, well, I was gonna say, if you two aren't then maybe Charlotte and I should.”
“You're assuming I even want to,” I growl back, hitting him in the chest with my palm. “I'm not interested.”
“You'd sleep with that creep Cody, but not me?” Micah asks, sounding all butt hurt. Now that I think about it, he does sort of have the personality of someone who'd like to fuck his grief away … Good thing there aren't any other girls here. That thought hits me in the face like a rubber band, and I end up frowning so deeply that it feels like the expression is etched into my face.
“I never slept with Cody.”
“You dated him for two years, and you never slept with him?” Micah chokes out, like he's beyond surprised.
“Bro, we already knew that,” Tobias retorts. “Now shut the fuck up before we get caught.”
“If you weren’t sleeping with Cody all that time, who were you sleeping with?” Micah asks, and I roll my eyes. It’s dark, so he can’t see me, but at least it makes me feel better. And then something dawns on him, something that makes me squirm and wish I could burst out of this closet and run like hell. But as much as creepy Nathan doesn't scare me, I don't want him to call my dad and wake him up. As not afraid as I am of Nathan, I'm ten times as terrified of my father. He'll send me to that Everly All-Girls Academy place. Or worse. Maybe he'll ship me off to some gross military boarding school in the desert, in some nightmare town like Lancaster or something.
I shiver.
“Can you look and see if he's still out there?” I grumble, trying to distract the bigger dickhead of the two McCarthy twins. How anyone could confuse Tobias with Micah is beyond me. Tobias has a much more generous nature than his jerk of a brother.
“She's a virgin,” they say in unison, looking at each other over my head, and I swear to god, my entire body heats up five degrees with a self-righteous sort of anger.
I take it back. Tobias doesn't even know the meaning of the word generosity. He's just a … well, he's an ass pig.
“Condom face,” I growl, and the two boys grin so big that I can actually see the white of their teeth in the darkness. Finally, there's the sound of the heavy exterior door closing followed by the shuffling of feet. That's something that seriously bugs me about Nathan: he drags his feet. He's so lazy, he doesn't even bother to pick them up. Drives me nuts for some reason.
“I might be a condom face,” Micah says as he kicks the door open and then leans back against it to hold it there. The smirk on his face is much crueler than I've ever seen, like his grief has stripped him raw of all his good parts and left only the bad stuff behind. “But you're a virgin, a pure, white little snowflake. No wonder Spencer was so interested; he can sniff that sort of thing out, you know.”
“Micah, that's enough,” Tobias growls, stepping between me and his brother. “I know you're hurting; we all are. But don't take it out on Charlotte. You know damn well that Spencer wasn't a fucking cherry hound, so don't belittle him like that.”
Micah frowns and turns away, licking his lower lip softly, like he's trying to regain some crucial part of himself he can't quite hold onto.
“I know. I'm … sorry.” Micah pauses and pushes his hair back, grabbing a bucket full of old washcloths from inside the closet and using it to prop open the back door again. “Just in case he comes back.”
Micah turns away and heads down the hall, leaving Tobias and me standing in the dark.
