Ugh. Very not Thomas. I grabbed his face between both my
18
hands to stop the madness and he took it as a sign of enthusiasm. Suddenly his tongue was everywhere, parting my lips and darting between my teeth.
This poor kid. He had no idea what he was doing. I wanted to push him away, but I didn't want to embarrass him. Instead I let him go and hoped he would either suddenly improve or get winded and stop.
Then his large hand fell right on top of my breast and squeezed. Hard. Like he was juicing an orange.
Just like that, Thomas was back. Right there in front of me. With his sexy smile and his practiced, gentle touch and his skin against mine. What the hell was I doing? Who was this person who was groping me like I was some kind of CPR doll?
My stomach lurched. I held my breath. Oh, God. I was going to throw up. I was going to barf in Walt Whittaker's mouth.
My hands flew up and I shoved him away from me. He was just letting out a confused murmur when I turned around, keeled over, and retched all over the bed of leaves behind the log. My eyes stung; my throat burned; my stomach wrenched in pain. Whittaker stood up and moved away, turning his back to me to give me privacy. Thank God. The last thing I wanted was for the guy I had just kissed to watch me puke all over the place.
And then, finally, it was over.
“Are you all right?” Whittaker asked me.
It was like his refrain of the evening.
I nodded slowly, too mortified to speak.
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“Can I walk you back to Billings?” he asked.
I nodded again. Whittaker held out his hands and helped me up. He wrapped his arm around me as we walked back to the clearing and I leaned in to him, mushy as overcooked pasta. Everyone stared at our arrival. I could only imagine what I looked like. For a fleeting moment my unfocused gaze fell on Josh. He looked as grim as death.
“Aw! Look at you two, all coupley,” Noelle said with a knowing smile.
I watched as Josh quickly looked away, swigging his beer.
“I'm going to walk her back,” Whittaker announced, sounding proud.
“Nice,” Dash said under his breath.
“Take care of our girl,” Noelle said, patting Whit on the back.
From somewhere deep inside of me, I summoned a trace of a smile. Even in my extraordinary state of queasy shame, I felt the warmth of Noelle's approval. And though I knew it was totally spineless to bask in it, I did. Noelle's approval was always a good thing.
20
CINDERELLA LIVES
The first thing I recognized was the dirty gutter taste in my dryas-?talc mouth. The second was the blinding pain in my skull. The third was the fact that I was freezing. The fourth was the banging.
The banging. The banging. The incessant banging.
“Wake up, new girl! It's after six! You're never going to get anywhere with this attitude!”
Each bang reverberated in my skull and shot a new stab of pain through my head.
I wrenched my eyes open, then blinked a couple hundred times against their painful dryness. In front of me was the cream-?colored wall of my dorm. Below me was my mattress. Nothing else was right.
“That's right, sleepyhead. Vacation's over! Get your sorry ass out of bed!”
It was Noelle. Noelle was yelling over the banging. I flipped over onto my back, the pain in my head nearly blinding, and looked up. I had to swallow back a sudden influx of bile in my throat. Not just Noelle: Kiran, Taylor, Ariana, Natasha, and four other Billings Girls whose names I couldn't remember in my