Lost In Me (Here and Now 1)

The room fills with Lizzy’s peals of laughter. “What drawer was that in?”

My cheeks heat. “My underwear drawer.”

“Lemme guess. It was tucked under your lingerie, maybe some sexy undies?” Even in the faint flickering of Nix’s lighter, I can see glee written all over Liz’s face.

“Oh. My. God.” As the realization hits me, my hand opens and I release the oh-my-God-that’s-no-candle. It falls to the floo

r with a thump.

Liz sinks to her haunches and picks it up off the floor with two fingers, the way one might hold a pair of someone else’s dirty underwear.

“It looks like a taper candle in the dark,” I say. “I don’t even know where that came from.”

Maggie snorts. “Amnesia is such a handy excuse now, isn’t it?”

Kill me now.

“Is it…is it what I think it is?” Nix asks.

“I guess that depends what you think it is,” Liz says. Twisting it at its center, she confirms my worst suspicions and sends it into a vibrating tizzy.

I back away. Horrified.

Lizzy giggles harder. “It doesn’t bite.”

“I didn’t even know I had a… Why do I have that?”

My mind wraps around the words from the texts on Nate’s phone. Nate asking if I’d taken my gift home. What had I replied? “It’s a sorry substitute for you”?

Not just a vibrator. Worse. A vibrator that was a gift from Nate.

The girls are all giggling now.

“I know you two are close,” Cally says, “but I absolutely cannot believe you’re touching that.”

“I don’t get it,” Nix says. “She gets buff, sexy-ass Max Hallowell and an affair with the sexy rocker. What’s the need for the vibrating friend, Hanna?”

If the floor wanted to open up and swallow me right now, I’d be okay with that.

Another flash lights the room. I must look as horrified as I feel, because Lizzy’s giggles go quiet. “Hanna, we’re just giving you a hard time. Are you okay?”

“I’ll go find your candles,” Maggie says, taking the lighter from Nix.

I watch her silhouette move through the darkness and into my bedroom. I shouldn’t let her rifle through my clothes—God knows what else she might find that I don’t know about—but another flash of lightning fills the space and a memory comes with it. Not the memory of sending those texts to Nate. A different memory. Clear and vivid and visceral.

Maggie is carrying a lit candle in each hand when she returns.

“We’ll stop teasing you about the vibrator,” Nix promises me. “We all have one.”

“Those bitches probably don’t,” Liz says, pointing to Cally and Maggie. She tosses the vibrator onto the island. Right there between the truffles and cheese. “They have men to do that work for them.”

Maggie snorts. “Where have you been, Liz? Men and vibrators go very well together.”

“She’s not lying,” Cally says.

“I hate you all,” Liz growls.

“Can we change the subject?” The question comes out of me with an awkward squeak.