Tempted (24 page)

“So this is your little clubhouse, eh?” Brett said, surveying the room. She looked completely out of place in her green Nicole Miller turtleneck dress and ultra-pointy black leather boots. All the guys sat up a little straighter the second she entered, and Brandon caught Lon doing a quick breath-check into his cupped palm.

“This is the
Boys
of Waverly,” Heath stressed, a hint of desperation in his voice. He turned to Brandon. “Tell her, Brandon. No girls allowed.” Brandon looked from Heath to Brett and back again, unsure of what to do.

“Calm down, Heath.” Brett placed her hands on her hips. “I seem to remember you at all the Women of Waverly meetings.” She wanted to keep a note of playfulness in her voice, mostly because she didn’t want what had started out as a perfect evening with Jeremiah—dinner at Nocturne and a romantic drive back to campus, Jeremiah parking his car just short of the gates so they could sneak back onto campus, ducking behind the library for a serious make-out session—to be ruined by Heath’s belligerent drunkenness. “How come it doesn’t work both ways?”

“I wish I had never gone to those meetings,” Heath moaned. He stared into his iPhone while the others looked awkwardly on. Brett sensed that she and Jeremiah had walked in right in the middle of something. “Then none of this would’ve ever happened.”

“None of what?” Jeremiah asked, staring at Heath in confusion. He opened the Absolut bottle and offered it to Brett, but she shook her head.

“Kara,”
Heath answered, taking a swig of beer and placing the empty can at his feet.

Brandon looked at Brett as if about to explain what the hell Heath was talking about. Heath added, “The only good thing that came out of those meetings were the pictures.”

Brett felt her stomach drop to the floor. Was he talking about what she thought he was talking about?

“What pictures?” Ryan asked, his gossip-hungry ears immediately perking up. He slid off the pool table and took a step toward Heath.

“The pictures,” Heath mumbled again, barely coherent. He put the iPhone up close to his face.

“Heath.” Brett’s voice was a little sharper than she’d intended, but Heath didn’t hear her. She dropped Jeremiah’s hand. “You’re drunk.”

“Good idea,” Heath answered, stumbling to his feet with difficulty yet still managing to operate his iPhone with skill.

“What pictures are you talking about?” Lon asked, rubbing his hands together, leaning forward on the sofa. “Let me see.”

Brett trembled as she made her way across the room. She had no idea what she would do—ripping Heath’s iPhone out of his hands was a possibility but would certainly cause a scandal in itself and tip off Jeremiah. What she needed was for him to shut the fuck up, right now. She reached out a hand toward him, hoping she could somehow pretend-comfort him and delete the photos with her other hand.

“Here’s one.” Heath held up the iPhone, the screen large enough and clear enough for everyone in the room to see the picture of two girls’ lips pressed together. It was a close-up, and a little blurry, but the corner of the picture was filled with an unmistakable lock of flame-red hair.

Brett’s skin ignited and she felt a dull thumping in her ears, as if someone far off were practicing the drums. She felt the whole ugly room starting to spin.

The sound of whistling filled the activities room, and a drunken smile spread across Heath’s face. “I got more. They’re all beautiful.” He set down his beer to focus on his iPhone.

“You asshole,” Brett hissed at Heath, trying to grab the phone from him. She glanced back at Jeremiah. He stood poised in the doorway, mouth open, eyes wide. He looked like he’d just seen his entire family murdered in front of him. He stared at Brett in horror and took a step backward.

“Wait,” she cried, torn between stopping Heath and stopping Jeremiah.

Brandon stepped forward and grabbed the phone from Heath’s hand. “Dude, that’s not cool.” He pushed down on a stunned Heath’s shoulders, sending him back into his chair with a thud of deadweight. Brandon put the phone in his pocket.

Brett barely had time to shoot Brandon a grateful look before scrambling after Jeremiah. “Wait!” she called again, following him into the hallway. Her heels clicked against the linoleum floor. Jeremiah whipped around, a look of total disgust on his face.

“So it was true,” he spit out, pounding a fist against a poster with a frog on it that read
KISS
ME, I
DON’T
SMOKE
. His blue-green eyes flashed in an anger she’d never seen before. “I can’t believe this whole time it was true and you were just a liar.
Again.
”

Brett’s face burned. She felt like he’d just called her a piece of Jersey trash. “I can explain.”

“You
always
have an explanation.” He pushed a reddish brown lock of hair away from his forehead and zipped up his jacket. “I’m tired of fucking hearing them.”

“That’s not fair.” Brett crossed her arms over her chest, her defenses rising. There always
was
an explanation.

“I can’t believe a single word you say anymore.” Jeremiah’s voice lowered, and instead of anger, a look of disgust washed over his handsome face. “It’s over. For good this time.” He turned and pounded up the basement steps, the sound reverberating in Brett’s ears.

Brett pressed her back against the wall, her throat completely dry. She stared at the poster of the frog and let herself slide down the wall until she was sitting on the cold, dirty linoleum floor. Her lips trembled, but she didn’t cry. It was over with Jeremiah—really and truly over. There would be no more making up this time, no more blissful games of backgammon, no more Soho Grand, no more Thanksgiving in Sun Valley.

At least now she didn’t have to wonder what would happen when Jeremiah found out the truth.

Jenny felt the ground underneath the Mustang shift and she gripped the passenger-side armrest, her fingers slipping from the leather interior. She squinted through the windshield at the road disappearing in tiny increments, flashing again through the snow, and then disappearing again. All the rain they’d had at Waverly over the past few weeks had become snow up here, and the sides of the highway were blurs of white snowbanks.

Tinsley leaned forward in her seat, wiping the inside of the windshield with her hand. “Hit the defrost, please,” she demanded crankily. “I can’t see shit.”

Just the fact that Tinsley had actually said “please” let Jenny know how nervous she really was. Jenny fiddled with the controls and a whoosh of air blasted up from the dashboard, blowing hot and dry in their faces.

Tinsley’s hands were clutched around the wheel, her shoulders hunched, her eyes squinting at the road, and she looked exactly like one of those little old ladies who refused to stop driving even though they couldn’t see above the steering wheel.

“Should we pull over and wait it out?” Jenny asked tentatively, biting her lower lip. The station wagon they’d been following flicked on its turn signal, the blinking yellow light announcing that it was giving up and pulling off.

Tinsley didn’t answer, but continued to concentrate on the road. She wiped the windshield again and then wiped her wet hand on her faded jeans. “I was in a sandstorm on the freeway in L.A. once,” she said distractedly. “It was just like this, except it was brown. You couldn’t even see two feet in front of you. It took them like two days to clean all the sand off the freeway. People’s cars were fucked, full of sand.”

The story didn’t ease Jenny’s fear that they were about to crash into a car they couldn’t see in front of them, or veer off the road down a steep embankment. She suddenly wondered if maybe Tinsley had a death wish. Had she inadvertently gotten into a car with someone who didn’t have anything left to lose? Jenny immediately regretted lording her new It-girl status over Tinsley these last few weeks; it didn’t mean as much to her as her own life. Right now popularity seemed as remote as Waverly, somewhere behind them, and Callie, lost somewhere ahead of them.

“Is this even the road?” Jenny asked.

“I think so.” Tinsley wrinkled her perfect nose. “But I can’t see the lines anymore.”

A rising panic boiled in Jenny’s brain and she was about to scream for Tinsley to
pull over right this minute
when the car stalled. The engine roared before going totally silent. The car drifted toward the shoulder as Tinsley tapped the accelerator.

“What? What’s going on?” Jenny watched helplessly as the car slowed to a halt. “Why are we stopping?”

“The-fucking car is dead.” Tinsley pounded her small fist on the top of the dash. The car made a small
oof
noise as it wedged into the snowbank. She turned the key a few times, and the engine gave a halfhearted cough before falling silent.

“It can’t be dead—the radio still works!” Jenny cried. The last strains of James Blunt’s new song filtered through the speakers before disappearing completely. An odd silence enveloped the car.

“Now we can’t even listen to music while we freeze to death,” Tinsley said dryly. She put the car in gear and twisted the key out of the ignition, reaching for her Balenciaga bag. “Where is it?” she asked herself while fishing in her bag. “Aha.” She pulled out her cell, the orange light casting an eerie glow inside the car. Tinsley stared at the phone, shaking it in a vain attempt to get service. “Damn it.” She opened the car door, letting in a gust of frigid air, and jumped out, the phone out in front of her like a divining rod.

Jenny got out too, her feet sinking into four feet of snow, instantly freezing in their canvas sneakers. She flipped open her cell and saw the battery was flashing, dying in the dark night. Instinct took over and she texted Easy, telling him everything, her thumbs moving as fast as they could against the fading battery. She pressed send as her phone beeped and watched the text icon work before the phone powered down, dead in her hands.

“I can’t get service, can you?” Tinsley asked, her teeth chattering.

“My phone just died,” Jenny admitted. “I got a text off to Easy, though.”

“How did you know where to tell him we were?” Tinsley asked sharply, holding her arms out to indicate the vast, silent expanse around them. If it hadn’t been the middle of the night, and their car hadn’t been broken, and she hadn’t been with Tinsley Carmichael, Jenny might have appreciated the sight of the snow-filled dark night. Her brother, Dan, would probably have wanted to write a poem about it.

“I didn’t,” Jenny replied, the snow seeping through her socks. Why had she worn Keds? “I told him about Callie.”

Tinsley narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you call nine-one-one?” she snapped. “Or do you
want
to die out here?”

Jenny shrugged, more casually than she felt. “I’m getting back inside the car.”

“Fine,” Tinsley said through gritted teeth, annoyed. She followed Jenny’s lead, opening the driver’s side door. But seriously, was Jenny mentally challenged? If she’d called 911, they could have been rescued. She rattled her useless phone again, trying to pick up service. Even standing outside for just two minutes had chilled her to the bone, and the heat had, of course, disappeared too.

“Maybe it’ll stop soon,” Jenny said hopefully, rubbing her hands together.

Maybe
Tinsley thought, her anger subsiding. Snowstorms didn’t last forever, did they? And they were on or near the freeway, right? So maybe the situation wasn’t as dire as Tinsley had first thought. Her mind wandered and she thought of Jenny texting Easy. It was sort of sweet that Jenny would do that for Callie. Tinsley thought of the old days, before Jenny, when she and Brett and Callie would look out for one another like that. It wasn’t so long ago, but felt like a million years ago. Ever since they’d gotten busted for the whole E thing, their tight-knit friendships had dissolved. She wished she could erase the last few months and go back to when it was just the three of them, ruling the campus, the envy of everyone else.

The lights inside the car dimmed, and then there was a loud click. Jenny looked at Tinsley, her brown eyes wide in panic. Tinsley didn’t know what to say. The car had died, simple as that. They hadn’t packed any clothes, so there was no way to layer up against the cold.

Jenny twisted around, reaching into the backseat. “He’s got to have a sweatshirt or something back here.” She emerged a moment later, tugging up a soft, wine-colored blanket.

“Oh, gross.” Tinsley wrinkled her nose. “That’s clearly Seb’s hookup blanket. I don’t think I can use that.”

Jenny gave a wry smile. “Funny, it’s actually Drew’s.”

“That doesn’t make it any better—in fact, that makes it worse.” Tinsley thought back to the snotty way Jenny had responded to her when she’d tried to warn her about Drew. “Wait, did you guys do it on this thing?”

“No!” Jenny squealed, pulling the blanket away from Tinsley and huddling under it. “I can’t believe—” A piercing wail sounded outside, and both girls looked up in terror.

“What was that?” Jenny asked.

Tinsley was about to ask the same thing, but didn’t want to give Jenny the satisfaction of knowing how scared she was. They were going to die. She’d come all this way to die in a car with Jenny Humphrey.

“We should huddle up. For warmth.” Jenny lifted part of the blanket up. Tinsley wrinkled her nose, but her cold body couldn’t resist. She knew what Jenny had suggested was true, that if they were going to make it they’d have to work together. She grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around her, inching closer to Jenny until their shoulders were pressed together beneath it.

“I really do hate you,” Jenny said, her voice quivering.

“I hate you, too,” Tinsley shot back.

A chorus of howling filled the air, and they held each other even tighter.