Last Will and Testament
Page 28
We’re having so much fun being back together like this, just the three of us, that we’re all startled as hell when an unfamiliar fourth voice cuts in.
“Um, am I in the right place?”
Immediately, I toss the shirt onto my bed and dust my hands off on my sweats. “Andrea?”
“Andi,” she says quickly. “Are you Caitlin?”
“Cait.” She looks so terrified of the three of us, I almost laugh again, but I’m pretty sure laughing in your roommate’s face on her first day in a new room isn’t considered polite. “This is Lizzie and Frankie. They used to live here. They don’t anymore.”
“Oh.” She glances at her new bed and desk, both of which are still piled high with my crap. “Um, am I…I mean, are these…?”
“Right, sorry!” I start snatching the piles and tossing them onto my own bed and desk, feeling a little like an asshole now. “They were just helping me clear space for you.”
She glances from closet to closet, both of which are obviously busting at the seams with my stuff. “Uh huh.”
Frankie snort-laughs, and then Lizzie’s phone pings with a text. “Ooh, it’s Connor. We’re grabbing dinner at the Mexican place that opened up over break. You guys wanna join?”
I’m kinda desperate to say yes—I’m sick of the inside of these walls, and I’m starving—but I need to clean this place up, and leaving Andi alone on her first day seems like kind of a dick move. I open my mouth to tell them to go on ahead, when another new voice—this one much deeper and decidedly male—floats into the room. “Andi, which one is it?”
“On the right!” she calls over her shoulder.
A moment later, the source of the voice steps into the doorway, and any words that might’ve formed in my brain disintegrate completely. Just…vaporize into nothing.
My roommate may be new to me, but her boyfriend isn’t.
In fact, I know Lawrence Mason quite well. Or at least I did when we were teenagers at sports camp.
But I left him behind—along with my virginity. And trust me when I say I expected to see the former again about as realistically as the latter.
Holy. Shit.
“Mexican sounds perfect,” I squeak back to Lizzie. “Let’s go.” Before anyone can say another word, I’m out of the suite like a bat out of hell.
I can always pick up shoes from Lizzie’s on the way.
• • •
“What the hell was that?” Lizzie demands as soon as we’re all seated. “I wish you would’ve seen that poor girl’s face when you bolted out of there.”
“Not to mention the guy’s!” Frankie laughs. “Christ, I thought he was gonna pass out from, like, proximity to your insanity.”
“I said I’d explain later,” I mutter, mentally begging a waitress to come over so I can hide my burning face in a menu. As the member of our trio—well, quartet, I guess, now that Lizzie’s boyfriend Connor’s a permanent fixture—who doesn’t thrive on drama, I’m not enjoying this nearly as much as they are. At least Connor has the grace not to ask what the hell we’re all talking about.
“Yeah, and it’s later,” says Lizzie. “So spill.”
“You’d think you’d wanna spend more time around that guy,” Frankie adds. “He was pretty fucking hot. I mean, taken, obviously, but…” She whistles. Badly.
A waiter does indeed come over then to distribute menus and drop off a basket of tortilla chips, but it doesn’t distract anyone for a second. Not even when Connor pointedly says, “Hey, will you look at how many kinds of burritos there are on the menu that have nothing to do with harassing Cait about her private life!”
Connor may be twenty-freaking-five and waaaay too old to be dating my best friend—especially considering he used to be her TA—but right now, he’s my favorite person at this table.
“Connor,” says Lizzie, squeezing his hand on the table. “You don’t understand. Cait never has drama. Cait’s favorite thing in life is giving us shit for our drama. I basically need whatever information she’s withholding in order to live. And I need to live in order for you to get laid tonight, so, take that into consideration.”
Connor pauses, nabs a chip from the basket, and takes a thoughtful bite. “So, Cait, are you gonna spill, or…?”
Men. Such traitors the second sex becomes part of the equation.
I sigh. A year and a half of living with these girls is long enough to know they won’t be shaking this anytime soon. “Fine.” I take a long sip from my water glass. “Let’s just say that wasn’t the first time I’ve met Andrea’s—Andi’s—boyfriend.”
Three pairs of eyebrows shoot up. Well, two pairs: Connor’s not quite as skilled in eyebrow acrobatics as the girls are. “Do tell.” Frankie props her chin up on her hands, dark eyes shining.
“We went to camp together, like, a billion years ago. Sports camp. He’s a basketball guy, I think.” I don’t know why I add the “I think” part. Of course Lawrence Mason is a basketball guy. At Stone Lake, he was the basketball guy. And I was the lacrosse girl. We made one hell of a power couple, as far as those things went.
“So that’s it?” Connor asks. “You know the guy from summer camp?”
“Hmm.” Now Lizzie pops a chip into her mouth with one hand, using the other to twirl a long black strand of hair around her finger. “I think she more than ‘knows’ him. I think maybe she knows him…biblically. Am I getting warmer, Caitlin?”
If I ate tortilla chips, I’d be stuffing a handful into my face right now. As it is, I really wish they’d brought some healthier foods out to snack on. Some of us are in training year round.
“Wait, what’s this guy’s name?” asks Frankie.
I pointedly ignore the question, but that doesn’t stop Lizzie. “Let’s see who we can remember from The Caitlin Johannssen diaries. Cait’s prom date was…Mike?”
“Matt,” says Frankie, making clear I’ve told these girls way too much about my life. “And the guy from the boat was Hector. That guy didn’t look to me like a Hector. We have heard about a guy from sports camp, though—”
“Oh my God,” I blurt. “Just stop. It’s Mase, okay? The name you’re thinking of is Mase. His last name’s Mason, and kids in camp used to call him Mase.”
Both of their mouths drop open, and suddenly, I want to crawl under the table and die. “Mase!” they say excitedly in unison. “Mase!”
“So, we know the name Mase?” Connor asks.
Lizzie smirks. “We definitely know the name Mase. Mase took Cait’s ladyflower under the stars during a very romantic evening.”
“Good job, Cait-Cait!” Frankie throws an arm around my shoulders. “I had no idea Star Boy was so hot!”
“Star Boy?” With every word out of Connor’s mouth, he sounds more and more confused, and I want to disappear that much more.
“He charmed her with his knowledge of the constellations,” Frankie says dreamily. “Man—athletic skills, brainy, and that ass! No wonder you gave it up.”
Fuck it. I grab a handful of greasy, fatty chips and stuff them in my face; I’ll run it off in laps tomorrow anyway. “I hate you guys. So much.”
“You love us and you know it.” Lizzie reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “So that’s Mase! He is hot. And I don’t remember things ending really badly, so why’d you run out?”
“Are you kidding me? What part of ‘My new roommate is dating the guy I lost my virginity to’ sounds like I should’ve stuck around?”
“She has a point,” says Connor.
“It’s in the past!” Frankie argues. “Have a good laugh, reminisce for five minutes, done.”
“I…think that’s more your style than Cait’s, Frank,” says Lizzie. “Some people get a little more…attached.”
“Attached” is one word for it. One might also say that I didn’t get over him quite as quickly as I’d thought I would when we mutually parted with the understanding it was our last summer at camp and it’d be too hard to try to make it work.
One might say it was kinda startling to see that I found him even more attractive now, in the two seconds I saw him, than I had back then. And I’d found him quite attractive then.
One might say I suspected it would be a very, very slippery slope back into wanting him—liking him—if I spent more than two seconds alone with him.
One might say that for all the details I’d shared with Lizzie and Frankie about my love life, the one I hadn’t was this: I’d been in love with Lawrence Mason.
And I’m pretty sure he’d been in love with me, too.
But before I can utter any of this to them—before I can even decide if I want to—the waiter reappears.
“Have you made any decisions yet?”
So far, only bad ones. Really, really bad ones.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Other Books by Dahlia Adler
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Sneak Peek at Right of First Refusal