worst behavior

sam

My cheeks grew a tiny bit warm as Em openly ogled my stomach as she spoke.

"Where?" I asked, shifting behind the door a little, uncomfortable under her gaze. I was already planning to go, though, wherever it was she was heading. I was just giving her a hard time. In all honesty, my want- my need- to get out of this house was eating me alive.

"A party. You're my best friend's type. I figured she'd love to meet you." Emily shrugged, her fingers trailing at the hem of her shorts. She looked me boldly in the eye, making me shiver with nerves.

I nodded. "Alright. Lemme get dressed."

"Why?"

I looked back at Em incredulously. "Because we're going outside...?"

Em flashed a winning smile. "You look better like that."

My cheeks went from slightly pink to full-on red as she appraised me in an awkward silence.

Finally, she blew out air from her cheeks. "Well. Come on." I ran upstairs to pull on a shirt, and then we hopped into her car.

We pulled up to a huge green house, and passed it on a long dirt driveway. At the end stood a barn, covered with peeling dark red paint. People were milling in and out with clinking beer bottles in their hands and loud laughs in their throats. I was glad I'd pulled on just a beat up t-shirt, so I sort-of blended in with the crowd, but not really. I felt isolated from moment I stepped into the barn.

"Come meet Cass," Em called, pulling me by the arm. She stopped me in front of a gorgeous, curvy blonde I had seen in the car that night. She wore a bandeau bikini top over high waisted shorts, which I guess was modest in comparison to what a lot of these girls wore.

"Hi," she drawled in a voice that dripped with sultriness and a strong accent. "What's your name?"

"Wow, Cass. Laying it on a bit thick, yeah?" Em scoffed, but Cass just flipped her off in response. "I'm going to find Ian, you two..." she glanced at her friend's hungry expression. "Be safe."

Basically, the party consisted of me getting dragged around by Cass, and being asked periodically, "Oh, wow, what do y'all do for fun in New York?" Girls in various outfits that usually included bikinis grinded around me on the make-shift dance floor. The guys gave me dirty looks, but it wasn't my fault I was a novelty.

I looked over at Em, and she was in conversation with a douche-baggy blonde with no shirt on, and surrounded by others smoking, drinking or both. The group sat on stacked bales of hay, Em sitting aloof and pretty on the highest perch. She caught my gaze and waved me over to them.

"Hey, guys, this is Sam. He's joining us this summer," Em drawled, smiling behind the pungent film of smoke that surrounded her group. Sitting high up, her friends looked intimidatingly similar to a royal court judging me with their icy stares that even the summer sun couldn't melt.

The blonde gave me a weird look, standing up to meet my eyes. "I'm Ian. Where ya from, Sam?" He spit my name like it offended him.

"New York," I answered, reflexively stepping back as he took one toward me threateningly.

"Ah," Ian drawled. He regarded me with a poisonous look. "How very nice for you." Something told me he didn't mean that at all. The kids surrounding them regarded me with similar judgemental stares.

"Em, could I, uh, talk to you for a sec?" I shifted uncomfortably under the gaze of her group.

She pursed her full lips, lazily shrugging her shoulders. "Sure, Sammy." She grabbed her red cup and took a deep swig before swinging her long legs off of the hay bales. Ian watched her leave with an unreadable look.

Once we were far away enough, Emily grinned at me, playing with the curly end of one of her French braids. "You having fun, Sammybaby?"

"Your friends make me uncomfortable."

"Mmm," she said coolly. "Yeah, well, frankly, they don't like new meat too much."

I scratched at the back of my neck. "Uh huh. Well, uh, think you could take me home? S'not really my scene-"

Em cut me off with a short laugh.  "Course it's not."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked indignantly. 

"What it means," Em began, smirking, "is that you're like every other city boy who thought he could handle a summer in the dirty south. But of course, you can't take the heat."

"Who says?" I replied, growing defensive. "You don't even know me!" Everything she said was true, though. Her friends were another breed of teenager, and I simply couldn't keep up. They were too cool.

"Prove it, baby," Em said, boring into me with her dark eyes. "Hang with me this summer. Show me how much there is to know about poor little rich boy, huh?" The way she said it, it was like I was a joke and she was waiting for the punch line. She was on the brink of laughter, I could tell.

In a burst of desperate anger, I grabbed her cup and took a long swig from it. "I will. You just watch."