New Girl in Town

Chapter 19

Maybe it's my imagination, but I'm already starting to itch when we finally get dropped off at Jennie's house. It's dark inside, and she motions for me to creep around the back after Rosie lets us out down the street so we don't wake anyone up. We sneak through the back door and up the stairs.

"He was really pissed," I whisper. Kai had spent the entire ride back muttering under his breath at such a steady pace, it put everyone on edge.

"As soon as he sobers up, he'll snap out of it," Jennie reassures me. "I'm gonna go get the first aid kit," she says. "You need to strip down."

"What?!"

Her head tilts. "The poison-oak oils, they're on your clothes and all over your skin," Jennie explains like I'm dumb. "We were knee-deep in the stuff. And we probably got it all over our arms, too, running through it. So you need to strip."

I can't stop looking at her lips as she says the word "strip." How can she act so calm?

"You can borrow some of my clothes," she says, like that's the thing I'm worried about here. "I'm going to go get the Tecnu. You rub it all over for like two minutes and it removes the oils when you wash it off."

"I'm now on Irene's side," I tell Jennie. "Barn parties suck."

Jennie grins. "Well, at least you two have something in common." She pauses, her expression turning thoughtful. "Jisoo was wearing your shirt."

"The guy she was hooking up with ran off with her shirt. She needed something to cover up."

"That was nice of you."

I shrug. "Been there."

"You've been a half-naked girl at a party?" Jennie asks innocently.

I had more meant that I'd been in embarrassing situations in which someone had saved me, but her eyes sparkle and I have to play along.

"More than once."

"Really?" She steps forward and I do too. I can't not. I want her closer.

"I've also been known to dance on tables," I lie.

"With the skills that you showed me that night in my room, I have no doubt you attracted quite a crowd."

"Juilliard, here I come," I joke, and her smile—it's thunderous inside me, the way it makes my heart beat. My entire body is shaken from her presence, her entire existence. The fact that I existed for sixteen years without knowing her, and now never have to live another year without having met her.

"I'll go get the lotion," she says, and she disappears, and I'm all alone in this fancy-ass bathroom of hers. There are jets in her tub.

It's just like a bathing suit, I tell myself. I chant it silently in my head as I peel off clothes and pick off my choker. My fingers settle on the button of my shorts and my stomach leaps, like it's someone else's fingers, not mine. If I close my eyes, I can imagine it: her fingers crooked inside the waistband, nails scraping against the skin under my belly button, right above the elastic of my underwear. I prickle everywhere at the thought and tell myself it's the imminent poison-oak rash.

It's not. It's thinking of her. It's how I want to think of her. It's why I want to.

I need to get out of here. I just need to get the lotion and shower off the booze and weed smell and then get home. I'll tell her that Marco will get mad if I don't show. I'll make up a curfew.

Otherwise I don't know what'll happen. I want—

So much.

My fingers tap against her sink, staccato little beats of nervousness. I breathe in and out, tilting my head back.