than done," Jude says. He looks around, probably to make sure his girl is okay—not somewhere doing something that will embarrass her, or him. Rachel has a past as complicated as Cassius's, as far as I can tell.
"Go get her, douchebag.” Cassius waves his hand toward the women strutting all around us. “Don't sit here with these girls, when you could be with the woman of your dreams."
He's right. They all are.
Still, it takes me until Monday night to get the fucking balls to call her.
When I do, she answers.
Maybe she's looking for a way into my "zone" as much as I want her there.
Chapter Twelve
Bexley
T he last thing I expected was for Holden to call me on Monday. I still don't know what to think of it.
He invited me to a premier—not his, but one of his friend's films that he had tickets to. He said he thought maybe I'd want to “check it out.”
He said it just like that. Like I've ever been to a freaking Hollywood premier before. Like I know the first thing about attending anything on a red carpet. Like he and I are actually friends.
And we're not. Because when you don't talk to someone for four years, and then just let them into your vagina, and then tell them to get off your front lawn the next day, it wouldn't exactly be what I'd call “buddy-buddy.”
Still. It's a premier.
With Holden.
I couldn't say no. I didn't want to say no. So I allowed myself to say yes.
And now, it's Saturday afternoon, and Sami is in my room telling me to go commando. Well, not literally in my room—she's FaceTiming me on my laptop, which is propped on my desk.
"The last thing you want is a panty line," she says, grimacing.
"It feels a little...."
"Like you're saying something with your lack of an undergarment?"
"Pretty much."
"Good, because you are saying something. You’re saying Fuck me please, Holden, and show me what it's like to be Johnny Jumper. Jump my bones ."
She moans dramatically and I immediately click down the volume, holding a finger to my lips.
"Language, woman, my parents might hear."
"Oh, you're no fun," she pouts, throwing a kernel of popcorn at her computer. "Just go all-in. He's being nice. I know you said he was a player, but maybe you ruined him. Maybe, after you broke his heart in high school, he had no choice but to sleep with all of Los Angeles."
"I did not ruin Holden," I scoff. "He was sleeping with plenty of people before we took Acting 101 our freshman year."
"That's impressive, to be sleeping around as a high school freshman. I didn't get my cherry popped until I was a freshman in college."
"I remember." I shake my head, grossed out by the memory. "I was your roommate, and above you in that freaking bunk bed, while Maloney-Baloney tried to put on a condom. It's pretty much cemented in my memory as one of the most awkward nights of my life."
"Poor Maloney-Baloney. A man with a dick as flimsy as lunch meat." Sami picks up a can of Diet Coke, sighing before taking a sip. "And now look at you, all grown up and going out with a man rumored to have a cock the size of a summer sausage."
"Eww, stop it. I'm going to hang up on you."
"Never!" she mock-screams. "You love me."
"I do." I slide my panties off, then pull the skirt of long black strapless gown back down.
Holden sent it over via FedEx yesterday.
It's exactly the sort of dress I'd have chosen for myself: form-fitting but classic, with a mermaid tail. I smooth it out, adjusting the fake diamond bracelet on my wrist—which I've kept in a jewelry box since my senior prom, when I wore it last. "But seriously, Sami, I'm scared. What if I fall for him all over again?"
She moves so that her entire face fills up my computer screen. "There are worse things than having your heart broken."
I nod, not wanting to cry and mess up my mascara.
"Now put on some lipstick and walk downstairs, pretending that you don't have the parental issues that you so clearly do, and get into that hottie's limo. Do you even know how jealous I am of you
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