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“They’re not—”
“Goodbye, Kennedy.” His gaze lingers on my face as if he’s waiting for me to say something.
The voice inside my head screams, say something! But my brain won’t send the signal, and Jordan stalks off, leaving me empty inside.
33
“Can you at least pretend you’re excited? You’re killing my buzz.” Nicole slides her gaze toward me as her stylist twists her lilac hair into a series of loose knots around her head, making her look like a Star Wars cantina character.
“Sorry.” I meet her gaze in the mirror while my stylist tames my red hair into a chic French twist. “I’m nervous.”
Who am I supposed to choose when I don’t want either one of them? How the hell did I get myself into this mess?
“You know, you could suck it up and call—”
“And say what?” I snap, irritated that she dare voice the thoughts in my head.
“Oh, I don’t know. How about, I screwed up? I’m an idiot? I wanna have your freakishly gorgeous babies?” Nicole grins to take the sting out of her words, but they still hit me deep in the feels.
“Since when did you become a Jordan Keller fangirl?”
Nicole shrugs. “After Eve’s posted the exposé about his parents. I don’t know, I guess I realized I’d misjudged him. Did you know he’s majoring in biochemistry? I had no idea he was that smart. And he bakes the cinnamon rolls at the Beanery.”
When she finishes rattling off his résumé, I nod.
“I ripped him to shreds on that list. The things I said about his mother . . .” She cringes. “He has every right to be pissed. If someone wrote half that shit about me, I’d burn their freaking house down.”
I open my mouth, but she holds up a finger.
“He should’ve told you sooner. I get that. But look what happened when he did. Maybe he was right to be afraid. According to Jeremy, the guy is gutted. I haven’t exactly been his biggest fan . . .”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “I treated him like shit. But I finally get what you see in him. He’s smart, funny, and without that ridiculous fishtail, he’s wicked hot. He did a shitty thing, but he apologized. He even ate your mother’s freaking meat loaf, which is basically playing Russian roulette. So, yes, I think you should call him.”
The tortured look on Jordan’s face the last time I saw him still haunts me. “He hates me.”
She snorts. “I doubt that.”
“You didn’t see how he looked at me. Didn’t hear the things he said.” I stare down at my sparkly nails and imagine stabbing one into my cracked heart.
“No, you haven’t seen how he looks at you when you don’t know he’s looking.”
“It’s weird hearing you defend him.”
“No weirder for you than it is for me.” Nicole’s grin slides off her face. “What will you do when he walks into the formal with someone else?”
A fist closes around my heart and squeezes. “He probably won’t even come.”
Would he?
“He might. He always seems to show up when you least expect it. And he’s a guy. There’s no way he’ll let you leave with either one of those boneheads tonight. Not when he knows exactly what he’d be missing.”
She waggles her eyebrows, and I regret informing her of my hymen’s demise. But . . . the girl has a point.
“You’ll see. He’ll show up, and when he does, you drag his cute ass out of there and force him to be your love slave for the rest of the weekend.”
Her idea has merit.
