Frenemies(24)

I’d like to claim that Henry took advantage of my emotional state, and part of me still thought he did. True gentlemen, it didn’t need to be said, would not avail themselves of the weeping drunk girl they found in their kitchen, especially when they were the ones proffering the alcohol. But no one ever said Henry was a gentleman, and anyway, he was drunk himself. I’m not sure why drunk men were expected to be more responsible than drunk women—it seemed like further condescension toward women, quite frankly, but that was me avoiding the subject.

There was that other part of me. The part that remembered that it was me who leaned over and laid my mouth on his. Me who pulled him to his feet and then pushed him back onto the long oak table. Just as it was me who crawled up there on top of him. I had perfect frozen images of myself doing all of those things. Of the Celtic tattoo he had on his left shoulder blade. Of the sweet hollow between his pectoral muscles. And more.

What I didn’t remember was how we got upstairs, or what else happened that night, although I had the faintest memory of talking, held up close to him in that huge bed of his. And I distinctly recalled waking up sometime before dawn, with the expected hideous headache and parched throat, in a state of horror and despair. I also remembered the actual Walk of Shame I undertook then, cursing myself all the way. When I got home, I commenced crying, which I did for a long, long time.

I never told anyone.

I mean, I told them about Nate and Helen, of course. But as for Henry, I just told them that he’d let me in when he knew exactly what I was walking into, and let me walk on into it. I may have embellished his role. I may have added a smirk, and a tone, like he was enjoying himself. I may, in fact, have deliberately suggested that he’d enjoyed the whole spectacle at my expense.

And my friends had believed me, because it was easy enough to imagine Henry the Womanizing Scum also being Henry the Guy Who Finds It Amusing That His Roommate Is Cheating.

Not that Henry Farland was anyone’s victim. Hardly. He turned up at yet another birthday get-together the Wednesday after that night. He had the gall to seem surprised that I was mad at him.

“What was I supposed to do?” he asked, his eyes registering something sharper than their usual lazy amusement. “I’m not his butler. I wasn’t going to lie for him. Isn’t it better that you know, though?”

“Thanks for your concern for my feelings,” I snapped at him. “I suppose you’re so disgusted with his behavior that you’re kicking him out of your house, right?”

“Gus …” Henry shook his head. “I’m sorry that Nate treated you like that. I mean, the guy’s a jackass. But I’m not sure I can evict him over it.”

“Men.” I glared at him. “Fucking typical.”

“And anyway,” he said. “I think we have other things to talk about, don’t you?”

“We are never talking about that,” I hissed at him.

He blinked. “What?”

“It never happened,” I declared.

“Yeah, but it did.”

“Which I’m certainly never admitting, and neither are you!” My voice sounded scathing. It was because my heart was pounding too hard. Even talking about what had happened between us made me feel weak and angry and kind of slutty.

He just looked at me.

“Promise me!”

He shook his head. “Fine. Whatever you want.”

“What I want,” I snarled at him, “is to live in a world where people don’t break up with other people in such a horrible, crappy way. Where people are grown-ups.”

“Oh,” Henry said, his eyes narrowing. “You mean like where they talk about suddenly having sex with someone they’ve known for almost ten years? That kind of grown-up stuff?”

“I hate you,” I told him, and stormed away.

Roughly ten days later, I was wasted and belting out classic rock. A week after that, I was back at the scene of the crime. The only thing that had changed in the interim was the fact I’d managed to rile up Amy Lee and Georgia on my behalf. Not that it took much riling, when it came to Henry.

Anyone would do the same, I thought then. In all the years I’d known him, I had never harbored any romantic feelings for Henry. Other than thinking he was incredibly good-looking in that smooth, blond way, which was sort of like noticing that the sunset was pretty. It was just a fact. And I’d had plenty of time to consider my feelings for Henry in detail during the long years of Georgia’s obsession with him. There was no way I could admit that after years spent pointing out his numerous character flaws, all the ways in which he could never be worthy of Georgia, and the simple fact of his apparent disinterest in women over ninety pounds, I had accidentally slept with him. I wouldn’t know how to begin to broach the subject. It was far better to pretend it had never happened.

Jack Daniel’s had a lot to answer for.

Besides which, I knew perfectly well that Nate had a thing about Henry. You might even call it jealousy. If he found out, it wouldn’t be pretty.

I braced myself against another rush of cold wind. Linus was oblivious to the temperature as he romped around the frozen ground with another creature of indeterminate breed. The sky looked like snow, all sullen and metallic, which only added to my unpleasant mood. Nothing like a New England winter to beat the will to live right out of you.