Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(12)

Miranda was watching me through narrowed eyes. “Hiding information about the Kings,” she said slowly. “You’re bordering on treason of the pact, Kira. You know what we do with traitors, right?”

Iris pulled out her nightstick and prodded me.

Miranda gave her a disgusted look. “Really, Iris? You have a Batman belt full of cool stuff, and you poke her with your oversize cop dildo?”

“What was I supposed to do? Set my pistol on the table? Also, cop dildo? Seriously? I’ve barely even considered using this thing for sexual pleasure before.”

Miranda visibly shuddered. “Barely even considered? In other words, you’ve thought about it.”

“What? You’ve never taken a long, lonely look at a cucumber or a banana before? Guys end up in the hospital with their dicks stuck in vacuum cleaners all the time. I’m not allowed to stick a nightstick up my—”

“I’m not a traitor,” I said loudly enough to cut them off. “I told him I never wanted to see him again. I even said have a nice life. So you two can just back off. I handled it. I handled him.”

“Handled him, did you?” Iris asked. She made a lewd hand gesture to show me I’d chosen my words poorly.

I laughed. “God, you can be such a perv.”

“You call it perverted. I call it perceptive.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly. “It’s so perceptive of you to realize that I totally gave Rich King a surprise hand job in the hallway outside my classroom.”

Miranda held up the invitation and bonked me on the forehead with it. “Hand job or not, you ‘handled’ him so well that he decided to invite you to his fancy party tonight.”

“Yeah. Traitor,” Iris whispered.

“It’s not like I’m going to say yes,” I said. “Here. Give it to me. I’ll tear the thing up. I just wanted you two to see how ridiculous it was.”

“No,” Miranda said. She was looking up and tapping her chin. “I think you should go.”

“Why would I do that?” I hated that I could feel myself trying to act more indignant than I felt. The way my eyebrows were pulling together felt manufactured. Even the touch of outrage in my voice was forced. The only real irritation I felt was at how my friends seemed to push me toward what they thought was best for the situation and not what was necessarily best for me.

“Because it would be fun, and what better fuck you than to show up at his party and ignore him all night? He thinks you’re going to show up and be on his heels, but you could just go to eat the free food and drink the booze. Dance with some other guy and then call it a night. Think about it. He’d be furious.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek, mulling the idea over. “Do you remember when we were making that video in Iris’s room? Freshman year of college?”

Iris put her palms over her eyes and started laughing quietly, but Miranda looked queasy at the memory.

“Why would you remind me of that?” she asked.

I grinned. We had just finished a night of partying and decided it would be a great idea to make an impromptu dance music video in Iris’s room. Apparently, a few beers made me think I was suddenly Miss Booty Dropper, and when I went down for the showstopper, I ended up impaling the inside of my butt cheek on a protruding piece of furniture.

Iris had fallen over laughing, and Miranda had thrown up at the sight of the blood.

“Well,” I continued, “once the stitches were gone and the wound was mostly healed, I kind of forgot about it. Then one day, it was a little itchy, and—”

“You spent all day scratching your ass?” Iris asked with an obnoxious grin.

“No. I mean, I might have scratched it in a very dignified, ladylike way once or twice. And then I guess I irritated it, because after that, I was miserable. I couldn’t stop thinking about scratching it more, but every time I did, it made it worse. The only way to get it back to normal was to ignore it.”

“As nice as it was to remember the time when you decided one butthole wasn’t enough, I’m not seeing the point here. We were talking about Rich.”

“Rich is like that scar. That’s the point I was trying to make. If I go to the party, it’ll end up making me think about him more, and then that’ll lead to more, and so on. The only smart choice is to stay home.”

Iris was grinning like an idiot.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m just making sure I understand the analogy, Miss Kira. So Rich is like your second butthole that closed up and scarred over, and you think scratching it would be a bad idea?”

I sighed. “It wasn’t a butthole. I told you guys that a million times. The wound was only three inches deep, okay? And it was on my butt cheek. It wasn’t even in the crack,” I added quietly.

“Here’s an analogy for you,” Miranda said. She leaned forward with an evil glint in her eye. “When I get an ant bite, if I scratch it a little bit, it gets itchier. But I don’t scratch it a little bit. I scratch that bitch until it bleeds. A few seconds of pain in exchange for no more itching. Simple as that.”

“Oh, perfect,” I said. “So you’re saying murder is the answer.”

Iris plugged her ears but nodded slowly to me and winked.

I laughed. “You two are idiots, and I’m not going. I’m also not murdering him.” Probably not, at least.