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Normally West doesn’t struggle. Wait, correction: he never gives any signs that he may be struggling. Outward he’s always cool and collected.
“Hey, West.” I nudge him in the ribs—or try to. He’s grown so tall over the past six months, it’s ridiculous. “My turn.”
“I’m not done yet,” he grinds out, but steps back anyway.
“Yeah?” I adjust the microscope and peer down through it. Who knew bread and meat mold could look so beautiful? Like the flowering branches of trees. Like small galaxies. “That’s okay.”
He grunts. I translate that as not okay.
“Everything all right at home?”
Another grunt.
Nope. Not all right at all.
“What about your granddad? He didn’t catch that flu that’s been going around, has he?”
“He’s fine,” West bites out.
Okay, good. His grandfather seems like an ornery old man, and he looks nothing like West, but he’s raised him, so that’s a plus in my book. “And your sis? She okay?”
This time the grunt sounds positive, so I leave it at that. Man, sometimes getting information out of Weston is like pulling nails. Your own nails, in fact, with a red-hot poker. It requires patience and finesse—and I possess neither.
“Not sleeping well, then?” I say.
A shot in the dark, but hey, I know he has nightmares.
“No,” he agrees, and I relax a bit, because that’s not so bad, not as bad as his family being unwell.
Nate told me about the nightmares once, and let slip that West has them often. I just don’t know why.
Maybe there doesn’t have to be a reason, I remind myself. I’ve Googled it. They can be caused by anything from anxiety to bad or too little sleep. People have nightmares, period. No need to worry about West, not over this.
And yet when I step back to let him have another go at the funky mold, my heart clenches at his bowed head, the downturned corners of his mouth, the dark lashes hiding those pretty blue eyes.
A deep pulse goes through me, and an ache starts between my legs.
Heat licks my cheeks. What’s happening to me? It’s wrong to want someone when they’re down, right?
It’s wrong to want your friends that way, period. It’s not just West. My body reacts the same way to Nate, and lately…
Yeah, lately to Kash.
My body is a filthy slut. There’s no other explanation. Though it doesn’t react at all to the boys in my classroom, or other neighborhood boys. Just these three.
As if that’s not already too many.
God.
Kash is fair game, I tell myself. I barely know him. Also he’s older than me. It’s normal to feel attracted to older boys, right? They have this worldly air about them, that experienced I’ve-seen-it-all-already allure.
Plus, hey, tattoos and piercings. A bad boy. Come on, it’s only natural.
If I focus on Kash, my body will forget this strange attraction it has to West and Nate who’ve been like brothers to me ever since I met them.
It has to.
But I don’t see Kash in the days that follow. Days that turn into a week, then two. He manages to slip under my radar, leaving Nate’s apartment, leaving our building and returning to it when I’m not looking.
