Page 9 of The Fine Art of Faking It
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Especially not you, Eden,” Davis started again, but Eden wasn’t interested in apologies or excuses.
“And yet here we are. I’m alone and humiliated and you brought a teenage super model as your date.”
“It’s not what it looks like. My parents made me—”
“You know what. You’re eighteen. No one made you do anything.”
“Eden, it’s not what you think. I tried to—”
“Whatever. At least I figured out that you’re just like the rest of your family before I did something stupid. The jackass gene must be dominant in your family tree.”
“Can’t we talk about this?”
“I don’t have anything more to say to you.” There were tears clogging her throat. She liked him so damn much and she’d been so damn wrong. Eden brushed past him, pushed her way through the crowd that had gathered around them, and grabbed the first guy she recognized. Ramesh Goldschmidt was junior class president and had won an award for his hand-lettered protest signs.
“Let’s dance, Ramesh,” she said with feigned brightness.
Astute for a seventeen-year-old, Ramesh wisely shut his mouth and put his sweaty hands on her hips.
And while a glum-looking Davis stepped onto the dance floor with Taneisha, Eden plotted her revenge.
* * *
She lastedall of four minutes on the dance floor with Ramesh—a guy whose only crime was being not Davis—before excusing herself to the shadowy hallway outside the gym next to the janitor’s closet.
Tears were hot on her cheeks. Her chest squeezed tight, a physical manifestation of emotional pain—as Blue Moon’s guidance counselor liked to explain it with puppets.
The gym door opened. Holiday lights and upbeat music spilling out into her little dungeon of heartbreak, taunting her.
“Eden?”
Moon Beam spotted her and stepped into the dungeon-like hallway. Eden hastily wiped her eyes.
“Oh, man. I didn’t know you likeliked himliked him.” Moon Beam slid down the wall and sat next to Eden.
Eden blew her nose in the punch napkin she’d snagged from the refreshment table for just such a purpose. She was crying over a boy. Just like her older sister Atlantis had sixteen thousand times between the ages of fourteen to nineteen.
She was supposed to be smarter than that. And Davis was supposed to be a nice guy.
“Ireallyliked him. I thought he was smart and funny and nice and interested.”
She didn’t want to ask the question. Because she wasn’t sure if she could handle the answer. Why would he do this to her? Was it because she wasn’t special enough? Attractive enough? Had he just been messing with her with their little hallway flirts? Taneisha was beautiful and tall and curvy in all the best places. She was also smart—damn her—and really, really confident.
In a side-by-side comparison, could Eden blame anyone for choosing Taneisha?
“He’s a dick, Ede.” Moon Beam patted her on the shoulder. “That’s all the explanation you need.”
“You’re sure it’s not me?”
“You could be a straight-up asshole and him treating you like this would still make him a dick,” Moon Beam insisted.
It didn’t take away the awful ache in her chest, knowing that the boy of her dreams was currently wrapped up in the slim arms and abnormally large teenage breasts of Taneisha Duval. But it was something to cling to.
“Heisa dick, isn’t he?” Eden sniffled.
“Yeah. And you know what you’re going to do?”
“What?” Eden asked, her voice watery.
