Hopeless (Hopeless #1)(10)

Six’s sense of humor and straightforward personality are huge factors in why we get along so well. Peppy, fake girls annoy the hell out of me. I don’t know that pep is even in Six’s vocabulary. She’s one black wardrobe away from being your typical, broody teenager. And fake? She’s as straight shooting as they come, whether you want her to be or not. There isn’t a fake thing about Six, other than her name.

When she was fourteen and her parents told her they were moving to Texas from Maine, she rebelled by refusing to respond to her name. Her real name is Seven Marie, so she would only answer to Six just to spite her parents for making her move. They still call her Seven, but everyone else calls her Six. Just goes to show she’s as stubborn as I am, which is one of the many reasons we’re best friends.

“I think you’ll be happy I woke you up.” I pull myself up from the floor and onto her bed. “Something monumental happened today.”

Six opens the bathroom door and walks back to her bed. She lies down next to me and pulls the covers up over her head. She rolls away from me, fluffing her pillow with her hand until she gets comfortable. “Let me guess…Karen got cable?”

I roll onto my side and scoot closer to her, wrapping my arm around her. I put my head on her pillow and spoon her. “Guess again.”

“You met someone at school today and now you’re pregnant and getting married and I can’t be a bridesmaid at your wedding because I’ll be all the way across the damn world?”

“Close, but nope.” I drum my fingers on her shoulder.

“Then what?” she says, irritated.

I roll over onto my back and let out a deep sigh. “I saw a guy at the store after school, and holy shit, Six. He was beautiful. Scary, but beautiful.”

Six immediately rolls over, managing to send an elbow straight into the same eye that she assaulted a few minutes ago. “What?!” she says loudly, ignoring the fact that I’m holding my eye and groaning again. She sits up on the bed and pulls my hand away from my face. “What?!” she yells again. “Seriously?”

I stay on my back and attempt to force the pain from my throbbing eye into the back of my mind. “I know. As soon as I looked at him it was like my entire body just melted to the floor. He was…wow.”

“Did you talk to him? Did you get his number? Did he ask you out?”

I’ve never seen Six so animated before. She’s being a little too giddy, and I’m not sure that I like it.

“Jesus, Six. Simmer down.”

She looks down at me and frowns. “Sky, I’ve been worried about you for four years, thinking this would never happen. I would be fine if you were gay. I would be fine if you only liked skinny, short, geeky guys. I would even be fine if you were only attracted to really old, wrinkly men with even wrinklier penises. What I haven’t been fine with is the thought of you never being able to experience lust.” She falls back onto the bed, smiling. “Lust is the best of all the deadly sins.”

I laugh and shake my head. “I beg to differ. Lust sucks. I think you’ve played it up all these years. My vote is still with gluttony.” With that, I pull a piece of chocolate out of my pocket and pop it into my mouth.

“I need details,” she says.

I scoot up on the bed until my back meets the headboard. “I don’t know how to describe it. When I looked at him, I never wanted to stop. I could have stared at him all day. But then when he looked back at me, it freaked me out. He looked at me like he was pissed off that I even noticed him. Then when he followed me to my car and demanded to know my name, it was like he was mad at me for it. Like I was inconveniencing him. I went from wanting to lick his dimples to wanting to get the hell away from him.”

“He followed you? To your car?” she asks skeptically. I nod and give her every last detail of my trip to the grocery store, all the way up to the point where he smashed his fist into the car next to him.

“God, that’s so bizarre,” she says when I finish. She sits up and mirrors my position against her headboard. “Are you sure he wasn’t flirting with you? Trying to get your number? I mean, I’ve seen you with guys, Sky. You put on a good act, even if you don’t feel it with them. I know you know how to read guys, but I think maybe the fact that you were actually attracted to him might have muddied your intuition. You think?”

I shrug. She could be right. Maybe I just read him wrong and my own negative reaction prompted him to change his mind about asking me out. “Could be. But whatever it was, it was ruined just as fast. He’s a dropout, he’s moody, he’s got a temper and…he’s just…he’s hopeless. I don’t know what my type is, but I know I don’t want it to be Holder.”

Six grabs my cheeks, squeezing them together, and turns my face to hers. “Did you just say Holder?” she asks, her exquisitely groomed eyebrow arched in curiosity.

My lips are squished together due to her hold on my cheeks, so I just nod rather than give her a verbal response.

“Dean Holder? Messy brown hair? Smoldering blue eyes? A temper straight out of Fight Club?”

I shrug. “Dowds sike dim,” I say, my words barely audible thanks to the grip she still has on my face. She releases her hold and I repeat what I said. “Sounds like him.” I bring my hand to my face and massage my cheeks. “You know him?”