Dream With Me (With Me Book 4) (6 page)

We hate each other. At least that’s what I’d always thought. I still remember our disastrous first meeting, what I overheard, and every single time afterward where we did not click. And then . . . last night happened.

So, I’m confused. Does he hate me? Do I hate him? And does it even matter anymore?

I’m not sure, but I’m not going to figure it out—not without some caffeine in my system. But first, a shower is in order. I’m not heading out to the kitchen looking like I’ve just spent the night having sex, especially when my best friends and roomies, Chloe and Taylor, are out there. My cell was fully charged by the time I got back, and I just saw their many texts asking me why I wasn’t on the boat. I didn’t respond, too tired, and beyond thankful that they were still out partying.

I have to get up. I want to create new nail polishes and a honey green tea cleanser before we head to the BBQ at Green College later this afternoon. Sad that I can’t be lazy, I make myself leave my comfy bed and head to the door. I let out a curse after I open it.

Taylor and Chloe are outside.

Chloe takes one good look at me and does a little victory dance. “I knew it! You had sex!”

“You so have,” Taylor says gleefully. “Who? Where? What?”

“And how big?”

“Oh! Yes! How big? And was he good?”

Chloe laughs. “Taylor, look at her! Evie’s barely alive. Of course he was good. She’s been well and truly fucked.”

I hold up a hand. “I need to clean up—”

“You can clean up
after
you tell all.” Chloe takes my right arm and Taylor grabs my left, and they pull me out of my room. We head into the kitchen where breakfast awaits. “Coffee. Bacon. Scrambled eggs with extra cheese. And, yes, if you’re a good girl, there are even hash browns.”

I pour myself a huge steaming cup of coffee, adding a dollop of cream and two sugars, and drink. Ahhhh. Sweet coffee. So good. So very much needed.

I open my eyes to see Sherlock and Watson, aka Chloe and Taylor, watching me. There is no hope for me. I’m not going to be able to avoid the Best Friend Inquisition.

Chloe, Taylor, and I met during the first week of our freshman year. We all had different roommates, but lived next to each other with my room being in the middle. We’re still really good friends with those first-year roommates, too—we all lived in a townhouse last year together—but Chloe, Taylor, and I just clicked on a different level. We all have similar personalities and get along really well.

They’re my girls, and I love them to pieces. But they’re nosy as heck. I can’t blame them, though. If one of them looked like me, I would be asking them prying questions, too.

I glance at them both. Chloe’s long light blonde hair is pulled back in a low ponytail and she has wide blue eyes. She’s tall, fine-boned, regal-looking, and even in her Hello Kitty pants and tee, she looks like she could be a real-life princess. Taylor’s also tall with curves that go on for ages. Her thick, shoulder-length jet-black hair, blunt bangs, brown eyes, and bronze skin give her a Cleopatra meets Victoria’s Secret model feel.

I grab my coffee and sit at the small round table. I’m not surprised when they join me. Chloe, the one who always looks out for us, gives me a plateful of food.

“Eat. Drink. Spill.”

Taylor shakes her finger at me. “And do not leave one single detail out.”

“Okay,” I say, taking another sip of coffee. “I had sex.”

“And?” Taylor prompts.

“It was out of this world awesome,” I say.

Chloe smiles wide. “Good! You should only look that awful because of out of this world awesome sex.”

“Hey! I don’t look
that
bad.”

Chloe and Taylor snort at this.

“Fine, I look a little rough.”

“A little?” Taylor laughs.

“Maybe more than a little,” I admit. “It’s hard having sex with a sex god.”

Chloe perks up. “A sex god? Do tell. And does this sex god have any sex god friends? Just asking for selfish reasons.”

“Um . . . I think his friends are all in relationships.” I eat some eggs, cooked exactly how I like them. Maybe they won’t notice that I didn’t tell them
who
I had sex with.

“Evie,” Chloe sing-songs. “Who did you have sex with?”

Damn. They noticed. How can I tell my best friends that I had sex with the guy that they know I hate? They’re not going to believe it. They’re going to think I’ve lost my mind. They might even stage a Sex Intervention.

“I don’t want to kiss and tell—”

“Since when?” Taylor asks.

“Yeah, since when?”

“My food is getting cold. I should eat.”

“Uh oh,” Taylor says. “It’s bad.”

“It has to be bad,” Chloe says. “Like maybe it wasn’t a sex god, but a sex alien.”

“Or a lizard. He was probably a lizard.”

“Or a serial killer.”

“A
lizard
serial killer,” Taylor says.

“Or”—Chloe leans in—“it’s someone even worse, because Evie is never, ever this quiet.”

“She isn’t.”

“I had sex with Griff,” I blurt out.

They stop. Stare. And start laughing. Full-out belly laughing.

“Griff?” Chloe hoots with laughter. “As in Griff Sinclair Griff?”

“As in the guy who dissed you at the Freshmen Mixer when you asked him to dance?”

“I didn’t ask him to dance. His friend said dance with that hot chick over there, and he said—”

“‘She might be hot, but she’s not hot enough to tempt me,’” Taylor and Chloe say at the same time.

So, I’ve told this story a lot, but it hurt me at the time when it happened. It wasn’t just what Griff said, it was
how
he said it. Like he was better than me.

“Well, I guess I was hot enough to tempt him last night,” I say. “Because we had sex—and more than once.”

Chloe’s laughter dies away. “Wait. Wait.
Wait!
You’re serious?”

“Deadly.”

Taylor quiets then, too. “For real?”

“For real.”

“HOLY. SHIT.” Taylor gets up. “You did
it
with
him
?! You hate him. He hates you.”

“Well, apparently not,” Chloe says. “Or they fucked the hate out of each other.”

“I have no idea how it happened,” I say. “One minute, I’m cursing myself because I missed the damn boat last night. I was running late, and it left just as I arrived. And I was mad, because I really wanted to go, and hang out with you two and all our other friends. And then the next minute, Griff is there and we lean down to grab my things—”

“What happened to your things?” Taylor asks.

“Who cares,” Chloe says. “Skip to the good stuff. Sex, Evie.”

I ignore Chloe and answer Taylor’s question. “I dropped them when I missed the boat. I’d taken off my heels to hopefully make it, but I didn’t. So, we lean down and our hands accidentally touched, and . . .”

“And?” This from Chloe, her voice breathless.

How can I adequately describe it? Explain it when I can’t explain it to myself?

“It was . . .” I swallow, my heart thumping at the memory. “It was something out of a movie. Romance, not horror. When we touched, it was
that
moment where I felt incredibly alive. I felt something undeniable about him. And nothing mattered—not what happened in the past or how we never talked. None of that mattered because I needed him. I’d never experienced that. And then Griff touched me like . . .”

“How?” Chloe asks softly.

“Griff touched me like he couldn’t believe his good luck.” I bite my lower lip and look at the two girls who know me better than even my sisters do. “And now I wonder if I was wrong all along. What if . . . what if Griff doesn’t hate me? What if he never did? What if I was just nursing a lot of butt-hurt feelings and didn’t give him a chance because of what he said?”

“To be fair, what he said was incredibly jerky,” Chloe said, her eyes narrowing. “You
cried
when we got back to the dorm.”

“One hundred and ten percent jerky.” Taylor finishes the rest of her coffee. “Also, he was never nice to you, and you had tons of classes with him. You ran into each other a lot. He could have apologized. Cleared the air. He doesn’t get a pass, even if he is a sex god.”

“But I didn’t try either,” I say, then fall silent for a moment. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Um, why doesn’t it matter?” Chloe glances at my half-empty plate and grabs it to put more food on it. A heaping pile of hash browns are on one side that I quickly dig into; I’m absolutely starving.

But I need something other than this coffee. I get up to grab a bottled water from the fridge and take a healthy sip. “It doesn’t matter because I don’t know what last night was. Even though he did ask me to spend the night, but—”

“He did?” Taylor jumps up. “Why didn’t you?”

“Um, because it seemed kind of foolish.”

“Oh, more foolish than hooking up with a guy you’ve
hated
since freshman year, you mean?”

I narrow my eyes at Taylor. “Touché.” I take my seat at the table and sigh. “It was just so unexpected. What happened between us, I mean. And I didn’t want to have to deal with waking up next to him, or thinking this was something more than it was. It was a once in a lifetime thing. And even if it isn’t, we graduate
this
Sunday. I don’t want to get involved with anyone when I’m moving to New York City the day after graduation.”

“Don’t remind me,” Taylor says with a small cry. “You’re going to New York. And we’re headed to Los Angeles.”

“At least you two will be in the same city,” I say. “I’m not going to have anyone—and my family in Manhattan does
not
count.”

“You should come, Evie. We have a place, and you can crash with us,” Chloe says. “I bet that other makeup internship in L.A. is still open. They
loved
you. Or you could start your own company, like you want to.”

This is an old argument that I wave away. “You know why I turned that down. And it’s too risky to start my company now. I was going to take that in the first place, but then Lily Harlow herself called me up to offer me a
paid
internship.”

“No, I know,” Chloe says. “It’s a great opportunity for you. Lily Harlow is famous, rich, beautiful, and the media loves her. We’re just sad you won’t be with us, that our let’s-move-to-L.A.-once-we-graduate isn’t happening.”

“But she’ll visit.” Taylor rubs her lips together, worry creasing her forehead. “Right?”

“Of course,” I say. “And you’ll both visit me. Think of it this way. We’ll have the best of both worlds. You’ll come to the city when you get sick of all the sun and gorgeous weather.”

We all laugh at this, because who would ever grow tired of that?

“Well,” Taylor says, “you’ll have to come out for your birthday in July.”

“I’m confused,” Chloe says suddenly.

I turn to her. “How so?”

“Why can’t you get involved with anyone before we graduate? It doesn’t mean it has to be a situation where you fall in love and then you break up because you’re both going separate ways. But why couldn’t you be together just to be together? Explore this not hate thing that you two have.”

“But it was a one-night stand.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

“No, but given past experiences . . .”

Chloe waves her hand in the air. “Forget those. You’re looking at this the wrong way. You’re seeing the short deadline as an oh-no kind of thing. When, really, it’s a blessing in disguise. It’s a way out. Keep it casual. Have fun. Nothing has to happen other than hot sex. And, personally, I think you’d be crazy not to see what happens with the sex god. Even if you do hate each other.”

“She’s right, Evie,” Taylor says. “I know you’re scared about getting hurt, but if you go into this with your eyes wide open, with no expectations that it’s going to last, and if you keep your heart safe, then you’ll be fine. Think about how you just said you might have made a mistake about the whole hate thing with Griff. Do you really want to think you made a mistake in not having some fun with him?”

“Plus,” Chloe says, “it’s not like you to not go after something. You’re the fearless one. You
always
take risks. Except for starting your company, that is. Oh, don’t give me that look. I promise not to bring it up again. But . . . why not take one more with Griff? At the very least, you know you’ll be coming.”

“By the way, how many times was it?” Taylor asks.

Chloe gives me a good look over. “Easy. Five times. Definitely.”

“That many?” Taylor purses her lips. “I’d say two. He
is
our age, Chloe—”

“But he is a sex god,” Chloe points out.

“There is that. We’ll find out soon enough. Evie?”

I smile and put down my fork, then raise my hands and hold up nine fingers.

“Nine?” they both cry out.

Chloe throws down her napkin. “That’s it. The decision is totally taken away from you. Sorry not sorry. But there is no way in the world that we are going to let you walk away from a sex god.”

“It’s in the Best Friend Manual,” Taylor says. “Rule Seven: Thou shall not let thy best friend pass up sex with a sex god.”

I laugh at that, but quickly sober because I’m not being completely honest. “It was great sex, but it felt . . . different. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t even know what it was. It feels super cliché to say we had a connection, but that’s what it was. Can I really keep myself unattached?”

“Evelyn Grace Hart,” Chloe says sternly.

Uh oh. I know I’m in for it. Chloe only says my full name when I’m about to get a lecture.

“You are fearless. Fun. Smart. Confident. And sexy as hell. You are going to conquer the world with your makeup line one day. You can do
anything
you set your mind to—and that certainly includes
not
falling for a guy in six freaking days.”

Taylor nods her head. “What she said.”

“He might not be interested,” I say as a last attempt.

They both snort and roll their eyes. “Puh-lease.”

I’m out of arguments. Why am I fighting this? I wanted Griff last night; I still want him now. Why can’t we just have a one-week fling? We’ll say good-bye when we graduate with no hurt feelings. We can be mature and adult about this. It can be easy. And do I really want to pass up more sex with a sex god?