Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe) (2 page)

I moved my arms to cover my breasts, though she didn’t seem awake enough to notice I was naked. I grabbed a big bath towel from the back of the door and wrapped it around myself.

She said, “Sorry for barging in, but I’ve been obsessed for hours with getting up to pee, and I couldn’t wait another minute.”

“No problem,” I replied.

“After you left the bar last night, Shayla made me do body shots. Tequila.”

“Another fun night at Cougar Town, huh?”

“Did you sleep with Adrian?”

She asked the question over the sound of her tinkling.

Two points to Golden for being direct! I knew she had a crush on him, and they’d been hanging out recently, but just as friends.

Did I sleep with Adrian? No. He turned me down.

“Nope.” I rinsed out my mouth and took an assortment of pill bottles from the medicine cabinet. “Vitamins?” I offered.

She was wearing one of Shayla’s workout T-shirts, which looked like a dress on Golden’s petite frame. Her eyes were rimmed in red, but I couldn’t guess if she’d been crying, or if that was just her morning face.

“Do you even care about Adrian?” she asked. “I don’t know why you’d bother with him when you have a rich movie star.”

I backed toward the door. Even though Golden was being calm and strangely detached, I still felt uncomfortable. Was this a confrontation?

“Of course I care about Adrian.”

“Since when?”

“We’ve been friends for a long time. Like, since high school. We’re totally friends, and that’s it.”

“Plus you work together.”

“Not really. He works on the days I’m not there.”

“What happened last night?”

“Nothing,” I said hurriedly.

“Why did you get mad at everyone and leave the table? We were just teasing you. That’s what friends do.”

I adjusted the fit of my towel. I wanted to take a shower, but not if Golden was going to keep interrogating me.

“My feelings were hurt,” I said. “You guys could try a little harder to pretend you’re happy for me. I don’t think I was talking about LA that much.”

“Beaverdale is small.”

“Yes. Your point being…?”

“Some people don’t appreciate having their noses rubbed in the fact they haven’t left here for anything.”

“Are you kidding? I love this town.”

“You’d be out of here in a heartbeat if you got the chance.”

“Oh, please, Golden. You’re just mad at me because things aren’t working out in your life how you planned. Don’t try to play it like I did something awful. I’ve done terrible things, but I haven’t done them to you, okay?”

She put her face in her hands and made a choked sound.

Oh, flaming bag of poo, she was crying, wasn’t she? I pulled the bathroom door open and peered around for Shayla. She was the one who brought Golden home, so that made her responsible for the girl. I adjusted my towel again and tried to think my way out of this problem.

I’m not the kind of girl who instinctively comforts a crying girl. I recently helped out a pregnant girl who was sitting next to me on an airplane, but that was different from this. That girl had a legitimate reason for being upset.

I called down the hallway, “Shayla, we have a situation!”

No response.

I looked back at Golden, who still had her face in her hands.

What would cheer me up if I were in her position?

“Golden. Hey, listen. I’m an asshole, okay? You’re really nice, and you’re super pretty. I’m sorry about everything, and I’m definitely not into Adrian. He’s actually gross. He’s too tall and he has weirdly long legs like a giraffe.”

She blew her nose on some toilet paper and looked up at me with her giant, baby blue eyes, her adorable face framed by her curls. Her golden hair had been streaked with colors ranging from pumpkin to platinum, and even with messy bedhead, she was cute. I had to wonder:
why wouldn’t Adrian make a move on her?

“He does have skinny legs,” she said, nodding in agreement.

“The next time I talk to him, I’ll punch him right in the nuts and ask him why he isn’t taking you out on romantic dates.”

She winced. “Maybe don’t punch him.”

My cheering-up was working. Golden was almost smiling at my jokes. Now I just needed one more great idea.

“Let’s go eat some motherfucking bacon and pancakes,” I said.

She nodded. “Okay.”

I heard a shuffling down the hall, and my roommate (and cousin, and best friend) Shayla appeared at her doorway, rubbing her eyes. Her black, wavy hair was fluffy on one side and flat on the other. Her golden brown eyes were barely open.

“Did someone say motherfucking bacon?” she asked.

“Yes. Five-minute showers and then we saddle up. I promise not to talk about LA.”

Shayla shuffled her way into the bathroom, a guilty look on her face. “You can talk about LA if you want. I’m sorry we went too far last night. You know we only razz you because we love you.”

“And because you’re jealous bitches.”

She smirked, one eyebrow quirking up with amusement. “Yes. And because we’re jealous bitches. But we’re YOUR jealous bitches, and you’re stuck with us.”

I shrugged. “I’d much rather have you guys than some other jealous bitches.”

“Damn straight.” She gave me a fist bump, then she dove at the tub and called dibs for the first shower.

I went back to my bedroom, got under the covers, and pulled my laptop off the night stand. Instead of checking email and Facebook, I pulled up google and typed in
Dalton Deangelo
.

The weird thing is, my fingers just did that on their own. I swear I hadn’t even been thinking about the guy—not consciously, at least.

I cried out in surprise and horror when the google autocomplete function suggested I was searching for “Dalton Deangelo porn.”

With sick curiosity, I clicked the search button.

I knew I shouldn’t go looking for the stuff, but knowing it was wrong only made me more interested. It’s like… deciding you’re going on a diet, and then suddenly all you can think about is eating an entire birthday cake to yourself, and not even a tasty one, but the cheap grocery store cake that makes you hate yourself as you shovel pale, under-flavored lard into your mouth by the fistful.*

*Or so I’ve heard.

As the search results came in, my jaw literally dropped.

CHAPTER 3

I stared at the search results for “Dalton Deangelo porn.”

First, the name.

In his adult film, he was billed as Chandler Boink.

When you heard that, you probably laughed, right? I did, too.

And then my google hijinx took a turn for the regrettable. I clicked on an article that had school photos of a young Dalton. My heart broke.

Before his adult film role, and long before he became a famous TV-series actor, he was just a big-eyed kid with dark hair sticking up from his cowlick.

He was born David Blake, and if the article on the gossip website was to be believed, he was four years older than me—twenty-six.

The liar had said he was twenty-four. Or had he? He’d said he was “officially” twenty-four, and then been evasive.

Who was he?

I closed my eyes and imagined his face. David? No, he was a Dalton. No offense to the Davids of the world, but Davids manage grocery stores and fix furnaces. They don’t play brooding vampires and sweep small-town bookstore managers up in a tornado of fame and emotional dysfunction.

Touching his school photo on the screen, I felt the emptiness of missing him. He was still in LA, probably hiding from the prying paparazzi in that big house of his, and here I was in Beaverdale, hungover and getting fingerprints of sadness all over my laptop screen.

Shayla popped into my room, one towel around her body and another one around her showered hair. She jumped on the bed next to me.

“Whatcha shopping for?”

I tried to shut the laptop, but she was fast.

“You caught me,” I said with a sigh. “But we can’t talk about it, because I swore I wouldn’t bore everyone with the LA stuff.”

She glowered at the screen and chided me, “I hope you didn’t find the you-know-what, because he was under eighteen, and that makes it child-you-know-what and very illegal.”

“Gross! I wasn’t looking for the actual film.”

“That’s too bad, because here it is.”

I screamed. “Delete it! Gross, gross, gross. Get it off my computer!”

“Calm down. They don’t have the video, just stills. Like those blurry screen-caps. Hmm.” She chuckled. “Chandler Boink.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Hmm.” She kept clicking, riveted to the screen.

“Shay, how do you feel about Dalton right now? Like if we didn’t know him, and you were just a regular girl again, watching the show with your friends? Do you think his career is fucked because of this?”

“He plays a moody vampire, Peaches. He’s not Meryl Streep.”

“So, you don’t think it matters?”

“Oh, it matters. I don’t care how fast you run, you never outrun something like Chandler Boink, starring in
Pizza Delivery Sluts Love Anal
.”

I fell back on the bed and grabbed a pillow to cover my face as I screamed.

Shayla said, “I know, right? Why did it have to be anal? I mean… it’s porn, so there’s always anal, but why did it have to be in the title? Poor Dalton.”

From under the pillow, I asked, “How many girls did he screw?”

Shayla patted my foot. “Just one, baby. Just one in this movie, and I’m sure that’s it. You were definitely the second girl he slept with, ever.”

I yanked the pillow off my face and blinked at her in disbelief. “Really?”

Shayla smirked and shook her head. “No, not really. For a girl genius you sure are dumb sometimes.” She laughed. “Really, Peaches, he’s probably slept with more girls than a year has days. You’re better off without him.”

I hugged my arms around my body. “What about him, though? Is he better off without me?”

Shayla raised her eyebrows and gave me a serious stare.

“He’s coming to Beaverdale,” I said. “There’s no Keith here to protect me from Dalton’s charms.”

“His charms?”

“And his penis.”

“And his bumpy chest.”

“But mostly his charms,” I said, stifling a giggle.

“Right. Because it was his
charms
you were blowing when you guys trespassed onto the Weston Estate.”

This time, my giggle would not be stifled. Dalton had taken me to the hot spring of local legend, and I’d played mermaid for him. Just thinking about how good it felt to be naked outdoors with him, touching each other in the dappled sunlight… it put a smile on my face. Even running naked through the woods with some shotgun-wielding maniac on our heels was making me grin, now that some time had passed.

Shayla asked, “What would Keith say if he found out you went back to Dalton?”

“I don’t know what he’d say, but I can picture the hurt look on his face.”

“Would he consider it cheating? Are you guys dating long distance?”

“No, Shay. I told you. We never were dating. We were just doing a mutual rebound thing, to
unbreak our hearts
.”

She made a popping sound with her mouth.

“You’re right,” I said. “Unbreak our hearts sounds ridiculous out loud.”

“Maybe Keith is the guy for you. I’ve never heard one bad thing about him.”

“He puts parsley in smoothies, and he made me go to the gym.”

She shook her head. “In that case, you ought to press charges for cruel and unusual treatment.”

I glanced over at the heart-shaped mylar balloon tethered to my night stand. It had been a gift from my family, but looking at it made me think of Keith, and how he’d phoned me the night I returned home from LA, exactly when I’d needed him. That was just so like Keith, to do the sweet, sensitive thing to show he was thinking about you.

“I miss Keith,” I said. “He’s in Italy now, doing something with his life.”

“And you’re here with me. Poor you.”

“He’s riding around cobblestone streets on a little scooter, I just know it. Ugh, the Italian girls are going to be all over him. He’ll have to beat them away with a breadstick.”

“Breadsticks,” Shayla said, rubbing her stomach. “I’m so hungry, I could eat tofu wieners.”

Just then, Golden called out that she was done in the shower, and I could take my turn.

Shayla looked down at my laptop, frowning. She clicked, then typed furiously for a moment, then frowned some more.

“What is it?” I asked. “More bad stuff about Dalton?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there a Pizza Sluts sequel?”

“No.” Her voice was high and strained, almost like she was asking a question.

I tried to grab the laptop from her to see, but she yanked it away and clicked the button at the bottom to pop out the battery.

“You’re killing me!” I wailed. “Now I need to know what you read! I’m burning with the heat of a thousand suns to know what it was!”

“Too bad. I’m hungry for pancakes and bacon, and… it was nothing at all. I just took the battery out so you’d have your shower and we can all go eat.”

I got up and started toward the bathroom, giving her a squinty-eyed look to let her know I didn’t believe her.

“Fine,” I said. “Murder my laptop. I’ll just ask Dalton when I see him.”

“Maybe you should give him some space.”

“We’re friends now. Friends help each other in crisis.”

“Yes, but…” She stood up and flicked at the heart-shaped balloon, which had lost some helium and now floated three inches below the ceiling. “Get in the shower before I go Low Blood Sugar Godzilla on your ass.”

Heeding her warning, I rushed off to do as I was told. (You don’t mess with Low Blood Sugar Godzilla.) The other girls had gone over the five-minute limit, and my shower was on the chilly side, but the cold water woke me up, and I’ve always liked how goosebumps make your skin feel tight.

After showering, as I was drying off with a big towel, I noticed that the small hand towel was missing from the rod next to the sink. Golden must have used it to dry off her petite body after her shower.

The realization made me scowl at myself in the mirror. The thing about accepting your own fabulous size is it’s not a one-time thing. You have to accept your body over and over again, every time some little thing happens to remind you that life isn’t fair, and other people don’t walk around with the same curves and creases you have. Some people can dry their little bodies off with a fucking hand towel. And what do you do when that reality hits you in the face? You smile at your beautiful face in the mirror and tell that girl you love her, big bath towel and all.