Lexi giggled back, just as dryly. “Well yeah, duh,” she replied. “You’re a cool boy, Quinn. I’m glad I got to, you know, know you better.”
“If it’s the looks that are doing it, I do have a twin,” I joked again.
“Eww, fuck no. Not Kevin,” she insisted.
“What’s wrong with the guy? He’s charismatic, he’s got connections, he’s-”
“Slimy, that’s what he is,” Lexi added.
“Hey, honestly, be careful. He’s my brother,” I said with a more serious tone.
“He just comes across as more, like, desperate. Fake. Like he’ll do anything for the time of day, I dunno. It feels like he’s there just to get what he wants from people and leave.”
“He has his… own version of empathy,” I replied thoughtfully. “Not unlike Taylor, actually, now that I think about it. Hell, she’s more of the ‘I just want something’ type, not to gossip.”
“Real talk, I totally thought you were…” Lexi trailed off, looking around to see if Morgan was on her way back. “I totally thought you were dating Taylor or at least fucking her before you started dating Morgan.”
I was taken aback, hopefully not for the reason she thought. “M-me? Dating Taylor?”
“I know, it’s crazy, but there was something about your energy together… like, for the longest time, I thought there was something there.”
Wow. Look at Lexi. She had more going than I gave her credit for.
“Of course, it was, like, super obvious after that you were just helping her to get closer to Morgan,” she continued.
I turned to her and grinned. “Is that what you think happened?” I challenged her.
She grinned back. “And that confirms it,” she told me. “It can be our secret if you want. I just can’t believe it fucking worked. You. With her. She, like, doesn’t date anybody, Quinn.”
If I knew one thing about Lexi, it was that if she believed in something volatile, even the truth, it could spell trouble. If she believed in something harmless, well… there were worse things than to just…
I nodded. “Our secret,” I repeated, letting a pause pass. “But yeah, I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
It was only after the conversation finished and Morgan rejoined us that the gravity of what Lexi said truly hit me. Did she have a crush on me, or did she just make this offer to every guy that got close enough with her? Did I cause this by calling her cute…? Was I making a mistake?
***
“Calling my friend ‘cute’ isn’t cheating on me,” Morgan laughed as we laid out her purchases in her room. “You’re so paranoid.”
“I have my reasons to be,” I defended myself as I looked over the sunglasses I bought. They matched hers. I wasn’t about to tell her that Lexi gave me the “If you weren’t with her” speech, but I could tell her everything else.
“Why, did she blow you or something?” she asked as a joke.
“No, of course not! I’ve remained faithful t-”
“Shut up,” she laughed, kissing me. “Honestly, I’m glad that you can be friends with my girls and not be weird about it.”
“What’s weird?” I asked.
“Well, for starters, having sex with them and not telling me about it.” She let a beat sink in. “And hey, you got over your weird phase there, so that’s all good.”
I felt my cheeks redden, and let out an uncomfortable growl.
“For second, believing guys and girls can’t be friends without something sexual going on between them. Believe me, so many guys I thought were good would be, like, proud of how they’re not friends with any other girls, as if every girl is someone I could lose to or something.”
“And you win against all of them anyways,” I replied, grabbing her around the waist and kissing her neck.
She lightly moaned, pushing her butt against my crotch. She lost herself for a few seconds, rubbing her ass against me, then pulled herself out of my grasp. “Hey. Parents are home. Keep it together,” she half-joked. “Anyway, speaking of, you wanna come to Crystal’s tonight?”
“I thought it was girl’s night,” I replied.
She shrugged. “They all okay’d you, even Milo, and he’s not a girl either, so fuck the rules,” she replied. “If you’d rather not, that’s cool.”
My tone turned to mild disappointment. “And when you say, ‘all of them…'”
She read my thoughts. “Yeah, Taylor is a no-show,” she replied in an equally bummed voice. “Sorry, Quinn.”
“You know if I said no she’d happily be there,” I replied, only realizing the implications once my words sank in. “Is that why you keep asking me? So that you can tell Taylor if I’m not coming?”
She sighed. “Look, Quinn. You’re important to me, but so is she. These are her wishes. If she doesn’t want to see you… Yeah, that sucks, but what can you do?”
“So that’s a yes,” I grumpily observed.
“It’s a yes.” She paused, then sighed again. “If you’re not coming anyway, I want to see her. I miss her. I’m asking you first, that’s got to mean something. Milo is cool with you now, that has to mean something too.”
“‘Cool with me,'” I replied, making air quotes. “In that ‘I’m not cool with you’ way.”
“Welcome to Milo,” she replied.
“Sometimes the politics of your group are exhausting,” I mumbled.
“I don’t disagree,” Morgan replied, starting to hang up her clothes, but stopping once she saw how much it was affecting me. Slowly and tenderly, she gave me a kiss. “Do you want a little break from them? Maybe I could hang out with you and your friends for a while.”
I chuckled sadly. “Morgan, I don’t have a friend group. I have a circle of people I sat with at lunch, maybe, but I won’t ever see those people again. You actually have a friend group. I have, like, Kevin, and…”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t like to hang out with Kevin if that’s okay,” Morgan mumbled.
“Did he poison half the school when I wasn’t looking or something?” I asked.
“He’s just one of those brown-noser types. Clings to the most relevant one in the room and leeches. It’s weird. I get you’re his brother and I’m sure he has other good qualities, but… I’m someone he thinks has power, so he’s kind of draining as a person.”
“I feel like you should give him a chance out of school, especially when you’re dating his brother,” I told her seriously. “I can accept if he rubs you the wrong way, but your whole group kind of… they’re all mean to him, and it gets a bit much when I have to constantly hear that when I keep getting nothing but, ‘I don’t like how he acts.'”
“We can have this conversation another time when I’m more ready,” she told me. “Anyway, did you need a break from my group?”
I huffed. “No,” I admitted. “They’re a bit much too sometimes, but they’re basically my friends too at this point. Though maybe I can skip out on Crystal’s so you can see Taylor or something. Just, uh, you know… say hi to her for me.”
“It’s bothering you,” Morgan said nurturing, stopping again. We both were sitting on the bed by this point, and she was stroking my cheek.
“Of course it is,” I told her. My cheeks were welling up. I felt like a lame-o. “I mean, she was the first person I was ever intimate with like that, and I knew what we had wasn’t going to last forever, but just… it feels… weird now that we’re not having sex and she just pushes me away like I’m nothing.”
“You don’t mean weird, don’t say it,” Morgan supported me.