“I did,” I said. “I still do… sort of.”
“ ‘Sort of ’? Jesus, stop dancing around the answers. Look, you’ve been ditching Jess and me for weeks. We barely see you anymore because you don’t do shit with us. Jess won’t say it, but she seriously thinks you don’t like us anymore. She’s upset, and I’m pissed because you’ve totally abandoned us. You’re always distracted and zoning out. And you dance around our fucking questions! Damn it, Bianca, give me some answers here… please.” The anger in her voice broke into a small plea of desperation. She lowered her voice. “Please, tell me what’s going on with you.”
My heart ached as guilt wrapped around my chest like a boa constrictor. I let out a long breath, knowing I couldn’t lie anymore. At least not about this. “We’ve been sleeping together.”
“Who? You and Wesley?”
“Yeah.”
“Since when?”
“End of January.”
Casey was quiet for a long moment. Then, after it sank in, she asked, “If you hate him, why have you been hooking up with him?”
“Because… it made me feel better. With all of the drama with my parents and then Jake showing up and all… I just needed to distract myself. I wanted to escape from it all… you know, in a nonsuicidal way. Sleeping with Wesley just seemed like a decent idea at the time.” I stared out the window, not wanting to see the expression on her face. I was sure she’d be disappointed in me. Or, in a sick way, maybe even proud of me.
“So… is that where you’ve been for the past month?” she asked. “Is that why you’ve been bailing on us? You’ve been with Wesley?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Every time things got to be too much, he was just there. I could relieve the stress without freaking you or Jessica out. It seemed like a decent idea. Then I was addicted… but it all caught up with me, and now things suck worse than ever.”
“OMG, are you pregnant?”
I gritted my teeth and turned around to face her. “No, Casey, I’m not fucking pregnant.” Was she serious? “God, I’m smart enough to use a condom, and I’ve been on birth control for, like, three freaking years, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” Casey said. “You’re not pregnant… thank God. But if that’s not the problem, why do things suck worse?”
“Well, for one, you’re pissed at me… and I like Wesley.”
“Well, duh, you are screwing him.”
“No, I mean…” I shook my head and turned to look out the window again. The little suburban houses of Hamilton sped past us, simple and clean. Surrounded by their innocent picket fences. I would have killed to be simple and clean like these little houses. Instead, I felt complicated and dirty and tainted. “I don’t like him,” I explained. “He annoys the hell out of me ninety-six percent of the time, and sometimes I’d like nothing better than to strangle him to death. But at the same time I… I want him to be happy. I think about him way more than I should, and I-”
“You love him.”
“No!” I shouted, spinning around to face her. “No, no, no! I do not love him, okay? Love is rare and hard to find and takes years upon years to develop. Teenagers don’t fall in love. I don’t love Wesley.”
“Fine,” Casey said. “But you have feelings for him, right?”
“Yeah.”
She glanced at me before turning back to the road, half grinning. “I knew it. I mean… all those jokes I made about it were just teasing, but I knew something would happen after you kissed him.”
“Shut up,” I muttered. “This sucks.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why is it a bad thing? So what if you have feelings for him. Isn’t that supposed to be great and exciting and give you butterflies in your tummy or whatever?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not great or exciting. It’s terrible. It’s excruciating.”
“But why?”
“Because he’ll never like me back!” God, wasn’t it obvious? Couldn’t she put two and two together? “He’ll never care about me that way, Casey. I’m wasting my time even thinking that it’s possible.”
“Why won’t he like you back?” she asked.
Did she have a million questions or what? “Stop.”
“No, I’m being serious, B,” Casey pushed. “I’m pretty sure you can’t read minds or see into the future, so I don’t see how you know that he won’t ever like you. Why wouldn’t he?”
“You don’t like me very much right now,” I pointed out.
“I’ll get over it,” she said. “Well, eventually. But seriously, what’s stopping Wesley from liking you back?”
“I’m the Duff.”
“Sorry. The what?”
“Duff.”
“Is that even a word?”
“The designated ugly fat friend,” I sighed. “The unattractive girl in the group. That’s me.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Is it?” I snapped. “Is it really that stupid, Casey? Look at you. Look at Jessica. You two look like you jumped out of an issue of Teen Vogue. I can’t compete with that. So, yeah, I’m the fucking Duff.”
“You are not. Who told you that?”
“Wesley.”
“You’re shitting me!”
“Nope.”
“Before or after you fucked him?”
“Before.”
“Well then, he didn’t mean it,” Casey said. “He’s been sleeping with you, right? So he must find you attractive.”
I snorted. “Look who you’re talking about, Casey. Wesley isn’t particularly picky when it comes to sex. I could look like a gorilla, and he still wouldn’t hesitate to fuck me, but dating me is a totally different situation. He wouldn’t even date a girl on the Skinny Squad-”
“I really hate it when you call us that.”
“-but me? He would never be the boyfriend of a Duff.”
“Seriously, Bianca,” Casey said. “You are not the Duff. If any of us is the Duff, it’s me.”