I held my cup out and she poured some more Skittles into it.
“Heard from Dusty?” she said, eyes on the screen.
“Uh, no. He doesn’t have my number, so that’s a negative.”
“Bummer.”
“Do you want me to have heard from him? Because you were acting really weird yesterday.”
“Oh, that? I was just being the protective friend. I wanted to see how he’d respond. A lot of guys get intimidated by a protective friend, and then there’s always the ones you need to watch out for, the guys that are threatened by a girl having friends.”
“Have you known a lot of guys like that?”
“A few. Here and there.” Yeah, there was much more to that story. An asterisk and a lot of footnotes in tiny print. I didn’t think we had passed the friendship milestone where I could interrogate her until she told me about it, so I let it go.
“And the verdict on Dusty?”
“He seems like a nice guy. Cocky, and he might have a dark past he’s trying to hide, or maybe he’s a closet fan of Lord of the Rings, or a hoarder, or obsessed with something weird, but I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Didn’t get that bad-guy vibe. Bad-boy vibe, yes.”
“What’s the difference?”
She paused the show and sighed, brushing her hair away from her face.
“Okay, a bad boy is one that makes you all, like, tingly. He’s dangerous in a good way. A way that makes your heart race and want to ride a motorcycle or go skinny-dipping. A bad guy is one who hurts you, or makes you feel worthless, or isolates you from your friends. He’s just dangerous. Those are the guys to stay away from.”
“Oh.” She seemed to have it all figured out, and I could tell she’d spent a lot of time thinking about bad guys as opposed to bad boys.
“So Dusty is a bad boy.”
“Definitely. Unless you see any red flags. Then you run in the opposite direction.”
“I’m pretty sure if there were any red flags, my sister and the rest of the people I live with wouldn’t let him near me. Hunter wouldn’t be friends with a bad guy.”
“Still. You never know. People aren’t always what they seem. You spend years thinking they’re one way and then something happens and they reveal who they really are.”
“But you can’t go through life thinking that everyone is bad.”
“I don’t. I told you—I trust my instincts.”
We weren’t going to agree, so I dropped it and we went back to watching the show, but I thought a lot about what she’d said about people being bad or good, and trying to tell the difference.
I didn’t think I’d ever met a really bad person. Even my ex and my ex-friends weren’t bad people.
I’d been just like them, and I didn’t think I was a bad person. That guy, Travis, the one who had hurt Taylor, he was a bad guy. I didn’t need to meet him or know anything else about him to know that. But did that mean he would always be bad? Could people change?
I’d changed.
I had so many thoughts running through my head I almost forgot about the engagement dinner and found the house in chaos when I got back from Hannah’s.
Mase was on his hands and knees in the living room, along with Hunter and Darah.
“What do they look like again?” Hunter said, patting his hands on the floor.
“They’re little gold studs. Remember, Taylor gave them to me?” Darah said, closing one eye and putting the side of her face on the floor.
“Right,” Hunter said.
“Found it!” Mase held his hand out to Darah, and she gave him a kiss.
“Thanks, baby.” She stood up and brushed off the front of her black dress and put the earring in her ear.
Both Hunter and Mase had nice dress shirts on and nice pants with dress shoes.
“Where have you been?” Renee said, slipping her heel into her shoe and walking down the steps at the same time. Paul was just behind her, making sure she didn’t take a dive down the stairs. She had one of her best dresses on; green with swirls of black on the hem. Paul was also wearing a green shirt. Oh, no. They’d become one of “those” couples.
“You’re not wearing that,” she said, pointing to my torn jeans and gray thermal shirt.
“I’m sorry. I completely forgot. I’ll go change.” Shit, what was I going to wear? Everything nice was packed away. “I don’t have anything,” I said, biting my lip.
“Are you serious? You used to wear dresses and skirts more than pants.” She put her hands on her hips.
I shrugged. “I don’t have any.”
“Okay, let me think.” She put her fingers to her temples. “I think I have something that you can wear. Come on.” She lunged out, grabbed my arm and dragged me upstairs.
I bumped into Taylor on her way down from the third floor. She had a baby-blue dress that looked like it could have belonged to Audrey Hepburn and her hair was loose around her face.
“Hey, Jos!”
“Wardrobe crisis,” Renee said before yanking me into her room and throwing her closet doors open. Taylor followed, and Darah was right behind her.
A flurry of activity followed, where I wasn’t allowed to talk or say anything. Much like a mannequin.
They held things up to me and messed with my hair. Darah had the best hair skills, so she braided it, starting above my ear on one side of my head and going to the other, making a sort of crown. Back in my previous life, I’d been a big fan of buns, and had slicked my hair back so people could see that I was put together and meant business. Darah let my hair wisp out around my face and pulled a few strands loose.
“There,” she said, putting a few bobby pins in place.
Renee and Taylor were tossing dresses on the floor and finally settled on a sparkly gold party dress with a flared skirt.
“I’m not wearing that,” I said as they started undressing me. “Jesus, can I have some privacy?” I ducked into the closet and pulled the door semishut. I didn’t care about Renee seeing me mostly nude, but it felt weird having the other girls there.
The dress had enough going on the top so it covered my bra, which was good. I adjusted it a little and tried to zip it up in the back, but my arms didn’t move that way.
“Um, can somebody give me a hand?”
Renee hauled me out of the closet and zipped the dress up.
“Perfect!” she said, hooking the clasp at the top of the dress so the zipper wouldn’t come down and cause a wardrobe malfunction. That would be just fantastic.