maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, which makes me feel too young to be here, yet older guys seem to be my thing, at least when I’m drunk.
“Hey.” One of them nods his scruffy chin at me. “You look a little lost.”
“Yep, I’m totally lost.” I force a smile, even though I’m frowning on the inside, and I hold my head high as I do the walk of shame. They start laughing at me and I find myself wishing I were someone sassier, like Ella, my best friend and old roommate. But I’m not. Sure, I can be sassy when the time calls for it, but right now I feel icky, gross, and disgusted with myself because I just woke up, my makeup’s worn off, my hair’s a mess, and my clothes smell like alcohol. Plus I’m crashing. Badly. And I don’t have anything on me to help balance my mood.
I rush across the room and throw open the door. As I step out of the condo, I hear one of them laugh and say something about me being easy and slutty, but I close the door and shut out their voices. I walk down the hall and trot down the stairs to the bottom, where I push the door open and step outside into the sunlight and the lukewarm November air. Being outside makes me feel a little better, except I still can’t recognize where I am. It’s a condo complex—that much I get.
“Crap,” I mutter, pressing my fingers to the brim of my nose. I have a splitting headache and my hair smells like beer and my pores feel sticky. I hike across the lawn toward the corner of the street so I can read the street sign, knowing itcould be worse. I could be in one of the lower-class areas of Las Vegas, but this looks like it’s a nice area, located near some cul-de-sacs and upper-class homes. When I reach the corner of the street, I shield my eyes with my hand and squint up at the street sign. Damn it, I’m way too far away from my apartment to walk. I can either take the bus, which I haven’t been a fan of since I was fourteen, or I can call someone. The only person I really know around here anymore—the only one who I trust seeing me like this—is Ethan Gregory. He’s the one and only bad boy I’ve ever had in my life and the one and only guy who’s never wanted to sleep with me, which makes him seem less bad to me, but to all the other girls he sleeps with, not so much.
I first met him two summers ago when I went with my best friend Ella back to her hometown. He was the best friend to the guy Ella was in love with, Micha—although she wouldn’t admit it at the time. While those two were working out their problems, I spent a lot of time with Ethan and we hit it off. There was this strange connection between us, like we understood each other, even though we were from totally separate worlds: rich and poor. Even when I went back to school in the fall, we still talked on the phone. And then he moved here and we’ve been hanging out pretty much ever since.
Cursing under my breath, I find my phone that luckily is still in the side pocket of my dress, and then I punch in Ethan’s number.
He answers after three rings and his voice is laced with amusement. “Well, hello, lovely Lila. What’d you do this time?”
I ignore the ripple through my body that his voice always causes. After knowing him for a year, I’ve pretty much become an expert at discounting the emotions he always brings out inside me, which is a good thing for many different reasons. For one thing we live in two separate worlds: I like nice things and Ethan is very unmaterialistic. He calls me spoiled a lot and I call him a weirdo because I don’t get half the things that he does, like refusing to buy nicer clothes when he has the money for them. He’s so sexy and if he’d wear jeans without holes in them and new shoes and shirts he’d look so much better.
Plus, even though I hate to admit it, my mother’s words always echo in my head:
If you can’t find a man to take care of you then you’ll end up living in a crack house, just like your sister. Find a wealthy man,