Dating and Dragons (Dungeons and Drama, #2) (28)
“See?” Andrew says. “Dorks.”
“Can we please go?” I throw an angry glare in Andrew’s direction, not that he notices. Mom stands, clearly trying to hide her grin, and I head to the car with my bag. I’ll take a freezing cold garage over my brother any day.
* * *
Kashvi’s at the door when Mom pulls into the driveway. She waves me in, and we head directly to her bedroom.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says, “but I thought we’d both sleep in here tonight. I know its small, but if we sleep in the living room, then Sanjiv will want to hang out with us all night. I love him, but I wanted this to be a girl’s night.”
I drop my bag just inside her door. “This is great.” It is a small room, but she’s painted it purple and covered most of the walls with bulletin boards and art prints. She’s already set up a twin-sized air mattress on the floor with cute, flowered sheets. My favorite part is her chandelier that looks like a cloud. She has a remote that can change the lightbulbs to different colors. She flips until the cloud turns pink.
“Do you have people over a lot?”
“Never. I mean, when I was younger I did sometimes, but I hardly talk to those girls anymore. And Sloane’s not exactly a sleepover type of person. So it’s fun to have someone over again. It feels like middle school!”
“In a good way, I hope,” I reply as I wander around her room. “Middle school was rough.”
“True, but we can make it the best part of middle school. Movies, popcorn—I even pulled out all my nail polish. I’m pretty good.” She grins and points to her desk where a half dozen bottles sit in a row.
My stomach clenches. Paige’s big dream after school was to become a nail tech and open her own salon. She was obsessed with nails—we used to watch hours of reels to learn techniques and then Paige would use me to experiment on. She was very artistic and could pull off the coolest designs. My favorite were probably the 3D gold suns and moons she created to match one of my favorite shirts. If I scroll back far enough, half of my pictures are of my nails. Now I never paint them.
I glance past the polish on her desk to a stack of papers from Kashvi’s AP classes and a framed picture of the D&D group. I point to it. “Oh, you all look so cute.”
She comes up beside me. “That’s from a couple years ago.”
Sloane’s hair was longer and Mark’s cheeks still had a kiddy roundish quality to them. Kashvi’s hair was straight, and Logan also looked younger, but just as attractive as always. My stomach wobbles as memories of the attic rise to the surface of my mind.
“So, I’ve been wondering what led to you all deciding to make the no-dating rule for the group? Was there fighting or weirdness between you all? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s because of me,” she says, and makes a face. “I liked this guy—Wyatt—and we started dating, so I invited him to be a part of our D&D group. I figured it would be another way to spend time together, and everyone else really liked him. But then we got more serious and he freaked out about it.” She rolls her eyes. “He texted me to break up! It was impossible to play across from him every week after that. And don’t get me started on Sanjiv—he wanted to destroy Wyatt. It got ugly when we had to kick him out, and after that we decided we couldn’t have any more dating in the group.”
“That makes sense,” I say, careful to keep my eyes off her photos in the hopes she won’t read too much from my expression. I have to admit I’m relieved that it didn’t have anything to do with Logan, but her experience sounds enough like mine that I can absolutely empathize. “I’m really sorry that happened.” I turn to her. “Guys can be the worst.”
“Seriously, the worst. But not these guys.” She points at the photo. “I really lucked out with this group.”
At Kashvi’s words, any thoughts about sharing what’s been going on with Logan fade away. I don’t want my inclusion in the group to bring any drama or problems. And it’s not even clear what Logan wants from me. He said he came to Grandma’s because he wanted to see me alone, but what now? He hasn’t texted, and he said it was a bad idea for him to come there. Maybe he doesn’t want anything else. It’s not like he said we should start dating in secret. If experience has taught me anything, it’s that boys are fickle.
What I should be thinking about are my friendships. Seeing them all together with their old hairstyles and goofy grins and arms slung over each other’s shoulders reminds me of how new I am. I want to be that comfortable with them—I want to think of them as friends without wondering if I actually fit in. I want us all to be close enough that I never have to think about my old friend group again.
We leave the photos behind and go downstairs to say hi to Kashvi’s parents and Sanjiv, who are all in the kitchen. Her mom points to pizza boxes on the counter.
“For tonight. I don’t have the energy to cook, and we don’t have enough leftovers for all of us.”
Sanjiv hands us both plates before taking a slice for himself. “What are you two doing tonight? We could watch BattleBots together.”
“What’s that?”
“Sanjiv and I have watched it together since we were young,” Kashvi says with a shrug. “Basically, teams build robots and then fight them.”