Under the Same Stars(13)

It clicked.

Oh.

My.

God.

Too much cheese curdled in my stomach. “Neither!” I all but vomited. “Ew, neither. Connor and I have been friends forever, and his girlfriend was also there tonight.”

“Is that why you aren’t with him?” Reese asked. Her voice somehow poked me. “Because he’s taken?”

I ignored her. “And we went to high school with Marco. He goes to Princeton now.”

“Ooh…” Amanda raised an eyebrow. “A Princeton man.”

“Never in a million bazillion years!” I exclaimed.

“Okay, okay, we get it.” Courtney gestured for me to lower the volume. “You are not romantically linked to either of them.”

“But are you romantically linked to someone?” Yasmin asked.

Meredith chuckled. “Yaz, she’s seventeen!”

“Says the person who started dating her high school boyfriend at fourteen!”

“Yeah, and he turned out to be a total shithead,” Meredith said, shrugging. “I’m just saying that you have a lot on your plate at seventeen, and maybe Mads doesn’t have time for a love life.” She glanced at me. “Please tell me to shut up if I’m off base.”

I shook my head. I liked Meredith—I actually liked her a lot but couldn’t help wondering why she was the one sticking up for me rather than Katie. Because Katie was the one who’d known me for more than several hours. “You’re not.”

She nodded in confirmation, but just when I thought that was the end of that, Katie cleared her throat. “Mads,” she said. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

Have you ever kissed anyone?

The question felt like someone was tugging my heart up from my guts, back to my chest where it belonged and could rattle around in my rib cage.

The answer, of course, was now obvious.

No, I hadn’t had my first kiss. I was seventeen yet hadn’t done more than hug a guy. Which barely counted because the only guy I’d hugged besides my brother was Connor, and hugs with Connor were more like football tackles.

Katie tilted her head, as if she suddenly found me the most fascinating creature alive—an absolute alien. “Have you ever gone on a date?”

Blood began pulsing through my ears again. This was, officially, the most embarrassing moment of my life. How had the weight of everyone’s judgment not broken the bed yet?

“Mads, come on!” Katie lobbed a grape at me. “You seriously haven’t been on a date?”

My hands balled into fists, wanting to scream at her. Why was she doing this?

“Katie,” Meredith murmured as my eyes smarted with tears. “Stop.”

Everyone was looking at me. I so very desperately wanted to go home, but I couldn’t. And even if I could, I still had an abundance of quality time to spend with these people in the coming months.

You need to own this, I told myself. Just own this, Mads.

“No, I haven’t been on a date,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “And I’ve never been kissed.” I reached for our Whispering Angel rosé, and no one protested when I took a sip straight from the bottle. One dose of liquid courage. “It’s not that I don’t want to fit someone onto my metaphorical plate, and it’s not that there haven’t been opportunities…but those opportunities usually present themselves at field hockey camps.”

I waited for them to put it together.

They did not.

Alright, I thought. None of you played sports.

“I was flattered by the attention,” I said slowly. “And love is love—”

“But you aren’t into girls,” Meredith said, nodding as the other bridesmaids’ eyes blinked with enlightenment. “Got it.”

“And I have no social life,” I went on. “I’m away almost every weekend for field hockey, so I’ve only been to three—maybe four—parties since I started high school. And when I’m not gone, I really want to spend time with Connor and my family. I just…” I raised my arms. “I don’t know.”

A knot twisted when no one responded, and I took another sip of rosé to hide how uncomfortable I was from the silence. Then, a third sip.

But before I could take a full-on pull, Meredith confiscated the bottle and said, “I have an idea.” She nudged Yasmin.

“What’s your idea, Mer?” Yasmin asked in an obvious stage voice.

I laughed, letting a few tears loose. “You two are terrible actors.”

“They are,” Reese agreed. “Hamilton once put on an amateur production of Twelfth Night, and they were—”

“A travesty!” Meredith interrupted like she still wasn’t over her flop as a thespian. “We were a travesty, okay? Twelfth Night is a comedy, but Yaz and I turned it into a tragedy.” She exhaled. “Moving on.”

“To your idea,” Yasmin prompted (much more naturally this time).

“Yes, my idea.” Meredith smiled at me. “Remember how you said you and your friends would go on Bachelor Nation benders during your sleepovers?”

I nodded.

“Well, I think you should be the Bachelorette!”

A little part of me deflated. Aspiring to Bachelor Nation? That was her idea? “Sure, maybe someday,” I said gently. “But I’m underage right now, and even if I weren’t, that audition process is pretty much a science. I heard if you make the top hundred, there’s a mock cocktail party with producers, and psych tests are involved…”