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"Shall I continue? Or should we leave it alone?" Edmund asks, making me wonder if I should even insist on it any further, but whatever it is that I might have said, or done, I don't care if Jordan hears it.

"No, I'll hear all of it. Go on," I urge him to continue.

"Right. Well, you were crying. I was sat there next to you on the bed, and you had a go at my...clothes, but I told you that you weren't in the right state. I told you that I didn't want to take advantage of you even if the two of us were, indeed, drunk. Then, well, that only managed to make the crying worse, so I held you until you fell asleep," Edmund admits.

"That's it? You basically had the same night with him that I did," Jordan says.

"Something we've withheld, now have we?" Edmund asks, raising his brow at me seemingly perhaps partially in jest and partially with genuine, if not mild, intrigue.

"You didn't miss anything. I just find it funny that he had the drunken heat for both of us and we both ended up upholding his virtue and we're both sitting here, right now, eating dinner with him. Maybe the next time he's drunk, he'll try to have at us, attempting a threesome—" Jordan comments and the two of them chuckle as my cheeks burn ablaze.

"Enough already," I say.

My phone vibrates. I sigh, wondering what my parents could be calling me about—and of course it must be them, because the only two other people who still talk to me—in the entire world—are sitting right next to me. I pull out my phone but it's neither of my parents. Instead, there's a number with no name, but it's a number that I can never forget—Brogan's number. What the hell could he want?

Since I'm presently in pleasant company, he can either, leave a message, or shove off, for all I care. The phone stops vibrating as soon as I hit the ignore button and stash it back into my pocket. What did Brogan have to say? I push the thought of Brogan out of my head, trying to watch and listen to the conversation that has now apparently returned to the subject of YouTube. My phone vibrates again. I pull out my phone and it's Brogan's number again. I groan.

"Sounds rather insistent—it could be important—perhaps you should take it," Edmund says, pausing his conversation with Jordan, both of them now focusing squarely upon me. Edmund winces and begins to rub his temples.

"You all right?" I ask Edmund, who drops his hands and stops rubbing his temples as soon as I ask.

"Bit of a headache. It's nothing. Don't let us keep you from anything important," Edmund replies waving the backs of his hands towards me in a shooing gesture.

"Right. Okay," I say, gesturing for them to continue on without me as I get up and step slightly away from the table to answer the call that I didn't want to take. Noticing Jordan peering over to me even as he converses with Edmund, I answer the call as if I'm talking to my father.

"Hey Dad, I'm a bit busy right now. What's up?" I ask, gritting my teeth.

"Don't hang up. You'll want to know what's up with Jordan," Brogan's voice says.

"I'll clean the Corvette when I get back home, so I'll see you later," I say, patting myself on the back for coming up with that one on the spot as Jordan continues to peer over to me. I hope Brogan gets the message, that I'm going to hang up if he keeps going with his vague and cryptic routine any longer than he already has. If he has something to say, he should hurry up and spit it out.

"Jordan outed you," Brogan says, stunning me into silence. "I have proof, and you know I do, or I wouldn't have bothered to call."

"What scratch? There's not a single scratch on that thing," I reply, hoping Brogan will get the message that he better make it quick with whatever details that he claims to have, but I'm also hoping that Jordan doesn't catch wind of what's really going on, since I know that he's still within earshot and it's too late for me to create a greater distance from the table now. After already periodically locking gazes with a seemingly suspicious Jordan, that would only antagonize any further suspicion.

"He's the one who sent a photo of you sitting in his car on that night, using a second phone. He texted later saying that you came out to him in the car before you two left for his house. He has two phones. He outed you, knowing that you'd get the boot. He's not your friend. He played you."

"Whether it was you, me, or some rats in the garage—who knows and who cares? We can send it to the body shop for a touch up. What's done is done," I reply.

"Yes, but how do you know that he isn't still playing you?"

"Sure, maybe. Rats can surely get underneath your tarp—they can find their way into anything and anywhere, but I don't know. Just take it to the shop on your day off, unless you want me to do it for you. Like I said, what's done is done."

"Fine. Last thing. If you somehow happen to get a hold of that second phone, the last four digits of the phone number should be, zero—two—one—four. Even if he deleted his texts, you know that I couldn't have guessed the last four digits of his phone number. That will tell you the truth, and whether I've been lying, or he has. Zero—two—one—four."

"All right, Dad. I'll see you when I get home. Bye," I say, hanging up. Jordan stares at me as I return my phone into my pocket and attempt to casually rejoin the table. Although he says nothing to me, his eyes seem to suggest that he senses something is amiss.

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