Foolish One ✷ Jess Mariano

VIII: Clandestine Meetings

She hated Kitty. Everything about her made her guts twist sickeningly and she wanted her to rot. Yet, like the boys, Teddy knew that feeling all too well. When you didn't have her, you wanted her, and when you did, you couldn't help but want more, forever chasing that high. She was an addiction, like white powder that littered noses on several occasions.

Teddy Bennet was a psychotic masochistic snake and bitch, but then the drugs (Kitty) set in and she went into that mind numbing haze that she oh so loved dearly and her hatred melted away. She was the sweetest torture.

So that's why she was here, laying on Kitty Lovelace's bed and staring up at the ceiling. There was a glass bottle of 818 Tequila by its foot, and a Playgirl Magazine pressed upside down on her stomach. Kitty walked out of her walk-in closet and held up a maroon off the shoulder top to her torso and tilted her head to the side, "What do you think?"

"I think you should just tell Heath how you feel," Teddy said with a frown. Teddy and her clearly didn't share the same concerns.

"Wouldn't this be so cute with my mini skirt? The denim one with heart pockets, maybe, I think mom got mine out the dryer this morning," Kitty spoke absentmindedly and rummaged through the drawers of her walk-in closet with a lipstick-stained cigarette in-between her glossy crimson lips. "And some red leather heels, maybe. I think silver jewelry looks a lot better with red. Don't you think?"

"He's, like, totally in love with you. He was practically drooling at the sight of you at the party," Teddy recalled. "I even asked him if you looked hot, and he said yes . . . I think. I honestly was too drunk to really remember."

"I'm really digging this whole red-on-red theme . . . where the fuck is my purse?" Kitty flailed her hands around.

Conversations between the two best friends were very similar to those of a wall and another. Most of the time, both were talking about a completely different subject to each other, but nobody noticed until the conversation came to a close or somebody chimed in with a quizzical glance. People just knew to let them be after a while.

Kitty vanished inside the walk-in and Teddy picked up the book resting on her nightstand, besides a Dior eyeshadow-palette and a pearl necklace and some jumbled up notes on a yellow Post-It that were no doubt unreadable considering she used them as a coaster for a tall glass bottle of water. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway with smudges of red lipstick on the brim of pages. Her bookmark was mid-way, just a folded up piece of restaurant-napkin with page numbers scrambled in blue ink all throughout. She grimaced and put it back, then sat up and stretched her back.

"Why are you reading Hemingway? I thought we agreed he was an abusive alcoholic misogynist hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers," Teddy commented.

"Yeah, we did," Kitty shrugged, "but Jess told me to give it a chance." She popped out her closet with a tortoiseshell clip in her tangled silky-brunette curls. "What do you think?" She twirled around dramatically, as though she was wearing a gown.

"Cute," Teddy whistled, making Kitty snort as she tossed herself on the bed. Kitty was dressed in an old baby pink t-shirt with lace panties kissing the cool silk pink sheets and her right knee hiked up, head resting on top. Teddy sat cross-legged and pursed her lips, "So now what? All of a sudden you're into Jess Mariano now?"

Kitty chuckled and shook her head, "Teddy, I am so not into Jess Mariano." And though it was true, the words tasted funny against her tongue, a sour sensation filling her mouth as it tumbled out.