I didn't see Michael at all the rest of the night. His parents suggested that he probably went to sleep but the sounds of machine guns firing followed by the Mario Brothers theme song fifteen minutes later told me that he wouldn't be going to bed any time soon.
Back at home, I changed into my pajamas and climbed into bed. I decided to scroll through Twitter for a bit before I actually went to sleep. And oh look! Michael followed me. I guess that's a good thing. Maybe it's a sign that he forgave me for what had happened tonight. Maybe he's actually considering being friends with me.
Whatever the case, Michael's following me wasn't what had really caught my attention. #letsmakeitawkward was trending at the moment and everyone was contributing to it by calling out people who have hooked up before. Most of them were funny since they were old, awkward couples that had since broken up, but others were downright shocking. Just about everyone had been called out by their friends, even unraveling embarassing hookup stories in the replies. Most of the stories were about drunken hookups and I found myself hysterically laughing at all of them. After a few minutes, I saw that I had a notification and went to click on it.
And that's when the laughter stopped.
The interaction was a single tweet from Brandon Vars, a guy who was two years older than me and came off as a complete douchebag. And oh look! He was at it again! His tweet only consisted of four usernames: mine, Jesse Baker''s, Alex Cameron's, and Jason DeMarko's.
I had been outed.
But wait, I had never hooked up with Jason. Sure, he was cute and definitely worthy of a hookup but he always went for the sophomore stoners and I'd really rather not know what kinds of things he's done with them.
Ahh, I see. Brandon had replied to one of Jason's tweets, which meant Jason waa the original outer. When I clicked on his tweet, though, all it contained was the #letsmakeitawkward tag and mine and Jesse's names, not even our usernames. Alex's username wasn't there, either. Did Brandon just tag him in his own tweet to try and tell him about me and Jesse? Alex already knew about us though, so that was stupid. Nice try, asshole.
Wait. Wait one motherfucking second.
The tweet had 44 favorites.
The tweet. Had. 44. Favorites.
And Michael Clifford was one of them.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
His verified username looked so weird amongst the common accounts of Branchville teenagers.
No but in all seriousness this wasn't good. At all. Jesse and I were supposed to be a secret, and we had done a damn good job of keeping things under wraps. The only people I had told about us were people who lived in different towns and had no idea who Jesse was, and I'm assuming he hadn't told any of his own friends. Why would he? Jesse was a varsity baseball player, popular, pretty cute, and could get any girl he wanted. But me? Kelsey Jordan? I was the furthest thing from popular. I didn't have a solid group of friends who I would hang out with every weekend or could tell anything and everything to. I had never had a real boyfriend. Guys barely gave me the time of day, for God's sake. While I pretty much knew everyone and almost everyone knew me, I wasn't necessarily friends with them - just friendly. There is a difference. But Jesse and his group of friends wouldn't be caught dead hanging out with me. It would ruin their reputation too much.
So how the hell had Jason found out? What, did he see Jesse drive me over his house one day? Did he have secret cameras set up around Jesse's house like some psycho stalker? Oh, God, what if he watched us? A violent shiver shot down my spine at the thought of it.
I reached over to the glass of water on my night table to take a sip and noticed that it was already almost one in the morning. The Twitter drama could wait until tomorrow. It wasn't like it was a big deal. Anytime something happened on Twitter, most people forgot about it by the next morning. Obviously, I had nothing to worry about. Switching off the light, I sank down under the covers, turned on my Pandora sleep station, and quickly fell asleep.
