jessica

Look, I__e already fucked you twice. You don__ have to flatter me. Besides, I love my friends way too much to trade them in for the sake of looking hotter.___eriously?___eah. I mean, Casey has been my best friend since, like, forever, and she__ the most loyal person I__e ever met. And Jessica_ well, she has no idea about me and her brother. We weren__ friends back then. In fact, I didn__ want to know her after Jake and I split, but Casey said it would be good for me, and she was right_ as usual. Jessica can be a little ditsy, but she__ the sweetest, most innocent person I know. I could never give either of them up just to look good. That__ make me a real dumbass.___hen they__e lucky to have you.___ just said not to flatter-_____ being honest._ Wesley frowned at the mirror. __ have only one friend-one real friend. Harrison is the only guy who will be seen with me, and that__ because we aren__ trying to attract the same audience, if you know what I mean._ A small smile spread across his lips when he turned to face me. __ost people will do anything to avoid being the Duff.___ell, I guess I__ not most people.

As you wish, of course." Lucius lowered the volume on an old record player, which spun a warped vinyl disk that wailed unfamiliar music, scratchy and whiny, like cats fighting. Or a coffin with rusty hinges opening and closing over and over again in a deserted mausoleum. "Do you like Croatian folk?" heasked, seeing my interest. "It reminds me of home.""I prefer normal music.""Ah, yes, your MTV with all the bumping and grinding. Like a shot of raging adolescent hormones administered via television. I'm not averse.

It was as if she was a wannabe Persian cat who had just tasted sour milk.

Are you ever going to kiss me without swearing first?

But he didn't need to seek visual confirmation of what he'd just heard to know she had. And the truth was, he couldn't blame her. He'd not have let her die, either. He'd have moved mountains. He'd have battled God or Devil for his wife's life. She'd betrayed him. He smiled faintly.

God, she was one big nerve ending, that girl, and those big brown eyes got just a little wider when she was close. And those bruises. And how she begged for them.I knew she was special the night I met her, I just didn't know how special.

Lucius shrugged. "Perhaps in time you will find it useful.""Sure. I'll keep it on my shelf right next to The Idiot's Guide to Becoming a Mythical Creature.''Lucius actually laughed. "Very funny. I didn't know you made jokes.""I'm a funny person," I defended myself. "And by the way__ don't snore.""You do snore. And you mumble, too."My blood froze. The dream . . . "What? What did you hear?""Nothing too intelligible. But it must have been a rather pleasant dream. You sounded ecstatic.

She shrugged, looking as baffled by it as he felt. "I don't know. I wonder sometimes if people even know what love is anymore. Some days, when I'm watching my friends change lovers as unperturbedly as they change shoes, I think the world just got filled with too many people, and all our technological advances made things so easy that it cheapened our most basic, essential value somehow," she told him. "It's like spouses are commodities nowadays: disposable, constantly getting tossed back out for trade on the market and everyone's trying to trade up, up--like there is a 'trading up' in love." She rolled her eyes. "No way. That's not for me. I'm having one husband. I'm getting married once. When you know going in that you're staying for life, it makes you think harder about it, go slower, choose really well.

You're a wrestler, right, Jake?" Dad asked, passing Jake more saag. My parents were in an Indian food phase. The evening's entree consisted of limp spinach. God forbid we'd throw a few burgers on the grill and just have a barbecue when guests came over.Jake gave the bright green, mushy contents a wary glance but accepted the bowl. "Yeah. I wrestle. I'm captain this year.""How Greco-Roman of you," Lucius said dryly, lifting a glob of spinach and letting it drip, slowly, from his fork. "Grappling about on mats.