Pumpkin Head
I woke in the morning completely disoriented. I knew right away that I wasn’t in my own bed. That didn’t leave many other options. I also knew I wasn’t in Zac’s bed; his room wasn’t this big or this clean. That left only one option, and it was the one I had been trying to deny since the second I had opened my eyes.
Taylor’s bed. I was definitely in Taylor’s bed.
The night’s events came rushing back to me all at once, riding on a wave of nausea—which I could blame on both the alcohol and Taylor, I supposed.
Logically, I knew there was no reason to be surprised by his actions. I would never have willingly admitted to being with Zac, and so he did the only thing his fucked up mind could think of to get the truth out of me. It was gross and nearly unforgivable, but I wasn’t sure how much I could really judge him given that I hadn’t walked out as soon as I realized he wasn’t Zac. No, I really had no room to judge Taylor at all.
And I was going to be sick.
I rushed to the bathroom and flung myself onto the floor in front of the toilet. My stomach turned and I heaved a few painful coughs, but nothing came up. My body was taunting me, I supposed. Why not? After the way I had treated it–and let Taylor treat it–the night before, I supposed it had a right to be a little pissed with me. God knows I was pissed with me.
Finally, after deciding that I wasn’t going to be sick after all, I peeled myself off the floor and decided to see if I could locate the bastard himself. He hadn’t been in the bedroom when I woke up, and I could hear the television, so I figured it was a safe bet that he was in there. The apartment seemed fairly quiet; I had slept through the end of the party and well on into the next day, it seemed.
The apartment was not, however, empty. Because that was just my luck. And because my luck was even worse than that, the first person I saw, sitting on the couch with a video game controller in his hand… was Zac.
“Georgie?” He blinked up at me, his eyes fluttering like he was looking into the face of the sun. He looked like shit, but I supposed with my hangover, I must have looked much the same.
“I… I…” was all that I managed to stutter out.
“What are you—” Zac began, then shook his head, because the answer was pretty obvious after all. “You know what? Nevermind. I don’t even want to know. It’s already disgusting enough just to think about.”
“So don’t think about it,” Taylor said, suddenly popping his head out of the kitchen. “Why are you thinking about Georgie and me having sex? You thinking about it is what’s gross. I mean, seriously. Who does that?”
I shook my head and stomped my feet, not even caring how childish I looked. “Stop it! Both of you just stop it! You being little bastards to each other is not going to help my hangover.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you climbed into bed with him again. I mean, I’m assuming you didn’t sleep in the bathroom. And if you slept in his bed, I’m assuming you fucked. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person he’s ever shared a bed with who he hasn’t fucked.”
“I don’t think I like you with a hangover, Zac,” Taylor said, finally stepping into the room entirely and leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed. “Remind me why I decided to let you crash here?”
Zac glared at him. “I assume it was so you could enjoy this moment and rub it in my face that you were still sleeping with George.”
“That is pretty fucked up,” I cut in, trying not to look either of them directly in the eye. “Sounds exactly like something Taylor would do, actually.”
Taylor rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m clearly an evil genius. Or it could have just been a happy coincidence, much like the fact that the Scream mask wouldn’t fit over my sweet little brother’s pumpkin head.”
“You’re one to talk,” Zac replied, and I thought he had a point about the size of Taylor’s head—literally and metaphorically. “But what the hell does that even have to do with anything?”
“Georgie can tell you,” Taylor replied with a dismissive shrug, then retreated back into the kitchen.
Zac spun back around to face me with a questioning look on his face, but I really didn’t have any answers for him. Sure, I could explain that Taylor had tricked me into thinking he was Zac, but I hadn’t turned him down and left the room when I realized the truth. I had still slept with him. There was no excuse for that, and so I didn’t see why I should even bother trying to explain myself to Zac. It wouldn’t change anything.
“Well?” Zac asked, obviously still waiting for some sort of answer or explanation.
I shrugged. My lips were set in a tight line to keep myself from blurting out something stupid that wouldn’t help my case at all. Not that anything would help it.
“Oh,” Zac said, and I thought I could actually see the light bulb over his head. Under other circumstances, I might have laughed at that. “We switched costumes. And you didn’t… you didn’t know. Or did you?”
I shook my head. “Not soon enough.”
“Like it makes a difference,” Zac replied, his voice turning harsh again. “You still had sex with him again. After…. after everything. You’re still fucking my slut of a brother.”
I stared at him, waiting for the next blow. Waiting for him to tell me I was just as much of a slut as Taylor was, because that was definitely how I felt. But he didn’t. He just shook his head, dismissing me entirely, and collapsed back onto the couch.
He was just… done. Zac was done with me. His sense of defeat was almost a tangible presence in the room, and it was suffocating, somehow even worse to see than his anger.
Was this the jealousy Taylor had talked about? I had seen just a glimmer of it, just the tiniest flicker. But I couldn’t fully believe in it. It was gone too quickly and he was too willing to just give up and not try to take me away from Taylor. That was all that I wanted from him, I realized. I wanted him to show me some spark and passion and fight. I wanted to really believe that he was jealous, that he really wanted me.
And he either couldn’t or wouldn’t show me that. Whichever it was, I wasn’t sure it made a difference.
“I’m going back to my suite,” I mumbled at that back of Zac’s head, not sure he was listening or even cared. “Tell Taylor to burn the costume I wore last night. I don’t ever want to see it again.”
“You’re just going to leave here in his t-shirt and boxers?” Zac asked. “I mean, if you’re going to take a walk of shame, why not advertise who you were with, I guess.”
And there it was. There was that little bit of contempt for me. I was wrong. It only made it more difficult to believe that he really cared about me. If he didn’t hate me for sleeping with Taylor, he definitely didn’t like me very much. Why I ever thought he might have wanted me for something more than my body, especially after I let Taylor have his way with my body… I really didn’t know. Of course he didn’t.
I turned away form him without another word and retrieved my cell phone and keys from Taylor’s floor. My high heels lay next to them and I had to laugh at how ridiculous I would look in a Nathan Hale t-shirt, silky red boxers and black stilettos as I stumbled across campus. I decided to take the shoes with me, but only carry them. Barefoot was gross, but slightly less embarrassing.
I wasn’t sure why I even cared anymore, when the person who meant the most to me already knew how awful I was.
On my way out of the apartment, I saw that Zac was no longer sitting on the couch. I made it all the way to the door before Taylor called out my name. I paused for just a second, and that was my mistake. That gave him time to rush to my side and grab my arm to stop me from leaving. Cursing his long legs and stealth movements, I spun around and glared at him.
“What do you want? Haven’t you fucked up my life enough lately?”
“I think you’re doing a pretty good job of that yourself,” Taylor replied. “But I’m sorry, alright? My brother… he makes no sense. I know he wants you. God, don’t you see that? You’re both so blinded by your own feelings for each other that you don’t even notice the other person. But right now, I don’t know what he’s thinking. And I’m sorry that he’s being an ass.”
“Are you sorry that you’re being an ass?” I asked, unable to even respond to anything else he had said. It was all too ridiculous to even consider.
“You should be used to that from me by now,” Taylor said. “But yeah, sure, whatever. I’m sorry.”
I rolled my eyes. It was the least sincere apology I had ever heard. “Yeah, alright. Can I go now?”
“You’re free to go any time.” As if to prove his point, Taylor made a show of releasing my arm from his grasp. “Try not to be too pissed off at me, alright? But please, be pissed off at Zac. He’s an asshole.”
“It clearly runs in the family,” I replied, grabbing the doorknob and hurrying out before Taylor could say anything else so stupid.
Just before the door slammed behind me, I heard him call out, “He really does love you, too, I promise!”
Yeah, right.
Taylor might have technically known Zac for longer than I had, but in this instance, I was positive that he was absolutely wrong about his brother. Zac didn’t have feelings for me, too. If he did, he would have fought for me more. Not just given up and let me be. He would have done something to prove that he wanted me more than Taylor did?
Wouldn’t he?
I was starting to wonder if I knew him at all anymore.
Ever since he had started dating Bella behind my back, Zac had been a mystery to me. I never knew what he was thinking anymore or what he wanted. I had always thought I knew him and he knew me better than anyone else, but that wasn’t true, was it? After all, he was clueless about my feelings for him.
And if he was clueless about my feelings….
No, it wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. There was no way he had felt the same way all along and I hadn’t known. It was even less believable that Taylor had known. But hadn’t Taylor been the one to suggest that sleeping with him would make Zac jealous? Why would it make Zac jealous if he didn’t have feelings for me?
Zac didn’t have feelings for me, I told myself. It was just impossible. Then I looked down at my outfit, complete with stilettos dangling from my hand, and realized that a few months ago, I would have said that me taking the walk of shame from Taylor’s apartment was impossible, too.