That’s when Tia piped up. “So, Kaye, tell us more about this break you’re taking with Aidan.”

6

“NO!” I WHISPERED HOARSELY AND a little desperately, nodding toward Sawyer in Tia’s lap.

“He’s asleep,” Tia said in her normal tone.

“If he is, you’re going to wake him up.” I was still whispering.

“Nothing wakes him up,” Harper offered. “He sleeps like a log.”

“So it’s okay to discuss my personal business in front of him? I don’t think so. Any second he’s going to jump up and startle us. ‘Ha-ha, I’ve been listening to you the whole time.’ ”

Tia shook her head. “He’s always worked such long hours at the Crab Lab, and now the mascot job takes a lot out of him. It’s harder than you’d think, so physical, bouncing around in the heat with that heavy costume on.”

“I know,” I said haughtily, offended that Tia would imply she understood more about Sawyer’s mascot job than I did. I was the one who stood next to him at games.

“Anyway,” Harper spoke up, “I don’t think he’d tell anybody your personal business.”

“I think he would,” I said flatly.

“What exactly is your problem with him?” Tia asked, sounding miffed. “You act like he’s a criminal.”

“He did get voted Most Likely to Go to Jail,” I reminded her.

In the dusky room I saw Harper raise her eyebrows at me. She and I knew he hadn’t actually won this title, since he’d won Perfect Couple with me. The real winner of Most Likely to Go to Jail was our school pothead, Jason Price.

“Sawyer and I are pretty good friends,” Tia said, which was the understatement of the century, “and I can tell he’s dead serious about cleaning up his act. He’s always been black and white, all or nothing. When he went vegan last spring, that was it. He never looked back. So if he’s saying no alcohol and pot now, I can guarantee he hasn’t fallen off the wagon. You haven’t seen anything to think he has, have you?”

The fact that she asked this question made me think she wasn’t quite as sure about Sawyer as she claimed. “I haven’t,” I admitted. “But Tia, you talk like he’s been clean for years. He passed out at school only three weeks ago. And I just . . .”

“You just what?” Tia insisted.

Her usually bright face drew into frown lines. She shifted, moving her arm down Sawyer’s body as if protecting him. He didn’t move, didn’t even stir or flutter his eyelids, as far as I could tell in the near dark. I couldn’t see Harper’s eyes because her glasses reflected the bridal gowns on TV, but she sat up cross-legged in her chair, attentive to my answer.

Without anyone coming out and saying it, I knew we weren’t really talking about Sawyer’s reform. They wanted to know why I didn’t go after him, now that Aidan was—temporarily, at least—out of the picture.

“Sawyer’s never been serious with girls,” I said. “But he’s been with a lot of them. He’s got this whole secret underlife. Cheerleaders tell stories about him fooling around with girls I never even knew he’d gone out with.”

“Why are they doing that?” Tia asked. “They’re assholes.”

“But what if the stories are true?”

“So? He’s not in a steady relationship with anybody. He’s not cheating. Why does fooling around with a lot of girls detract from his moral character?” Now she was talking about herself. We were back to the argument we’d had a million times, in which I expressed concern that she wasn’t being very picky about whom she slept with, and she told me to stuff it.

I shouldn’t have done it, but I took the bait. “When’s the last time you had sex with him?” I asked. “It probably hasn’t been a month.”

“Do we want to go here?” Harper asked. “I do not want to go here.”

Tia’s mouth set in a hard line. “Define sex,” she said.

Damn Tia. Now I was thinking about all the ways Tia and Sawyer might have played around with each other in the past few years. They’d probably done things that I’d never tried in three years with Aidan, and that Aidan would have said were too dirty anyway.

“There’s no fighting during girls’ sleepover night,” Harper declared.

“Seriously,” Tia kept on anyway, “because there’s different kinds of sex.”

“Now you’re baiting her,” Harper scolded Tia. “Just tell her what she wants to know.”

Tia scowled at me, then opened her free hand. “Okay. The last time I did anything with him was about a month ago, before Will and I got together.”

“Well, after you and Will had been together,” I corrected her, “but before you actually went on a date.” I happened to have heard about some of the things she’d been seen doing with Sawyer one weekend after she’d already made out with Will.

Tia grimaced and rubbed her brow like I was giving her a headache. “The past is past. I don’t see why this matters.”

I couldn’t believe I was doing it, but I laid my biggest fear down flat on the table for them to peer at. “Because if Sawyer slept around before, he’ll do it again.”

“People change, Kaye,” Tia said solemnly. “I’ve changed.”

I frowned at her. “You’re not wearing a bra.”