"Don't say that, Belly."
"I'm only saying it because it's true."
She said, "I'm sorry, okay?"
I looked away for a second. "You promised you'd be nice to him."
"Who? Owen?" Taylor looked genuinely confused. "No. Richard. You said you'd be nice."
She waved her hand in the air. "Oh, he doesn't care."
"Yeah, he does. It's just that you don't know him." Like I do, I wanted to add. "I didn't think you'd ever act so--so ..." I searched for the perfect word, to cut her the way she'd cut me. "Slutty."
"I'm not a slut," she said in a tiny voice.
So this was my power over her, my supposed innocence over her supposed sluttiness. It was all such BS. I would've traded my spot for hers in a second.
Later, Richard asked me if I wanted to play spit. We hadn't played once all summer. It used to be
