“What happened at the Dublin show?”
She looked down, combed her fingers through her hair, and it kind of made me sick that I was still focused on how beautiful she was despite the fact that she was also obviously upset about something. “My mom dropped me off and told me to call her when the concert was over so she could come pick me up. I told you that part.”
I nodded.
“What I didn’t tell you is that after the show I managed to sneak backstage. It’s really not that hard when you know how to talk to certain people. I found Rupert X.’s private dressing room. And then I took all of my clothes off, sat on his couch, and waited for him to find me.”
“You didn’t.”
“Yeah, I did. I still can’t believe I did that. I was such an idiot.”
She’d never told me any of this, and hearing it was shocking. This was big. This was huge. This was story-worthy. It was especially something you’d tell your best friend. If not as soon as it happened, then at least some time within the six months since it’d happened. “Wait a minute. You’re doing all of this because Rupert X. rejected you?”
“Who said he rejected me?”
I sat down again, my knees suddenly giving out. “Are you saying …?”
“I told you I was saving myself for Rupert X. And I did.”
“What the fuck?” There I went again. I said it a bunch more times, differently now than how we’d started this conversation, but still with just as much meaning behind it. Erin’s admission was shocking on so many levels. Not just because she was talking about sex with her actual favorite boy bander, which was a mindfuck and the most improbable thing ever, but because Erin had had sex at all.
And didn’t tell me about it.
This was huge. Sex was huge. Here was Erin, having actual sex (with arguably the hottest boy on the planet, no less) and here I was, thinking we were best friends. But best friends told each other this sort of thing as soon as it happened. How could she keep it to herself all this time?
“When Rupert X. came into the room he was looking down at something on his phone, so he didn’t notice me at first,” Erin said. “But then when he finally did he had the strangest look on his face. His eyebrows sort of scrunched together, but he smiled. He looked at me like I was a puppy who’d managed to find some hidden treat or something, and Rupert X. couldn’t be disappointed because it was so damn adorable. He didn’t even look particularly surprised. He didn’t turn me down. But obviously I didn’t want him to.
“After we were done he took pictures of me on the couch. I thought, ‘Wow, he must like me so much he wants to remember me.’ But then he said, ‘I’m going to send these to the lads.’ Don’t you just hate it when they call each other ‘lads’?”
“Erin …”
“I told him not to send the pictures to anyone. I told him that I wanted him to delete them. But he just kept talking like he hadn’t even heard me. He said, ‘I think I’ll title the message Party in My Room.’ I said, ‘Please, don’t.’ I started to cry. I pleaded with him not to send those pictures to anyone. I asked him, ‘What do I have to do to keep you from sending them out?’ And he said, ‘I want you to beg for me, love.’ ”
The words echoed in my mind. I’d heard them before. And then I realized I heard them when Erin herself had said them to Rupert P.
“So I begged. He stroked my face, and gave me this ‘poor you’ smile. And then he sent them anyway. A second later Rupert L. and Rupert P. came bounding through the room. Now that I think of it, Rupert P. looked like he was just coming along ’cause it was something to do, not because he actually wanted to see a naked girl. Rupert L. looked way more excited.
“I took one of the couch cushions and tried to cover myself up, but it wasn’t really enough. And then Rupert X. held my clothes up and said, ‘Looking for these?’ I tried to grab them and he said, ‘It was just a Snapchat, love. Are you really going to go?’ He laughed, and then he gave me my clothes. And I ran out of there.”
I couldn’t imagine Erin like that. Naked. Vulnerable. At the mercy of someone who wasn’t partial to her charms. “And you took his dagger necklace,” I said. It wasn’t a replica I’d found in her bag. It was Rupert X.’s actual necklace, the one he hadn’t been seen wearing for the last six months.
Erin’s eyes were dark and shimmery and distant, like she was back in that room. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt?”