Hard As Rock by Olivia Thorne Page A

me THAT.”
    “Yeah, I figured.”
    “So you two are quits?”
    “Yup.”
    “GOOD. Good fuckin’ riddance. For you, I mean. He’s a dipshit.”
    I really appreciated her support. Again, she had surprised me.
    Then she went back to being Riley.
    “Offer to bang’s still on the table, by the way, now that you’re single again,” she said impishly – and then realized something. “Or ARE you still single?!” She looked at Ryan. “You dog, you – you been hittin’ that Georgia peach ass out there in Cowtown?”
    “NO!” I yelped, a little louder than necessary.
    Ryan rolled his eyes. “No, Riley, we’re just friends.”
    “No wonder you haven’t been fuckin’ any sheep – ”
    “Riley,” Ryan warned.
    “Fine, FINE. I am-a so happy-a for-a you both-a,” she said in a fake Italian accent. God knows why. Maybe that was her mocking way of being ‘fancy’ or ‘upscale’ or something. Then she grew serious. “Does Douchebag Numero Uno know she’s hangin’ out with you?”
    “No, and we’d like to keep it that way,” Ryan said. “Can we count on you to keep it quiet?”
    “Yeah, yeah, of course!”
    I crossed my arms. “Derek’s not ‘Douchebag Numero Uno.’”
    “Oh GOD, she’s still in love with him,” Riley groaned.
    “I am NOT,” I said, protesting too loudly once again.
    “Did he cheat on you?”
    “…yes,” I said, grumpy to have to admit it.
    “Then he’s Douchebag Numero Uno, and don’t you forget it.” Suddenly Riley grew really serious. “Ry… you two can’t hook up, you KNOW that, right? Or if you do, you got to keep that shit on the DOWN-LOW, man.”
    “We’re not hooking up!” I protested again, louder than ever.
    “She’s just staying here,” Ryan agreed. “Nothing funny’s going on.”
    “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Riley said dismissively with a wave of her hand. “But if Derek finds out, that’s IT. That’s the end of the fuckin’ band. You know that, right?”
    “But we haven’t been doing anything,” I insisted.
    Riley looked at me like, Get REAL, bitch.
    “Whatever. The point is, he’s gonna flip his fuckin’ lid – you KNOW that, right?”
    “That’s why he’s never going to find out,” Ryan said.
    An ominous feeling came over me. Not just because what we were doing was innocent… not just because lying by omission felt like we were covering something up…
    …but because Ryan’s last statement sounded like famous last words.

29
    Two days passed after we talked to Riley – and suddenly Derek stopped.
    Stopped texting me.
    Stopped calling me.
    Completely.
    It was devastating.
    He had been driving me absolutely insane since I let him know that I was okay. Text after text, voicemail after voicemail, swinging from anguish to rage to self-pity to pleading – sometimes within the same message.
    When he wasn’t infuriating me, he was breaking my heart. During his constant stream of recriminations and lovelorn pleading, I almost broke down a couple of times and nearly gave in, but then I would remember Riley’s words:
    Did he cheat on you?… Then he’s Douchebag Numero Uno, and don’t you forget it.
    She helped me stay strong.
    Then, suddenly, all the messages stopped. Dead. I wondered if he had been hurt – maybe he was in the hospital, or lying in a ditch somewhere – but then I figured it made more sense that this was some sort of new tactic, some reverse psychology ploy to get me to text him.
    Or maybe he’d lost his phone.
    Or maybe he’d just forgotten to plug it in.
    Or maybe… he had moved on.
    The first option – that he was hurt – was hard to take. I actually spent a bad couple of hours worrying about him.
    The second option – that he was faking – was easy enough to verify. If I didn’t hear from him by tomorrow, I could get Riley to check up on him under some pretense, like wanting to go drinking while he was in New York.
    The third and fourth options, that he had lost the phone or forgotten to charge it, were