Oh! You Pretty Things by Shanna Mahin Page A

restaurateurs or golf pros. Not JJ. He mined his dorky phase, landing a sitcom role where he wore wide-collared polyester shirts and danced wrong.
    Then one day, he turned hot. Not in a he’s-kind-of-cute way, but in a holy-shit-who’s-
that
? way. And after that, he disappeared for years. Until he finally took a small part in an independent film. Just a cameo, but he threw himself into the role of the heroin-addicted hit man who falls for the daughter of a Russian crime lord. Sure, his character dies in the first scene, but those four minutes gave JJ a major Hollywood makeover.
    JJ Kelly was back, on the edge of great things . . . and dating my roommate. I’m positive that I know more about him than Megan does, which kind of skeeves me out.

Nineteen

    L ate the next morning, I’m packing the last load of food to truck over to Scout’s house when Megan and JJ come stumbling out of Megan’s room. They look like they just finished fucking twelve seconds ago, which is highly probable. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve had my headphones super-glued to my ears since they started going at it like wolverines an hour ago, all of which was perfectly audible through our thin apartment walls.
    At first it was kind of cute—young love and all—but it eventually just got scorchingly hot, like listening to a particularly well-made porn flick. Except a porn flick where the actor looks like JJ Kelly. Then it turned creepy, like a porn flick where the actress is your best friend. Finally, it made me kind of sad and lonely. All that in the span of four minutes.
    â€œOh, good, you’re still here.” Megan brushes past me with a hip bump to get to the refrigerator. “I’m craving a feta cheese omelet.”
    â€œAlready in the car, Boof,” I say.
    â€œYou made omelets?”
    â€œNo, the feta. It’s in the car.”
    She doe-eyes the empty cheese drawer. “This is a catastrophe.”
    She’s wearing a baggy tank top that reads CARPE DIEM in flaking silver glitter, and a pair of ruffled Agent Provocateur knickers that I know she stole from a wardrobe trailer because there is no way she paid $175 for underwear. She looks at me imploringly. Her mascara is smeared under her eyes and she’s really working the whole orphaned kinderwhore thing.
    â€œDon’t look at me like that. I’m walking out the door right this instant,” I say. “Order it from Urth.”
    â€œNo,” she mock-whines. “I want it now.”
    â€œ
Daddy, I want an Oompa-Loompa,
” I mimic. “Come to the car, then, because the feta wagon is pulling out of the station.”
    â€œI’ll walk you out,” JJ says from the doorway. “Just let me find some pants.”
    He stretches into a yawn and clasps his hands over his head in an ersatz yoga move that’s more bodybuilder pose than anything else. He’s wearing what I think for a moment is a swimsuit but is actually a pair of form-fitting, gray 2(x)ist boxer briefs. And holy crap, his abs are ridiculous. Seriously, I stop counting at six. Plus, his hair looks like he just came from a salon where he paid $275 for an artfully mussed bedhead, made all the more alluring because I know that’s not the case.
    â€œBack in a flash,” he says, striding toward Megan’s room like a Greek statue come to life.
    Megan takes a running start at his retreating form and leaps onto his back. He’s completely unprepared and they stagger sideways and collapse onto the leather sofa, which skids a couple inches and bumps against the wall, rattling the oversize, glass-framed poster from
Jade Wolf
that dominates our living room.
    They’re gorgeous together, a tangle of long, lean limbs with her creamy white skin against his natural tan. They look like they’re about to shoot the box art for a quirky indie rom-com. I should be thrilled for Megan. She’s my best friend, for God’s