“I had enough. Like, every fucking time she makes me believe it’s just gonna be me and her, and that we’re gonna work things out or whatever. But then there’s always someone else involved, and it’s never what I think it’s going to be.”

“That’s kinda your thing, though, right?”

It sucks that even one of my closest friends believes this about me. Although, I’ve never given him a reason to think otherwise, because then I’d have to explain more than I want to.

“Not like you think. And when Tash and I started hanging out, it wasn’t like that. Not at first. And it wasn’t supposed to be anything, but then suddenly it was.”

“When did it change?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe it was when you and Miller went to that camp up in Canada last summer that it started to be…something real, I guess. Or I thought it was real. Nothing really happened between us until just before Waters’ engagement party, though. Tash likes to play games.”

“Miller thought something was going on between you two before that.”

“Before the camp thing?”

“Yeah.” Randy tips back his water and takes a long drink. “Think back to the night you and that chick drew a dick on Miller’s forehead. You were weird about Tash even then.”

I give him a look. I know now that was also the night Poppy came to my house. Mostly I remember seeing the dick pictures on my social media feed the next day. They’d gone viral, and gotten Miller in a world of shit with Sunny.

“That chick you were with? She’s the friend of Poppy’s you fucked.”

I try again to piece together the events of that night, but last season I spent about as much time drunk as sober, and it only got worse as I got into things with Tash. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah. Poppy was the one who removed the dick from his forehead. You don’t remember that at all?”

I’d probably been focused on the fact that Tash was coming over and there were still bunnies in the house.

I pull up my Instagram, but then I remember I deleted all the pictures because of the shitstorm the dick on Miller’s forehead caused. Well, it wasn’t the dick so much as the presence of the girl in the bed with him. I get now why it wasn’t the best move on my part, but at the time I hadn’t thought past how funny it would be.

I flip to my photo stream and scroll back through the pictures until I get to the ones from last summer. It takes me a while to find the dick forehead pics, but when I finally do, I have a hazy recollection of the girl in them.

“I don’t think I screwed that chick.”

“Dude, you don’t even remember meeting Poppy that night. How can you be sure about anything?”

The not remembering Poppy bugs me a lot. I keep trying to find her in my memories, but she’s not there—not the way I want her to be. All I get is the swish of a long, strawberry blond ponytail and the urge to pull the end of it.

I close my eyes, trying to pull up other memories from the night, anything to make a connection between that girl in the picture and Poppy.

As I start talking about the little I recall, more memories trickle in until it becomes a flood. “I remember going upstairs and stopping in my room to grab that girl a shirt. I wanted to check on Miller since he hadn’t come outside.” It had been my excuse to go upstairs since it was late and we had the training session in the morning. I didn’t want bunnies in the house when Tash got there. She was pissy with us when she knew we’d been out partying. Me especially.

“That’s when you drew the dick on his face, right?”

“Yeah. Exactly. But I didn’t sleep with her after that. She had a freak out.”

“What do you mean?”

I remember tears. I have a weakness for girl tears. I don’t like it when women cry. My mum used to do it all the time. After she’d have one of her epic raging sessions on me, she’d feel bad. That didn’t stop it from happening again, though.

I sift back through my memory. The girl had been wrapped in a towel. I took her to my room. My phone had been sitting on my nightstand, lighting up with messages. It was Tash, reminding me she’d be there in the morning. I’d given the bunny a T-shirt while I messaged Tash back a thumbs up, because typing anything more required too much coordination. Then I realized it was after two in the morning, so she’d likely know we’d been out, anyway.

The girl had come up behind me and put her hands on me. It felt like spiders crawling on my skin, which wasn’t unusual. I’d grown accustomed to that sensation when any woman touched me, so I managed it for a few seconds before I grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the door instead of the bed.

I took her with me down the hall to Miller’s room, not because I was pawning her off on him, but because he’d been super drunk thanks to all the shots I’d fed him. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t face down in a pile of vomit.

“When I found Miller passed out, butt-ass naked and not responding other than grunts, the girl made a joke about drawing something on his face. She was wasted, falling all over the place, which should’ve been a solid tipoff that it wasn’t a great idea, but you know how it is.”

Randy gives me a short, curt nod. We’ve been drunk plenty of times together, and I’m sure he’s made some questionable choices in those uninhibited states. Nothing like the ones I make, but then he and I are a lot different.