Gluttony
Authors: Robin Wasserman
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Dating & Sex, #Friendship, #Love & Romance, #General
What happens in Vegas …
It was her skin that Reed loved the most. The cheap hotel sheets were scratchy, but her pale, creamy skin was unbelievably soft and smooth, as if it had never been exposed to the outside world….
“Do you … do you want to?” she whispered suddenly, her eyes still closed.
“Want to what?” He kissed her cheek, then her forehead, her nose, and, finally, her lips.
“You know.” She opened her eyes. A tear was pooling in one of the corners. “I don’t know it you brought … protection.” It sounded like she had to choke the word out. “But if you did, maybe we should—”
Reed rolled off of her and propped himself up on his side. “Where’s this coming from?”
Beth tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and, instead of turning to face him, stayed on her back, staring up at the cracked ceiling. “I know I said I didn’t want to, not yet, but that was before … You’re just really good to me, and I thought—I want to make you happy.”
“You thought
this
would make me happy?” he asked incredulously, his voice rising. “You doing this as if—as if you owe me something? Do you think I’m that kind of guy? … Why would you think … I told you I’d wait. I told you I didn’t care.”
“I know. But …”
She didn’t need to say it out loud. He got it: She hadn’t believed him.
“Why now?” he asked. “Why tonight?”
At first she didn’t answer, and when she finally did her voice was almost too soft to hear.
“Because I don’t deserve you.”
SEVEN DEADLY SINS
Lust
Envy
Pride
Wrath
Sloth
Gluttony
SOON TO BE COMMITTED
:
Greed
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2007 by Robin Wasserman
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Ann Zeak
The text of this book was set in Bembo.
First Simon Pulse edition March 2007
Library of Congress Control Number 2006933723
eISBN 978-1-43910-785-0
for Richard, David, and Natalie Roher
And for Aunt Susan, who has heard it all—
and is always willing to listen
They are as sick that surfeit
with too much as they that starve with nothing.
—William Shakespeare,
The Merchant of Venice
I eat too much
I drink too much
I want too much
Too much
—Dave Matthews Band, “
Too Much
”
1“Anything worth doing,” Kane Geary intoned, gulping down a glowing green shot that looked radioactive, “is worth overdoing.”
“Thanks for the wisdom, O Wise One.” Adam Morgan pressed his hands together and gave Kane an exaggerated bow. “What did I ever do without you to guide me through the mysteries of the universe?”
“Less sarcasm.” Kane clinked his shot glass against the half-full pitcher of beer. “More drinking.”
It was nearly midnight, and the bar was packed. To their left, a whale-size cowboy in a ten-gallon hat tucked hundred-dollar bills down the cleavage of a harem of spangled showgirls half his age. Against the back wall, a table of white-jumpsuit-clad Elvis impersonators argued loudly about whether
The Ed Sullivan Show
hip swivel properly began with a swing to the left or the right. The bartender, who wore a gold bikini and a cupcake-size hair bun over each ear, would have been the spitting image of Princess Leia—were he not a man. The walls were lined with red velvet and the ceiling covered with mirrors.
Welcome to Vegas.
Adam felt like he’d set foot on an alien planet; Kane, on the other hand, had obviously come home.
“Where do you think Harper and Miranda are?” Adam asked, nursing his beer.
Kane rolled his eyes and spread his arms wide. “Morgan. Dude. Focus. Look around you. This is nirvana. Who the hell cares where the girls are?”
“If they got stuck somewhere—”
“They’ll be fine. You’re the one I’m worried about.” Kane clapped him on the back. “You need another drink, kid. You’ve got to loosen up.”
Adam shook his head. “No more. It’s late. And I’m—”
“Lame. Very lame.” Kane grabbed Adam’s glass and downed the remaining beer in a single gulp. Then he filled it back up to the brim and slammed it down in front of Adam. “But we’ll fix that.”
“Oh, will we?” Adam asked dryly.
“Adam, my doubting disciple, if there’s one thing you learn from me tonight, let it be this.” He was silent for a long moment, and Adam began to wonder whether all that beer sloshing around in his brain had swept away his train of thought.
“Yes?” Adam finally said.
Kane leaned across the table, the better to wheeze his sour breath into Adam’s face. “This is Vegas, baby.” His voice was hushed, almost reverential. “America’s Playground. City of Lights. Sin City.” He leaned in even closer, as if to whisper a crucial secret.
“This is Vegas, baby!”
Adam recoiled as Kane let loose an ear-piercing whoop of elation. “Live it up!”
“This is definitely
not
Vegas,” Harper Grace observed sourly.
Miranda Stevens pulled the car over to the side of the road and shut off the ignition. “Thanks for the news flash,” she snapped. “If you hadn’t pointed that out, I might have mistaken that”—she gestured toward the hulking mound of rock and dirt jutting out of the desert landscape—“for the Trump Taj Mahal.”
“That’s in Atlantic City,” Harper corrected her.
“Gosh, maybe
that’s
where we are,” Miranda said in mock revelation. “I knew we shouldn’t have taken that left turn….”
Harper tore open a bag of Doritos and kicked her feet up onto the dashboard. “I really hope that’s not sarcasm,” she said, neglecting to offer Miranda a chip. “Because the person responsible for stranding us here in the middle of East Bumblefuck should probably steer clear of the sarcasm right about now.”
Miranda snatched the bag out of Harper’s hands, though it was several hours too late to prevent an explosion of orange crumbs all over the front seat of her precious Honda Civic. “And by the person responsible, I assume you’re referring to … you?”
Harper raised an eyebrow. “Am
I
driving?”
Harper, doing her share of the work?
Miranda snorted at the thought of it. “No, of course not. You’re just sitting there innocently, with no responsibilities whatsoever, except, oh …
reading the map
.”
That shut her up. Miranda’s lips curled up in triumph. Beating Harper in an argument was a rare victory, one that she planned to savor, lost in the wilderness or not.
“Okay, let’s not panic,” Harper finally said, a new, ingratiating tone in her voice. “Look on the bright side. It’s your birthday—”
“Not for another twenty-four hours,” Miranda corrected her.
“We’re bound for Vegas,” Harper continued.
“Maybe.
Someday
.”
“And we’re not stranded,” Harper added, grabbing a map off the floor, seemingly at random, “just—”
“Lost.
“Detoured.”
Harper spread the map across her lap and began tracing out their route with a perfectly manicured pinkie. “We just need to get back to the main highway,” she mumbled, “and if we turn back here and cross over Route 161 …”
Miranda sighed and tuned her out, resolving to backtrack to the nearest gas station and get directions from a professional. Professional lukewarm coffee dispenser and stale-candy-bar salesman, maybe, but anything would be better than Harper’s geographically challenged attempts to guide them. Especially since Harper periodically forgot whether they should be heading east or west.
This was supposed to be a bonding weekend—or, rather, a
re
-bonding weekend, given all the tension of the last few months. But it turned out that five hours in a car together didn’t exactly make for a BFF bonanza.
Call it the sisterhood of the traveling crankypants.
Miranda turned the key in the ignition, eager to start driving again—somewhere. Anywhere.
A small, suspicious, gurgling sound issued from the motor. Miranda turned the key again. Nothing. With a sinking feeling, she lowered her eyes to the dashboard indicators: specifically, the gas gauge.
Uh-oh.
“Harper?” she said softly, nibbling at the edge of her lower lip.
“Maybe if we circle around to Route 17,” Harper muttered, lost in her own cartographic world. “Or if we—wait, am I looking at this upside down?”
“Harper?” A little louder this time.
“Fine,
you
look at it,” Harper said in disgust, pushing the wad of paper off her lap. “And if you tell me one more time that I don’t know how to read a map, I’m going to scream. It’s not like I didn’t—”
“Harper!”
“What?”
Miranda tore the keys out of the ignition and threw them down on the dash, then leaned her head back against the seat. She closed her eyes. “We’re out of gas.”
She couldn’t see the look on Harper’s face. But she could imagine it.
There was a long pause. “So you’re telling me—” Harper stopped herself, and Miranda could hear her take a deep breath. Her voice got slightly—very slightly—calmer. “You’re telling me that we’re out of gas. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, and now we’re not just lost—”
“We’re stranded,” Miranda confirmed. “So, Ms. Look On the Bright Side …
now
can we panic?”
