joelle | d.m

72 | too embarrassed

June, 1995.

"Joey?"

Her eyes lifted from her hand that rested on the mattress, where she lay on her stomach across the bed as she painted her nails, to catch Imani's stare.

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?" Her friend turned around in the wooden chair at the desk to fully face Joey, pausing in the midst of her studies. "It's about you and Malfoy."

She glanced back at her nails and continued to paint the last few fingers. "Sure."

"Why did you guys break up?" Imani's question didn't surprise the other girl. "You still never told us, and from what I've been seeing, it seems as though you ended it and he's pining for you. Did he do something that upset you?"

Joey put the brush back into the bottle of polish and twisted it shut. She took her time, examining her freshly painted nails and gently blowing over the grey polish.

"It was because the night of our anniversary date," she said at last, calmly so, "I found out that the only reason he ever spoke to me was because of a game."

Imani's brows drew together in a furrow. "A game?" she echoed. "What game?"

Joey cracked a wry smile, still eyeing her nails. "You know the night you, Von, and Nayun challenged me to make Malfoy fall for me because of the weird encounter with him that day?"

"Yes..." the other girl responded slowly. "Did— Did Malfoy have that same game going on?"

"No." Joey shook her head and finally lined her gaze with her mate's steadily. "His game was to get me into bed. His mates made bets on how long it'd take him to sleep with me."

Imani's jaw went slack before her features screwed up in disgust. "Bloody hell," she hissed with a scoff. "Disgusting."

"I was too embarrassed to tell you guys." Joey was calm and pleasant, forearms planted upon the mattress to prop herself up. "Too embarrassed to say the only reason I ever got a boyfriend or ever had a guy want to get to know me was because of a game to sleep with me."

"But that's not on you, Jo-Jo." Imani stood from her seat and padded toward the end of her friend's bed to sit on the floor in front of her since she lay with her upper body on the foot of the bed. "And you do realize that plenty of guys want to ask you out. You're just not very approachable, which you are well aware of."

"It's because dating or anything like that wasn't something I was particularly interested in before Draco," Joey said indulgently. "I was willing to try for him, and I did."

Imani fell quiet for a beat as she crossed her legs and propped her hands behind herself on the ground. "Did Malfoy tell you that night?" she questioned curiously as her voice hushed down. Her eyes appraised her friend vigilantly. "About the game, I mean."

Again, Joey shook her head. "Nott caught me as I was going to Draco's dorm and... well, you probably could assume what happened."

She didn't feel sad or upset by the talk of that night. Not at all. She half expected to, but she found it was rather nice to talk out loud about what happened.

Though, she was going to keep the fact that Draco slept with another girl to herself. She didn't want to tell anybody that because for her own sanity, she wanted to do her best to forget about that whole thing.

"Malfoy wasn't going to tell you on his own?" Imani's voice was pure curiosity and interest, mouth turned down into a subtle frown.

"No." Joey's stare was stuck on the floor next to where her friend sat, staring blankly. "He said he didn't want to tell me because he didn't want to hurt me, so he tried to protect me from it."