Stuck Like Glue

Chapter 1: Taylor

I wasn’t what you would call impulsive or rash. I never had been, and I never would be—at least, that’s what I would’ve said the day before I got myself kidnapped. As it turned out, though, being the passive wimpy friend with twigs for arms wasn’t really an option when your best friend’s life was on the line.

The day I went from passive wimpy friend to impulsive wimpy friend—total upgrade, right?—started off normally. Well, normally for me, anyways. I woke up early, attempted to do some Pilates, laughed and gave up because I wasn’t actually going to do Pilates, and then headed off to the ballroom that had been rented out for my eighteenth birthday party.

My best friend, Emma, had found it a couple of weeks ago and thought it would be perfect for my party once it was decorated and fixed up a little. The exterminator we’d hired was already starting to work his magic on the place.

No, I’m totally kidding. There were no bugs in that place. At least, I hoped there were no bugs in that place…

Okay, there better not have been any bugs in that place for the money we were paying. Well, the money my dad was paying, anyway.

But you know what? Not even bugs could have ruined my mood or my party because I, Taylor Williamson, was exactly one week away from turning eighteen. The big one-eight. The big uno-ocho. The big… okay, I didn’t know any other languages, but you get the point. I mean, this was big. At least, it was supposed to be.

What could I do when I finally turned eighteen?

Well, I couldn’t drink legally—legally being the key word, wink, wink—so that was out. I still had three whole years to go for that one.

Oh! I could gamble! Yes. In one week, I could head to Las Vegas and burn all of the cash I had on me. Because let’s face it, that was the only thing that would happen if I tried to gamble. I’d never even won a game of Go-Fish. I would definitely lose everything I came with. If my dad weren’t ridiculously loaded, I would probably end up homeless. Maybe I would even have to become a stripper… decisions.

I could get a tattoo without having to ask my dad for permission. (I jokingly asked him if I could get a unicorn tramp stamp one year thinking he was in a good mood—he wasn’t—and from that moment on, the word “tattoo” basically became a trigger for both him and my mom. Oops.)

I could get a real, unrestricted driver’s license, not just the one they give to sixteen year-olds. Not that I was much of a driver, mostly because I was considered a “menace to society”—not my words—when I got behind the wheel. I went on the sidewalk once. Once.

Man. Vegas, tattoos, driving… I was pretty much on the cusp of womanhood.

Wait. Oh, my gosh. I almost forgot the best perk of all: I could legally have sex with any of the celebrities on my To Bang list. This wasn’t just going to be nice. This was going to be freaking awesome.

Ryan Gosling, here I come. Literally. Oh, my God, what is wrong with me? 

I was pulled away from my inappropriate thoughts when the door to the ballroom swung open all of a sudden, its hinges clicking into place once it hit the back wall with a loud thud. Out of the entryway came a red-faced, messy haired Aaron Gaff. I was surprised he was the one behind the door. He had less upper arm strength than I did, and that was saying something. I struggled to open water bottles on a daily basis. 

“Taylor, you have to do something,” he said, simultaneously breathing heavily through both his nostrils and his mouth. How in the world…

“Uh… did something happen?” I asked, silently debating over whether or not I should slowly step away from Aaron. He was one of my best friends, right after Emma, and I loved him, but he really worried me sometimes. Then again, he said the same thing to me all the time, so who was I to talk?

“Emma happened. She’s a monster,” he whispered, his voice rising with every word he spoke. Why was he an alto? He could totally pull off being a soprano.

“Is Emmy going overboard again?” I asked, stifling a giggle.

“Overboard?” He snorted loudly, kind of like a horse when it whinnies. Whinny; what a great word. I should use it more often. “I’m pretty sure we passed overboard a long time ago. Ages ago, in fact.”

“We’ve only been here for like half an hour,” I pointed out. Emma had decided to stop by the ballroom before school to get some more work done, and I’d decided to tag along. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. I wasn’t going to work out or do anything silly like that.

“Exactly,” he whispered again.

“Please stop whispering. It’s freaking me out.”

Aaron grinned apologetically, rattling the box he held as he shifted his stance. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget how creepy I sound when I’m whispering. Anyway, I better go look for those lights Emma wants. Apparently, this yellowy stuff is bronze, not gold.” He held up one of the lights and examined it. “Who the hell can tell the difference?” He shook his head and muttered under his breath. “I’ll be back later. If I don’t come back, you know who murdered me.”

I reached up and patted Aaron on his curly-haired head. I had to stand on my tippy-toes to reach it, though it probably helped that he was hunched over. He was carrying that heavy box, and he was what people called “tall and lanky” so he didn’t have the best posture in the first place. “I’ll pray for you.”

He let out a dramatic sigh. “Why am I doing this again?”

“Because she’s paying you a thousand dollars.”

“It’s not worth it.”

“Then because your dad cut you off again for stealing the limo while you were grounded and you’re broke now.”

“Right.” He sighed again and after hesitating for a little, he ran off, sprinting out the door and down the street. He was going to get run over if he wasn’t careful. What happened to looking both ways before you crossed the street?

I shook my head at him and walked through the open doors, into the ballroom, glancing around for Emma. The room was pretty much empty, so finding Emma wasn’t hard. Plus, I could hear her all the way across the room.

“Is there a problem? Is there a problem?” she exclaimed over the phone. Uh-oh. Poor guy. Emma had the ability to make grown men cry. “Of course there’s a problem! I said crème brûlée, not cream of mushroom! How do you even mix the two up?”

How did you mix those two up? They were totally different.

Whatever the person on the other end said seemed to calm her down a little, and her voice returned to a normal volume when she replied and hung up. Still, she looked ready to explode. I needed to get her out of here before it was too late.

I walked towards her and frowned. “Emmy, you should really chill out,” I said, placing a hand on my hip with what I hoped was a stern look when I got to her. I wasn’t really a stern person. I couldn’t even scare a puppy. “You’re stressing out, and you know what happens when you stress out.”

She looked over at me and sighed. “I know, I know. I break out.”

The only thing stress led to was pimples. The cure for stress was chocolate, at least for me, except chocolate sometimes led to pimples, too. It was a double-edged sword… but it was such a delicious sword.

“Exactly,” I said. “So just chill out. It’ll all be fine!”

“Right,” she said. “Except I’m the one who has to make sure it turns out fine.”

Well… “And it will,” I said, although I was pretty sure she kind of had a point. It was why I’d asked her to help me plan my party. I guess I could have hired an official party planner, but I wanted Emma to do it, and I knew she’d do a good job. She was an obsessive planner and was freakishly organized.

Me? I stuck posty-notes with cryptic messages everywhere and then forgot what the messages meant and threw them away. When I finally remembered why I’d made the note, it was too late. I definitely wasn’t the girl for the job.

Emma clearly knew she had a point because she just kept going. “This is important. This is going to be the biggest party of the year. No, it’s going to be the biggest party of the decade. I have a right to stress out.”

“I know, and I’m super excited! Seriously, I am, but even I’m not freaking out over this, and it’s my birthday party, so what does that tell you?”

What it told me was that I had a neurotic mess of a best friend. A neurotic mess that I totally adored, of course, but still a neurotic mess.

“That you have an unusual disinterest in parties and party planning?”

I laughed, but I wasn’t even surprised. I’d known her for way too long to be surprised. She’d been my best friend for as long as I could remember. Really, I knew her better than her own parents did. “No, it tells you that you need to calm down.”

Emma sighed after a moment, sounding kind of reluctant. “You’re right. I’ll try to calm down, I guess.”

I grinned at her. Hey, maybe my happy-go-lucky outtake on life was starting to rub off on her a little, after all. She could only fight it for so long.

I watched her eyes slowly narrow at someone across the room.

Yeah, probably not.

***

One of the best parts of having a party was passing out the invitations. That way you got to see who was actually excited about it and who needed to be “accidentally” crossed off of the list and accused of forging an invitation. Emma had almost mailed them out, but I’d stopped her at the last minute. She just wanted to avoid human interaction, but I wanted to embrace it, and I was the one who got to make the actual choice, so that was that.

“Cross off Jordyn,” I mumbled to Emma as we stood in the middle of a crowd of students, my face turning red with anger. “She just said she hopes the party’s at my house so she can sleep with Noel in my bed.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open and she looked at me in shock. “That little bitch. Who does she think she is? Hey, Jordyn,” she called out. “Don’t leave yet.”

“What are you doing?” I asked slowly, looking back and forth between her and Jordyn. I’d just asked her to cross Jordyn off, not confront her!  

Jordyn stopped walking away from the crowd and turned around. “What?”

“I need to see your invitation for a second,” Emma said. “I forgot something.”

“And you’re the party planner?” Jordyn asked, walking back to the middle of the circle, pushing through people on her way. “Wow. Here.”

Emma took the invitation from Jordyn’s outstretched hand and looked down at it before ripping it in half and then ripping the halves in half.

“What are you doing?” Jordyn screeched. “That’s my invitation!”

“And now it’s garbage,” Emma said, tossing the scraps into the nearest garbage can. “Have a nice time hanging out with yourself next Friday.”

Emma looked down at the next invitation I handed her, and we both went right back to acting casual, pretending nothing had just happened.

“Here’s your invitation, Mel,” Emma said, handing an envelope over to Melanie Scower, a girl who’d been in our class since the first grade and had yet to get on Emma’s bad side. That was a miracle just by itself.

Jordyn stood there and huffed for a little more before whirling around and stalking away. I had to admit, it felt really nice seeing her get what she deserved. She was the kind of girl who was super nice to your face and then acted like a total female dog behind your back. Could female dogs get neutered? She needed to be neutered. And you know, I didn’t care if we were expecting around 500 people at my party. I didn’t want her to be one of those 500.

Emma passed the stack of invitations over to me all of a sudden, distracting me from my inner rampaging. She had her cell phone in her hand. “It’s the caterer again. You handle this for right now. I’ll be right back.”

I nodded at her and started passing out the invitations myself. I wasn’t going to be the one who stopped Emma from fixing whatever problem had cropped up now.

“Cody Romac,” I called out, smiling when my voice came out loud and clear. I’d been worried Jordyn’s comment had worked me up too much, but I was fine.

Cody stepped out of the crowd and smirked at me. He was tall, blond, lean, and tan. So hot. “So I made the shortlist, huh?”

“You did,” I said, putting on my best flirty smile. Don’t screw this up, Taylor. There are a lot of people around. Be cool. Like ice. Except not like ice. That’s too cold. Be cool like iced tea. “If you’re nice to me, I might even make you VIP.”

He took the invitation from me, and his fingers brushed against mine. No sparks. Dang. “I’m always nice to pretty girls. I’ll see you on Saturday, Taylor.”

“See you then,” I said with a grin. Everything was stacking up so perfectly. A hot guy—who needed sparks? I could make sparks—a raging party, hot celebrities, tattoos, Vegas—this was going to be the best birthday ever.

I still had traces of a smile on my face when Emma came back to help me finish passing out the invitations. “What are you so happy about?”

I just shook my head. I was playing it cool, and girls who played it cool didn’t gush over something as small as a hot guy coming to their parties. There were a lot of hot guys coming to my party, but Cody had to be my favorite.

Emma narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re lying. You’re telling me later.”

“I know.” I told Emma everything. This was no exception.

Once the rest of the invitations were passed out, the crowd dispersed and we headed to our classes. The teachers weren’t happy that we were all late, especially not the one that had yelled at us to get to class earlier—the one we’d completely ignored—but they weren’t about to give out that many detentions, so they didn’t actually do anything. I wouldn’t want to be stuck with us after school, either.

We’d apparently killed a lot of time in the hallway because class ended sooner than I expected. My next class was the one class I didn’t have with Emma—she had a free period instead—so I headed off to it by myself. I regretted not finding a friend to walk with when I almost ran into Noel on the way there.

I stopped walking immediately and made a break for it, running inside the first classroom I saw. Please tell me he didn’t see me… oh, please, please, please.

Okay, I knew avoiding him like this was stupid. Our high school was big for a private school, but it wasn’t big enough to avoid someone forever. I knew I would have to face him alone sometime, but I didn’t want to. Sue me. Ex-boyfriends like Noel Davis were the kind you completely cut out your life. He’d broken my heart last semester, and I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. He’d already made his choice, and I’d already wasted two years of my life on him. He’d dumped me for some easy girl he met online, and she’d turned out to be a Catfish.

Karma had already handled this for me. I was done.

“Can I help you?”

I looked up at the teacher who’d just spoken. She’d been one of my teachers my sophomore year of high school. I guess I’d run into an underclassman room. “Oh. No. I was just dropping by. Just checking out the scenery. Smelling the flowers.”

“This is Algebra. There are no flowers.”

Well then. “Metaphorical flowers, I mean,” I said, quickly glancing around the room. The students all looked like freshmen, hence the Algebra class, I guess. They were too small and underdeveloped to be anything else, anyways, and the guys were staring at me like they’d never seen a real girl before.

“Okaaaay, this is weird,” I said. I was actually starting to feel uncomfortable under their gazes. I didn’t bother giving anyone the chance to respond. I just walked out. That was creepy enough already. Since when were underclassmen such weirdoes?

I was late to my next class, but the teacher didn’t care. She was the kind of teacher who overlooked basically everything everyone did. It was great, and we didn’t actually do anything, either. We just sat there and talked while she went on her computer, like we did most days. Not that anyone was complaining.

Emma and I met up when the bell rang for lunch around noon, and we sat with Aaron and some of our other friends like we always did.

“Please stop, you’re going to make me throw up,” Emma said in a choked voice. Her shoulders were shaking and I thought she was going to start heaving with laughter.

“Wait, did I ever tell you guys about the time I pooped on the coffee table?” Aaron exclaimed, raising a hand. “I was sleepwalking, and I guess I don’t just sleepwalk. I sleep-poop. I guess now would be a good time to mention I was three…”

“Aaron, that’s disgusting!” I covered my mouth with my hand. Why, oh, why did I have to choose that day to eat the chocolate pudding?

He just laughed obnoxiously and shoveled a spoonful of chocolate pudding into his own mouth. “Mmm. This is so delicious. Mmm. Have some. You know you want to.”

“I don’t think so... I’d rather—oh, no.”

Noel walked up to our table just as the words left my mouth. He did a good job of ignoring me most days. In fact, he acted like I didn’t even exist most of the time. Why couldn’t he have just kept that up?

“Hey, Williamson, van der Bilt. Where’s my invitation?” he asked.

I wanted to be the one to respond. I wanted to say something totally witty or snappy like Emma always did and make him realize what he had lost, but I couldn’t get a single word out. I was completely tongue twisted. I sucked. Majorly. Ugh.

Emma was the one who answered instead. “Your invitation is nonexistent.”

“Nonexistent?” he asked. “Why?”

Emma looked at him. “Do you really have to ask?”

“I deserve an invitation,” he said. I forced myself to look away. His good looks had stopped me from seeing what a tool he was for way too long. I wasn’t going to fall back into that same rut, no matter how cute he was. Nope, nope, nope.

Emma snorted loudly. “You deserve an invitation? What you deserve is a kick to the groin. Now get out of my face before I give you what you deserve.”

I couldn’t have hid my smile if I’d tried. This was why I had the best friend in the entire universe. She always had my back, no matter what. I may have been a wimp, but my best friend was a rockstar.

“Not without my invitation.”

Oh, my God. Why was he insisting? I was pretty sure he didn’t actually want to come, and it obviously wasn’t going to happen, anyways, yet he refused to back down.

It took a few more threats from Emma and a threat from Emma’s ginormous bodyguard to get Noel to go back to his seat. I let out a relieved sigh when I was sure he wouldn’t be back. He was scared of Jack, like most people.

Jack was Emma’s bodyguard, and when I said he was ginormous, I meant it. He was six and a half feet tall, and who even knew how much he weighed? More than Emma and me combined, that was for sure. He was terrifying when he was just standing there, but when he was mad? Have fun changing your pants.  

Aaron turned to me when Emma and Jack started having their own conversation about Emma’s disturbing hobbies. “You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding quickly. “He’s an asshole. He was just trying to make us mad. He’s not worth my time.”

“No, he’s not,” Aaron agreed. “You deserve way better, Taylor.”

I nodded again. I knew I did. He wasn’t who I thought he was. He’d dropped me like I was nothing, without caring that he’d hurt me. But it was hard to imagine finding someone else and falling in love with them the way I’d fallen in love with Noel. How was I supposed to erase two years of my life?

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “There are plenty of fish in the sea. Right? Way hotter fish, too. Metaphorically speaking. I’m not sexually attracted to fish.”

Emma turned to look at me, choosing that exact moment to pay attention again. She always popped in and out at the worst times, and she always misheard what I said. “Did you just say you’re sexually attracted to fish?”