“Seriously?”
“Trust me, it makes movie-watching that much better.” He poured the contents into the Coke.
“Maybe I should get another,” Ethan said. Either that or he’d have to add public intoxication to his list of illicit activities on a Monday afternoon.
“It’s not that much. It’ll calm you.”
“I am calm.”
Greg shot him a disbelieving look. And he was right—Ethan would never be calm. He seemed destined to always have thirty thoughts running through his head at once.
Suddenly, a thirty-first thought occurred to him: this is totally illegal.
“Are you sure this is okay? What if we get arrested for like indecent exposure?”
Fooling around in a public place off-campus was a whole new ballgame. They didn’t run the risk of getting caught by their college rent-a-cop. They could be apprehended by real police. Ethan shriveled up, and his leg shook with a new kind of nervousness.
“We’ll be careful,” Greg said. “C’mon, Folly. We need to step up our game, keep things interesting.”
Ethan wanted to stay interesting. He took a sip of the soda and felt the faint alcohol sting hit the back of his throat. “That’s all I’m having. I’m not getting drunk.”
“Just promise not to shove your feet in my face.”
He remembered!Ethan’s heart fluttered, but he quickly put it in its place. So he was listening outside the coffee shop; that did not mean anything except that he wasn’t a complete asshole.
Just before the lights went down, Ethan heard a familiar voice, and it set off a panic alarm.
“Let’s go! The movie’s starting,” Jessica whispered loudly. Her orders carried up to the top of the theater, and she would be rounding the corner into the auditorium any second.
Ethan gasped. He pointed to the entrance. “My friends.”
“Get down,” Greg whispered.
Ethan kneeled on the floor next to Greg’s knees and made a mental note of his tree-trunk legs and strong calf muscles.
“I like sitting here so I can put my feet up on the railing,” Jessica said.
“Is that too close?” That was Dave, who was about to be overruled.
Ethan tapped on Greg’s knee. “Who’s down there?”
“I count five. Three guys, two girls.” Greg offered the popcorn bag to Ethan. He refused.
“Five?”
The whole gang was here. Ethan reached into his pocket, which was no easy task in this position, and felt for his phone. No messages. Full cell reception.
The theater went dark, and the trailers started. Ethan got back into his seat and glared down at his friends. Hurt bruised his insides. Blake leaned his head against Preston’s shoulder.
Greg leaned in. “We’re going to have so much more fun than they are.”
He proceeded to massage Ethan’s thigh, his calloused hand rubbing the muscle with a firm grip. Ethan watched his fingers guide their way around his thigh and into a more sensitive area.
Ethan pushed him away. The mood was gone, down in front with his friends. Once again, he was the odd man out.
“Relax,” Greg whispered in his ear. “Fuck ‘em.”
Nerves ate at him. Mega-public place. Friends a few rows away. The movie was a quiet drama, not an action blockbuster, so they couldn’t be loud.
