For some reason this bothers me.
Adrian’s the team captain and my roommate and one of my best friends. He’s generally a great guy, I know that. I know he wouldn't pressure her or anything. But I also know that Adrian’s a bit of a man-whore, some might dare to even call him a fuck boy. He exclusively does casual, typically one night stands, and he’s told me on multiple occasions that he thinks she’s hot. “Okay, so I shouldn’t worry about her?” I say.
“No, she’s a big girl. Plus, she needs a win tonight.” Miranda says, a little defensive of her friend. Miranda has a look in her eye, the one she gets when one of her schemes is finally coming to fruition. I don’t like it. I can’t explain it, but the idea of Kennedy and Adrian together doesn’t feel right to me.
I’m more than a little worried the whole thing is a bad idea. But more than that, I’d really, really prefer if I didn’t haveto pick sides when it blows up. Because at the end of the day, I'm going to side with Kennedy.
“Okay then. Well, if you see her can you tell her I’m looking for her?”
Miranda gives me a sly smile and nods over the rim of her drink.
I push my hand through my hair, feeling like Miranda is looking at me under a microscope, not enjoying the expression flashing over her face as she sips her drink. “Okay then?” I say and leave, scanning the room one last time for Kennedy before heading into the kitchen to get the girl I left and the drink I promised her. I think I can still recover tonight with her, I just need to figure out a way to get her name again. Once I know her name, we’ll kiss a little, I’ll suggest we go back to my room, and then, we hook up–easy.
In the kitchen, instead of beers, I find Adrian talking to some girl who's sitting on the counter. He’s standing between her legs, face close like hers like they’re about to start making out. But this girl is definitely not Kennedy.What the fuck?
I move from room to room until I find her on the tiny back patio, sitting on the concrete smoking a joint with some girl I've never seen before.
I watch her plump lips wrap around the end of the joint as she inhales. When she passes the joint back to the girl, there's a ring of dark pink staining the paper the same exact shade as her lipstick.
I take a seat next to her, my back leaning against the brick exterior of the building. I hold my hand out to the girl I don't know and take the joint, bringing to my lips and inhaling deep. I cough and pass the joint to Kennedy, watching her as she closes her eyes and takes a deep inhale. Her red, nearly brown hair hangs down her back in loose waves. Her lashes fan our over the tops of her cheeks. She tilts her head back, letting out a cloud ofsmoke into the air above our heads. She passes the joint to the other girl.
I'm still coughing from my earlier hit, an embarrassing amount. I shake my head no when the other girl tries to pass it to me again. I don’t smoke very often because of the drug testing that happens on the hockey team, I know I have baby lungs. After a few more rounds of Kennedy and the other girl passing the joint back and forth, I attempt to take another small hit, but start coughing before I take a full inhale.
“You good, old man?” Kennedy says next to me.
“Yeah, I’m good, areyou?”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” she shrugs, then takes another hit of the joint and passes it. “I just don’t know how to talk to people anymore. It's kind of like that cliche nightmare you hear about where you’re at school and everyone’s laughing at you. So you look down and you’re naked. But everyone has seen me naked, or at least most of the guys in there have, and I feel like everyone’s laughing at me. Like they’re looking at each other behind my back and sharing some inside joke.”
The other girl smoking with us says, “That’s fucked.”
Kenny replies, “I know, right?”
I feel horrible. I get why being at my party is stressful now, why she’s avoided every party I’ve invited her to in the last year. I didn’t think about how it doesn’t matter that it happened a while ago, every single hockey player on the team has still seen her leaked pictures, myself included. “You want me to take you home?”
“Are you good to drive?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” She side-eyes me. “I swear.”
She narrows her eyes at me, then holds up a pinky between our bodies. I hook mine around hers a little surprised at how cold her hands are.
I stand up first, wiping my hands on my pants from the concrete floor, then hold both of my palms out in front of her. Her icicle fingers grip mine and I pull, Kennedy hopping to her feet with a little flourish at the end.
I drop her hands and she walks in front of me, saying, “Alright, get me outta here.”
Chapter Three
Kennedy
Bramwood is in bloom and it's beautiful. Bright pops of blue and orange flowers are tastefully planted in front of buildings and next to doors. But it’s also hot. And humid. Very humid.
August in Michigan means nomatterhow beautiful the walk is, I’m sweating by the time I make it to my destination. Today: astronomy. As a poli-sci major I still have earth science credits I need to take in order to graduate, and astronomy seemed like the safe choice to balance out my heavy course load this year (contemporary political thought, logical and mathematical thinking, and global macroeconomics).
The doors to the lecture hall slide open and I’m hit with a blast of ice cold A/C. I let out a sigh of relief as I step further into the cool building and head down to the middle-ish row, shimmying my way down the aisle of cramped seats until I get to the exact center; my preferred seat for any class.
I’m pulling out my laptop and textbook from my backpack when I see a figure standing oddly close to my seat out of the corner of my eye, glancing up to find Will’s head of curlybrown hair and goofy grin looking down at me, backpack straps slung over both of his shoulders. Without a word, he drops his bag next to mine and takes the seat to my right.
“I didn’t know you were taking this class,” I say.
