“We’re, um,seeingeach other,” I confess quietly, dragging my thumb up and down the side casing of my phone.
“Holy shit!” Foster shrieks, initiating a dog pile on top of me, whereupon my other un-housetrained friends squish the air out of my lungs.
I hate having to lie to them, but they just…they wouldn’t understand.
Unfortunately for me, their excitement is indisputable, and newborn guilt sows itself into the lining of my skull, elongating redwood roots into a woven quilt of pine needles that effuse terpenes and resinous sap.
I gently inch myself out from underneath them. “Yeah, it’s…it’s new.”
Foster’s lips draw into a grin, his eyes glistening with childlike merriment. “Dude, this ismonumental. You’re the king of hookups. And Staten—she’s…she’s everything you stand against. How did this happen? We need all the details.”
Gulp.Allthe details?
Suddenly, this well-intentioned cross-examination has me feeling like a cow in a slaughterhouse with a bolt gun to the neck. One wrong move and everything goes up in flames. Onewrong move and I not only put Staten at risk, but also the fate of my friendships.
Warmth combusts in my cheeks, my belly pitching up behind my ribs. “I…”
Crew, sweeping in after a hard shift of sandwich making, snatches my phone from me, unknowingly holding the six-inch truth in his very hands. “You should invite her to the party tonight. Make your big public debut, you know?”
There’s a paperweight on my chest that’s making it hard to breathe. It’s not that I’m against the idea—I’d love nothing more than to have Staten hanging off my arm—but parading her around for everyone to see while we both know our chemistry is fake? My carousel of nerves isn’t equipped to handle something of that magnitude.
“Tonight?”
“Tonight,” Crew insists.
I honestly don’t remember a time when I wasn’t accompanied by some busty blonde or leggy brunette at a party. And as expected with my history of fuck ‘em and chuck ‘ems, my teammates clock my hesitation with their own expressions of confusion.
“You’re acting weird,” Sutton notes.
“Give him a break. It’s his first time going official with a girl,” Axel rebukes.
Foster and his proclivity for escalating situations jumpstarts a chant, goading me into spending a non-educational night with the girl who haunts every waking second of my day. There’s absolutely no saying what could happen at a party. The overflowing kegs, the countless bedrooms, the mind-altering substances that could lead to the fuck of a lifetime. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t need things to get physical with Staten to enjoy spending time with her, but I can’t promise that I’ll be able to control myself in such a…stimulating…environment.
Crew tosses my phone back, and I just narrowly catch it. “Text her.”
Panic freezes me like a snow-blown torpor waging war aboveground, razing through crops and painting the countryside in bleak shades of white. “And say?”
“Damn, she’s already done a number on you.”
No kidding.
Sutton is the second person to get out of his seat and go for my device, and his drive-by secures my phone, unchallenged by my once-appraised hockey reflexes. He begins typing something with his large, awkward thumbs, and realization lugs me into its undertow not a second later.
I bounce onto my feet so fast that my knees crack. “Wait, what are you?—”
“Chill. I’m just getting the party started,” Sutton drawls, sending whatever world-ending message he fabricated in record time—and saving me from having to chase him around the house to repossess my phone.
Everyone scatters like a shoal of fish and congregates around the glowing screen, and I’m the last of my teammates to stumble into the huddle, my nervousness going hand in hand with the pyrexia that blooms inside my head.
ME
Come to Sig Chi’s party tonight. I want to see you.
Fuck. I need a paper bag to hyperventilate into.
STATEN
Are you asking me to go out with you?
