Reeve tosses his beer bottle in the trash and pops open a new one. “I’m gonna go up and watch the game, ” he murmurs as he takes a generous sip. “You should come up. For a while, at least. Bogart was talking shit about us blowing them off.”
We roll our eyes almost in unison. But I get it. Not living in the frat house isn’t a big deal as long as I still spend most of my free time here, like the other brothers who live in the dorms or off campus do—and like I did freshman and sophomore year. And even if I was here more this past weekend than I have been since Beth first started staying with me, I’ve been hiding down here with weights, and whiskey, and words, and I know I’ve been neglecting my brothers. But my head has just been all kinds of fucked up, and it’s becoming too much damned work to play the easygoing version of myself they’ve all come to expect. All except Reeve, anyway.
I blow out a long-winded sigh, wondering if this is how Reeve feels all the time. I still don’t know much about his ex, but I know she did a fucking number on him, and a part of me admires him for not bothering to pretend otherwise.
Pretending is fucking exhausting.
“Yeah. I feel you, brother,” I mutter, no more enthused than he is. I shove a hand through my hair, wanting to tear it right out of my damned head. Because I don’t know what the fuck else to do anymore. This hiding bullshit obviously isn’t working for me. Nothing seems to be fucking working. Being close to Beth didn’t work, and being away from her is working even less, and these past few nights, if I didn’t at least have those few dark hours before dawn to feel her in my arms, I might genuinely lose my damned mind. “I’m just going to finish my cigarette first.” Reeve’s room is one of the only ones in the house that is smoker-friendly.
My phone buzzes, and I eagerly open Rectum Ralph’s text, ready to feel that subtle sense of relief as I read his update on Beth. Because it’s supposed tell me either that she’s home safe at my place, or that he’s waiting outside while she volunteers at the new student chatline.
But it doesn’t. My heart freezes before scrambling like a fighter jet as I read Rectum’s message. Because the fucker’s fucking lost her.
Lost. Her. Like she’s a fucking puppy who broke away from her leash.
I have him on the phone a second later, and his bullshit excuse does not calm me one iota. Like I give a fuck how sure he’d been that she was heading to the student health center. Like his worthless fucking certainty is a good enough reason to follow farther behind than usual, only to lose her when she changed directions. Fucking moron.
I order Rectum Ralph to go check the student health center just in case, spitting out enough expletives to fill a fucking sonnet, letting it all out on him so I don’t unload on Beth. Because she’s my next text.
Where are you?
I stare at the screen, and wait, clutching my phone so hard I’m lucky it doesn’t crumble in my hand. But I don’t have fucking time for this shit, so I do the unthinkable, and call her. It rings until voicemail, and my stomach bottoms out. Something’s not right. We’re strictly-text people, so she knows if I’m calling, I have to have good reason, and whatever fucked-up state our friendship may be in right now, she’d never blow me off like that.
Right?
For a split second, I entertain the possibility that she might be mad at me for not calling, or something. But it’s not like that with Beth and me. It never has been. We go days, weeks, sometimes even months without connecting, and it never means we’re any less…well, whatever we are.
But then again, I’ve never been inside her before, either.
Fuck, what have I done?
I know I’ve taken the coward’s way out by hiding down here these past few nights, but now that we know what happens when we get too close, surely Beth understands why it’s best that I stay away, doesn’t she? At least for now, while the memory of her naked body, of the way she moaned my name, is still so fucking fresh.
I force that, too, out of my mind.
I knew what this was. Even as I gave in to the temptation I’d been fighting for what felt like millennia, even as I grasped onto the alcohol as an excuse to let myself break, I knew it wasn’t real. That it was just a stolen hour gifted by Beth’s whim and her libido, and most definitely by that fucking dance at Hot Box.
I knew better than to get that fucking close to her.
But it won’t happen again, and at least that’s one thing I know Beth is on the same fucking page about. Because her “I know” came faster than I could get even my words out—faster than I could get to the part about it being a one-time thing—about it not changing anything between us.
Because, fuck, was it reckless. If Cap ever found out—ever even suspected—he would be done with me. And the truth is, I don’t know what that version of my world even looks like.
My father barely speaks to me these days—has barely spoken to me ever since he failed to force me into a business major so I could “become a productive member of society and someday support a family,” and though my mother still calls every few weeks to check in, it’s all surface-level bullshit. She follows my dad’s lead; she always has, whether she agrees with him or not. In fact, I wonder if she even has her own opinions anymore, or if years of deferring to those of someone else has trained them away.
But the fact remains that Cap, Tuck…Beth—they’re all I’ve really got. Sure, I’ve got Reeve, and the rest of the brothers, I guess, but it’s different.
But I can’t even worry about fucking Cap right now—not when Beth is fucking missing.
I try calling her again. Nothing.
Shit.
I call Toni next, thinking she might know where Beth is, or could at least go up and knock on my door to see if she’s there. But she doesn’t fucking answer, either. Then I try Lani, but she’s at Campus West, and hasn’t seen Beth since class this morning. I try the line for the front desk of my building, but Barney, our doorman, says he hasn’t seen her, either. He reports back five minutes later that there was no answer at my door. Fucking shit!
I grab Reeve’s beer from him just as he’s about to tilt it to his mouth. Thank fuck he’s only had the one. “You’re driving.”
He blinks at me for a beat before he registers the panic in my eyes, and I watch his own shift from surprise to purpose with one sharp nod.
