Cody’s look of bafflement made me chuckle. To be quite honest, I was shocking myself with this newfound generosity, but something about parents fucking up their kids got to me.
I wonder why that is?
He didn’t deserve to be alone, reading about fucking horticulture, while the assholes outside were having the time of their lives.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
Why was I doing it? Ugh, feelings. I didn’t like them, and didn’t care to talk about them. My habit in life was to cover them up with sardonic wit and illegal substances.
So, I leaned closer to him and whispered, “Because I wanna see you shake your big delicious ass on the dance floor.”
That one got him. His guffaw filled the room, bouncing off the glass enclosure. I grabbed him by the arm, “Let’s go,” and yanked him back into the house.
***
The party was in full force. Rowan’s living room felt like a fucking rave. Not a soul in the house wasn’t completely wrecked, except for Cody and me. I had to hand it to him, the boy had moves, and, yes, his ass looked amazing as he bounced it around when cheesy rap songs from the nineties came on. He looked like he was in heaven. I knew he would. The fucking boy scout needed to let loose. He needed to be a teenager for a change.
He needed to be bent over Rowan’s pool table with me railing him from behind.
Shit. I wasn’t even drunk, and I could barely stop myself from grabbing the back of Cody’s head and smashing his lips into mine. That wasn’t a good idea for the current environment, but I couldn’t stop looking at him. Every so often, I caught him glancing at me. He’d look away quickly, his cheeks turning the color of the plastic red cups everyone held. I hated how much I loved his face when he got embarrassed. The flush of his cheeks was my kryptonite.
I needed a distraction. I couldn’t kiss Cody in front of the hockey team.
Fuck the idea of two dudes kissing, I didn’t care if people gave a shit about my sexuality. But we were stepbrothers. That’s scandalous, no matter how you cut it.
A girl who’d been eyeing me sauntered over, and I wrapped my arm around her.
She turned around and pressed her ass against my dick. I thrust into her as I kissed her shoulder.
She looked back and said, “Mmm, you keep doing that, and we might need to find an empty bedroom.”
“Oh, yeah?” I turned her to face me, kissed her between her neck and shoulder, and slowly worked my way up. She let out a soft mewl, and I knew I had her.
She gripped the sides of my face and said, “Kiss me.”
Our lips connected, we kissed like we were suffocating, and the only air was in each other’s mouths. I could feel people taking notice.
Good. I needed to keep cool. Cody was making me gush like a fucking goon, and I needed to pump the breaks before I did something stupid.
The kissing finished, and I saw Cody rushing into the kitchen.
Aw, fuck.
Cody
So, that’s what it was all about. Rafael didn’t care about me—he wanted to show me who had the power. He did something he knew would make my heart swell, and then stuck a knife in it by making out with someone else.
He played me like a goddamn fool. Rafael knew precisely how to behave to make me let my guard down. He had to have known how good it would feel to have someone sober at the party with me—someone who understood.
I loved having fun with Rafael. That’s all I wanted. We were acting like idiots and goofing off. We seemed like friends, but occasionally, we’d look at each other, knowing that we had a secret that was ours. My heart could barely fit in my chest. I loved feeling that way with Rafael. I loved feeling like I belonged, and he was by my side, cheering me on rather than being awful and cruel.
Then, he started kissing that girl. It crushed me. The sting of his cruelty was tearing me to pieces. I wanted to jump into the pool and drown. It would have been better than Rafael ripping my heart out and putting it in a blender.
“Hi.”
I looked over and a guy I’d never seen stood by the punch bowl. He wore a backwards Red Sox cap and a loose-fitting black button-down shirt, completely open, with a beater underneath. My eyes caught the chain around his neck, then trailed down to see the chest hair escaping from the top of his shirt.
His green eyes surveyed me, and he bit his lower lip.
