“So how did the rest of the party go?” I asked a little too loudly. Wide eyes snapped to me, but Griffin happily took the opening. I’d learned fast that the brash auburn-haired lacrosser was always ready with an outrageous story…or three.
“Man, you missed the best part! These two chicks were apparently doing the same dude on the baseball team, and when one of the girls ran into him and the other girl was grinding allup on each other, shelostit. Grabbed the other girl’s hair, ripped her off the guy, and started smacking the hell out of her! While those two were fighting on the floor, the dude snuck off withanotherchick dancing nearby and ended up making out with her in the pool!”
“Is that it? If that’s all you’ve got for us, I’m changing the channel. I’ve seen juicier stuff on reruns ofJersey Shore,” Fin said with an arched brow. Griffin narrowed his eyes at him and I could’ve sworn I heard him growl.
“Pipe down and let me finish before I come over there and hit your mute button.”
“Babycakes, you couldn’t find my button with a compass and a prayer. Even if you did, I doubt you’d know what to do with it,” he snapped with an impish grin.
I didn’t want to know if that was irritation or heat I saw in Griffin’s gaze. Ever since he and Fin had met this year, they lived to fuck with each other, but there was always an undercurrent of something more. That was so far beyond what I had the mental capacity for right now.
“Anyway, what I was about to say,” Griffin continued sharply, “was after the two chicks had stopped fighting long enough to find baseball bro in the pool, they ended up jumping in and trying to fight the other girl he was making out with. But after about two minutes of the crowd egging them on, they all started making out with each other and went off to hook up somewhere and left poor baseball guy all by himself. But as they were leaving, they all threw out that he apparently swings with a “little bat” and he’d have better luck scoring a homerun on the field because he couldn’t get one out of them!”
Laughter broke out at Griff’s enthusiastic ending, and even Fin’s lips twitched at hearing the misfortune of the hapless playboy. But I barely cracked a smile. Hearing about party hookups dropped my mind back down a rabbit hole I wasdesperate to avoid. I was floating between feeling nothing at all and drowning in despair after what happened with Theo.
A hand gripped my shoulder and shook me hard, and Nate’s face came into view. “Dude, what’s up with you? You don’t look so good.”
I looked around to see everyone else’s eyes on me, scrutinizing me carefully. My neck heated under the collar of my shirt.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly, but every face in the room twisted with skepticism and disbelief.
It wasn’t my nature to talk about myself or my problems. I pushed things down, buried them until I could release them back into the world as notes and chords. I was always willing to let others unburden themselves with me, help them carry whatever weighed them down. Theo had been the only one I trusted enough with my vulnerabilities, but after he left, my walls came up and everything I felt was barricaded behind them.
“Really, it’s nothing. The party just ended up sucking for me, that’s all,” I murmured reluctantly. The last thing I needed was to trauma-dump on my friends over breakfast.
“I’m guessing it has something to do with theDawson’s Creekepisode that awkwardly played out during beer pong?” Fin asked curiously.
“Hah! I get it,” Nate barked out happily.
“Oh my God, Finny…” Aly mumbled, biting back a smile.
“For why?” Rhys chastised.
“Can I add a splash of tact to your juice there, babe?” Micah smirked.
“OMGeez, what did I do wrong this time?” Fin complained with wide doe eyes.
“Nothing, you’re fine. I know we were a bit…dramatic last night. The thing is Theo and I have, uh, history.”
“Yeah, we caught onto that after the first thirty seconds of angry sexual tension,” Cal interjected, grunting in discomfort when Rhys elbowed him in the ribs to silence him.
I flushed at his comment. “We didnothave sexual tension…”
“So you’re saying you weren’t thinking about jumping his bones again?” Griffin asked.
“What? No, why—didn’t you notice we were at each other’s throats last night?” I argued.
“Only because you couldn’t go at each other’s naughty bits instead,” Fin added unhelpfully. “You two were throwing major vibes, just sayin’.”
“That’snotwhat was happening.”
“Aw, it’s cute you think that, but it really was,” Micah confirmed with faux sympathy. “Did he actually look a little pissed at Nate for some reason, or was that just me?”
“No, I totally caught that! I think he was jealous,” Fin agreed.
Nate grinned and slung his arm over my shoulder. “I mean, who can blame him? I’m a straight catch. And Dawson and I do have a love that can’t be contained…isn’t that right, boo?”
He leaned up and planted a loud kiss on my cheek. I detached myself from him and wiped my face off as he laughed.
