2. Then
2
THEN
Tripping over cobblestones, Brooke, Chels, and Kieran made their tipsy way across Edinburgh’s lamplit old town. Kieran’s older brother’s house parties were legendary and they’d pregamed accordingly.
Kieran and Chels took almost nothing seriously, especially a costume party. He was in a red shirt with a sign around his neck reading Netflix and Chels wore athletic pants and a tank top with a matching Chill sign, even though they’d immediately part ways—Kieran to the beer pong table and Chels to the dance floor.
Chels hooked one arm around Brooke’s neck. “I’m so glad you’re coming with us,” she squealed in her posh English accent, raising Kieran’s flask in the air and bumping her fake glasses off kilter. Brooke snatched the flask before Chels spilled it and tossed back a burning swig.
“Classes haven’t started yet. She’s no excuse to miss it,” Kieran said.
“You’re making it sound like I lock myself in the library.” Sure, Brooke was driven—she had a scholarship to maintain and the world to impress—but with friends like these two, there were always shenanigans going on in the periphery.
Kieran quirked an eyebrow at Brooke and she crossed her arms in indignation and also to combat the September wind cutting through her black hoodie, stealing away the warmth from her whisky-fueled alcohol jacket. “Not all of us can descend into a caffeine haze and learn an entire term’s worth of material during revision week,” Brooke defended.
Chels and Kieran always emerged as zombies from exams and proceeded to sleep for ten days straight. Brooke worked hard for her grades. And she wasn’t graduating this spring and getting into the summer writing fellowship Professor McCallister—her favorite author and all-around idol—hosted by slacking off.
“That’s literally what revision week is for. Why else would they give it to us?” Kieran asked, jumping over bike racks and hollering into the night. If he and his brother, Rohan, had been American, they’d be Philadelphia sports fans, for sure.
By the time they made it to Rohan’s new flat, the party was in full swing. A heavy bass line reverberated in the stairwell and people spilled out onto the landing.
“Alright, overachiever.” Kieran pulled his flask out of Brooke’s hand midsip.
“Hey!” Brooke wiped away the whisky dribbling over her chin as she followed Chels into the humid living room—cleared of its furniture to make space for the crush of dancers, string lights hanging at the top of the tall ceiling. The electropop beat of Calvin Harris’s “Summer” pulsed so loudly through the oversize speakers, Brooke was surprised the neighbors hadn’t called in a noise violation yet. Rohan must’ve invited his football team, all their fans, and the entire building.
Chels punched her hand above her head to the rhythm, weaving through the crowd and towing Brooke behind her. She bumped against a guy dressed as Deadpool, a lumberjack, and a human pinata wrapped in fuchsia, yellow, and green fringed paper as they made their way toward the kitchen.
Crammed in with so many sweaty bodies, Brooke was sweltering. She pushed up the sleeves of her black hoodie and unzipped it so the low V of her black bra was almost showing. She felt bold tonight.
A loud pop sounded and silver confetti rained down to the screaming delight of the party. A beach ball bejeweled like a disco ball bounced around the room and Brooke reached up to hit it back into the air.
The night was awash with possibility. Like they might end up at the beach or climbing onto the roof, but either way, they’d have a story to tell.
Chels twirled her around and pulled Brooke in close, scream-whispering in her ear, “Jazz is here!” before heading into the middle of the dance floor toward her on-again crush.
Chels’s peer pressure was the only thing keeping her dancing. As Brooke made to leave, she nearly collided with Rohan, dressed in a red-and-white-striped shirt, red ski hat, and glasses. At six foot two, it was the easiest Where’s Waldo? she’d ever played.
“You made it!” he shouted over the noise in the room. He had all the dark-eyed beauty of his Indian mother and his Scottish father’s penchant for mayhem; he and Kieran were a duo of charismatic menaces.
Rohan pulled Brooke into the kitchen and twirled her under his arm. “Meet my new flatmate.” She spun and stumbled, hand landing against a frilly pirate shirt over a hard chest.
“This is Brooke.”
She steadied herself and looked up at Rohan’s roommate with a half-formed apology and a smile that got a bit lost when her eyes found his dark ones locked on her, framed with eyelashes that put her mascara to shame, a shadow under his full bottom lip.
He blinked twice, pulled off the skull-and-crossbones patch covering one lens of his tortoiseshell glasses, and slipped it into his pocket.
“Captain,” Brooke said breathlessly.
A sexy half smile stretched across his face and spread through her like a vodka shot. He held out his hand. “I’m Jack.”
“Sparrow?” She slipped her hand into his—warm, gentle, lingering.
“Sutherland.”
“And here I thought you were the real deal,” she teased.
Rohan placed a red cup in front of her and she dropped Jack’s hand; she’d forgotten Rohan was there. Brooke hooked a thumb in his direction. “Bold move living with this one,” she said to Jack, then tipped her head. “Or do you not know that yet?”
Rohan let out a full-throated laugh but Jack’s was a low, rumbly thing that tugged at her stomach.
“I’m aware of the antics.” His eyes didn’t leave her face and she couldn’t help tracking the bow of his lip and the curve of his glasses where they rested against his cheeks.
“We play footie together,” Rohan added before turning to welcome a woman with a pink pixie cut dressed like Tinker Bell, wrapping her in a hug and lifting her off her feet.
It’d been a grave tactical error declining all of Rohan’s invitations to his matches. If Jack was this good-looking as a pirate, he’d be devastating in joggers.
He tweaked the black felt ear safety-pinned on her hood. “And what are you supposed to be?”
“An I-Don’t-Care Bear, clearly,” she said, gesturing to the white circle in the middle of her stomach housing a pot leaf, a storm cloud, and a middle finger she’d drawn herself.
Jack broke into a full-fledged smile and the brightness was enough to turn her into an I-Care-A-Whole-Fucking-Lot Bear.
“Clever,” he said, and in a lifetime of wanting to be the best, Brooke had never enjoyed hearing that quite so much.
A guy torpedoed in, wrapping Jack in a headlock and chanting, “Beer pong! Beer pong!”
Jack scuffled, attempting to knock the guy’s feet out from under him, and Brooke took a step back. The other guy seemed to anticipate Jack’s hook maneuver and remained upright. He held out his free hand to Brooke, his brown hair curling into his eyes, while Jack twisted uselessly under his arm. “I’m Logan.”
Brooke looked to Jack who stilled and heaved out a defeated sigh. “My brother.”
“Oh. Hi,” Brooke said with a laugh and took Logan’s hand.
Jack landed a heel on the top of Logan’s foot; Logan yelped and released the hold. Jack’s eyes were hot on her, as if he didn’t like her attention on his brother, and it sent a thrill through her stomach.
“Where’s Rohan?” Logan asked. Brooke scanned the busy kitchen and found him making out with the pink-haired girl sitting on the counter.
When Brooke turned back to Jack, he arched an eyebrow at her. “It looks as if I’m in need of a beer pong partner.”
“Wait just a minute.” Logan held his hand up between them. “How good are you?”
“There’s a lot riding on this,” Jack said, crossing his arms. “Two decades of competitive spirit and bragging rights.” He lifted a hand to shield his mouth and mock-whispered, “Say ‘Abysmal.’”
She bit back a smile and told Logan, “Totally average,” when in fact, she was fantastic. She didn’t do things she wasn’t damn good at.
Logan eyed her skeptically, but she was pulled back to Jack’s dark gaze.
“She’s it,” Jack said.
The heat flaring in her chest and spreading into her cheeks was better than any spark she’d read about in a book. Brooke smiled a too-wide smile as she followed Jack farther into the dimly lit kitchen, tracking the stretch of his shirt over his back muscles and noticing the way he cracked his knuckles down by his side.
A redheaded woman in sunglasses and a flamingo floaty racked cups on the far side next to Logan.
Jack handed Brooke a warm beer she immediately cracked and started pouring. He stood beside her, arm brushing hers as he poured his beer. Excitement fizzed in her like the bubbles inside the can.
“Now, you don’t have to worry about Logan. He can’t aim for shit when he’s pissed,” Jack explained, pouring the last of his beer into a red cup.
Logan threw a Ping-Pong ball at Jack that went wide and Jack caught it with a self-satisfied smirk. He turned around and leaned against the table, tipping his head in closer, as if it was of the utmost importance that he give Brooke every strategic advantage. “But Elyse, she gets better the more she drinks.”
The red-haired girl curtsied, holding out an imaginary skirt.
“Unless she gets overconfident,” Logan reminded her, making keep-your-eye-on-the-prize fingers at her.
Jack handed Brooke the Ping-Pong ball for her to start the game. With an easy flick of her wrist, she sank the first shot.
“Falsification!” Logan shouted.
Jack turned a crinkly-eyed smile on her. “Well, you appear to be perfect.”
She glowed under his praise and gave a casual one-shoulder shrug. “I introduced Rohan to this game.” She’d taught ev eryone in their first-year dorm, and like anything competitive and belligerent, Kieran and Rohan had immediately taken to it.
“Ah, so you’re the American responsible for this preposterous kitchen table.”
Brooke smiled. “You said you knew what you were getting into.”
“I fear I’m not at all sure what I’m getting into,” Jack said as Logan’s Ping-Pong ball dropped into the beer. Jack picked up the cup, chugging, and slammed it back on the table with a devilish grin. “I have a new house rule,” he said.
“You just moved in.”
His eyes were bright and dancing. “For every ball we sink, we have to tell each other something about ourselves.”
It was intoxicating, him wanting to know her. And she desperately wanted to know more about him, too.
“Aye, aye,” she said with a pirate salute, and sank her next shot. She leaned against the table, studying the slight flush along the open neck of his shirt, while she thought of something interesting to tell him.
“I’m dying to know. Whatever you’re going to say.”
“I know how to gut a fish.”
Jack’s eyes twinkled as a smile bloomed across his face. “You’re going to be full of surprises. I can tell already.”
Jack sank his next ball and Brooke looked expectantly at him. He glanced up to the ceiling and his lips pushed to the side like he couldn’t think of anything.
“Dig deep,” she said, and his eyebrows furrowed dramatically.
He looked at her from under those long eyelashes. “I can play a rousing rendition of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ on the piano.”
Brooke broke out in a laugh, reveled in the glow that seemed to cling to the edges around them.
When Elyse sank the next ball, Brooke drank, wiping the beer foam from her mouth with the back of her finger, and Jack’s eyes followed the motion.
Brooke and Elyse were well matched in skill—and competitiveness—and a group of guys huddled around the table, cheering. A crowd usually elevated Brooke’s performance, but it was hard to focus with Jack this close. There were too many people in the room, too much alcohol in the air, too much heat coming off his body. Her head felt lighter and lighter as they played and the music pulsed as if it emanated from inside her chest.
On Brooke’s next turn, she made her shot and said, “I’m excellent at Balderdash. Using the right amount of detail to sound believable. I’m a writer,” she added, volunteering more information than he’d asked for, her filter most likely lost on the walk over.
“It just so happens, I’m an excellent reader.”
Earlier that night, while riffling through Brooke’s closet for a costume, Chels had said, “When you’re a famous author, sitting in your cottage by the sea, trying to write the next great American novel—from Scotland, of course—you’re not going to have anything to write about if you don’t live. ”
The image Chels had painted of that cottage Brooke absolutely coveted and the blinking black line in a blank document she deeply feared, had settled on her with the heft of a typewriter.
But now, looking at Jack as he ran his knuckles across his chin, his eyes soft and engaged, Brooke had to breathe through the lightness in her chest like there was simultaneously too much and too little oxygen in there. Like she could fill pages and pages with the sparks crackling between them.
He continued to brush against her arm as they played, holding her gaze while he tipped back cups, and cheering her on. He was a terrible player, but Logan was drunk and considerably worse.
When Brooke sank the last ball, Jack turned and gave her a double high-five, his fingers slipping between hers, a bright smile lighting her up. He said something and she wasn’t sure if she couldn’t hear over the noise in the kitchen or because she was so distracted by the movement of his lips.
She leaned in closer. “What?”
He yelled something she couldn’t make out. But she wanted to know more. Wanted to live more.
She yelled back, “Can we go someplace quieter?”