Chapter 14
June, Saturday Night
I was drunk. I was terribly, completely, outrageously drunk. After entering this wooden hellhole they call a frat house, it only took me about two shallow salutations from preppy dudes who wanted to fuck for the night for me to take to drinking. It was the best way to put on the smiley, vapid, social mask and blend in with all the others who were hiding their true personalities.
Here, the only things I knew about people were what they looked like, what drinks they tolerated, and that they enjoyed the occasional party. That was as deep as it went. For someone who had trouble connecting, it was a mystery to me why exactly the surface-level stuff bothered me so much. It should’ve been right up my alley. I was closed off, after all, and I recognized that. But having to suffer the banality of others? Yikes.
Even Mary. She was great, super friendly, but I guess we didn’t really have as much in common as I’d hoped. So I drank, and drank, and giggled at a joke I didn’t hear, and drank. My mind plunged deeper into the spinning nothingness until I was no longer sure if Mary was even with me or not. The liquor in my cup swirled through the crevices of my brain, and I couldn’t handle the act anymore. My face was tired from faking a smile, and my head hurt from keeping all topics of conversation shallow enough that no one would think I was a freak.
I stumbled upstairs to the bathroom for some quiet privacy, almost tripping into the stained shower curtain as I entered. I shut the door and decided I would live here now. Yes, I would live in this silent bathroom forever.
A girl with lazy eyes appeared in front of me and cocked her head. She didn’t look like she’d wear a vapid mask. She looked kind of cool, actually. It took me a moment to realize I was slumped over the sink, staring at myself in the mirror. Ew. Never mind.
If Alana had been here with me, we would’ve been exploring the house or passing silent glances back and forth whenever someone said something stupid. We weren’t assholes. We were respectful. But I liked that we could be assholes within the privacy of our friendship. As humans, I think we all need that, and Alana gave that to me. Now, the only person I could be an asshole with was…well…Oliver.
He played on my asshole-ness so perfectly. I hardly even needed to think twice when I was around him. I could just let all my meanest thoughts rip, and he always came right back with something to say, because he was just as much of a jerk as I was. And he was smart, too. And maybe that dangly hair that always fell in front of his face wasn’t so bad. And maybe this party would’ve been funnier if I’d come with him and not Mary.
Oh, shit… My stomach gurgled strangely.
I paused, waiting to see if I was going to vomit into the sink.
Nope. False alarm.
I pulled my phone out of my purse. Well, Mary’s purse that she made me wear. Oliver needed to know what I was thinking. It was very important. I sucked down the last sip in my cup and shuddered. The last sip is always the worst one. Yes, yes. Oliver needed to know.
Me: Ur an asshole.
My phone chimed almost immediately.
Dickhole: Thanks, Juni. Appreciate the update.
I snorted into the sink, my knees bending, slowly leading my body down as I laughed hysterically. I could hear the sass in his text. Maybe Oliver was funny sometimes. One second, my elbows were propped on the counter, and the next, my ass hit the floor. I fell deeper into my own giggles as I answered.
Me: No. thAts not what i mean
Dickhole: Are you drunk?
Me: its impotant i need to tell you. Come here plaese.
He had to know that I could be near him without thinking. He had to know how much I needed that. I snuggled into my position on the grimy, shaggy bath mat.
Dickhole: Send me your location.
Dickhole: Now.
I curled onto my side with my phone in front of my face, staring at the bright, white light of our messages. I was wearing one of Mary’s skimpy dresses, meaning my arms and legs were bare and I could feel every particle of dirt on the floor, every piece of mold growing in the rug. It felt incredibly icky, but enduring it sounded better than standing up right now, so I sent Oliver my location and fell asleep.
◆◆◆
Oli
“Yo, who do you know here?”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t even bother looking at the guy who’d said that as I covered his entire face with my hand and pushed him out of the way like a curtain of hanging beads in a doorway. The frat house wasn’t as packed as I expected it to be, though I guess that made sense if they only let in a select few.
“Bro!” Another guy stumbled in front of me, ready to fight though too drunk to do so.
I grabbed him by the shirt. Not to hurt him, just to remind him I was much bigger than him. I stared straight into his eyes. “I’m getting my girlfriend, and I’m leaving. Believe me, I’m not here to fucking stay.”
I shoved him backward, and he dared to laugh. “I hate to say it, bro, but if your girlfriend is here, she’s probably getting railed out.” He put his hands up in surrender. “Go find her. Be my guest. It’ll be hilarious to watch.”
My heart sank. If I walked in on June doing something with someone, I would fucking lose it. I didn’t know what I’d do. Half because she was too drunk to text me properly, meaning she was too drunk to consent to one of these assholes, and half because my heart would probably dissolve into my stomach and shit itself right out of my ass. Maybe Jonah and I could live in our beds forever, crying over the two irreplaceable women we fumbled.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, as well as the urge to slap any one of these guys across the face, and trudged further into the party. I walked through rooms of dark mahogany, checking behind every door. It wasn’t until I made my way upstairs that the general noise of the gathering faded away. June wasn’t downstairs with the rest, and all there were upstairs were bathrooms and…bedrooms.
What the hell was I even doing here? I smeared my sweaty palms over my trousers and looked between the three different doors lining the wall I stared at. I had no idea what I’d find behind them. I knocked on one lightly and placed my ear to the wood, alarm bells ringing in my chest.
“Fuck off, Randall!” someone said from inside. “I told you I wanted to get some sleep tonight!”
I forced myself to take a calming breath and back away, stepping to the next door. Again, I knocked lightly, though there was no answer from inside. I listened as closely as I could and didn’t hear any skin slapping or people grunting, so I placed my hand on the cold knob and turned it. The door creaked as it opened, revealing dark hair on white floor tiles. A bathroom. And a woman. On the floor.
The door opened fully and…oh my god. June. She was completely passed out. What had she taken? Did someone do this to her and hide her here for later? I dropped to my knees, using both hands to brush her hair from her face and try to wake her up. She awoke relatively easily, and my heart relaxed, my shoulders lowering more than a few inches.
“June,” I whispered. “June, let’s get up.” I grabbed her phone off the floor and shoved it into her purse.
She looked around herself tiredly, clicking her tongue as if to get a bad taste out of her mouth, and reached for me. Her fingers gripped my shoulders as I maneuvered her up and sat her on my hip, wrapping her legs around my waist. She giggled and dropped her nose to the top of my head.
Thank god. She was fine. But, fuck, her dress was fucking short. I stretched it down and palmed it to her bare thigh to keep it from rolling up her ass.
“You are Oliver,” she said into my hair.
“Yes.”
She hugged my neck tightly, pulling my face into her chest. There was definitely a boob on my cheek. I forced myself to look at the wall. Fortunately, she was drunk enough that it wasn’t sexy at all. Sloppy inebriation was anything but a turn-on. Unfortunately, I was so infatuated with her that literally anything she did was amusing to me.
“I have to tell you something,” she mumbled, taking a deep breath and squishing my head tighter in her embrace.
“Later.”
I carried June down the stairs and toward the front door of the house, ignoring all comments from the guys I’d spoken to on the way in about how they totally would’ve fucked her if they’d seen her earlier. Just like how I totally would’ve killed them if I weren’t getting June out of here.
We bounced onto the street and into the night, June adjusting herself on me like a cat with her claws in my T-shirt. I asked her for some help finding her dorm, and she muttered a few inane directions though spent the majority of the fifteen-minute walk sleeping on me. This was the only situation in which I would ever consider the prospect of her sitting half naked on my hip with her arms around my neck and her tits pressed into my face to be anything less than awesome.
Somehow, we ended up at the front door of her building, and I was able to dig her key out of her small purse. Her purse which contained the key, her phone, a tube of lip gloss, an Alka Seltzer tablet, an ID, a single earring, and a condom. I was pissed about it, but at least it was mildly responsible of her.
I carried her into the elevator and then down the hall, finally setting her on her feet once we were both in her room with the door shut. Her ankle gave out over her heel, but I caught her before she fell. Why she was wearing heels was a mystery to me. She didn’t seem like the dressy type. Especially not to a frat party. But no judgment, I guess. She looked really pretty.
June surveyed the room, spinning on some sort of axis until her gaze locked on what I assumed to be her desk, given the family photo on it. She extended a finger and pointed silently at the large, pink water bottle sitting there—the same one I’d seen her carry around with her sometimes. I snatched it from the desk and brought it to her, flicking the straw up so she could sip. June grabbed it and shoved it into her mouth. Had the bottle not been an inanimate object before, it certainly was now, what with how she sucked the damn soul out of it. When she finished sucking, she lowered the bottle, breathing heavily.
“Would you like pajam—?”
She began sucking again, more violently this time, holding out a hand to cut my question in half. I rolled my eyes and waited for her to stop torturing the poor bottle.
When she finally finished, I asked again. “Would you like pajamas?”
The girl looked me dead in the eye, peeled off a set of eyelashes I hadn’t even known were fake, slapped it to my forehead, and walked to her desk, leaving the bottle where it’d been sitting previously. I sighed heavily as I flicked the eyelashes from my face and turned toward her closet. While June positioned her other set of lashes on her pink bottle, I ruffled through her things as carefully as I could, searching for a pair of pants and a T-shirt.
“Where are your sweatpants, June?”
“Up your butt,” she said with a hiccup.
“Fine.” I abandoned my quest in her closet. “If you want to sleep in that piece of fabric you call a dress, be my guest.”
“No!” She stomped her foot, stumbling to my side and holding up the back of her halter dress, ready to pull it right off. She managed to get it over her head just as I spun her away from me and trapped her arms under my forearm, preventing her from dropping her top. Considering she rested her boobs on my cheek the entire walk home, I was already annoyingly aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Now, even more so.
Her arms were bent beneath me like chicken wings, her back pressed to my front. I stood there trying to figure out the best way to get her covered. I considered just throwing her under her covers as is, but then something tickled my forearm. I looked down. June had stretched her fingers to my skin, and she was tracing my tattoos with her fingernail.
“He has arms,” she mumbled. “No flannel.” She leaned her head back and looked up at me with a surprising amount of clarity in her wide, brown eyes. “You have tattoos.”
I nodded, her sparkly gaze sucking me in like a deadly whirlpool.
“They’re pretty.”
“Thank you, June,” I whispered. I let her wind her fingers over my colorful patchwork for a few more silent moments before reaching a hand into her closet and pulling out the first T-shirt I could find. Getting it over her head and torso was probably one of the hardest things I’d done all semester, but I managed to pull it around her and let it drop to her thighs, releasing her arms and dress with it.
She squeezed the red dress off herself and stepped out of it before throwing it at her roommate’s bed. “Stupid dress. It was Mary’s idea.” She was forming full sentences now. The nap on the bathroom floor, and then on my shoulder, and then the water seemed to have helped a bit.
I finally found a pair of pants and held them out to her, nudging my chin to encourage her to put them on. She faced me, in nothing but a T-shirt in heels, pressed her arms behind her back, and said, “No.”
I sighed. Instead of throwing the pants at her head as I wanted to, I turned back toward the closet as calmly as I could. “You want shorts?” I glanced back at her for an answer, and she shook her head. My jaw tightened. “Juni, put some fucking pants on.”
“I don’t wanna.”
Fuck.
Keeping my cool had never been so difficult. Veins popped in my forehead, my face filling up with blood. I shook my head and grabbed her by the waist, tossing her down on the bed. She gasped, gripping my wrists and staring straight into my eyes. She might’ve thought I was about to do something inappropriate. I was just going to change her shoes, forgoing the argument about pants for now.
I ignored her stare and got down on one knee, undoing her heel and replacing it with a shower shoe. She began trailing a finger through my hair and rubbing her thighs together. I paused to observe her. She was definitely giving me…a look. Fuck. She smirked. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Staying away from her was one thing, but having to reject her if she came onto me? Fuck. It was the 21st fucking century. Couldn’t they have invented sober pills by now so she could pop one and snap out of this? She was going to be furious tomorrow knowing this entire interaction even happened.
What’s more, I was pretty sure she was wearing a thong, given the thin-as-air material her dress was made of, and Kai had been pretty clear at past sleepovers that sleeping in a thong was a death wish for vaginal health. Something which, by the way, I did not fucking ask to know, but couldn’t stop thinking about just now. Kai had made it seem bad. I didn’t want June to get sick or anything.
What is the time limit on thongs and vaginas? Is it like...a 24-hour thing?Maybe there’s still time...
Fuck.
“You have to take that off,” I said both quickly and quietly. Better safe than sorry, I guess. My gaze hit the shadow between her legs where her shirt fell to indicate that I was referring to her thong. “It’s not good for you to sleep with it on.”
She smiled. Evilly.
Did I say fuck yet?
“You can take it off,” she cooed.
Holy shit. I just wanted to get this fucking girl to bed safely, but with June, everything was a fucking obstacle course. I gripped her ankle tightly just as I finished slipping her second foot into a second shower shoe. “Do not make such offers, June. I tend to surpass my limits.”
My fingers may have lingered on her calf as I released her foot. I stood in front of her, and she stared up at me, widening her sweet eyes deliberately. The corner of her mouth quirked up, and I had to shove my hand in my pocket just to keep from brushing it with my thumb. I couldn’t even look at her. The only way to keep my senses was to ignore her entirely and, unfortunately, that wasn’t an option right now.
“You’re taking care of me, aren’t you?”
I nodded stupidly. “I suppose I am.”
She fell back on the bed, her hair spreading like rays, her shirt falling into the crevices of her body. “Then do it. Or are you a pussy?”
God, I was going to fucking murder this girl. I was going to murder her, and then I was going to revive her so I could marry her, and then I was going to spend the rest of my life doing anything she told me.
“I’m not a pussy, June.” I grabbed behind her knee and pulled her closer to me, her shirt undoubtedly sliding up with the movement, though I didn’t notice. My gaze was fixed on her eyes. “But you need to get it together.” I slid my fingers over her hips and hooked them into the thin string of her thong. “Because if you don’t, I will shatter every moral I’ve come to possess in a matter of seconds.” My knuckles grazed over her skin as I slid down her soft thighs. Her stare fluttered, her back arching into the bed as her knees pressed together. I watched her lips part and listened to her breath hitch.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I wished this was all real. I wished she’d feel this way sober.
I pulled the garment off her ankles and threw it at the clothes hamper in the corner. I then ensured she was covered, picked her up, tossed her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, slapped a towel over her back, grabbed her key and shower caddy, and headed to the bathroom.