Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Wells - the present
Me: Consider our deal officially off, Squeak.
Me: I’ve decided I’m making other arrangements for a tutor.
Me: I think you know why.
Me: Also, don’t ever try to blackmail me again.
Me: You’ll severely regret it if you do.
My thumb hovered over my last text to Bow.
I deleted it.
I didn’t know why. That shit would have been more than fucking valid. I waited over an hour in the quad for her to show up for our tutoring session, and she didn’t.
Still waiting there now, I gazed around, my hands in my hoodie’s pocket.
It was warmer today in Queenstown Village, but it was still colder than shit.
Others were out on the quad studying in jackets despite that, and I would have spotted Thatch’s little sister anywhere on the quad. She was tiny, stood out.
Needing to get high, I decided to text Thatcher to see if he wanted to go to a party tonight.
He probably wouldn’t get high himself. Thatcher and his hard partying days were pretty much over since he got a girlfriend.
A part of me was happy about that though.
He used to party harder than me before he met Aspen.
Thatcher: Can’t. I have to study, and I’m video chatting with Aspen after.
Thatcher had gotten way more responsible since he found his girl. No one deserved what he had with Aspen more than him. Thatcher had a pretty rough go of it before she came around. She completed him, made him happy, and I loved that for him.
Thatcher: You should see if some of the other guys want to go though.
I probably wouldn’t. Ares and Dorian rarely came out since they found their own girls. That left Bru, and that shit wasn’t happening.
I hadn’t heard from Bru since I’d last seen him, and that wasn’t much of a conversation at all. Actually, it wasn’t one. He’d given me a death stare, and Squeak had been between us.
That moment had been weird to walk in on. Like they’d been having some intense conversation, but something I knew about Squeak was that she had a way of getting under a dude’s skin. For all I knew, she was pulling her little manipulative shit with Bru, but that (like him) was none of my business.
Nah, it was none of my business.
Bru had once again crossed a line with me. We were good friends, and he was ruining that shit.
I was ruining that shit.
Really needing to get high, I decided to go party myself later that night.
I always knew what was going on around campus.
I got what felt like a million texts a day from people asking me to appear at their parties or events.
They knew if people spotted me, shit would pop off.
Their parties would be the it places to be, so my DMs were constantly flooded with requests.
Especially since I was basically the only one in my friend group who really partied anymore.
My friends all got boring once they were tied down.
It made shit get lonely. I used to have Bru to hang out with.
I needed to fuck.
I did badly, and the moment I crossed the threshold of the house I decided to appear at, I grabbed the first girl I saw. She came willingly with me, and even offered me a blunt.
I lit it as she felt me up through my jeans. We were in some bedroom in the house now, but, when she tried to kiss me, I forced her in the direction of my cock. I rarely kissed, and when I did, it was generally guys. I didn’t know why.
Trying to will my high to come faster, I zoned out. I took another hit on the blunt while the girl kissed me through my jeans. Growling, I yanked her ponytail back. “Pull me out.”
The bitch was too busy playing around.
The unzipping of my jeans hit the air when she finally got done screwing around. I just wanted her hands, her mouth. She reached in, and as soon as her clammy (cold) hands touched me, I sucked in a breath.
Fuck.
It was like I got the ick the moment her hand wrapped around me. She opened her mouth to take me in, but before she could, I shoved her away.
She fell to the floor with a thud, and her eyes flashed wide. It was the first time I noticed she was a redhead. Cool. She shook her head. “What’s wrong?”
Ignoring her, I put myself back in my pants. “I changed my mind.”
I didn’t know why, and I wasn’t even hard when I opened the door. It was like what happened in my bedroom with that guy, and really, every time I tried to fuck since then. Every time I tried to fuck, I couldn’t get hard without a lot of effort.
Not every time.
I hadn’t even had sex the last time I got it up, and I shook my head in an effort to get the thoughts of why out. What happened in the shower with Bru had plagued me since it happened, and I didn’t want invasive shit like that playing around in my head.
I needed to get drunk.
I was doing what I usually did when I wasn’t trying to deal with something.
I got high. I got drunk and partied/fucked my way out of my feelings.
There were full days if not weeks of high school I didn’t remember when I went on a bender.
Being stoned against one or several warm bodies was an easy way not to remember shit.
It was an easy way to block out the screams of someone who needed me at the pool while I paid attention to another.
While I looked for blue eyes and the feeling it felt not to see them for once.
I was always aware of those eyes, so when I didn’t see them…
“I guess I’m not surprised to see you here.”
I pushed smoke through my nose, closing my brain off to more shitty thoughts, memories. Bru couldn’t have come at a better time, his voice.
The head fuck got worse when I turned around and looked at him though. When I studied how his jeans hung low, and the visible bulge he had through the dark denim. Dude wasn’t even hard I bet. He was just big, and I knew that from personal experience.
I wet my lips. It was almost distracting how his university sweater stretched across his broad chest and hugged his biceps. Dude literally was built like Superman, and I was so fucking into Superman. Especially the last couple of castings.
The thing was, I didn’t even know Bru was into dudes before something happened between us. If I knew that, I would have come at things differently when it came to our friendship.
Nothing happened between us.
It didn’t as far as I was concerned, and Bru smirked when he caught me checking him out, sizing him up. It made me want to sock his motherfucking face in. I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
He never partied before we started partying together. He was too busy in school. He was like Squeak in that regard.
Why the fuck you thinking about her?
I took a swig of the beer in my hand as my former friend walked up on me. Former, because he was really messing with that friendship now.
He was checking me out too.
Bru did a visible once-over on me. His dark eyes definitely lingered over the fit of my Pembroke Football hoodie and where my low jeans sat as well. His attention rested on my cock, and it twitched. A fucking semi followed, and it was effortless.
Fucking hell.
I didn’t like that shit. I didn’t like that I thought about shit the moment Bruno’s scent was in my nose.
The first time we kissed, I thought it’d been an accident.
It wasn’t the first time a seemly straight dude went to experiment when we were fucking a chick together.
I seemed to have that effect on people, so it happened a time or two.
Dudes got caught up in the thrill of a threesome, but I never had any desire to be anyone’s gay awakening.
That shit had happened too, and, with Bru, I thought us brushing lips during a threesome had been an accident.
I hoped it was because we were friends, and I didn’t think either one of us wanted to mess any of that up.
But then more happened.
My best friend and I deep dived into something we had no business venturing into.
I may have been gay, but I only ever saw my friends as brothers.
Ares, Dorian, and Thatcher were my brothers, but I wasn’t feeling like that with Bru.
It wasn’t like that with Bru at all, and each time shit went down between us, I knew this wasn’t some experiment or gay awakening for him.
Bru knew how to touch. He knew how to suck.
And he also knew how to submit.
Like he knew I was thinking about all that, he smirked again, and that shit heated my blood. What I wouldn’t give to take him into a room and teach his ass a lesson.
I had before.
“I guess the same thing as you,” he said, answering my previous question. My eyes narrowed, and he bumped a laugh from his Superman chest before taking a drink. I knew this game he was playing. Shit, I taught him how to play it. We fucked a lot of girls together before anything happened between us.
Bru lowered his beer. “How’d your tutoring session go with Bow? Sloane mentioned you guys were meeting today. Bow told her.”
And for some reason he thought that was his business.
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know since she didn’t show up today.”
That really surprised me too. Her motivations had been clear. She was using me, and though that may surprise someone else, it didn’t me. That was that girl’s MO. She was drama, and she was also selfish.
Bru’s cocky expression wiped away. He gazed down at his beer, sloshing it around.
I tipped mine at him. “What’s your deal?”
I knew Bow had him fooled too, like she was innocent, flawless. She may fool everyone else with her sweet-little-girl act, but she didn’t me.
She never would.
I had to live every day with that shit that happened in high school. I had to see a girl drown and therapy couldn’t even help relieve those images in my head. A family lost a daughter that summer, and I died that day too. I had to in order to cope and freaking function every day.
Bru’s attention turned to me about the same time the bottle went tight in my hand.
I thought I’d crush it in my grip, but his focus on me distracted me.
He shook his head. “I wish you’d lay off her, and honestly, I have no idea why she’s helping you.
” He took another drink, his swallow hard. “You’re an asshole.”
That last bit was under his breath but not enough that he didn’t want me to hear it. I approached him, and the bottle left his lips. I put a finger in his chest. “You don’t know shit about that girl, and you definitely don’t know shit about me and that girl.”
He didn’t, and though I put it in my past, daily, it kept cropping up. It had last night, actually. I had another fucking dream about it, about how I was too late. About how I failed and also something else I’d never talk about.
I refused to talk about the itch in the back of my mind that day.
It was a recurring thought I had. A feeling hit me that day when I found out that girl who drowned wasn’t Thatcher’s sister.
It was a deep feeling, a hard pulse in my chest, and, though it should have been about Thatcher, it wasn’t.
I wouldn’t talk or think about that feeling I had that fucked-up summer, that relief.
If I did, it’d make me as fucked up as Bow Reed.
My finger was making an attempt to drill a hole in Bru’s chest. I stabbed into the fucker hard, but for some reason, that didn’t faze him. His lips turned down. “Wells?”
Wells.
“Did something happen? Between you and Bow, I mean,” he asked, suddenly scanning my eyes, and I hated that shit, his concern. Dude liked to fuck with me, but he also cared about me. The feeling was mutual, as much as I hated to admit it. He touched my arm. “Wells?”
If this dude didn’t stop saying my name like that…
I moved my arm out of his hand. “I’m getting another beer.”
Mine was still pretty full, but I had a feeling I’d need another, maybe several.
“Wells?”
By the time Bru called after me, my back was already turned.
I shot through the house toward the kitchen where the beers were, but a scream sounded.
It made me pivot, and I instantly became aware of the people gathering on the stairwell to the next level of the house.
People were clustering like a motherfucker on it and damn near trampling each other.
“Rainbow Reed’s going to jump!” one of them said, and my eyes flashed.
Bru’s did too.
I didn’t know how we found each other. We were on opposite sides of the room, but our eyes managed to find each other in that moment. Right away, Bru dashed toward the stairwell like the Superman fucker he was, but I was The Flash I think.
How else would I have beat him there?