5. Dutton
Dutton
B lue : Dude. Where the hell are you? We’re doing shots in the kitchen. Get in here.
Blue : I made Deano pour one for you, but if you’re not here in two minutes, I’m taking it.
Blue : Two minutes is a really long time. I’ll make him pour you another one when you get your ass in here.
I shake my head at my best friend while I read his messages.
He can have all my shots because there’s no way I’m going back into that party.
It’s bad enough I have to deal with my roommates when they’re sober, but now?
Ollie’s even louder than usual, Mickey’s more hyped up, and Dean thinks he’s a bartender from that '80s movie where the guys flipped cups and made fancy drinks.
I had my beer, I made my appearance, and I’m out.
Okay, technically, I’m outside, but it’s basically the same thing.
I came out to the deck to get some air, and I enjoyed the peace and stillness for about five minutes until a couple of douchebros commandeered the picnic table.
They’re easy enough to ignore, though. I doubt they even realize I’m here, and that’s fine by me.
It means I’m not going to get cornered into small talk.
While they yammer on about the baseball team’s chances for a winning season, I’m calculating the distance between my spot on the deck and my third floor bedroom window.
It’s been a while since I took high school physics, but I bet I could make the jump from here to Ollie’s balcony.
From there, I’d have to do a little balance beam work on the brick trim of the house just to make it to my side of the building.
If I put a little power into it, I could leap and pull myself onto Blue’s balcony.
He probably doesn’t lock his sliding glass door, so I could walk right through his room and into my own in no time.
Coach will have my ass if I break my legs, but escaping this party without having to go back inside might be worth the risk.
I won’t actually put my Spidey moves into action, but I am tempted.
Just when I decide to take my chances of weaving through the crowd and taking the steps two at a time to the third floor, I hear rustling behind me.
My first thought is that Mickey dug up some newspapers, and he’s about to make a fire pit on a wooden deck, but my second thought is hol-y shit.
Holy. Goddamn. Shit.
My diner beauty is here. At this party. At my house.
I’ve got to be hallucinating right now. Or the dim glow of the twinkle lights is playing tricks on my brain. I’ve got no clue why she’s here or why she’s wearing the daily freaking bulletin on her beautiful body, but I’ll worry about all of that once I catch up to her.
Fuck. I can’t do that. I can’t just run off after a hot girl because I think I saw her once and have been dreaming of her ever since.
That’s deranged. And I definitely can’t approach her until I get my shit together.
I need to act cool, natural. Blue tells me that when I smile I look like a feral animal on the hunt for prey, so I need to go with something low-key.
I need to smile in a way that says I want you , not I want to eat you alive .
Well, really, I’m going for something in the middle.
But instead of going up to her, I’m standing here like a statue because there’s no way this is actually happening right now. There’s no way the stacked redhead in a paper dress is my diner girl—the gorgeous, curvy woman who’s had me in a chokehold since I laid eyes on her last spring.
And no, I didn’t talk to her. And no, I don’t know her name. And yes, I’m only about sixty-seven percent certain that’s her, but I’ll take those odds even if it means making a total fool of myself.
It’s less risky than trying to scale the outside of my house and leaping onto balconies just to hide out in my room, right?
When I’ve got my shit together enough to approach her, I look up to see her hoisting a cooler in the air and dumping its contents in the one guy’s lap. Predictably, he squeals like a whiny little bitch.
Damn. I haven’t heard her say a word, but I’m already in love.
All too soon, she’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared into fucking vapor.
Swear to god, I only had one beer, so how the hell am I seeing things?
What the fuck did those assholes do? I know without a doubt that the douche in the cardboard shorts deserved his ice bath, but now I need to know two things.
One is what the hell they said to her, and the other is where she went.
But when I take a step out of the shadows and in their direction, I only make it a few feet until their conversation has me stopping cold.
“Nice going, Lanza, you made her run away,” the one guy says. He’s dressed in that yellow and black tape they put around crime scenes.
“I did not,” the bare-chested guy says, taking a swallow from his red plastic cup. “That girl couldn’t run anywhere. She’s too fat. Did you see the size of her ass?”
The idiot in the coconut bra laughs his ass off, and I’m so damn tempted to wipe those stupid smirks off their faces with my fists.
That’s going to have to wait, though. My first priority is finding the girl in the receipt dress and making sure she’s okay.
No one deserves to be talked about that way, and I want to make sure she’s all right, even if she isn’t the girl who’s been haunting my dreams for months.
And yes, I do have a heart, thank you very much.
I might be cranky, but I’m not soulless.
Sprinting across the deck, I dart past them and push the sliding glass door open.
My eyes scan every face I see as I make my way across the room.
She’s not in the living room or in the line of people waiting for the bathroom.
I nearly plow right over a guy wearing only a bedsheet as I make a beeline for the kitchen, but he’s too drunk to notice.
Deano’s at the counter, mixing drinks, but Blue’s nowhere to be seen, and neither is my redhead.
And yeah, I know she’s not mine.
Yet.
Liza and Fallon were smart enough to lock the door that leads to their bedrooms, so I reach a dead end when I’m done searching the kitchen.
There are about a million rooms in this place, so I guess she could be anywhere, but my instincts tell me she was eager to get out of here, so maybe she stayed outside instead of venturing indoors?
Circling back, I dodge partygoers as I weave my way to the front door.
One good thing about being an asshole is that nobody stops to talk to you while you’re making your way through a throng of people.
There’s no one on the front lawn, but it’s easy to see why. The rain has started back up again, and it’s coming down in sheets.
Fuck.
My chances of finding her just went from slim to none.
Ducking back inside, I make my way back through the house until I get to the back deck.
I doubt she returned to the scene of the crime, but there’s a chance those idiots saw which direction she went.
By the time I make it all the way to the sliding glass door and out to the patio, it’s empty.
I’m halfway across the lawn when I see a flash of white.
Her paper dress is ruined, and she’s clicking her key fob and opening her car door.
I call out in a pathetic attempt to check on her, even though I have no right.
She freezes for a moment, and I’m ready to sprint down the hill to the street where her car is parked.
But instead of looking in the direction of my voice, she ducks into her car.
Shit. She probably thinks I’m one of the dickheads who was giving her a hard time.
I’m sure as hell not, but I’m going to find those she’s nowhere in sight. But neither are they.
I don’t know this girl, and I don’t know the details of what happened. The smart thing would be to head upstairs and play video games until I crash, just like I’d intended to earlier.
Good thing nobody ever called me a genius.
Don’t get me wrong. I fully intend to crash on my bed and play some video games before I fall asleep, but I’ve got a quick detour to make first.
Entering the party for what better be the final fucking time tonight, I scan the crowd once again. This time, though, I’m not looking for a gorgeous woman. I’m looking for the bully who sent her running.
The crowd is thick with bodies, simply because the weather sent everybody inside. I spot Blue in the distance, a goofy smile on his face. He’s so wasted that if he has much more to drink, he’ll be spending the night praying to the porcelain gods. Thank fuck we don’t have to share a bathroom.
Mickey and Ollie are slumped against the far wall looking equally annoyed.
I’m not sure what crawled up the asses of my perpetually energized teammates, but that’s not my problem.
For once, at least, Mickey’s glaring daggers at someone other than me.
I didn’t know that was possible, but I follow his line of sight…
and fucking hell. What do you know? I may have just found the one thing Mick and I have in common: our hatred for the barechested dudebro in beer shorts.
I don’t know what Mickey’s beef with this guy is, but I don’t give a shit. I’m not just going to stand around and shoot nasty looks at him, I’m going to take action.
In a few seconds, I’m halfway across the room and face-to-face with Lanza, the numbnuts who likes to run his mouth and thinks it’s public fucking duty to broadcast his opinion of other peoples’ bodies.
If Blue weren’t drunk off his ass, I’d recruit his help.
He could be the good cop to my bad cop. I’d let my buddy lay on the charm before I went in for the kill.
But I’m on my own for this one, so I get straight to the point.
I waste no time on niceties or introductions, unless you count the way my palms push against his chest as I shove him.
“What the fuck, dude?” he bellows.