Chapter 36
36
MADDIE
“ Y ou’ve had some great ideas over the years, Maddie,” Jasmine says as she twists off the cap of another bottle of white wine. “But a day drinking pumpkin carving party is way up there.”
I hold out my glass for Jasmine to fill. “What can I say? It was a flash of inspiration.”
Jasmine, myself, and three of my friends from the art department—Hannah, Yun-hee, and Ayanna—are hanging out having a pumpkin carving party featuring a couple bottles of wine at the park on the Monday before Halloween.
The idea popped into my head as I was taking a stroll through Cedar Shade one day and enjoying all the Halloween decorations. I kept smiling as I looked at the creatively carved pumpkins that adorned the yards and porches of so many houses in the neighborhood, and I thought it would be fun to have a little get-together with friends and carve some of our own.
It might sound silly, but suggesting to my friends that we do this kind of feels like a big step for me.
Part of my social anxiety is that it’s hard for me to be the one to propose things. I get too stuck in my head.
What if something sounds fun to me, but wouldn’t to anyone else? What if me organizing things or inviting people to things is just a burden on them? That’s the thought process that’s so often shut me down and kept me from suggesting things that I’ve wanted to do.
But lately, I’m finding it more possible to overcome those nagging anxieties.
Rhys helping me go to that first art party weeks ago was a big step in that direction, when he pushed me to get out there and talk to people like I wouldn’t have had the courage to do if I were alone. I ended up meeting and hitting it off with Yun-hee and Ayanna, who I’ve kept in touch with since.
And then, since Rhys and I started doing … whatever exactly you can call what we’re doing, I’ve had an even bigger boost of confidence. Something about the way Rhys looks at me since we had our first kiss just melts off the patina of self-doubt that’s accumulated over my confidence.
When I suggested this as a hang-out idea to the girls, they all loved it. It’s the first time Jasmine is meeting my other friends from the art department, and it’s great to see them immediately hitting it off.
Hannah excitedly holds up the pumpkin she’s working on. “Look!” she beams. She’s carved a cute silhouette of a cat.
“Aww,” Jasmine coos. “That is going to look so good lit up at night.”
I gasp, and maybe my enthusiasm is a little bit heightened by the fact that this is my second glass of wine. “That’s so adorable,” I gush. I run my fingertips along the pumpkin rind of the carving. “Look at her little tail.”
“Ta-dah!” Ayanna exclaims, turning around her pumpkin to reveal a super cool, creepy, gothic-style carving of a screaming face.
Jasmine playfully pouts. “I should have known I’d get shown up carving pumpkins with four art students.”
Jasmine tosses aside the pumpkin that she’s admittedly been butchering for the past several minutes and picks up another one. Yun-hee scoots close to her to give her some carving pointers—and also to have her wine glass refilled.
I take a minute to breathe in the chilly autumn air. The coolness mixes nicely with the warmth from the wine in my chest.
When I was depressed last year, thinking about how I was missing out on what I wanted my college experience to be, this is what I was wishing it were like.
Hanging out with my long-time best friend, making new friends who are into art like I am, and even having sizzling-hot hookups with a guy—but even in my wildest dreams, I wouldn’t have imagined that last part would be featuring Rhys Callahan.
Though, technically, I guess we haven’t actually hooked up yet. We’ve done everything short of actual sex.
I’m looking forward to it, of course. But at the same time, I kind of want to keep putting it off.
Not because I don’t think it’ll be good. I know Rhys will make it an incredible experience for me. But … what happens after that?
Having my first time was the whole point of what we’re doing, after all. Once that’s over with, there will be no real reason for us to keep doing the kind of things that just friends don’t do with each other.
I really, really, really want to keep doing those things with Rhys.
And I don’t mean just him getting me off, or me getting to play with his gorgeous cock, or us making out and getting to run my hands all over his panty-melting body.
I mean the way he looks at me with a spark of hunger in his eyes because he knows what I look like underneath my clothes. The way his hand will graze against the curve of my ass when he knows no one’s looking. The way we’re casually physical with each other when we’re together. The flirty insinuations he drops into our conversations that make my stomach leap into my chest.
The thought of all that coming to an end makes a dull, sad ache lodge next to my heart. I’ll miss those things even more than I’ll miss the orgasms he gives me. And that’s saying something.
But I try and blow those thoughts away with a sigh.
Letting the dread of ending something good sour the experience while it lasts is silly. Right now, I have friends, wine, pumpkins, and the anticipation of a toe-curling climax next time I see Rhys.
Maybe one of those things has an expiration date, but I resolve to just enjoy them all while they’re here.
I take a long sip of my wine, laugh at a funny story Hannah’s in the middle of telling, and plunge my knife into a new pumpkin.
Jasmine and I are back home, our newly carved pumpkins proudly looking out onto campus from our windowsill, small candles burning inside them. We have low, ambient lighting on in our room so that our Jack-o’-lanterns are visible to people walking by.
“Ordered!” Jasmine declares. We’re getting two massive burritos from a local Mexican place. Ordering delivery on a Monday night might be an irresponsible splurge, but we both agreed it was an appropriate way to end a good day.
I pat my grumbling stomach. “I can’t wait to stuff my face with that burrito,” I say dreamily. I haven’t eaten since an early lunch before noon.
“Speaking of various orifices getting stuffed,” Jasmine says archly, “it seems like progress has stalled on operation v-card. Do I need to set you up with someone? Plenty of guys in my classes I could easily sell on going out with a cute as hell artsy girl who’s hot to get deflowered.”
I bark out a surprised laugh. “Even if I wanted you to set me up with a date, please don’t use gross nineteenth-century vocabulary when doing it.”
“Even if? Does that mean I should set you up with someone?” Jasmine’s already perched at the edge of her bed in excitement.
I haven’t told her about Rhys yet. Even though I know I can trust Jasmine … I don’t know, this whole thing with Rhys is so unbelievable, it doesn’t even feel real to me at times.
But the wine I had while pumpkin carving is loosening the screws on my self-control. It’s not right that I’m keeping something like this from my best friend, is it?
“Maddie?” Jasmine asks, seeming to notice the searching expression on my face. “Are you keeping something from me? Did you pick things back up with James and not tell me?”
The Monday after I kissed Rhys, I told James after class that I just wanted us to stay friends. I couldn’t help but read the disappointment on his face, but he was totally cool about it. We’re still friendly, and we still talk before and after class.
Shortly after I told him that, I saw him having coffee with another girl at Brumehill Brews in a way that looked very date-y, so I’m pretty sure he took it with stride and is beyond over me. Which I’m happy about.
“No, it’s not that,” I answer. The urge to come clean rises.
Jasmine leans forward with keen interest. “But it is something?”
The last thread of my secrecy frays and snaps. I sit up from my bed and turn to her. I nod my head.
Her eyebrows leap. “Who? What? When?” she whips her head side to side. “Where? And why didn’t you tell me right away!”
My lips tug upward at her reaction. “It was—is—complicated.”
“Well?” She asks, breath bated.
I tap my tongue on my upper lip. “It’s Rhys.”
Jasmine blinks. Again. Her lips straighten. “Come again?”
My tipsiness pushes me to make an immature joke that’s not exactly fitting with the serious moment. “Since I’ve been fooling around with Rhys, yeah, again and again.”
Jasmine’s expression stays deadpan. “You and Rhys. Callahan?”
I nod, trying to bite back a smile by pursing my lips tight. “Yeah. Me and Rhys Callahan.”
Gosh, just saying it out loud feels so good.
A beat of silence passes with Jasmine’s expression still frozen. Then another.
Then, she screams.
“Maddie!” she cries, leaping over the distance between our beds onto my mattress. “What! You, Rhys? Rhys ? Oh my gosh.” She’s sputtering ecstatically, and I start to laugh.
“How could you not have told me right away!” she reprimands. “How could you have been holding back on giving me extremely detailed accounts of what he looks like naked? And by extremely, I mean extremely . Have you … have you done it with him?”
While we wait for our dinner, I fill Jasmine in on the details. Her face is a carousel of animated expressions as I take her through the whole story.
Our food arrives, and we go down to get it together and bring it back up, sitting down on our carpeted floor to eat.
“You can’t tell anyone, okay?” I say before biting into my ground beef burrito.
“Me? Who would I tell?” She winks. Jasmine’s not a gossip, and I know I can trust her to keep a secret, but she’s definitely a natural yapper. After she swallows her first bite, she asks, “Is it really that big a deal to keep it a secret, though? Would your brother actually care?”
It’s a question I’ve asked myself plenty of times, considering how serious Rhys seems to be about keeping what we’re doing from Lane.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I confess. “But Rhys seems to think he would.”
Jasmine scrunches up her lips, her forehead furrowing. “Men are stupid. It’s none of your brother’s business who you go out with or do anything with, whether it’s with one of his friends or not.”
That’s how I feel. Honestly, I would expect that that’s how Lane would feel, too.
But Rhys and Lane are best friends, and even though he’s my brother and we’re close, Rhys knows and understands Lane in certain ways that I can’t.
But maybe Lane’s reaction is just an excuse for Rhys—a made-up reason he’s selling to me so I don’t try to push things further and make it harder when he wants to go back to just being friends and move on to different girls.
“You know what I think?” Jasmine asks, and her voice makes me realize I’ve been staring into space while my brain goes into hyper-analysis mode.
“What?”
“Less overthinking, more overeating.” She pushes the side of tortillas and guac that she ordered toward me. “Don’t make me finish this myself.”
I laugh. “Sounds like a plan.”
Things right now are going so well. Academically, socially, and—for lack of a better word—romantically. Better than they’ve ever gone before in my life. I need to shut down my brain and just enjoy it.
But no matter how I try to put those words into practice, I can’t help but think that all these unresolved questions mean Rhys and I are heading toward an ending that won’t be good for my heart.