4. Eli
4
ELI
F inn didn’t need my help with Britney. He didn’t even want me there as backup. His nervousness faded, and I bet he didn’t even realize that I’d left him alone with the chick he wanted to impress.
He didn’t tell me to get lost or ask me to go away. I just had common sense like that. I could read a room, and I could tell that I would be an unwanted third wheel if I stuck with him at this party.
Ten minutes after hanging around them as they talked, I left and checked out what was happening in another room. Then another. From one spot in the huge mansion to another, I had fun and didn’t let anything bother me more than wondering what else I could do.
Foosball.
Beer pong.
Even a half-assed game of chess with some honor’s society frat boy.
Talking with friends, hitting on girls, and helping myself to the drinks and food.
I was having a fine night, so long as I made sure to avoid running into Preston again. The less we interacted, the better, but tonight, when we were both drinking, it would be a recipe for trouble to butt heads with him.
Later, when I vaguely wondered where Finn was and if he was doing all right with his tendency to still become a little socially anxious, I smiled down at the short redhead who was doing everything and anything she could to keep my attention on her.
“I think you did great tonight.” She leaned into me, tracing her finger down the front of my shirt.
Holy shit, are you wasted. She reeked of alcohol, and her obliviousness was off-putting. Yeah, I’d been drinking throughout the night, but I wasn’t in any rush to get so hammered I didn’t know what I was saying. A steady buzz was fine, and I didn’t have to worry about driving either, since the campus was within walking distance.
“Tonight?” I asked, playing stupid but knowing damn well what she was insinuating.
“Yeah, at the game. You were so, so sexy on the field.”
Oh, my God. You sound ridiculous. “It’s a basketball court. Not a field.”
She giggled. “Same thing.”
“Hmm.”
She bit her lip, staring at me with come-fuck-me eyes. This girl was after one thing and one thing only, but I wasn’t in the mood now. Not with her.
“I don’t play basketball, though.”
She didn’t look up at me again, moving closer to be flush with me as she brushed imaginary fluff off my shirt. “Oh. Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
She shrugged, lifting her sultry gaze to smile at me again. “My bad. I could have sworn I saw you playing tonight.”
“Nope.”
“But you look just like the rest of them.” She smoothed her hand up my arm. “Strong.” She squeezed my biceps. “Muscled.” She raised her arms higher, to urge me into following along and hugging her. Not a normal hug, but the raised-arms kind of hug a woman did when they wanted to smash their tits against a guy. “So… hot.”
Hearing a woman compliment my body was nothing new. I got around, or I did back before the football season started. During it and after, I was more selective. And hearing this girl stereotype me bothered me.
“You’re just my type, Ethan.”
Fuck, she doesn’t even know my name. “Eli.”
“Hmm. Eli, you’re just my type. I like all the jocks.”
I bet you do.
There was no doubt that she was offering herself up to me. Nearly grinding against me, tipping her face up toward mine as if waiting for a kiss, she was throwing herself at me.
Between her behavior and how she moved, and the revealing outfit…
Yeah, her desperate intention to get laid was obvious.
I didn’t want to stereotype either, but she looked like an easy lay, like she’d dressed like this and come to this party just to get fucked up—and find a guy to fuck.
Her shirt was more like a scrap of fabric than a garment. The thin strip barely contained her boobs and her stomach was fully exposed. Despite it being twenty-five degrees outside, she wore a tiny skirt and leather boots meant more for design than lined with layers for warmth. Sure, women could dress for themselves, too, but when a girl clung to someone like this, they were after one thing.
Something about her tossing me in with all the other athletes here bothered me. Cutting through the haze of my buzz, I fought the urge to roll my eyes and step away from her.
All the jocks?
Couldn’t she at least acknowledge that I was a football player, not a member of tonight’s winning basketball team?
It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did.
I never cared this much about how people perceived me before, but I couldn’t let go of how her incorrect assumption about me irked me.
Because soon, I wouldn’t be that guy. My sports season was already over. Football had ended months ago. Now, I was just a college student, ready to graduate and move on to “real” life. For the first time, making that distinction of my changing identity caught my attention.
This girl saw me not as a person, but as a free dick to ride—a jock to claim as a conquest.
Not that I was a smart man toughing out college and graduating.
Not that I was a respectable guy getting ready to contribute as a working professional later this year.
I’d been “Mr. Popular” for years, but when it came time to graduate, what the fuck would that do for me? What would it matter if I went out of my way to be well-liked, easily recognized, and desired for a quick fuck by brainless ditzes who didn’t actually know me?
“So… what do you say?” She tipped her face up a little more and licked her lips. “Want to get out of here?”
With you? Ordinarily, I’d say yes. A quick fuck. Another one-night stand. Another sweet pussy to enjoy. Maybe she’d be up for a little bit of kinky stuff, too. I hadn’t been a celibate saint my whole life.
But as I looked at her eyes, I wasn’t intrigued by the dull brown of her eyes, hazy with too much booze. I wasn’t interested in her small breasts and over-visited pussy. She was too easy. There was no challenge here.
Nothing like the familiar thrill I felt when I faced off with Haley.
I furrowed my brow as I stared down at this girl’s face, hating that it was her in my mind again.
What the hell is going on?
Earlier after class, I had been thinking about her. During dinner, my mind wandered to her. When I got here and saw Davina, I was again reminded of her.
Now with an easy lay within reach, Haley freaking Feldstone was on my mind again!
I stepped back, annoyed with how easily I kept thinking back to the brunette I’d grown up with. We were both born and raised here. Way back before it mattered to be so cool and popular, we’d even been friends. In the years since then, we’d grown apart. A line was drawn in the sand between us, marking us as enemies, not buddies. I wouldn’t stoop so low as to call her an acquaintance, either. That was how much of a pariah she was.
Other than happening to go to school with her my whole life, she was nothing, a nobody to me.
So why the fuck can’t I get her out of my mind?
“Hey, no.” The redhead tripped, reaching for me as I backed up another step. “Don’t go.”
“Nah. I’m good.” I held my hands up to ward her off.
I couldn’t explain it, but this inability to dismiss Haley was bothering me.
It threw me off my game, and as I looked for Finn to see where he was, I grabbed another beer from the kitchen and hoped it would help me forget about Haley. About why I was acting so off as to give up a chance for a nameless fuck.
Mid-life crises would be waiting for me later. Like, thirty years later. But as I drank and walked through the mansion to find my buddy, I wondered if I was experiencing some kind of a lame quarter-life crisis. Or a third-life crisis. Something was off with me, but I ignored it.
I was here to have a good time, not to get deep and reflective.
Or think about Haley.
I huffed, laughing at myself as I stepped outside. Maybe Finn had come out with Britney for some fresh air.
He had. Over by the vertical outdoor heating elements on the patio space, he passed a joint to Britney.
Aha. No worries about stinking like weed, then, huh?
“There you are,” I said.
“Oh, hey. I was just about to come find you and see if you wanted to head out,” he replied. Tipping his head toward Britney, he smiled. “I was going to walk her back to her dorm.”
Bro’s getting some tonight.
“Yeah, sure. I’m done for the night.” It was unusual to leave this early, but I wasn’t feeling like myself tonight, and it wasn’t just because of Haley creeping into my thoughts.
“Yo, Eli,” someone else said from near the driveway. “Check this out.”
I walked over, shoving my hands into my pockets to keep them warm. Finn and Britney joined me, strolling toward the guy and taking in the sight of the classic car parked on the pavement. He was a closer friend of Preston’s than he was of mine, but he was an okay dude. I paid him to write one of my lame-ass Brit Lit papers the first week of the semester.
“Nice wheels, huh?” he said, opening the driver’s door to the antique. “Preston said his dad just got this thing for him as an early graduation gift.”
I scoffed, nodding. “Nice.” I wasn’t sure what else I could say. One of the clearest distinctions between me and Preston were our backgrounds. He came from money, and my family was strictly low-middle class. He had laidback parents who let him have wild parties at their mansion when they were out of town, and my parents were so strict and hard-to-please that they used a tracking device on my phone to know where I was. They didn’t trust me to do anything but throw a fucking football, and it had taken years not to let that sting as harshly.
“Wanna take it for a ride?” he asked as he turned the ignition and slid out of the seat.
“Nah.” I shook my head. “I’m good.” I had no interest in playing around with some rich dude’s toy. I wasn’t desperate to take a walk on the wild side like that.
“It looks so shiny,” Britney said, leaning down to peer through the windows.
“You can feel the horsepower.” Preston’s friend laughed. “Do me a favor. Step on the gas and rev her up.”
I only now remembered that this guy had been using crutches lately.
“Preston said I could come check it out, but the surgeon said I can’t put pressure on my foot for another three weeks.”
I chuckled. “Sure, I can sit in the car and rev it up. What, are you some antiques buff?”
“No. But I wouldn’t mind seeing this thing purr.” He walked around the car, getting in the passenger side.
“Eli, you sure?” Finn asked.
I waved him off. It wasn’t like I was drinking and driving. The car was parked and would remain so.
In the dark interior of the classic car, the hints of polished leather assaulted my nose. It smelled rich in here, like this was a car that the bluebloods of long ago drove.
“Damn…” I said slowly, running my hand over the dash.
“Isn’t it something else?” the other guy said, sitting in the passenger seat and closing the door. “Fuck. I’d kill to have something like this someday.”
Speak for yourself. I’d never owned a car at all, not even a beat-up clunker of a hand-me-down. Since my parents were too stingy to let me have a car, despite letting me get my license five years ago when I turned sixteen, I mooched off Finn all the time. Or walked.
“Go on.” He prompted me to step on the gas. “Let her purr.”
I smiled, feeling like I was someone else to fool around in here. I doubted I’d ever have another chance to sit in the driver’s seat of an expensive rarity like this again.
Moving my leg further in, I felt for the gas pedal and fitted the sole of my shoe over the flat piece. One downward flex of my foot made this bad boy growl with the raised throttle.
“Damn,” the guy said, laughing.
I stepped down again, increasing the pressure to keep the gas hitting the engine for longer, but the guy in the passenger seat leaned over. Before he could correct himself and sit straight again, he knocked his elbow into the gear stick.
Oh, shit.
In a lurch, the antique car shot forward, no longer in park or neutral. It was in drive, stunning me so quickly that time passed in a blur.
“Fuck!” the guy held on to the dash.
I slammed my foot on the brake, but it was too late to make the car stop. The tree off the side of the driveway did. With a deafening crunch and then a stomach-twisting push into the windshield, the car stopped.
I’d smashed it straight into a tree.
“What the fuck?” the guy shouted, slamming his hands to the dashboard to prevent himself from smacking his head into it.
I clutched the steering wheel as I held my breath and waited to fall back against the seat at the sudden stop of momentum.
Staring through the webbed display of the windshield, I let out a shaky exhale and willed my heart to stop thrashing against my ribcage this fast.
What the fuck did I just do?