Chapter 17
Blaze
“Blaze, don’t stay there all alone. Come with us.” Amelia beckoned me from the couch.
“What if your brother sees you?” I asked her.
“My brother’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
She fingered the edge of her beret as I tried to act as comfortable as possible among all these people.
“I hope I finally lose my virginity.”
“Gross, Amelia!”
She had the unfortunate talent of always saying things at the most inappropriate times just to embarrass me. I joined her as my eyes darted to Jackson and Marvin, talking next to us.
“What are you doing here with them?”
“Nothing bad. I’m just here because they’re smoking. What’s the problem?” Jackson was drunk. That was the problem.
I was reduced to watching Jackson completely ignore me.
He put his arms around Becky, who felt up the crotch of his pants with alarming ease. I sulked, and Amelia noticed.
“Jeez, Blaze, you’re bringing me down.” She exhaled the pungent smoke from the joint Marvin had passed her, enveloping me in the cloud.
I coughed.
“Sorry,” I murmured, shrugging it off.
I never had fun at parties. Especially when Brian wasn’t there. Meeting new people made me anxious, and it wasn’t easy for me to join conversations. I always ended up being the wallflower who was jealous of everyone having fun.
“If I wanted to be around a sad sack, I’d be around my brother.”
Amelia was missing a sensitivity chip.
When my silence became deafening, she put her head on my shoulder congenially.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . come on, you know what I mean. I smoked too much.”
Amelia was apologizing, but I could tell she wasn’t feeling remorse because she kept smiling. She was feeling stoned, and that was enough to convince me.
“Gimme a hit,” I said.
She passed me the joint, and Jackson didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Is your dad feeling better?” she asked, swinging her head to the beat of the music.
“Yeah, more than anything he was really shaken up. Plus it happened in broad daylight.”
Amelia didn’t seem very focused. “But they didn’t do anything to him? They didn’t mug him, did they?”
“They didn’t hurt him, but he took a few weeks of sick leave.”
“I can imagine what it’s like having him at home.”
“He’s all over me. ‘Why don’t you go out? Why do you go out? Why don’t you study? Why do you study so much?’ It’s impossible to make him happy.”
She laughed as if that kind of behavior was normal. “He’ll always be the school principal, Blaze.”
“I’d like a dad who didn’t give a crap about what I did.”
Amelia’s eyes went dark, and I realized what an awful thing I’d said. Her dad up and left last year without even saying goodbye to her and Brian.
“I’m really sorry.”
“We’re even,” she answered, putting her arm around me, only to pull it back almost instantly. “I gotta go now.”
“What? Where? You’re leaving me with these animals?” I whined anxiously.
“Um.” Amelia massaged her chin with her index finger.
She was a really good liar, but right now she wasn’t in control of all her faculties, which was why I was more worried than usual.
“If it has to do with a guy, I don’t wanna know. Does Brian at least know where you’re going?”
She wasn’t sober. I just wanted to make sure she didn’t get into trouble.
“Uh, yeah, yeah.”
She held back for as long as she could before she burst out laughing.
“Amelia?”
I saw her get up, grab her leather jacket, and disappear into the crowd without saying anything else.
“Blaze!” Marvin’s amused voice called me. “Want a hit?” He offered me the joint, which I refused. It was time to go home.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jackson lift his muscular bicep, and I instinctively hid. He pretended to hand me the vodka-filled water bottle, then burst out laughing.
“You’re such a fucking wimp,” he teased.
Jackson put up an aggressive and impertinent front, but the combination of taking hits and drinking vodka seemed to make him particularly interested in me. When Marvin got distracted talking to Becky, he motioned for me to go upstairs with him.
I tensed. I should say no.
I shook my head as he looked at me with his eyebrows raised.
He put his lips around the top of the bottle and then took another sip without taking his gaze off me.
Suddenly, I had impure thoughts. Terribly impure thoughts.
The situation only got worse when Hunter joined us.
He was shirtless as usual, and wore only the pants from his tracksuit.
His lips were red and his hair was tousled.
“Where were you?” Jackson asked.
“Taking care of something.”
James patted Jackson’s jaw affectionately, getting so close to his lips that my brain started doing somersaults.
Jackson’s cheeks, which were already flushed from alcohol, got even redder when James whispered something mischievous in his ear.
I couldn’t stand seeing them so close together. Jackson only had eyes for James when he was around. And when he drank more than usual, he wasn’t as discreet about his leering.
How could I blame him? That asshole oozed testosterone from miles away. Except that it was impossible to harbor any good will toward him. He caught me staring at him intently.
“Blaze, Blaze . . .”
I tried ignoring him, but after a few seconds I glanced in their direction.
James continued to whisper, and Jackson threw his head back, biting his lip like he’d just been seized by a jolt of pleasure.
James was morally bankrupt. He didn’t give a damn if his best friend was in love with him. He enjoyed the attention. I often wondered if he knew Jackson carried a torch for him, or if Jax knew how to hide it so that James wouldn’t notice. My thoughts came to a halt when James straightened up.
“Where are you going?” Jackson asked.
“To bang Poppy. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” chortled James.
“Ten minutes? So there’s not long,” Jackson teased, as he continued to graze his lip piercing with his tongue.
“What are you talking about? I’m gonna bang Poppy in the car.” I ignored the crass exchange.
“Be gentle with that one, James.” Jackson looked at him seriously, almost disheartened when he pointed out the baggie of pills his friend was playing with.
“Go get me a blunt for when I get back,” James snapped.
I didn’t want to stand there begging for him to notice me. There wasn’t a trace of Marvin and the girls. We were alone.
“So your little friend abandoned you, huh.”
My comment caught Jackson’s attention as he put a vape pen behind his ear and stood up.
“Jealous, Blaze?”
“Of you? When you’re in love with someone who only sees you as a friend? No, I’m not jealous.”
Jackson grabbed my collar and lifted me up. I was an inch away from his face.
“Don’t you dare say something like that ever again.”
“It’s true,” I hissed.
“Shut up, Blaze,” he huffed.
Jackson must’ve really been wasted, because we soon ended up mouth to mouth and even though he glared at me, I felt his body react to how close I was.
“Come with me,” he snarled.
He abruptly left me, and I fell on the couch like deadweight. He motioned for me to follow him as he walked away, and I couldn’t argue with him anymore.
Without even realizing it, I found myself in Will’s bedroom. I looked around at his room. It was so bare and sterile that it seemed like a storage closet. I noticed his full bed, a love seat, and a TV mounted on the wall.
My room, in contrast, looked like a war zone: books, comics, and clothes thrown everywhere.
“I’m gonna say this only once. Don’t get any ideas, and most of all, if you go around telling anyone about James and me . . .”
“Do you have the balls to deny it? You can’t control yourself around him.”
“You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
He wouldn’t admit to feeling attracted to me, the principal’s son and the butt of the whole football team’s jokes, but I could understand that. But why deny the obvious? He was clearly crazy about James.
“How many times have you jacked off thinking about him?” I prodded.
“None of your fucking business. I’m not in love with him or anyone else.”
“Yeah, right,” I retorted sarcastically.
“I’m not like you,” he insisted, curling his upper lip. I ignored his phony disgusted expression.
“Oh yeah?”
I pushed my hips forward into the crotch of his pants to brush against his hidden hardness, drawing a moan out of him.
Jackson answered by grabbing my sides and whirling me around to face the door. He pushed his body into mine and tasted my neck with languid kisses.
“You’re drunk, Jax,” I groaned, repressing my instinct to throw my head back further to enjoy the sensation.
“I’m always drunk when I look for you. Didn’t you realize that?”
“Why can’t you stop being an asshole for once?”
“Because you like it, Blazey,” he whispered.
“No. I don’t.”
He spun me again, and my words fell on deaf ears when our lips met.
“Jackson, you have to stop treating me like this.”
“What the fuck do you want to hear?” he slurred without interrupting the kiss. Our tongues mingled in the throes of unbridled passion.
“Why do you treat me like shit in front of everyone?”
“Because I can’t stand the way you look at me,” he moaned, biting my lip.
On the one hand I would’ve loved to keep kissing him forever; on the other hand I wanted to make things clear.
I pushed him away.
I saw his eyes gleaming with determination, but I wanted to hold my ground even if it was a battle I was fighting against my own will.
“But you’re always the one who comes to me, Jackson,” I challenged. He furrowed his brow.
“What do you want to hear? That I can’t stay away from you?”
“That’s what you’re showing me. Aren’t you sick of all this?”
Jackson ran his fingers through his hair and cleared his throat. He was embarrassed. “Sick of what?”
“The lies, the hiding,” I declared.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He lunged toward me again, and I pushed him back, putting my palms on his warm chest.
“Me and you.”
“I’m not like you.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“So you’d pull away if I kissed you again?”
That made him laugh. “You’re the one who can’t resist me.” His swollen lips brushed against my ear, sending a chill down my spine. “Oh, Blazey.”
I felt something throb in my boxers when he sucked on my earlobe.
“Do your friends know?” I gathered all my strength to push him away and repressed the instinct to kiss him again.
“What? That I want to fuck you, sweetheart? No, they don’t fucking know,” he panted. “And it’s none of their business.”
“Are you embarrassed by me?”
Jackson burst out laughing. He sounded like a kid, but his words were sharp daggers that plunged into my heart.
“So what? So what if I’m embarrassed of you?”
I backed away decisively this time. “You know what? You’re not embarrassed of me, Jackson. You’re embarrassed of yourself.”
I turned around and left, leaving him bewildered.