Chapter 15
DRUNK WORDS ARE SOBER THOUGHTS
STATEN
Am I offended that Knox didn’t want to slap my ass like a pair of sexy bongos? Kind of, yeah.
This whole night has felt…off. Knox and I both arrived at this party with one goal in mind: to give some hot-off-the-grill ammunition to every nosey gossipmonger in a ten-mile radius.
I had no idea that Leif was going to be here tonight, but the fact that he didn’t invite me to be his plus-one fucking stings.
I mean, why would he? We haven’t really been on the greatest terms lately.
Silvering moonlight clashes over the spacious living room, and I excuse myself from Knox’s and my stalemate before the afterburn of tears has a chance to sucker punch every one of my senses.
There’s a ringing in my ears like audio feedback—shrill, jarring—and I pray that Knox doesn’t try and follow me out the door.
I just need some air. I need to reset my emotional breaker.
We might’ve succeeded at making Leif jealous, but at what cost?
Am I really going to hurt him just because he rejected me? I’m not that kind of person.
At least, I didn’t think I was.
When I plow through the crowd, someone of slightly taller stature than me accidentally intercepts my right of way, and I’m thrown off course without adequate time to assess my surroundings.
“Shit, sorry!” a girl says, her arm outstretched away from me while she clenches an overly full Solo cup between her fingers.
I pat myself down for any wet spots, breathing a sigh of relief when the dignity of my dress remains intact. If Hassie found out I’d returned her five-hundred-dollar ensemble ninety-five percent cotton and five percent alcohol, she’d probably blow a gasket.
Nothing but a fugitive stammer. “It’s okay.”
She shakes her head of long, chestnut hair—the kind that you only see in shampoo adverts—and doesn’t bother with camouflaging the faint blush on her cheeks. “It’s too crowded in here. I totally didn’t s—”
Maybe my hearing has finally croaked, but the last part of her sentence gets cropped, and it takes me an embarrassingly long time to realize it’s not because of the atrocious EDM setlist currently shaking the base of the floorboards.
“Wait a second, are you Knox’s girl?” she asks out of nowhere.
Knox’s girl.
I stall like the hiss of a car’s radiator in hundred-degree heat. A good actor keeps up their performance, even when the spotlight is no longer on them.
“Uh, yep. That’s—that’s me,” I confirm, guilt an anchor in my belly that slams me against the ground.
How does she know who I am?
As if she can hear my internal monologue, she flushes my worry out with a hasty rectification. “Sorry for being so forward. That sounded…creepy. I know Knox. My boyfriend plays hockey with him.”
Hockey. Right. Another part of my fake boyfriend’s life that I’ll have to be indoctrinated into.
It’s now that I realize I might’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
I’ve never been in a relationship before, and the first one I’m “in” is the equivalent of a goddamn gauntlet feared by seasoned veterans and newbies alike.
Making conversation out of nothing, kissing in public, pretending like you know everything there is about the relative stranger beside you.
And things only get complicated when you sub in Knox’s and my rocky history.
A smile skims my lips, partly exaggerated. My discomfort is an easy thing to spot if someone learned to look for it—learned to triage my differing levels of anxiety.
“Oh, hi! You’re all good! Sorry, I’m just…all of this is a little overstimulating.” I gesture to the bedlam that is Sig Chi’s frat house on a rowdy Friday night.
“Oh, yeah. Sig Chi really goes all out. My social battery is usually on red by the time the party is over.”
The girl in front of me—my fake boyfriend’s teammate’s girlfriend—is backlit by an auroral sky sealed in darkness, projected through the main door’s sidelight windows.
She’s stunning. Otherworldly. Harboring a dark sensuality that outshines everyone at this party.
It makes sense that she knows Knox—beautiful people herd together.
She sticks her hand out, completely oblivious to—or polite enough not to comment on—my lack of interpersonal skills. “I’m Merit.”
“Staten,” I reply, shaking her palm. “It’s nice to finally meet someone who isn’t trying to get into my pants.”
Shit. Why did I just say that?
Waiting for the punchline to land, I’m relieved when I extract a genuine laugh from her, the tiniest of dimples bracketing the corners of her peachy lips.
“You know, I’m surprised Knox found someone to settle down with,” she comments, only needing to take one look at the fear on my face before backtracking. “I mean that as a good thing.”
I’m blowing this. I haven’t interacted with someone like this since freshman year.
All I ever needed was my two-person friend group, okay?
Without Hassie and Leif, I’m a loner. I make it a point to only exchange casual pleasantries with my classmates.
I’m not versed in navigating the landmines of adolescent socialization.
“Thanks. It’s, um, all still really new.”
Merit nods in understanding. “He must really like you. I was convinced no girl could ever get him to throw in the towel.”
Oh, I’m convinced an orgy with Megan Fox couldn’t get him to throw in the towel. I say this lovingly, but that man is a sex fiend through and through.
It’s my turn to laugh, but I do so with a lot less elegance. “I don’t know about that.”
Knox is just…doing what we agreed on.
Then why was he so upset earlier?
Because he doesn’t like Leif.
Okay. And why doesn’t he like Leif?
I don’t know, conscience! Stop asking questions!
Merit scrutinizes me with eyes bluer than the Caribbean, all while I fail to patch over the weird feeling in my chest. It’s a brand of unease that I mistakenly thought was only attainable through acts of intense adrenaline.
This whole night, Knox and I have invited people to form their own judgments about us, and I got a particularly nasty side-eye from a group of blondes. If I don’t treat this like the business arrangement it is, everything will fall through.
I’m not sure why Merit squeezes my shoulder—maybe because I’m looking especially depressed tonight—but the gesture sends a microtremor through my arm.
“I’m serious. Knox Mulligan may be a lot of things, but a boyfriend hasn’t been one of them. You mean something to him, and I hope he’s smart enough to tell you that.”
While I appreciate the kind words, Merit’s claim is unfounded.
Once Knox and I drain each other dry, we’re going to go back to being strangers, and some other girl will come along and capture his attention.
A new, shiny thing for him to obsess over.
I hate that a part of me is…conflicted…over that outcome.
Knox and I have long jumped over a lot of hurdles to get to this point, and forming feelings for him would be so insanely unscrupulous that I’d make a politician look honorable.
I don’t know what to say. It feels like there’s vinegar cutting up the inside of my mouth.
Thankfully, Merit’s caprices save me from spilling anything that might hinder the operation, and the mood of the conversation lightens exponentially. She waves me over in the direction she was initially heading.
“Come on. I think I can see Knox and the rest of the guys over by the composite wall.”
I follow silently in her footsteps, head bowed, doing the unwise thing and pulling out my phone to see if Leif texted me after our heated staring contest. The screen is blank.
Really, Staten? You think he’d message you after your “boyfriend” put a very public claim on you?
The only thing I should be focused on is playing it up for Knox’s friends, not the fact that I’ve been reduced to some Frankenstein creation in my best friend’s eyes. I didn’t realize I was paying such a grueling tax.
Pocketing my phone, my eyes hook with Knox’s when his circle of friends widens to accommodate me, and he places his hand on my side. His touch is different this time. Still featherlight, sure, but with a finesse you only use around delicate things of great importance.
A pith of concern creases his eyebrows, his eyes not unlike the mirror-dark surface of a lake during nightfall. The only time he’s ever looked at me like this was when I got bodychecked by his car, and even then, the recollection is still hazy.
His usual blasé attitude is a distant second to the guilt that he must have gleaned from me in the past hour, when we both cooperated in the world’s most pathetic, veering-on-voyeuristic display of affection.
“Are you okay?” he asks, the grit of his voice warm, familiar, dredging up that permanent rumble that sits in the pit of his throat. It’s as if—in this very moment—all his caustic edges and porcupine quills have been filed down into something…tolerable.
His fingers still lay along the curve of my ribs, temporarily caging the anxiety that trespasses through the backcountry of my thoughts, running the perimeter of switchbacks in the dead of night, undeterred by my futile efforts to keep it out.
“Yeah, sorry. I just needed a minute,” I whisper, grateful that the rest of his teammates seem to be too involved in their own side conversations to pay much mind to us.
“You never have to apologize for taking time for yourself. I’m the one who should be sorry. That whole display back there was tasteless.”
I feel my heart catch on a pointy segment of my ribs, and my breathing stumbles over itself. Like quicksilver, guilt comes to collect its debt, taking the first, half-formed globules of my tears as compensation. “I was the one who spurred you on. It’s my fault.”