7. Lex
Iwished Carter Scott had gone to any other school in the world. I wished he’d stayed in London. I wished he’d gone home to Chicago or maybe dropped off the face of the fucking Earth. Because then I wouldn’t have to watch him strut through Ivy’s room in a towel and act like the sight didn’t make me want to drop to my knees and claw at the fabric until it fell away. I loved Miri, I knew I did, but my draw to Carter had not gone away. And by the end of spring semester, it had started to drive me wild.
He and I never talked about it. We pretended we were friends, college dudes, drinking and partying and acting like assholes together. But sometimes when I was alone at night, I remembered the way he growled as he came, and I fucked my fist thinking about his hands in my hair.
It didn’t make me love Miri any less. It just was. And it wasn’t a problem, so long as I kept my shit together when I was around him. That became increasingly harder to do the closer he got to Ivy. She and I hated each other. That was our schtick.
But in some dark, twisted part of my heart, I was protective of her. I’d known her my whole life, and in a way, we were sort of family. Someone like Carter would chew her up and spit her out. On the other hand, that could have been fun to watch.
We sat around the bonfire out behind the frat house, Miri on my left with Carter and Ivy across the flames in seats by the pool. They were playing the slap game, where you hold your hands out and a person puts theirs on top and you try to slap the top of their hands before they can pull away. He was quicker than her, but she hit harder. (I knew that from personal experience.)
“You’re staring again, darling,” Miri whispered in my ear. We sat on a couch at a frat party in Hyde’s Square. It wasn’t the best part of town, but who gave a shit when the taste of bad decisions hung in the air like an aphrodisiac?
At the time, I didn’t know why I hated it so much. Maybe because I wanted to make him laugh like that. Maybe because he showered her with the affection he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, show me. Or maybe because Ivy would never look at me the way she stared at him…the way she sometimes stared at Miri. Up until recently, I wasn’t sure she was capable of such adoration, but that was another fucking bag of cats I didn’t want to deal with tonight. I took a drink of my beer.
“Why don’t you tell him how you feel?” she said. “Either you’re jealous of Carter or you’re jealous of Ivy. I don’t think it’s the former.”
“I don’t feel any way about Carter.”
“You’re a good liar, but you can’t trick me, Alexei.”
I loved it when she called me Alexei. I’d hated my full name most of my life, but to hear it fall from her lips in that glorious accent made my dick pulse.
“She’s not right for him.” I cleared my throat as the lie poured over my lips.
“You don’t know that. He cares for her.”
I adjusted my hips in my seat, suddenly uncomfortable with her line of inquiry. When had it gotten so fucking hot out here?
“Only until he’s had her.” I took another sip of my beer and my throat fucking ached. “Trust me. I know his type. I was his type.” Not true. “I’m still his type.”
“You think so low of your friend?” Miri brushed a piece of hair back behind my ear. “What if he makes her happy?”
“I don’t give a shit if she’s happy.” That also didn’t sit right in my gut, but I pretended it was the beer and not the subject of conversation.
Miri chuckled and leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. “You can like her, you know. It’s okay.”
“Ivy and I will never say we like each other.” I gave her a quick peck on the lips, pretending the ache in my chest had nothing to do with my shame. I didn’t want Ivy to like me, and frankly, I hoped she never did. “I mean that.”
“Of course you do, darling.”
It was with Miri’s taunts and this heavy inferno brewing inside my chest that I made a reckless decision. I’d been trying to sever this stifling, entangled thing between Carter, Ivy, and myself, but even at the time, I knew I’d only been acting like a spoiled, selfish prick.
“Did you decide to go back to Chicago, Carter?” Miri asked, refocusing her attention across the flames. “For the summer?”
“No. I’m, uh…” He met my eyes for a brief second before shifting them to Ivy. “I’m staying here.”
That vile sensation writhed in my gut, growing more desperate the longer I acted like it wasn’t there.
“Really?” Ivy’s face lit up.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m taking some summer classes, trying to catch up to you, Weeds.”
“Good luck,” Miri said. “The girl’s a savant. No one will ever touch her.”
Except for me. No one knew it, but I was neck and neck with her. After Ivy announced her double major, I’d decided to do the same thing. By graduation, I’d be poli-sci/theater right alongside her.
“So you’ll be here?” Ivy asked Carter with that hopeful lilt in her voice. “All summer?”
The with me went unsaid, but it glittered in those steel-gray eyes all the same. Ivy had it bad for him. He had started to reciprocate. I didn’t like that shit one fucking bit.
“Yeah, Weeds. All summer.” My heart clenched when he smiled at her like he had the same whimsical summertime thoughts floating through his mind.
Time for me to do something horrible.
“What about you, X? Any big plans?” I said. “Are you finally going to remove that enormous stick from your ass?”
The few people sitting around us reacted with laughter or ominous ohhhhs.
“Alexei,” Miri said. “Don’t.”
It was too late. Ivy recognized the taunt in my voice, and that beast inside of her blinked awake, staring out at me with vengeance on its teeth.
“Yeah, and maybe I’ll shove it down your throat,” she said.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” I huffed out a laugh, narrowing my sneer on her. “Of course, what do you know about deep-throating anything?” I tilted my head as she tightened her hands around the armrests, evidently knowing where I was going next. Fear replaced the thrill in her wide eyes. I should have pumped the brakes, but my temper had already slammed on the gas. “You are still a virgin, right, X?”
The crowd gasped. Everyone. Even Miri.
“Lex, shut the bloody fuck up.” Miri smacked my arm, but I glared at my adversary. She glared right back, her jaw clenched, and I knew I’d hit my mark. But Ivy…oh, wonderful, competitive Ivy. She never backed down from me, and that’s what anchored me to her like a splinter in my cold, dead heart.
“No, Lex.” She launched out of her seat. “Ask your girlfriend about that.” She gave me the finger and stormed away.
Most of the crowd laughed, evidently thinking she was giving me shit, that it was a joke between us like the way frat brothers teased about fucking each other’s moms. But my brain stumbled to a halt, all thoughts skidding to a gory demise on my mental asphalt like a bad motorcycle wreck.
Uh…What. The Fuck.
When I snapped my attention to Miri, she clenched the seat so hard her knuckles had turned white. She hung her jaw open and her wide-eyed stare burned shame and anger.
It was true.
I thought about the first time I met her, when she’d taken me to her cottage in Scotland. The way she sighed when she talked about Ivy. The twinkle in her eye and the ghost of something personal in her smile. Now it made sense.
My heart raced at the thought of them together. Most guys probably would have reacted like cavemen about their girlfriend hooking up with her roommate, especially if that roommate was Ivy Washington.
But me?
I seethed with something icy and rotten. Not only had Ivy stolen Carter, but she’d lain claim to Miri before I could. Why did she get to have everything? Why did she get the big family and the brother who didn’t die and the presidential burden of history? Why did people love her so damned much when I was just as good, just as smart?
Carter ran a hand over his mouth, his indigo eyes scouring me with sour incredulity. “Nice, Lex,” he said, standing. “Real fucking smooth.”
He followed Ivy around the front of the frat house, and all eyes shot to us, waiting for my reaction, waiting for Miri’s. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she stood and stalked away to the jeers of the onlookers. I followed her like my ass was on fire.
“Why did you say that?” Miri whispered after I caught up. “Why do you always start this shit with her?”
“I was just fucking around,” I tried. “She took it too far.”
“You know how she is about her personal life.” Miri crossed her arms over her chest. “Telling all those people about that? What if it ends up in The Puck?”
“No one gives a shit who Ivy’s fucking.”
“It’s different for you, Lex.” She stopped so she could look me in the face. “The public looks at you and marvels at how many women coast through your bed. They look at me and Ivy, and we’re the whores who can’t keep our legs closed.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” Miri said. “If you did, you wouldn’t have teased her about it, and if you want to keep doing this thing between us? You’ll never tease her about it again.”
“What?” I said with a laugh. She couldn’t be saying what I thought she was saying.
“I’m serious, Lex,” Miri said. “I don’t know what your obsession is with needling her, but it has to stop. She’s my best friend. I love her.”
“Yeah, a little too much, evidently. You and I need to have a long talk about that shit.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What happened between you and Carter in London?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I didn’t know what to say. Carter and I had agreed to keep it between us. I wouldn’t lie, but I also couldn’t tell her the truth.
“Exactly,” she said. “We’re entitled to our secrets, but the minute you start being cruel about the ones you know is the minute I stop sharing any of mine with you. Don’t follow me home and don’t call me for a few days. I want to be mad at you.”
She left me there, confused and drunk and pissed off at the world.