12. Lex
Ihated it in fucking Ireland.
It was so damn hot and miserable that my insides were fucking boiling. There was no cool place to go except for the creek, and we couldn’t spend all day there when we had rehearsal to slog through. Ivy and I weren’t in the second half of the play, so somewhere around day five, we weren’t needed on set in the afternoon, giving us ample time to get off-book in the water.
“Any but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow,” I recited, lounging on my towel in the grass.
“You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and you will give me occasion.” Ivy stood in the water and ducked her shimmering tangerine hair back to get it wet, letting out a moan that echoed through my torso down to my cock. I zeroed in on her long neck, the curve of her breasts, and the way her stomach dipped into her belly button and disappeared under that string bikini.
She made that moan when she came. I’d heard it through the walls a thousand times in four years, always the result of Carter’s handiwork. Lord knew he had a talented mouth, but I wondered what Ivy’s felt like. My thoughts went to more illicit topics, like how soft her skin might be under that bikini and how tight her pussy—Wait…What? Where the fuck is that coming from?
“Could you not take some occasion without giving?” I replied, inhaling deep on my cigarette and readjusting my hips so my cock had more room in my trunks.
“Mercutio,” she said, rubbing her hands over her face. “Thou consort’st with Romeo?—”
“Consort!” Here was where I kept fucking up. I couldn’t remember what came next, something about minstrels and discords, basically a big no homo, bro. “Ahh.” I let out a growl as I picked up my script and searched for the line. “Fuck.”
“You’ll get it.” She rose out of the water and walked toward me, looking like some fucked-up fantasy version of a forest nymph in her tiny swimsuit. We were in the woods, after all, and as water dripped down all that smooth silky ivory skin, I itched to reach out and touch.
Damn it.
Focus.
I didn’t know why I was having this reaction to her. Sure, objectively, Ivy was hot. She had a great body and a killer smile, and I ached to twist that wild hair in a fist and see how hard I could yank. But she was my archnemesis. Carter’s girl. Miri’s best friend.
My fiancée.
“You think he means fucking?” She wrapped her towel under her arms as she sat next to me. “Consort’st?”
“I think that’s implied.”
She snorted a laugh and reached for the cigarettes, lighting one and taking a long drag. “Could you imagine? Mercutio and Romeo in a homosexual affair?”
I laughed to hide how close to the truth she’d sniffed. “Romeo’s such an emotional twat, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all.”
She returned the good humor with a small grin before returning her focus to the trees and the rambling water, accented by the cacophony of summer wildlife. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” My chest deflated with a forlorn sigh, as if I could will myself to disappear into those woods if I only tried.
“What if we just stayed?” she said. It was low, almost too low for me to hear it. “What if we never went home?”
For one moment, I let myself have the fantasy. Perhaps Miri and Carter could come. We could live together, the four of us, in some cabin where no one would ever take photos of us again. We wouldn’t be forced to marry each other, and we could love whomever we wanted every night. But alas, such a thing would never be anything more than a pipe dream.
“They’d track us down.” I hated how sad and desperate my voice sounded.
“We could run away.” She gave me a shrug, as if the idea was totally feasible.
“Still on your crusade to save us all?” I barked out a laugh, imagining myself going approximately two hours before I broke down and booked us a hotel on one of my family’s credit cards. “I’m not built for life on the road.”
“I might run away,” she said, her hopeless expression nearly cracking my frozen dead heart.
“And leave me to deal with our parents on my own?” I pretended to balk at the blind outrage. “Some friend you are.”
Her eyes shot to me. “Is that what we are now? Friends?”
“Maybe that’s too far,” I said, ignoring the lurch in my chest that told me this was a lie. “But we’re not really enemies anymore, are we?”
“No, I guess we’re not.” Her cheeks flushed and that stupid X appeared on her neck, making me desperate to know what she’d been thinking about to put it there. I let it go because at the end of the day, I loved Miri, Ivy loved Carter, and we would never love each other.
“We might have a problem,” she said, taking another long drag on the smoke.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I was talking to Kit and Jon a few days ago about our engagement.”
I made a sad chuffing noise. Engagement. Some fucking marriage we’ll have.
“Kit said she would help us find a way out of this, some statute we might have overlooked.” Ivy winced and wrapped her arm tighter around her knees. “I’m pretty sure one of the locals overheard the whole story.”
A small alarm bell went off in my head, but I didn’t know about what. The entire world would find out soon enough. What did it matter if some random stranger overheard a conversation out of context? Still, I asked, “Which local?”
“Her name is Siobhan. She owns the pub in town.” Ivy shrugged. “I don’t think she knows what she overheard, but I thought I’d tell you in case it comes out somehow.”
I sighed and shook my head. “The Puck’s not over here, X. We’re safe for now.”
“Yeah, but the paparazzi killed Miri’s parents. People are hungry for paydays everywhere.”
A question hung between us, one that had gotten louder and more persistent every day we spent with them.
Is it time we tell them?
We should have done it when it happened. Miri and Carter were special to me, to both of us. They deserved the respect of knowing something this life-altering, but the same reasons we didn’t say anything a week ago were still there. We had over two weeks left of this intensive, and it was already stressful enough, especially for Miri and Carter, leads of the play, who carried the weight of the performance on their shoulders. This was important. We couldn’t afford to fuck it up.
I bit my lip and let the question hang there for now.
In time, I told myself. We’d tell them when it was right.
* * *
The four of us had lived across the hall from each other for the last three years. We’d spent countless nights hanging out, drinking, and partying until the wee hours of the morning, but we always had our separate space. Miri and I usually went back to her room, and Carter and Ivy to his. A line existed between us as couples, clearly defined, clearly delineated, and even though Miri and I fucked around with other people, there were two who were off-limits.
In four years, we’d never been as close as we were in that Killwater dorm room together. Night after night, Carter and Ivy hung out in her bed across the room from Miri and me. We ran lines until we couldn’t read anymore, and then we watched whatever cheesy British comedy we found on TV.
We talked.
We talked in a way we hadn’t in years, laughing and teasing. For the moment, I could almost forget that this would all be over soon, that Ivy and I were staring down law school and a future together. A future full of forced smiles and extravagant galas where we’d pretend to be madly in love. None of that mattered in those small moments of joy. I could forget how absolutely fucked my life had become.
But then…things changed.
One morning, I woke up to an empty bed. Miri was in the bathroom, and when I rolled over, I found Ivy’s bed empty as well. Carter stood by the closet, his boxers low on his hips with his beautiful muscular body on display. He’d just gotten out of the shower and his hair was in wet spikes on the top of his head.
Good. Fucking. God.
What a sight.
He shook out a T-shirt and turned, locking eyes with me. When he caught me staring, he curled one side of his mouth into a grin, flashing a dimple as his gaze softened. “See something you like, DC?”
His expression had turned hungry, and a depraved part of me responded. I had to physically restrain myself from getting out of bed and yanking him back to it by the waistband of those boxer briefs.
“What if I do, Chicago?” I reached for my cigarettes on the side table, lighting one and sighing in relief as the nicotine buzzed in my veins. “What are you going to do about it?”
He straightened and tilted his chin up at me, looking down from under hooded eyes. When he darted his tongue out over his lips, I zeroed in on the motion. How could a simple pink muscle be so perfect? It shimmered in the morning light, promising temptation and sweet, sinful release.
I inhaled deeper on my cigarette.
“Don’t tease me,” he said. “Or I’ll give you something healthier to suck.”
I whipped my focus to him.
What the fuck was this now?
For four years, we’d danced around this line between us. We acted like it hadn’t happened, and though we joked with each other in that vaguely fraternal way guys did, we’d never gotten close to that line again. Since landing in Ireland, Carter had not only brought up what happened in London but had also eye fucked me first thing in the morning. Now he was flirting?
“Would you want that?” He raised an eyebrow. “One last time, for old time’s sake?”
What the fuck is happening? Am I dreaming?
“C’mon, Lex.” He took a step closer to me, moving his hips in a hypnotizing gait that meant he knew what he was packing and exactly what to do with it. “You’ve always known who I am, and I know who you are.”
My eyebrows furrowed.
Why did that sound so familiar? What the?—
Before I could think anymore about it, the door opened and Ivy came in, freshly showered and wearing jean shorts with a black tank top. Her long orange hair had been braided down the side, and even though she’d put makeup on, she couldn’t hide the bags under her eyes. I knew her well, and she was exhausted.
She threw her dirty clothes by her bag and wrapped her arms around Carter’s waist from behind, tucking her head into the space between his shoulder blades. The intimacy in the moment overwhelmed me, and I looked away to give them their privacy.
But I felt it on me—Carter’s incinerating stare. I looked back and froze at the heat in his eyes, the possessive way he held Ivy’s hands and the cruel twist in his lips mixing with the dominance in his posture. Normally, Carter was all sunshine and rainbows. He could charm the pants off a priest, and everyone who spent any time around him fell in love with him. In the years I’d known him, his light had not dimmed. I’d tried to devour it in the beginning, but he had an infinite supply.
Maybe that was why he’d appealed to me, why I couldn’t leave him alone. His light filled my darkness in a way no one else could, not even Miri. But this was new. His stance, the way he held on to her, and the way he glared at me. It all claimed Ivy as his. It sent a message.
Stay the fuck away.
I didn’t know how to interpret that. I was relieved when Miri came into the room after that, bitching about the water pressure.
“I swear, everything about America is better,” she said. “Even the smell.”
Just like that, whatever was brewing between Carter and me vanished. He smiled and cracked a joke and the day went on as normal.