Chapter 15 Niko
Niko
Niko, checking the app before walking into Onyx House, earlier today
Username: Dragonfly
I feel a little too good as I check the Camboy account.
Good in a way that makes me not give a fuck about what any commenter might be posting.
They’re not Oliver.
So why the hell should I care?
I belong to him, after all.
Wait.
No.
It’s all just fake.
But maybe I don’t give a fuck about that, either.
I’m surrounded by a shimmering sea of color.
Beauty.
Shades of blue and silver, falling in rivers around me, welcoming me into the grand ballroom.
“This is fucking incredible,” I say out loud. “Those trees weren’t here yesterday.”
Each edge of the ballroom is lined with staggeringly tall, lit-up rows of Christmas trees, four on each wall.
The ornaments reflect and shine the light, nestled between slowly pulsating tiny white twinkle lights.
Paper lanterns hang from the ceiling. The live band is playing up on the raised stage that I watched people help build yesterday.
The music fills the room, making it feel alive.
The whole space is alive.
And people are filling the ballroom wall-to-wall, far more people than I ever expected to see at a winter formal. It feels like the whole student body of Crimson College is in attendance, far more than just the secret societies.
And he’s here with me.
Oliver.
With those fucking gorgeous eyes. Right in front of me, reaching back to clasp his hand in mine.
Something’s happening.
I can feel it, by now.
A rush of euphoria that came on slowly at first, but is falling over me in a burst, now.
I know this feeling.
I know it.
Why do I know it?
“Niko, come with me,” Oliver says.
“I will do fucking anything with you,” I tell him. “Do you know how much I mean that?”
“Just come here.”
He drags me through the sea of silver and blue, past the heat of a bunch of bodies, everyone dancing, talking, and having a good time already.
I catch bits and pieces of the type of conversations I might usually hate, one girl chatting about a bunch of pompous shit like flying on private jets and another guy talking about how many girls he fucked last year.
And none of it bothers me.
It almost sounds sweet, in some strange way.
All of these people, just trying to find something. Sex, validation, love.
Isn’t it normal, to want those things?
I’m lost in my thoughts as Oliver pulls me through the crowd and toward a narrow, dim hallway at the far edge of the ballroom.
He pushes open a wooden door and takes me into a bathroom, stopping in front of a mirror.
“Look at your pupils,” Oliver tells me. “Mirror. Now.”
I love the sound of his voice.
I watch him for a moment, then raise a thumb to his mouth, dragging it over his lower lip.
“So fucking soft. Your mouth is made for me, Oliver.”
“Look in the mirror.”
I don’t want to stop looking at him, but I want to do what he says right now. I tear my gaze away and look into the mirror.
Yep.
Knew it.
“Damn. My pupils are wide. As fuck.”
“Jesus Christ, Niko.”
Suddenly I’m acutely aware that we’re alone in here. The steady thrum of the live music filters in.
I love his hair.
His eyelashes.
Even the fucking look of worry on his face that I just want to kiss away. Even when he’s all concerned, with his brow furrowed at me, he still looks at me…
Like that.
Like he needs me.
Like he fucking wants it so bad, and god damn, it makes me want it, too.
“You think I look kind of sexy like this, don’t you?” I ask him, cocking my head to the side a little. “Take a picture with me.”
“I think Callum slipped you something, Niko. Fuck. Fuck. Look at this.”
He seems worried, but he has no real reason to be.
Of course Callum gave me molly.
I should have known it earlier.
Should have figured it out the moment I felt so warm and at peace, out there on the campus quad, walking over with Oliver.
But now I can’t feel anything other than acceptance.
Tired of fighting.
The constant. Fucking. Fighting.
Fighting for control. Power. The upper hand.
I just want to be with you.
“I just want to be…”
I let my words trail off into the air as I realize I’m saying them out loud. I want to say more, but isn’t that something I usually stop myself from doing?
Oliver is pulling out his phone and I can’t stop looking at his fingers, because somehow even Oliver’s fucking hands manage to look sexy as he scrolls back to one of the unhinged texts that Callum sent me last night.
“I don’t give a fuck what’s on that phone, Ollie.”
“Just look.”
I glance down at it, seeing the message he’s concerned about.
CallumXvX: Have a love potion. Think he doesn’t want me? Ur wrong.
“He said that to you?” I ask, bringing a hand up and running my palm over my hair to feel something soft.
“It was one of about twenty different unhinged things he wrote to me last night. I passed it off as a crazy rambling thing to say. I didn’t know you were going to fucking meet with him today.”
I exhale and reach out to grab Ollie’s hand. “Baby, I had to meet with him. You need to realize that. I had to tell him to get away from you.”
“You’re rolling right now,” Oliver says, confirming he knows what I was already aware of. “Holy shit, Niko. He thinks molly is a ‘love drug.’”
“Can we stop talking about him? I’ve done molly enough to know that I’m about to have a good night, and I don’t care that he drugged me.”
“You’re going to care a lot tomorrow,” Oliver says quietly, looking away. “You’re going to care so much you might actually fucking kill the guy.”
“I don’t really want to think about tomorrow right now.”
“I’m going to keep you hydrated and I’m not leaving your side tonight. If you feel anything other than the effects of ecstasy, you need to let me know. The campus hospital is just across the street.”
“I know what I feel. After meeting with Callum today, he doesn’t want me dead. He wants me back, and it’s never going to happen.”
“I think Callum is the one who drugged you at that hockey game, too,” he says, and the sad look in his eyes makes my heart squeeze in my chest. “I hate him. I hate him so fucking much.”
He’s right.
“Don’t waste your time hating him. I think he did it, too. And I should be mad about that, but why the fuck am I ever mad about anything?”
And that’s the drug talking, too, but I don’t give a damn.
“You’re staying by my side,” Oliver says. “What do you need right now?”
So protective of me.
Almost like he thinks I’m something worth caring about.
He’s been waiting for this winter formal for a long time, and all I want is to make sure he gets to have it.
“Right now I need to go out there and dance with you. Let’s go.”
We plunge back out into the shimmering ballroom and I feel like I’m fucking home. I keep my hand on Oliver at all times, touching the small of his back, then his hip, then his hand again.
The moment we’re out in the center of the ballroom dance floor, I wrap my arms around him and pull him tight, dancing with him.
“How are you feeling?” he asks me.
I kiss the side of his head. “You want to know a secret? I love that I was your first.”
He exhales against me, and I can feel it on the side of my face. “Because you liked taking something from me?”
“Giving something to you.”
“I wanted to get rid of my fucking virginity for so long. You were the perfect person to do it with.”
“I think you’re perfect, too.”
He gives me a disaffected look, like he thinks I’m only saying that because of the drug.
“Anybody else might make a big deal of my virginity, but you would just… claim it. Without a second thought.”
Of course I fucking wanted it.
Wanted it more than anything else I could ever possess.
It’s interesting that Oliver is being more honest with me right now, too. He doesn’t seem to realize that ecstasy isn’t like alcohol. I’m not just going to forget everything he’s saying, but he doesn’t know that. He’s using this as an opportunity to speak his mind.
“I gave it quite a lot of thought, Oliver.”
He hums, and I know he probably doesn’t believe me on that, either.
“You’re here, you take what you want, and then you’re gone. Like a dragonfly.”
I grip his waist. “You know, it’s a common misconception that dragonflies can sting or bite. They don’t.”
I reach up and stroke his hair, searching his eyes.
It feels as though there’s a warm fire heating me from the inside, keeping me safe, in a place that’s normally so cold. Can’t he feel my warmth?
Can’t he feel all of this, between us?
He doesn’t think I give a damn about him.
And I know that’s entirely my fault.
“You two look hot,” a voice comes from beside us, and when I turn, a camera flash hits my eyes.
I’m still holding Oliver as Weston comes over, snapping some manual Polaroid photos of us and then grabbing a few with his phone camera.
I lean against Ollie in the photos.
Holding him tight.
Because I need him like oxygen. And because it’s what we’re supposed to do.
Weston is clearly having a good time, too, smiling wide and dancing off to go snap pictures of other people.
And the moment we’re alone again, I feel words trying to push out from inside me, like I’m having to hold back from telling Ollie every little thing about him that I’m obsessed with.
I kiss him so I won’t speak.
I take his mouth and while we’re out here on the dance floor, the feeling of his tongue sliding on mine, wet and hot, feels more like I’m fucking him, instead.
Way too intense for a winter formal.
And I don’t even try to stop.
We dance for what feels like hours in the crowd.
I ride the wave of the molly, and the initial rush settles into a calm, warm high. Like I’m in a cloud. Like the world isn’t hostile, but finally a place I belong.
And I make sure Oliver and I look every bit like a couple.
People pass by, waving at him or stopping to say hello, and I keep close with him at all times. Touching him. Holding his hand. Taking my own pictures and videos with him whenever I feel like it.