Slick & Spooky (Friction Fiction #3)

Chapter 1

“Pretty sure you don’t have to try that hard, Tyler.”

I drag my eyes over the mirror, taking in the whole mess of it.

I tilt my head, squint a little, and I'm sure maybe there’s some version of me in there that makes sense.

The look is not really subtle, but I'll be so honest... subtle’s never really gotten me anywhere.

“I think I look hot.”

My pledge brother Joey groans dramatically. “Hot, yeah, but also… kinda desperate.”

Joey is stretched across my bed like a bored house cat.

This look he's perfected that is this strange mix of half-impressed and half-annoyed. It's the same look he's giving me now. That paired with his own glow-in-the-dark skull paint is somehow managing to make his face less attractive, which is a feat.

Joey’s hot, but he’s the kind of hot that never has to prove itself, which makes him unbearable. He’s tan, Puerto Rican, curls crammed under a backwards cap like that’ll somehow hide them.

The man is five-eight on a good day with a stocky build like the universe ran out of inches and dumped the leftovers into his squat frame.

He's nothing but bulging muscle stuffed into a skeleton tee with the sleeves hacked off, biceps threatening to rip what’s left of the fabric, while his thighs are practically exploding out of his black five-inch inseam shorts

He’s a total opposite of me. I’ve got a few inches on him, but it doesn’t matter. Next to Joey, I’m invisible.

People love to say I have “feminine features,” as if I should thank them for noticing.

I’m lean and wiry in a way that makes people assume I run track or do ballet or haven’t eaten today and most of my face is just…

eyes. They're big and brown and taking up way more space than they should.

A bunch of dark curls that refuse to cooperate fall over my forehead, resting against skin so pale it practically lights up under a blacklight.

To top it off, freckles are splattered across my face like someone sneezed while holding a paintbrush.

I look less like a frat boy and more like some Victorian fever dream that got lost on the way to the graveyard.

Delicate.

That’s the word they land on.

Not hot.

Not sexy.

Delicate.

Like I’m a glass figurine waiting for the wrong touch to shatter me.

The thing is… they’re not wrong.

At least, they’re not wrong about the version of me I let them see.

Leaning into it works for me. I let my voice fall softer, let my shoulders round, let my smile stay light and careful. Because if people see delicate, then they don’t see Finley. They don’t see the last name that gets me waved through doors I never asked to open.

So to the outside world I’m harmless and palatable and separate from the family power I never earned.

Out of all the things pledging Mu Lambda Nu gave me, including sleep deprivation, group chats I cannot escape no matter how many times I mute them, and the deep emotional trauma of lukewarm Natty Light, the biggest surprise was Joey.

He’s painfully straight, uncomfortably direct, and kind of a menace when he’s bored, and somewhere between being hazed within an inch of our lives and slipping each other Tylenol PM to survive, we stuck.

His friendship alone makes the dues feel worth it.

“You could wear a hoodie and he would still notice you,” Joey says.

I hate that I am this obvious.

Joey sees through the mask. He refuses to let me coast on charm or name or theatrics. He knows when I’m full of shit, and he says it.

If Joey can see through me, then I’ve got no shot of fooling the one I actually want.

Knox Everett.

Human statue carved from marble and ambition.

Fraternity president and my biggest complication.

One mind-blowing night, and the ghost of it never really left. It’s like he’s stitched into the air around me.

He’s always close enough to feel, never close enough to touch.

Anyone from Florida will tell you the Fourth of July is basically a slow roast in patriotic colors, but that year it was hell with fireworks.

The air felt like soup, the backyard reeked of warm beer and over boiled hot dogs, and my tank top had literally fused to my skin. Despite all this my dad still dragged me along, because apparently, nothing says family bonding like sweating through your clothes in front of local politicians.

“Smile for the voters,” he said, as if sweating through my clothes was good press for his re-election kickoff.

He was running the same tired script.

Same barbecue, same photo ops, same only son dragged along to play the role of doting heir.

Mayor Roger Finley never wanted the real version of me. The messy, loud, complicated side that might make people whisper. Much like everyone else he wants the performance. The perfect, delicate ambassador of family values for the moments when the world was watching.

The world is always watching.

Why else do you think I learned to bury the parts of me that didn’t serve the image?

That’s how I ended up in some random constituent’s backyard, turning on all the soft parts of myself for a crowd of retirees, bored housewives, and kids sticky with melted popsicles.

He should’ve been part of the blur. Just another body lost in the heat, in the stink of too many people standing too close, but Knox Everett doesn’t blend.

He doesn’t even try. He didn’t smile or shout or do that thing people do when they want to be noticed.

Somehow that made him impossible to ignore.

He came looking for a future in politics, the pre-law nephew of the host, desperate to impress. But my dad barely noticed him. Luckily, I did, and more importantly he noticed me.

While I was out there performing for everyone else, I accidentally tripped right into his orbit. I’d been so focused on keeping the world at arm’s length that I didn’t notice I was pulling him closer the whole time.

Everything warped at his edges. The party thinned, the voices dulled, but he stayed still. Watching until my skin burned hotter than the July heat. A sparkler dangling in one hand, Solo cup in the other, and his gaze raked over me like he had already decided that I was worth ruining his night for.

He never said it, but I know he felt a pull toward the part of me that didn’t fight or posture or pretend. The part that stayed soft.

It was obvious in the way he let me set the pace. The way he answered in clipped words, as if I might crack under anything heavier. With each kiss he offered, hidden from watching eyes, there was a restraint to it like softness was all I was allowed, even when what I wanted was ruin.

Thinking of it now makes my hole twitch, clamping down on the memory of his stretch. How his big uncut cock worked me open, how it left me aching and wanting more.

“I’ve been putting on this show for two and a half months and he still won’t crack,” I snap, hands on my hips.

“Like he could,” Joey fires back. “An active pledge getting railed by the president of the house? Escándalo.”

I flop down across my bed and let out a long breath. “None of this shit mattered over the summer.”

“You weren’t you then,” Joey says.

“Yeah I was.” I lean back on my hands. “Hell, I was more me. I was there with my fucking dad. He saw the good on paper version everyone gets.”

Joey raises a brow. “Exactly.”

I frown, but he keeps going.

“Maybe that’s not the version he wanted.”

“And what… he was into the tragic, repressed virgin act?” I toss a pillow at his face. He bats it away, grinning.

“Maybe,” he says, “but maybe he wanted someone real. Not the show. Not the politics. Just…you.”

“Hate that,” I say, rolling my eyes, even if Joey’s words hit so much harder than I’d admit.

“Being myself didn’t exactly get me very far. I smiled, played nice, did everything right and he still walked away. It’s Halloween. One night to rewrite the script. I’ll be who I’ve gotta be to get another shot.”

Joey chuckles, “The dick was that good, huh?”

It was.

God, it was.

How do you explain that to a straight man? Letting someone split you open, not only with their body but their whole existence.

“What’s your end goal here?” Joey asks, arms crossed like he’s bracing for a bad idea.

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” He tilts his head, skeptical. “Is this just about sex or… are you trying to date the guy?”

I hesitate. “Do you think he’d even want that?”

Joey studies me for a beat, then shrugs. “With the way he looks at you? Maybe. But it’s not gonna be easy. You’d have to convince him.”

I groan, dragging my hands over my face. “Yeah, well, convincing someone who’s actively avoiding eye contact isn’t exactly a strength of mine.”

“Probably can’t look at you too long cause he’s so busy thinking about bending you over a twin XL in your summer dorm room.”

There it is again. The clench low in my gut, heat sparking down my thighs, humiliating in how fast my body remembers him.

“I don’t believe it,” I mutter. “The man came inside me and then acted like it never happened. Like I’m some experiment he regrets.”

“Maybe he’s just… following protocol. Pledge rules or whatever.”

“Please. Half the actives are raw-dogging across Greek Row and nobody’s writing them up.”

Joey shifts. Then, quieter, “Your family doesn’t make it easier. You know that, right?”

My head snaps toward him. Not because I’m surprised, but because he said it out loud. He gave voice to the thing I keep trying to perform my way out of. The thing that shadows every look, every smile, every step I take into a room.

“It shouldn’t matter,” I say, softer than I mean to. “Who my dad is. What people expect. That shouldn’t factor in.”

“It shouldn’t,” Joey says, gesturing loosely at me. “But you show up already wearing a story. And people, especially people like him, read it before you ever open your mouth.”

“A coward,” I mutter.

“Maybe,” Joey says. “Or maybe he liked it and he’s smart enough to know the Finleys don’t come without fallout.”

He lets that sit, then adds, “But you know what’d really mess him up?”

I glance over.