Chapter 8 #2
“Man, you missed the best part! These two chicks were apparently doing the same dude on the baseball team, and when one of the girls ran into him and the other girl was grinding all up on each other, she lost it. Grabbed the other girl’s hair, ripped her off the guy, and started smacking the hell out of her!
While those two were fighting on the floor, the dude snuck off with another chick dancing nearby and ended up making out with her in the pool! ”
“Is that it? If that’s all you’ve got for us, I’m changing the channel. I’ve seen juicier stuff on reruns of Jersey Shore,” Fin said with an arched brow. Griffin narrowed his eyes at him and I could’ve sworn I heard him growl.
“Pipe down and let me finish before I come over there and hit your mute button.”
“Babycakes, you couldn’t find my button with a compass and a prayer. Even if you did, I doubt you’d know what to do with it,” he snapped with an impish grin.
I didn’t want to know if that was irritation or heat I saw in Griffin’s gaze. Ever since he and Fin had met this year, they lived to fuck with each other, but there was always an undercurrent of something more. That was so far beyond what I had the mental capacity for right now.
“Anyway, what I was about to say,” Griffin continued sharply, “was after the two chicks had stopped fighting long enough to find baseball bro in the pool, they ended up jumping in and trying to fight the other girl he was making out with. But after about two minutes of the crowd egging them on, they all started making out with each other and went off to hook up somewhere and left poor baseball guy all by himself. But as they were leaving, they all threw out that he apparently swings with a “little bat” and he’d have better luck scoring a homerun on the field because he couldn’t get one out of them! ”
Laughter broke out at Griff’s enthusiastic ending, and even Fin’s lips twitched at hearing the misfortune of the hapless playboy.
But I barely cracked a smile. Hearing about party hookups dropped my mind back down a rabbit hole I was desperate to avoid.
I was floating between feeling nothing at all and drowning in despair after what happened with Theo.
A hand gripped my shoulder and shook me hard, and Nate’s face came into view. “Dude, what’s up with you? You don’t look so good.”
I looked around to see everyone else’s eyes on me, scrutinizing me carefully. My neck heated under the collar of my shirt.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly, but every face in the room twisted with skepticism and disbelief.
It wasn’t my nature to talk about myself or my problems. I pushed things down, buried them until I could release them back into the world as notes and chords.
I was always willing to let others unburden themselves with me, help them carry whatever weighed them down.
Theo had been the only one I trusted enough with my vulnerabilities, but after he left, my walls came up and everything I felt was barricaded behind them.
“Really, it’s nothing. The party just ended up sucking for me, that’s all,” I murmured reluctantly. The last thing I needed was to trauma-dump on my friends over breakfast.
“I’m guessing it has something to do with the Dawson’s Creek episode that awkwardly played out during beer pong?” Fin asked curiously.
“Hah! I get it,” Nate barked out happily.
“Oh my God, Finny…” Aly mumbled, biting back a smile.
“For why?” Rhys chastised.
“Can I add a splash of tact to your juice there, babe?” Micah smirked.
“OMGeez, what did I do wrong this time?” Fin complained with wide doe eyes.
“Nothing, you’re fine. I know we were a bit…dramatic last night. The thing is Theo and I have, uh, history.”
“Yeah, we caught onto that after the first thirty seconds of angry sexual tension,” Cal interjected, grunting in discomfort when Rhys elbowed him in the ribs to silence him.
I flushed at his comment. “We did not have sexual tension…”
“So you’re saying you weren’t thinking about jumping his bones again?” Griffin asked.
“What? No, why—didn’t you notice we were at each other’s throats last night?” I argued.
“Only because you couldn’t go at each other’s naughty bits instead,” Fin added unhelpfully. “You two were throwing major vibes, just sayin’.”
“That’s not what was happening.”
“Aw, it’s cute you think that, but it really was,” Micah confirmed with faux sympathy. “Did he actually look a little pissed at Nate for some reason, or was that just me?”
“No, I totally caught that! I think he was jealous,” Fin agreed.
Nate grinned and slung his arm over my shoulder. “I mean, who can blame him? I’m a straight catch. And Dawson and I do have a love that can’t be contained…isn’t that right, boo?”
He leaned up and planted a loud kiss on my cheek. I detached myself from him and wiped my face off as he laughed.
“Why the hell would he be jealous of Nate when he thinks Aly and I are dating?”
“Wait, you and Aly are dating? Since when? How did I not know about this?” Nate threw me an accusatory look.
“We’re not, but Dawson heavily implied we were…twice.”
I glared at Aly, the judgmental tone in her voice unmistakable. “Look, I’m not proud of lying about it, but I only did it because...”
Their expectant gazes were pinned on me, but I wasn’t sure how to explain why I’d wanted Theo to believe I was taken so he didn’t think I’d just been pining after him for nearly four years while he’d clearly been off screwing anyone he wanted and ignoring my existence.
I didn’t want to come across jealous and petty.
Even though I was. Hard core. Like an asshole.
“It was because...we—I mean, he…that is…”
“I’d like to buy a vowel please, Vanna,” Micah muttered when I failed to string together a coherent sentence.
I growled in frustration. “Yeah, no. I’m not talking about this. Thought I could, but I can’t. Experiment over.”
“You sure do like to experiment a lot, huh?” Fin mumbled and I could hear the amusement in his voice. I glared at him as he scrambled to shovel a forkful of pancakes into his mouth, peering at me innocently.
“You can’t give us anything? I mean, you kind of left us on a cliffhanger there, D,” Nate remarked through a mouthful of food.
“Fine, whatever. Theo and I used to be a thing. We were together for a long time and then he left without a word our senior year and yeah, it majorly sucked. I hadn’t heard from him since, but he recently moved back and it’s fucking with me a bit because I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.
Now he’s being all cagey and weird, so there’s no chance in hell of us ever getting back together.
I just want to forget about everything and move on with my life. Can we please drop it now?”
My confession sucked the oxygen straight from the room. I concentrated on scarfing down my unfortunately cold breakfast instead of entertaining any other questions from them. I had no more mental or emotional bandwidth, so I was determined to move on from the subject of my pitiful love life.
“Dawson?…”
“Please don’t ask me anything else about it. It’s…a lot,” I pleaded gently.
“Why can’t any of us go one semester without drama in our love lives? Honestly, it’s becoming a concerning pattern,” Micah sighed loudly.
“Because life sucks ass sometimes,” Cal grunted in agreement.
“That is a truly terrible saying,” Fin retorted. “Half of the people at this table know the joy of sucking ass. It’s like in the top ten things to try in life. Hardly a negative.”
“Micah sure is a big fan,” Bash chuckled before his boyfriend thwacked him hard on the shoulder.
“Even I’m not opposed to it from time to time,” Aly weighed in.
Nate’s eyes seemed to dislodge from his skull. “Wait, chicks like that too? Like, it’s the same feeling for you…back there?”
“Uhh, yeah? Why wouldn’t it be? My ass is just like yours.”
“This is the weirdest fucking breakfast I’ve ever had,” Kenji muttered.
“You know, we can just stop talking about—”
“Maybe life’s just really bad at sucking ass?” Nate cut me off. “That seems more accurate, though I wouldn’t personally know. I’m assuming there’s a wrong way to do it, right?”
“Well, wrong is a bad word for it. It does take a certain finesse to do it properly, and sometimes if they—”
“For fuck’s sake, please don’t finish that thought, Fin. I’m eating,” Aly whined.
“Well, excuse me sassy pants, but you jumped into this first!”
“Anyway, don’t lose faith, D-man,” Nate smiled, ignoring Fin and Aly. “Things will work out with Theo the way they’re meant to, maybe even better than you’re expecting.”
“Thanks, man.” I couldn’t hate his endless optimism, even if I disagreed with him. I wasn’t sure there was anything for Theo and I to work out anymore, no matter how much I had wanted it to.
“For sure! Life’s anal oral skills are bound to improve this year and then you’ll reap the benefits!”
A chorus of groans and laughs came from the group as Nate continued to argue his point, the bizarre debate growing in volume and enthusiasm from everyone except me and Kenji.
“Hey Nate, you know who’d be delighted to give you a personal lesson on rimming?”
Nate glared at Micah’s mischievous face. “Do not go there, Russo. I’m not letting you ruin my appetite if you are going to be talking about him.”
“Oooh, yeah,” Cal grinned. “I forgot you and my boy Mateo have this weird thing between you. Want me to text him that you miss him?”
“Hell no! This is a text-free zone! In fact, all of you are in violation of Breakfast Code 17.4 and I’m going to have to confiscate all your devices. Hand them over.”
“But then how will I know what he texted back?” Cal waved his phone tauntingly. “Hey hey! I see text bubbles!”
“NO! Pop those damn bubbles, Hawkins!” Nate jumped up and launched across the room towards Cal, who took off with his phone in hand out the back door.
Even I couldn’t help choking out a laugh with the others as we watched through the windows as Nate chased Cal in zig zags across the lawn with Stella the goat now in hot pursuit.
I wasn’t sure how she got out of her enclosure again, but seeing their horrified faces and hearing their distant shrieks as she charged them made it worth it.
“Mmm, I can already smell the fresh drama coming,” Fin announced brightly. “Welcome to the 75th annual Hunger Games, everyone.”
I finished my food while my friends talked and enjoyed the morning once the guys came back inside, panting and sweaty.
I smiled to myself as I thought how lucky I was to have these people in my life now, weird as they were.
When my gaze drifted out the window to the Bishop’s house, my smile faded.
My friends had managed to distract me for a small time, but even that hadn’t been enough to bury the memories of last night.
I excused myself from the table to go shower, telling them all to hang out and make themselves at home. Truthfully, I just needed some space to decompress after the last twenty-four hours. I made it to my room, locking the door behind me to avoid any more good-intentioned, but unwanted intruders.
Coming home hadn’t exactly been the peaceful getaway that I’d been hoping for.
My peace of mind had been stolen the first day I arrived and it had only gotten worse with every encounter with Theo.
I promised my parents I’d be here when they got back from their short holiday trip, but the second they were home, I was heading back to campus.
I needed to get back to my life the way it was before Theo stormed back into it.
It may not have been everything I wanted it to be, but it was perfectly fine.
I whipped off my shirt and headed for the bathroom, but movement out the window caught my eye.
Across the way, I noticed a sleek red sedan pulling up the Bishop’s driveway.
I watched a man climb out and though I couldn’t quite see his face, his build was faintly recognizable.
He trudged up to the porch and knocked, throwing a sweeping glance over his shoulder and I saw it was Corvin.
I hated the way my chest clenched and my stomach churned as I saw the door open. Corvin waltzed inside after a few seconds, not even allowing me a glimpse of Theo before it shut again.
I didn’t want to think of why he was there at ten in the morning or what they were doing. I only had so much sanity left. It made no sense to me that Theo had seemed so wrecked at our falling out last night, only to turn around and invite Corvin into his home, possibly into his bed, hours later.
The realization ripped the breath from my lungs.
Theo might have still wanted me on some level, but I clearly wasn’t the only one he wanted.
To know the love of my life no longer saw me as the love of his shredded something inside me.
I shuffled into my shower on autopilot, adjusting the temperature until the water scorched my back and gave me a different pain to fixate on.
I couldn’t keep doing this, grappling with betrayal and hurt I had no right to feel. And if I was honest with myself, I was tired of being angry and bitter. I couldn’t hate Theo if I wanted to and the resentment I felt was eating me up inside. This wasn’t who I was.
Maybe the only way forward was to forgive Theo and put everything behind us. Not just the bad, but the good as well. Wipe our slate clean and start over. I didn’t think we could start as friends, but perhaps with time we’d get there. Even as I thought it, I knew it wouldn’t be that simple.
How do you erase a lifetime of memories? Was it even possible to forget every laugh or word of love between us? Could we sweep every smile, kiss, and intimate touch under the rug like they never happened?
I hoped the answer was yes because I couldn’t keep living this half-life. If Theo had any mercy left for me, he’d give me back my heart so I at least stood a chance at piecing it back together.