Chapter Twelve Sadie
Getting Ro to a party is like pulling teeth—but somehow, getting her to leave one is even worse. Especially tonight, because despite my efforts to keep her sober, she is bubbly drunk.
I bang on the bathroom door again, brow furrowed in concern.
“Ro?” I call again. “You okay?”
There’s a long silence, and for a moment I think about trying to bust down the door. Instead, I press my ear against the door again and play with a lock of my hair from my now-unbraided ponytail, twirling it round and round, looping through my fingers in a pattern.
Finally, there’s a loud clatter, and then, “I’m okay!” shouted a bit too loudly from inside. I hear the sink running and settle myself against the wall, closing my eyes and tipping my head back.
The party had originally been my idea, but Ro had agreed after I took a Sharpie to her College Bucket List and added attending this specific party with me.
It’s partially for me, but also for her to feel something good again instead of getting lost in her head.
Her “I have a boyfriend now” complaints were heard and blatantly ignored by me because no way in hell will I be tolerating the way I’ve seen him treat her in the very few times we met over the summer.
Tyler is still at an intensive program for biomedical engineering.
Ro wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I saw the texts over her shoulder while doing her hair in our dorm bathroom.
She let him know about going with me to the party; he requested photos of her and then ghosted her in the middle of their conversation after a flippant text that said “ ok. ”
She isn’t as overtly sad now, burying her feelings beneath the shots of tequila we took before dancing until all she could think of was pulling at the high hem of her patterned lilac shorts. All I can think about is putting my skate blade through Tyler’s neck the next time I see him.
“That bad of a party?”
The familiar voice feels like cool silk against my heated, flushed skin.
I open my eyes and I’m greeted with the sight of Rhys, looking completely put together and very un-vulnerable—a first for our interactions.
Having not seen him in a week, the urge to ask him if he’s okay, if he’s had another panic attack or if he’s ready for his first real practice back—still marked in blue Sharpie on my own calendar—is overwhelming.
My eyes eat him up. His long, lean body is fitted into dark jeans and a crisp black tee that molds lightly to his biceps as he rests against the wall across from me.
I notice the clear quality of his eyes and a light flush to his cheeks; he isn’t drunk, but he’s had something to drink.
Which is somehow more confusing because I hadn’t noticed him anywhere in this house.
“Why do you say that?” I ask, pressing my hands down the skirt of my dress, pulling at the hem slightly.
I hate the wave of self-consciousness that buzzes through me as he takes me in, his eyes quick in their scan of my very short gray silk dress and white platform Converse that have double insoles for my aching feet.
I might be slightly overdressed in a sea of denim and leather, but I look a thousand times hotter than I actually feel. Not to mention that the dress makes it much easier to get in and out of this party with what I came for—a quick distraction.
Which my traitorous mind is now thinking should be the hotshot who has appeared at my side like a wish granted.
“Because it’s almost one in the morning and you don’t even look buzzed.”
“How do I look then, hotshot?” I ask, smirking despite my earlier self-promises to forget about the boy with the blues.
“Like you’re in pain,” he snaps out, more fire in him now than he’s had in our previous interactions. The snippiness of his statements and the gleam in his eyes make me warmer, my pale skin flushing red.
Like you’re in pain .
Jesus Christ.
Is that how it goes then? All the depth of truth I’ve seen from his eyes and his obvious panic are reflected back at me—where I saw through him so easily, he can now see through me, like some twisted, broken mirror.
“Way to ruin a party mood,” I manage to grit out beneath a sudden suffocating wave of nausea before turning to knock on the door again, praying for an escape from the torment of his warm chocolate eyes.
“You weren’t in a party mood.”
“No?” I snap, eyes squinting toward him over my shoulder. My ponytail tosses with the swiftness of my movement. “Why do you think—”
The door bursts open and a tipsy Ro stumbles out, giggling and hiccupping like a drunken little fairy.
She spots us both, her eyes going wide as she finishes fixing the strapless striped top to her matching shorts, before pulling at her tall pale cream boots that give her an extra few inches over me she doesn’t truly need.
Grabbing me around the shoulders, she leans in and offers her hand to Rhys, who takes it gently.
“I’m Ro.” She smirks, continuing to side-eye me and wiggle her eyebrows.
“Rhys,” he offers. His smile toward her is dazzling, and I see tipsy, overly romantic Ro looking a little starstruck.
“Ro.” I smile, but it comes out more like a grimace. “Can you give us a minute? I’ll come down and meet you, and we can go.”
“I thought you and Sean—”
My hand slaps over her freshly re-glossed lips before I pull it swiftly away and wipe the sticky residue on my bare leg. Ro frowns dramatically at me, her cheeks burning as she takes in my face while I dutifully ignore the heat of Rhys’s gaze on my skin.
“Tell Sean I changed my mind. Since your English class buddy is hanging around, maybe you can talk to him.”
Ro’s face only flushes further as she giggles and backs up to hold onto the wall—but it isn’t a wall she’s grabbed, it’s a boy. One I also recognize.
The tall, lean, and muscular body comes to a halt, letting Ro completely mold to him as she stumbles and holds on to him.
He settles his hands on her hips to catch her stumbling, his boyish face glinting with stars in his eyes like a perfect prize just fell into his lap—and, in all fairness, it kind of did.
“Sorry,” Ro breathes out, her face tilting up toward him. Her curls cascade down her back, the flower clips I spent an hour meticulously putting in sliding down the strands, barely keeping them half-up now.
The man holding her bursts into a wide smile, his famous one that every girl at this party—hell, nearly every girl on campus—has probably succumbed to before.
It’s not hard to guess why—tall, muscular hockey god Matt Fredderic looks like pure gold.
He has a handsome face, somehow angular and soft at the same time, with carved smile lines like a supermodel version of a young Heath Ledger.
It definitely doesn’t help that he’s dressed like he walked out of some Greek vacation ad, the white linen short-sleeve button-up unbuttoned at the top to offset his golden skin, a chain and medallion of gold glinting in the dim hall light.
“You’re good, princess,” Freddy tells Ro. His mouth curves, hands touching the ends of her curls, which fall all the way down her back. “Need some help?”
“Nope,” I snap out, grabbing Ro’s hand and yanking her away from Trouble with a capital T. I know for a fact that if she were sober, her entire body would’ve jerked away from this man the second she accidentally brushed him. “No funny business, RoRo —now go. I’ll come find you.”
Ro grumbles at the nickname but releases the wrist of the playboy behind her and slinks down the stairs, albeit unsteadily. Freddy watches her with that same little glimmer in his eyes.
“Absolutely not,” both Rhys and I say at the same time.
“I didn’t do anything!” he barks, hands raising high in surrender. “I was only up here looking for your dumb ass.” He points an accusatory finger at Rhys. “Text Reiner back. He doesn’t believe me that I don’t have you completely wasted.”
“I’ll tell him we’ll be home soon.”
“Why?” I ask, regretting the word vomit immediately as Rhys looks up, a little shell-shocked and a little confused, but with the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. Freddy is smirking, walking backward and making himself scarce. “I mean—”
“Want me to stay?” Rhys asks; the smile aching to burst forward is barely held back. He stays where he is, like I might scare off if he gets too close.
“I’d like to see your stamina when you’re not fresh off an adrenaline-high crash.”
He lets out a quick laugh that he looks nearly shocked by, before shaking his head and closing his eyes, stalking toward me.
Before he gets to me, a different body cuts him off, pressing me into the wall and grinding down—ignorant of present company and oblivious to my disinterest.
Sean—last name redacted since I can’t seem to remember it—seemed like a good idea when he joined me on the dance floor earlier in the evening.
He’d been a regular hookup of mine during the absolute downfall of my life last semester.
He’d seemed like an even better idea when he’d started massaging my calves while chatting away about nothing I cared to hear.
His hands are strong, rough enough that they might leave a mark, or so I’d subtly hinted at him earlier.
It seems after seeing only Ro come back downstairs, he took that as an invite.
“Are you trying to eat me?” I snap, shoving him off, flooded with the embarrassment of this happening while Rhys can see.
I hate that prick of self-consciousness as much as I hate the immediate, obvious flush to my cheeks.
It’s not the hooking up I’m embarrassed about—I’ve always been unashamed of my sexuality, my choices to do what I want with who I want.
Hookups only, that’s my MO, and I refuse to apologize for it; if men don’t have to, why should I?
I enjoy myself and get what I need—most of the time.
So why does Rhys being here make my stomach hurt?
“That’s the plan, babe.” Sean smirks, crowding into me again. “Ready now?”
My face only flushes further as I shove him off again . “Not interested, actually. Get. Off.”