3
Aura
Bliss sends thirteen photos of bridesmaid dresses in six minutes, which feels less like wedding planning and more like an organized attack on my peace.
I’m in bed at the ABC apartment with my laptop open beside me, a half-eaten bag of kettle corn on my nightstand, and my phone lighting up every few seconds with another satin, chiffon, or silk option proving Bliss has lost her mind to love and Pinterest. Charm is asleep across the hall—or pretending to be asleep in that elegant way she does when she wants plausible deniability for ignoring us so she can sext Ryan while thinking we don’t know.
I should be asleep. I have a reading assignment for Cartright that will absolutely require caffeine and legal rage tomorrow morning, but Bliss labeled the group chat Bride Tribe But Make It Hot, so now I’m trapped in the ninth circle of supportive-best-friend hell.
The latest dress loads slowly, the image sharpening from a blur into something pale gold and backless, all delicate straps and soft drape, the kind of dress designed for women who have healthy relationships with vulnerability and upper-body exposure.
I stare at it for too long.
My thumb hovers over the screen.
A backless dress should not be a threat.
Fabric is fabric. Skin is skin. I know this.
I own mirrors, bikinis, and dresses so short my father would need a rosary and a blood pressure cuff if he ever saw them.
I can be half-naked in public and feel nothing but control because public is performance.
Public is lighting, posture, attitude, and choosing where people look.
Private is different.
Private is where a man can destroy your life with one decision.
Another photo pops up, this one from the back. The model’s hair is lifted off her neck, her spine bare, her body turned slightly as if she has never once worried about what surrender looked like from behind.
My stomach tightens before I can stop it.
Bliss: Too soft? Too wedding cupcake? Be honest but not felony honest.
Charm replies immediately, which means she has absolutely been awake.
Charm: It is beautiful, but Aura will call it haunted lingerie.
I type my first reaction.
Me: It looks like a ghost got invited to prom.
Then I delete it because Bliss is emotional and I’m trying to be supportive without lying under oath.
Instead, I send something with more of a happy-for-you vibe.
Me: Pretty. Maybe too pale for me unless you want me looking like the dress and I are fighting for custody of my undertones.
Bliss sends back three laughing emojis.
Bliss: Okay, rude but useful.
I drop the phone against my chest and stare at the ceiling.
The room is dark except for the glow of my screen and the thin blue wash from the streetlight sneaking through my curtains. My own reflection stares back from the black laptop screen, my hair wrapped for the night, face bare, eyes sharper than I feel.
My phone lights again. This time, it’s another dress, champagne silk with a slit high enough to start family drama.
The color hits first, although it isn’t champagne exactly.
Gold.
Warm, wet-looking gold under firelight.
Bare skin. Sand. Music. Lake air. Easton in swim trunks with his hair damp and his eyes on me like he had already decided the night was going to end badly for both of us.
My throat goes dry.
I close my eyes, but memory is a rude bitch and has never once asked permission before entering the room.
Eighteen months ago, the first time I let Easton put his hands on me, I was wearing a bikini that should have come with a warning label, and he was standing in the sand like a man who had no idea he was about to become a problem.
The lake party was not supposed to matter, and that is important for the record.
It was supposed to be another reckless summer night before campus swallowed us whole again, one of those late-August parties where everyone pretended the semester hadn’t started because technically it was still warm enough to make bad decisions near water.
Somebody from the team knew somebody whose family had a lake house twenty minutes outside Kimball Falls.
Somehow, that turned into half the Fury, three houses’ worth of friends, two bonfires, a speaker system that deserved criminal charges, and enough beer to make the shoreline smell like hops, sunscreen, and future regret.
Bliss dragged me there because Bliss believed fresh air solved things.
Charm came because Bliss asked, and Charm could make a gas-station bathroom look like a society event if she stood in it with the right posture.
I came because my red bikini arrived in the mail that morning, and I am not a woman who wastes good fabric or the opportunity to remind men they are not in charge just because they can see skin.
The bikini was ridiculous—deep red, high-cut, tiny gold rings at the hips, and a top that did exactly enough to keep things legal while making eye contact feel like a test most men failed immediately.
I wore oversized sunglasses, gold hoops, and my braids loose down my back because if I was going to walk into a lake party full of athletes, I preferred to look like temptation with excellent boundaries.
Getting dressed like this had become a ritual, proof that I had fought my way back to feeling sexy without surrendering control. I kept my rule book close whenever a man caught my eye because I would never become that powerless version of myself again.
Bliss took one look at me when I stepped out of the bathroom and pressed both hands to her heart.
“Oh, she came to ruin lives.”
“I came to tan.”
Charm lifted her drink from the kitchen island without looking up from her phone. “You came to emotionally destabilize men with a family history of poor impulse control.”
“Exactly that,” I said.
By the time we reached the lake, the sun had already started dropping behind the trees, turning the water copper and the sand warm under my sandals.
Music bumped from somewhere near the dock.
Someone had strung lights between pine trees and over the porch of the lake house, and the bonfire closest to the shore had already grown big enough to make everyone around it look prettier and more dangerous than they probably were.
Briggs saw us first because he had the observational subtlety of a golden retriever spotting a tennis ball.
“Bennett!” he yelled from beside a cooler, shirtless, damp, and holding what appeared to be a marshmallow skewer like a weapon. “You brought the council!”
“The council voted against whatever you’re about to ask,” I called back.
“I hadn’t asked yet.”
“That’s how efficient we are.”
Ryan stood near him in black swim trunks and an open button-down shirt, tattoos on display, his expression dry as sand. As usual, he looked like the ABCs’ collectively approved bad decision, our Chicano god of tattoos and sin. The man was so fine it made him untouchable.
“The council is smart,” he said.
Briggs pointed the skewer at him. “You’re only saying that because Charm is here and you get weird around expensive women.”
Charm slipped her sunglasses down her nose. “Expensive?”
Ryan’s mouth barely moved. “I get nervous around no women.”
Briggs made a wounded sound. “You’re supposed to deny it.”
“I’m comfortable with self-awareness.”
“Since when?”
“Since I became superior.”
Rider lounged in one of the low beach chairs near the fire, quiet as ever, his blond hair pulled back and his elbows resting on his knees while his attention moved over the party like he was collecting details nobody else would remember.
“That started today?” he asked.
Ryan looked at him. “Don’t participate.”
Rider lifted one shoulder, almost smiling. “You made it easy.”
I laughed because it was impossible not to, and then I saw Easton on the dock.
He wasn’t doing anything dramatic, which was offensive because he did not need help being noticeable.
He stood near the end with a beer in one hand, shirt off, swim trunks low on his hips, and shoulders wet like he had just climbed out of the lake.
The last of the sunlight caught in his pale hair and slid over the hard lines of his chest and arms, making him look carved out of every terrible idea I had ever had and several I had been too smart to try.
He looked at my face first. Looking at my body first would have been easier, but his eyes went to my face before sliding down and returning again, like he understood looking was a privilege and wanted me to know he knew exactly what he was doing with it.
I hated him immediately, even if my skin warmed in places the bonfire had not touched.
Bliss’s head turned slowly, following my line of sight. “Absolutely not.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You breathed slutty.”
Charm choked on her drink.
“I did not breathe slutty.”
“You did,” Charm said, coughing delicately into one hand. “It was subtle, but legally present.”
“I regret both of you finding me in life.”
Bliss leaned closer, lowering her voice while pretending not to stare at Easton because she had the discretion of a woman who wanted the best for people and the patience of a caffeinated raccoon. “He has been looking over here since we got out of the car.”
“Then he needs a hobby.”
“He has one. Defense.”
“Not helpful.”
Briggs came charging over before Bliss could make it worse, his feet sandy, hair damp, and grin wide enough to cause property damage.
“Aura, gold was a hostile choice.”
“So was coming over here.”
“I love when you greet me like a hater in lip gloss.”
“You make it easy.”
He pressed a hand to his chest and looked at Charm. “She wounds me because she knows I’m emotionally accessible.”
Charm smiled. “You are emotionally available in all caps.”
“Thank you. I work hard at being legible.”
Ryan appeared beside him and passed Charm a bottle of water without comment. She looked at it, then at him.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“You don’t have a drink. I was being a gentleman, mami.”
Her brow lifted. “Do you monitor everyone’s hydration, papi?”