Chapter 5
Chapter Five
I choke on my beer. Surely I misheard him. This is the absolute pinnacle of embarrassment in an evening rife with humiliation. Everyone around us is staring at me as I cough. This is the absolute pinnacle of embarrassment in an evening rife with humiliation.
“She needs water,” says Elliot, disappearing into the crowd of onlookers. More liquid is probably not what I need as I continue to sputter on the beer in my airway, but I’m too busy coughing to protest.
“We’ll be outside,” calls Felix, taking one of my arms while Lukas takes the other to steer me out the back door. Sebastian strides ahead of us, clearing a path to the back door.
Ronnie is halfway to us with a concerned look on her face, but I wave her off.
“Fresh air,” I mouth in between coughing fits so she knows where I am. Not that she could possibly miss the spectacle of me hacking up a lung as I’m escorted outside by three tall, attractive guys.
There’s a small porch on the back hosting a few smokers, but once they hear my coughing, they clear out pretty quick, leaving the guys to settle me on the bench swing.
Felix sits beside me and Lukas and Sebastian hover around us as I try to regain my breath. I try sipping a little beer to see if it helps, but it does not. It really is disgusting beer, even for a frat party.
It’s freezing out here. The sweat on my skin from inside began to dry as soon as the cold air hit my skin, and Ronnie’s strappy little glitter top isn’t doing anything to keep me warm. I rub my hands over my arms, and Lukas takes his sweatshirt off and drape it around my shoulders.
“Thanks,” I rasp out, still fighting a coughing fit, and slip my arms into the sleeves and zip it up. It’s warm from his body and smells like boy, in a good way. I’m tempted to bury my nose in the fabric and inhale, but that would be really weird of me, so I staunch the desire.
“Sorry it took me so long,” says Elliot, stepping out the back door and closing it behind him. “They’re out of cups and the glasses in the cupboard did not look clean, so I had to wash it first. Here you go, this should help.”
I accept the glass and take a sip. The water is much better than the beer.
The only reason I’d been drinking it in the first place was to give my hands something to do and to not look out of place.
Looking around, I realize that none of them have a drink in their hands.
They can’t hold a beer and solve their cubes one-handed, after all.
Wait, actually, they can. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
But for whatever reason, they’re here, completely sober, and want to spend time with me.
“Thanks, I needed that,” I say to Elliot, once I’ve drained half the glass.
“What did you answer about the photo?” asks Elliot. “I wasn’t here to hear it.”
“We’re still waiting for an answer,” says Lukas, leaning against the railing across from the swing and pinning me with his gaze.
The other guys fall into line on either side of him, Felix standing to join them. It’s a little intimidating, all four of them staring at me from the railing, solving their cubes almost in tandem.
“Why do you want one?” I sip more water instead of the beer, which I set on the table next to the swing as I have no plans to consume any more of it tonight.
Even if it doesn’t try to pour itself into my lungs, I don’t want to fit in badly enough to force any more of it down.
Not to mention, I’ve embarrassed myself plenty tonight stone-cold sober.
The last thing I need is to get tipsy and make it worse.
“Fair is fair,” says Sebastian, echoing Lukas’s words from a few minutes ago.
“Exactly,” agrees Elliot. “You have one of us.”
They do have a point. I’ve been looking at their photo all week, and it’s not fair for them not to have the same opportunity.
I can’t believe I just had that thought.
“Why? Other than to be fair?” I ask. “Because I could delete your photo from my phone right now, if you want me to.”
I don’t want to delete it, but if they’re uncomfortable with me having it and this is their way of telling me, then I will.
Their hands still on their cubes. It appears I’ve alarmed them with my suggestion.
“Don’t delete it,” says Sebastian quietly.
“Yeah, don’t. We like you having it,” Felix tells me.
Elliot is the first to resume his cube-fidgeting. “We could send you better ones.”
I chug the rest of my water to avoid eye contact with any of them, so they don’t see how much that idea appeals to me.
They do look sort of stiff and awkward in the picture I took of them with their prize ribbons.
I wouldn’t mind having better photos of them.
I’m not prepared to fully examine why I want them, though.
Lukas, apparently taking my silence for agreement, pulls out his phone. “What’s your number?”
The back door opens and Ronnie pokes her head out, her gaze sweeping from one end of the porch to the other before her eyes land on us.
“There you are,” she says, stepping out and immediately wrapping her arms around her shoulders to stay warm. “I’m going home with Trevor, are you cool out here?”
Ronnie’s eyes shift, questioning, to the four tall guys leaning against the railing with their phones out.
If I said anything, she’d jump in and drag me out of here with her.
Sure, she might then make me hang out in Trevor’s living room while she spends time with him in his bedroom, but she would rescue me if I needed her to.
“We’ll bring her home,” Elliot tells her.
“She’ll be safe with us,” adds Felix.
Ronnie eyes them, solving their cubes one-handed with their phones in the other, and grins at me.
“Okay, I’ll tell Callie. See you in the morning!” She disappears back into the house, the door slamming shut behind her.
Wow. Normally when she ditches me at a party it takes ages to convince her I’ll be fine catching a ride back to the dorm with any of the other girls on our floor.
Turning back to the guys, I take in the way they fidget with their cubes and realize that she probably assumed they’re harmless nerds.
Or maybe she’s engaging in her favorite activity: Meddling in Rebecca’s Love Life (or Lack Thereof).
Knowing Ronnie, that’s the more likely scenario.
“Okay,” says Lukas, straightening from the railing. “Do you want us to take you home now, or do you want to stay for a bit longer?”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that. I’m sure I can find one of the other girls from my dorm to drive me back.
We all came together, they’ll text me when they want to leave.
” I don’t want to make them drive all the way to my college just to turn around and drive right back here.
Well, not here, specifically. I’m not sure where they live, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in this frat house.
Elliot looks baffled. “Of course we need to,” he says. “We promised whoever that was we would take you home.”
“That was my roommate, Ronnie.” I steel myself for them to start asking more questions about her. People are always asking about Ronnie because she’s so fun and outgoing and pretty. She makes an impression.
“Okay, well, we don’t want to have lied to Ronnie. We want her to like us. If your friends don’t like us, they won’t want you to date us.” Lukas hands me his phone. “I opened a new contact so you can easily put in your information.”
He steps off the back porch into the yard, and starts making his way around to the front of the house. The others follow, shepherding me along with them. I let them guide me, because my brain is still back on the porch trying to wrap itself around what Lukas just said.
They … they want to date me? These guys, these four good-looking, obviously brilliant guys, want ordinary, boring me?
I know I’ve been flirting with the idea all week, with my tame little “they win and run offstage to have behind-closed-doors celebration sex with me” fantasies, but I haven’t fully acknowledged even to myself that I’ve developed a huge crush on them.
I only glance back at the house once before following them, Lukas’s phone still in my hand. I could go inside and look for Callie and Reyna, but I doubt they want to leave yet, and I’m over this party. Besides, the guys are surrounding me, corralling me to wherever they’ve parked their car.
Looking down at Lukas’s phone, I see he already started the phone contact for me, putting in both my first and last name. All I have to do is put in a number.
Girls in college do this sort of thing all the time. They meet a guy, give him their number, he texts them, and they go out on dates. Maybe they even sleep together. This is all completely normal.
It’s just that this is new to me. I’m not the type of girl to sleep around, or even date. I don’t think I know how to do this. Especially if, as Lukas implied, they all want to date me.
How would that work? Would I be dating them all individually, just with the understanding that they’re all okay with it?
Or would I be dating all of them together, at the same time?
And beyond dating, if we get to the point where we’re having sex, is that going to be a group activity, or individual?
I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t even typed my number into Lukas’s phone yet, it’s way too soon to be thinking about sex.
But now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop imagining what each of them is like between the sheets.
Sebastian doesn’t talk much but I can feel his eyes on me, the way he notices every detail, every movement. I bet he’d be attentive in bed. He’d make sure I came first.
Lukas, on the other hand, is pretty vocal about what he wants. He’d tell me exactly what he wants me to do. And probably manhandle me into every position he can think of to try. I think he’d still make sure I was having a good time, but he’d be a lot more take-charge than Sebastian.