11. Undercover And Thoroughly Intoxicated
UNDERCOVER AND THOROUGHLY INTOXICATED
LAKE
“Please come with me tonight,” I beg, latching on to Ellaria’s arm and giving her my best puppy dog pout.
She feigns offense. “Right, so I can follow you around as you infiltrate the hockey team and spy on them?”
“It’s a party, El. There’ll be tons of stuff to do there. Drink, make out, do drugs. You know, the essentials.”
My best friend surrenders and plops down on my bed with an exaggerated sigh, rubbing my boring, white comforter between her fingers.
My bedroom is…dated. Student salary and all that.
A collection of pictures of my family and high school friends, a pop of grunge black, and a small collection of old-timey vinyls that I have yet to enjoy because record players are freakishly expensive.
My favorite concert posters made it up on the wall—curling at the edges from old age—but reminiscent of a time in my teen years when I could bend down without cracking my knees.
Everything is a time capsule of sorts—fossilized in dust, lonely amidst the unintentional minimalism.
“Why do you even have to work at a party? I thought the article you’re writing is supposed to be about their life on the ice, not off it.”
“Tammy doesn’t just want cold, hard facts.
She wants the inside scoop on their interpersonal relationships.
She wants to know what makes them tick. Kind of overkill if you ask me, but I’m slightly terrified of her.
The student population isn’t going to tune in because they’re avid hockey fans; they’re going to tune in because they want to secretly dismantle the top of the food chain. ”
Ellaria sucks her teeth. “Jesus. Hope they’re paying you extra for that.”
Am I really wasting my Saturday night by going to a frat party that I’ve outgrown? Yes, but not without ulterior motives. I know for a fact that Sutton is going to be there, and I think he would’ve asked me to be his plus-one if he didn’t look so constipated at the protest.
Did I want him to kiss me amidst the battle cries of my fellow warriors? Fuck yeah. But…maybe we’re just not there yet. The last thing I want to do is rush into things and scare him off.
A frown folds in Ellaria’s peachy-glossed lips, and the pulse in my neck is rioting like an insistent drumline.
So, having exhausted all my options, I plead with her one last time not to abandon me in a never-ending maze of testosterone and bad decisions. “Pleeeaaaseee. I’ll buy you Taco Bell on the way home. I need the support, and Sutton is going to be there.”
Ellaria crosses her arms over her chest and gives me a shit-eating grin. “Oh, Sutton is going to be there, huh? Is this why you’re low-key losing your mind?”
I huff, though the nerves inside me say otherwise. I never used to experience anxiety over a man. I’d ride those blissfully unaware waves all the way into the sunset like my bloodstream was permanently half THC.
What I feel for Sutton scares me more than jail or my mother’s disappointment or not living up to anything in life and eventually becoming a college dropout. The uncertainty of our friendship reminds me that I can lose him as easily as I met him.
“Pish, I am not ‘losing my mind.’ I’m doing great, actually. Sutton and I—we’re just friends.”
God, I fucking hate that word.
A bitter taste congeals on my tongue, triggering a feedback loop of melodrama that would send me to a psychiatric hospital if we were still in the 1900s.
He doesn’t look at me like I’m merely a friend, but he hasn’t made a move either.
I haven’t even ingested any alcohol yet and my stomach is starting to hurt.
Unfortunately for me, Ellaria has become a Lake expert after extensive studying, and she is fine-tuned to every tell I have. “You wouldn’t ask me to go with you to a party if something wasn’t seriously wrong. Admit it, you need emotional backup.”
As I glance out my window, an omen crackles in the gray-bellied sky, darkening stratocumulus with strokes of pitch-black oil pastels.
“Even if I wanted something to happen tonight, there’s no guarantee anything will.”
“Come on, the two of you have already seen each other half-naked.”
“Gasp! I told you that in confidence!”
My pathetic supplicating transforms into a much-needed motivational talk, and my best friend casts a metaphorical reel to save me from the bottomless depths of self-doubt.
“You’re Lake fucking Capitano. You have enough sex appeal to make a monk break his vow of celibacy.
If Sutton can’t see what’s right in front of him, then he’s an idiot, which is why you should whip out your sexiest dress and show him what he’s missing.
If you want a kiss tonight, make yourself irresistible. ”
I do want a kiss. I want a long, hard, passionate kiss from the one man I can’t stop thinking about. And if he wants to rip my clothes off Bridgerton-style and confess his undying admiration for me, I wouldn’t be opposed.
I know just the dress Ellaria is talking about.
All black, short hem, plunging neckline, cinches around my waist and makes me look like I got a few ribs removed.
It’s the dress that gave Buford an inferiority complex whenever we would go out together—which wasn’t a lot.
If Sutton doesn’t cream his pants when he sees me, I’ve failed.
I must’ve gotten my signature I’m-about-to-fuck-shit-up-and-make-it-everyone’s-problem look in my eyes because Ellaria shares a complementary expression of mischief. My confidence comes swinging into the picture with the force of a mallet.
I’ll get the inside scoop, make a move on Sutton, and be out of Sigma Chi’s house before midnight. The plan is seamless. Not even anxiety’s relentless undertow could wick me into the ocean.
My pussy is ready for action (wishful thinking), I have enough adrenaline surging through me to kill a cow, and every reservation Sutton has stuffed in the rafters of his skull are about to come crashing down.
“Let’s fucking do this.”
Sigma Chi and I have a…complicated…relationship. Once a piss-smelling vessel used to mollify me on the loneliest of nights, it’s now a popularized staple where everyone goes to drink their problems away or make out with a stranger that they’ll inevitably never see again.
The womb of the two-story house throbs with obnoxious EDM music, a myriad of stains glutting every conceivable surface.
Untainted air is scarce, my breath frays while a spate of nerves make themselves known in the pit of my belly, and my latent hatred for social events on par with the size of a small, underground concert supplicates me to turn around and evacuate the premises as soon as possible.
With sweat lacquering my forehead, I shove my way into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of hard liquor, needing this bad boy to dull the edge before I strangle the next person who rams into me.
Tequila. Nothing top shelf, obviously. It’s lukewarm, artificially too sweet, and singes my stomach lining after one consecutive chug.
Ellaria watches me with a grimace. “You good?”
Call it the placebo effect, but I swear this shit is already kicking in. “Huh? Oh, me? Yeah, I’m good.”
“You never drink hard liquor right out the gate. Is this about Sutton?”
“It’s not about Sutton,” I insist through a tooth-bound grievance, realizing a second too late that there’s not enough food in my belly to sponge up the violent stream of alcohol I just guzzled down.
It’s not about him, nor is it about my bruised ego.
We’re not together. He didn’t invite me to this party, even though it was broadcasted all over his teammates’ socials that they’d be in attendance tonight with their significant others.
It doesn’t mean anything. They probably have plans afterwards or something.
Careful, Lake. Your jealousy is showing.
After a few more drinks, I needle my travel-sized notepad out of my dress pocket like a true journalist, beginning to make my rounds, and jotting down the underwhelmingly predictable behaviors of MU’s so-called “gods.”
Beer pong champions. Sex fiends. Cocaine enthusiasts—shit, I can’t include that.
All of it is rather redundant, but the good news is that I’m exceeding my tolerance and passing the state line of tipsy. It takes a lot to slow me down.
Ellaria has been by my side the entire night, keeping an eye on me like I’m a five-foot-seven toddler determined to open all the child locks and stick my chubby fingers into all the prohibited substances.
She’s pulling me behind her to weave single file through the dense mass of people before something stops her in her tracks. There are too many heads in the way for me to pinpoint her distress.
“Let’s turn back. We should go over there,” she shouts over the music, switching gears and reorienting me a full one-eighty. The panic in her tone piques my curiosity, and, as usual, I heed her warning with a grain of salt.
Thanks to my slippery reflexes, I squat underneath her arm, start shuffling, and use the congested throng of partygoers to my advantage.
We break apart pretty easily, and sure enough, when I make it to my first checkpoint not overflowing with inebriated college students, the hockey team is posted up near one of the windows.
Maybe I was subconsciously manifesting my own destiny, but Sutton is standing front and center before me, graciously silhouetted by a navy-blanketed sky festering with a glaucous bloom of heavy storm clouds.
He laughs at something one of his teammates says, his cheeks puckering with an ear-to-ear grin that I wish was directed at me.
This is fucking creepy. I’m being creepy.
Despite the paradoxical urge to stand here and watch him from a faraway bluff, my self-respect isn’t so easily disregarded—unlike my sensibility that has swirled down the drain.
I don’t know how to handle all these ooey-gooey feelings webbed between the cracks of my body, hollowed out by years of apathy and replaced with a phlegmatic masquerade that couldn’t be more contrived.
The concept of Sutton and I being together—it’s antithetical.
He’s popular and well-adjusted, and I’m one bad decision away from winding back up in jail or maybe somewhere in a ditch in the outfield of a backwater town.
You have a job to do, remember, Lake?
I bet Buford is around here sticking his nose up some poor girl’s skirt. I click my trusty-dusty pen and scribble hastily onto my pad of paper.
CHEATERS.
“Lake?”
Huh. That’s weird. I don’t remember Ellaria’s voice sounding so…deep. Like a ripsaw in all the right ways.
The second I lift my head to make eye contact with my pursuer, my vision slants to the wayside, my heart falls out of my ass, and I freeze on the spot like a rabbit caught in the hungry eyeline of a rough-and-tumble predator.
Sutton.
Shit, my cover has been blown. I immediately stuff my notepad into my dress before he can see it.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, softening his voice to a temperate degree, a mixture of excitement and confusion blustering over his handsome features. He eats the distance between us in a few strides, then rubs his hands down my arms in an intimate gesture.
It feels like he has the barrel of a revolver pressed against my temple, and my survival depends on my ability to twist the truth.
“Uh, I’m just here with my friend, Ellaria. She’s back there somewhere.” I jerk my thumb in the direction I came. If I keep talking, I’ll either submit all of us to an inadvertent faux pas or vomit all over his shoes.
Guilt-addled, Sutton pulls me to the side so I don’t get swallowed up by the restless swarm.
“I swear I would’ve invited you as my plus-one. I just—you didn’t seem like the type of person who’d enjoy this kind of thing.”
“The girl who puts herself in danger for fun doesn’t seem like she’d enjoy a party full of endless booze and recreational drugs?”
When he laughs, the rumble sits comfortably in his barrel chest, taking every one of my harried thoughts and padding them with soft cotton.
I missed hearing it. Granted, it’s only been like a day and a half since I last saw him, but the tequila is making me sappier than usual.
I don’t—I’m not a hopeless romantic. Romance is for losers.
Sutton cocks his head, that beautiful mullet of his looking way too finger-fuckable. “So you admit it: you put yourself in danger.”
I rise to my tiptoes to bop him on the nose. “For fun.”
He ignores my little quip, assessing me with the same seriousness the head of mortuary affairs might use when studying a half-mummified corpse. “Jeez, how many drinks have you had, Lake?”
“Not that many. Just a few. Without chasers. I’m not a lightweight though. I didn’t eat anything before I came.”
Sutton sighs. “You need to take better care of your body.”
I wasn’t planning on getting super drunk tonight. I just wanted to drown out the noise for a little while. I guess I was half successful?
Two things can happen when I introduce alcohol into my system. One, I get over-the-top drowsy. Or two, I get over-the-top horny. Right now, it looks like the latter is making a guest appearance.
“You can take better care of my body,” I say, slipping on my best seduction guise and winking with both eyes.
Sutton doesn’t say anything, but his cheeks burst into rubescence. There’s an almost imperceptible shift in his jaw before he hugs me protectively into his side, still three times my size and grizzled with well-intentioned annoyance.
“Are you here for me or one of your articles?” he inquires.
I wobble a bit on my boots, euphoria cracking in my chest like an egg and bleeding runny yolk right down the middle. “That’s for me to know, and for you to dot, dot, dot.”
A chuff billows out of Sutton. “Didn’t realize drinking was a part of said job description.”
“Shhh, don’t tell Tammy,” I whisper, smushing my index finger to my lips.
“You’re not leaving my sight tonight, Lake. Not even for a second.”