Chapter 37 – Josie
chapter
thirty-seven
Josie
I was looking for Waylon before I even stepped foot inside Kappa Nu. But he wasn’t on the porch.
It had been a week of near-misses, thanks to practice schedules and Marcus dogging my every step. It had all been crowded trails and stolen glances, nothing more. So tonight, I was looking.
I missed him. And God, I wanted to see him before I had to put on this girlfriend charade.
I could feel the bass in my chest before I even got through the door.
Kappa Nu had gutted the living room of everything that wasn’t a speaker or a person, and the speakers were loud enough to make the floor vibrate under my heels. Someone had strung red-and-white lights along the crown molding.
The staircase against the far wall was fully occupied, two bodies to a step, a girl in somebody’s lap with a Solo cup balanced on her knee.
A guy by the window was vaping into the November air and not even pretending to be subtle.
The air inside was thick with sweat, spilled beer, and way too much cologne, and under all of it was the sweet chemical smell of whatever jungle juice was currently destroying livers in the kitchen.
Sabrina Carpenter was on the speakers.
Marcus found me immediately and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Took you long enough.” He nuzzled into my neck, and I shied away as much as his arm would allow.
I smiled through my teeth at nobody in particular and let Marcus steer me.
“C’mon baby, smile,” he said, low, near my hair. “Smile.”
I am smiling, asshole.
I smiled harder. The muscles in my jaw ached.
“Kane!” somebody boomed from the kitchen doorway, and Marcus lit up. He never lit up for me like that. He pulled me into his side, his hand gripping my upper arm.
“You know my girlfriend Josie, right?”
“Hey.” I did the wave and the smile, the whole thing.
Kowalski said something that was either a compliment or a joke at my expense, and Marcus laughed. Then his palm was lifting off my back because Kowalski had said Petrov’s name, and Petrov was apparently in the kitchen doing something that required witnesses.
“Stay here,” Marcus said into my ear. His hand closed around my wrist on the way past, tight for one second, then gone. “I’ll find you.”
I looked around for somewhere to be, and that was when I saw him.
Waylon was in the far corner, couch against the window, beer in one hand, Ryder saying something to him and only getting half his attention.
His hair was doing the thing it did after a shower, loose and messy at the front.
Dark Henley, sleeves shoved to the elbows, the top two buttons open on a throat I had very recent memories of. Do not, I told myself.
But then my eyes landed on the girl. She wasn’t next to him.
She was on him, draped across his thigh like she lived there.
Dark hair, shiny in the red-white light, a loud laugh.
She had her hand flat on Waylon’s shoulder, fingers spread wide, and she was tilting her head back to laugh at something Ryder had said, and when she tilted her head back her shoulder pressed into Waylon’s jaw.
“Brooke,” somebody called from the kitchen. “Brooke, I got you one.”
So her name was Brooke.
Waylon’s arm was along the back of the couch. It wasn’t around her, technically, but he wasn’t pulling it away either. I measured the gap between his hand and her shoulder anyway. Four inches, maybe five. I hated that I was counting.
Oh, I thought. I’m going to be sick.
I turned away.
I found Kimmy at the drink table, stationed myself at her elbow, and let her tell me about the grievance she was currently holding against her chemistry lab partner.
Her outrage was very full-bodied. I nodded in the correct places.
I took another sip of my drink. I tried not to look at the corner by the window, but I looked anyway.
Waylon’s eyes were already on mine.
Across a whole room of drunk people having their Friday night, he was looking at me. He’d been looking at me the entire time I’d been pretending to listen to Kimmy.
I looked away first.
“— and then he had the audacity to text me about the next lab,” Kimmy was saying. “The audacity, Josie.”
“Staggering,” I said. “Truly.”
An hour passed, and it felt like four.
Marcus reappeared at my elbow twice, put his hand on my waist where everyone could see it, and disappeared again.
I talked to Kimmy and Lena and a few others. But every time I drifted near a wall or a doorway, my eyes found that corner anyway.
The girl was still there, laughing and leaning and making herself comfortable on him.
I set my drink down on a side table and slipped down the hallway toward the back of the house where the music got muffled. My heels had been sticking to the floor in the living room. Here, the floor was just old wood and somebody’s forgotten jacket.
I just needed the bathroom for two minutes.
I heard him behind me before I saw him.
“Flash.”
I stopped walking but didn’t turn around.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
He came up alongside me. A door on the left was cracked open, dark inside — mops, a vacuum, boxes of things nobody was ever going to unpack. His hand found my elbow, warm through the sleeve of my sweater, and he steered me through it and pulled the door shut behind us.
The air smelled like cardboard and old paint, and like him, soap and clean cotton and the cold he’d carried in from outside. A thin line of yellow hallway light ran under the door. The bass came through the wall at chest height.
“Waylon.” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“She was talking to me.” His voice was low and tight. “That’s the whole story.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. I saw your face.” He wasn’t touching me. He was close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him in the dark. “You’ve been looking at me like you want to take my head off since you walked in. But you seem to forget you’re the one driving me fucking crazy.”
“I didn’t like it. But everything is messy right now.”
“Kane’s been draped over you for the last two hours, and I have been trying not to lose my shit.”
“Oh really? Is that what you call her trying to kiss your neck?”
“Jealous, Flash?” His voice dropped, and I felt it low in my belly. “Now you know how I feel.”
I went with the anger, because anger was easier than the hurt. “You had a girl in your lap.”
He was quiet for a second. “Yeah.”
“So don’t stand here and lecture me.” I looked away, jaw tight. “Just — give me a minute.”
“You think I like that he had his hands on you, Josie?”
“She had her ass on you, Waylon.”
“You think he can make you come?” he said, and the question knocked the wind out of me.
“That’s not fair.”
“Answer the question.”
“Waylon.”
“Has he ever?” His voice was right at the shell of my ear, and I was aware of the hallway door, the thin wall, and the hundred people on the other side of it. The hair at the back of my neck lifted. “Has he ever made you feel one fraction of what I do?”
My throat went tight. His Henley sleeve brushed my forearm, and my whole arm went to pins and needles.
“N-no.”
“Say it properly.”
“No. He’s never made me come.”
“And he can’t.” He slid his hands down my waist. He made a low sound like he couldn’t help it, and my thighs pressed together. “I’m the only one,” he said. “Say it.”
“You’re the only one who’s ever made me come.” My voice was barely there. “The only one who can.”
Someone laughed in the hallway. The shadow of feet passed under the door. I stopped breathing. Waylon stopped breathing.
The feet kept walking, and neither of us moved.
I could feel my pulse in my throat, in my wrists, between my thighs. His breath wasn’t steady.
“Do you even miss me?” God, I felt so weak asking that.
His eyes searched mine. “How can you ask that.” He took my hand and put it over the bulge in his jeans. “Feel that? I’m fucking desperate for you.i can show you how much.”
There was no way he was serious. “We can’t. Someone will see.”
His forehead dropped, pressing into my hair for a single ragged breath. He pulled back, and the space between us felt cold. “I don’t care,” he said, but his voice was rough. “Go back out there.”
“Waylon...”
“Don’t.” His hand caught my wrist before I could reach for the door, and the grip was not gentle. “Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want me to do something about that throbbing in your pussy.”
The bass thudded through the wall. Someone shrieked with laughter in the kitchen. I could feel his thumb on the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse, and I knew he could feel it hammering.
“Waylon,” I said again, just to do it.
He made a sound that wasn’t a word and then his mouth was on mine in the dark.
There was no working up to it. His hand slid up to the back of my neck, fingers in my hair, and his tongue parted my lips like he had a right to.
I tasted beer and mint and him, and I made a noise into his mouth that I would have been embarrassed by anywhere else, but I didn’t have room to care right now.
His other hand was on my waist, then under the hem of my sweater, then on the bare skin of my stomach, and my whole body jerked toward him.
“Shh,” he breathed into my mouth. “Shh, Flash.”
“You said to go back out there.”
“I was being a dick. Please don’t leave. Let me touch you for a little bit. I need you so much.”
He walked me backward two steps until my shoulders hit something — a shelf, a wall, I didn’t care — and his thigh came up between mine and the seam of my jeans pressed exactly where I needed pressure and a sound came out of me that he had to swallow with his mouth to keep contained.
“Quiet,” he said against my jaw. “You have to be fucking quiet for me.”
“I can’t —”
“You can,” he whispered as he nipped my bottom lip.
His hand slid under my sweater and found the lace of my bra, his thumb dragging across my nipple through the thin fabric, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep it in.