by Rachel Shane
“Mackenzie,” Fallon tugged on my sleeve. “He’s not coming, let’s just leave.”
I nodded in defeat. We both had eight A.M. classes the next morning. We made our way toward the door, coasting through the empty space that was usually crammed with bodies. Just as we reached the exit, Corey walked in with some of his fraternity brothers, Nate absent from the pack. Corey’s entire face lit up with a grin. “Hey, babe.” He kissed me on the cheek, swinging me into his arms. I closed my eyes and savored the touch of his lips against my skin. Soon the two of us were sharing shots and dancing to the music, our bodies in sync to every beat, every swivel of hips.
He pulled me close to him and whispered in my ear. “I missed you.”
His words tangled through my chest, burrowing close to my heart. “You did?” I trailed my nails along his torso from shoulder to crotch.
“You missed me too, admit it. Your status message wasn’t exactly subtle.”
I looked away at Fallon chatting up a girl we knew from freshman year. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Corey cradled his nose against my neck and breathed hot air into my ear. “I thought this was casual.”
His words made me deflate. Still, I kept my voice flirty. “Who said it wasn’t?”
“Okay, just checking that you weren’t, like, waiting for me tonight or anything.” He laced his fingers in mine.
“And I thought this was secret?” I held up our interlocked hands.
“It is.” He didn’t need to say anything else for me to understand. …But only from Bianca.
I could live with that. For now.
A FEW WEEKS LATER, I joined Bianca, Erin, and the guys at Quigley’s where my sorority was hosting a graffiti party. The dress code required everyone to wear a white t-shirt, quite a change from the usual low cut tank tops that graced the floor. At the door, customers exchanged cover charge for a colored marker with a portion of the collection donated to the charity Rho Sigma sponsored. Corey usually only came out with us once or twice a week and I equally savored and dreaded those nights. I wouldn’t dare look at him the entire time, fearing my face would give away our secret tryst. So instead I’d watch Bianca stealing glances in the boys’ direction as they ordered our drinks, dragging Corey and then Nate in turn for provocative dances that probably belonged in lesser establishments. Every time she and Corey shared a laugh, my stomach squeezed. But then he’d swoop me in his arms for a single dance. We’d fit together like puzzle pieces, my leg sliding between his. He’d whisper treats into my ear under the guise of singing, little sweet nothings that amounted to everything to me: I missed you. There’s a new position I want to try. Come over later.
And there usually was a later. I’d go home to keep up the ruse, then switch gears to head over to his place. Still, I kept hearing about Corey attending other sororities’ functions—crush parties, semi-formals, mixers—and I feared maybe there was someone else, a reason why we had to keep us to only us. A reason why he didn’t ask me over every night. I didn’t want to be a polygamist’s wife. I had to say something before I exploded.
Tonight, a sea of white shirts lit up the otherwise dreary wooden decor. Layla Davies roamed around with a blue marker, drawing phallic symbols on everybody’s shirts so the guys didn’t have to. As soon as we stepped inside, Corey immediately spun around and drew green nipples on all of our chests. He made mine lopsided, so I wrote a cheery, “Ask me about my hairy balls!” message on his shirt in bubble letters, earning a chuckle. Bianca drew chaste little stars on Nate’s sleeve in a clear attempt to downplay the vulgarity. But Erin kicked it back up a notch with some good old fashioned swear words written in giant letters across our backs.
After completing our art masterpieces, Corey led the way, shoving through the crowd until we found sanctuary in an empty patch of floor away from the counter. “Drinks?” He pointed at each of us, his finger lingering on me an extra second. Nate flanked him like a body guard. “First round’s on me,” Corey said. “Unless you’d all prefer to ask me about my hairy balls?”
Bianca ran her hand through her hair. She glanced at the guys through the space between her fingers. “Rum and diet.”
Nate suggested we all do tequila shots. I nodded my consent. It was easier to be with Corey in public when he wasn’t actually in my vicinity, so I let out a breath as he fled to the bar.
“Be right back. Holly’s over there.” Erin squeezed her way through the crowd, brandishing her marker, toward a girl dressed in skinny jeans and bouncy pony tail.
Bianca moved her shoulders to the trendy Clever Trevor pop song booming through the room. She gyrated close to me, her butt grazing my thighs. “Mackenzie, look at him over there. God, he looks amazing in that shirt.”
My eyes flew to where Corey stood by the bar, Nate stretching a long tanned arm to reach over his shoulder. She was right, Corey looked damn good in that tight-fitting white Polo that sculpted his barely there abs. But I couldn’t stoke her fire. “I think he wore that shirt last week.” In fact, I knew he did, I remembered clutching the bottom in my fists and pulling it over his head.
She wrapped her silver nails around my shoulder. “I can’t take it anymore. I have to tell him how I feel. What should I say?” Bianca’s big green eyes blinked at me. Was nothing an option I could give her?
Corey glanced back and gave us a chin nod followed by a smile that lit the entire room.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Do you—do you think he likes you back?”
Her cheekbones slid like tectonic plates. “Yeah, I think he might. You’ve seen the way we dance.”
I nodded. I had. I couldn’t deny it.
My nod was all the confirmation she needed. She squared her shoulders and pointed her determined face in their direction. Her pointy heel brought her one step closer to them. Fight or flight mode took over, and I grabbed her arm. Before she had a chance to wriggle free, I blurted, “I slept with him.”
Her manufactured tan bleached into stark whiteness, so much so that the girls dancing next to her backed away as if she might faint on them. Her eyes glistened and her mouth parted, making her look like a child who’d just been scolded. But that was nothing to how I felt, my breath ragged, my pulse spiking to heart attack levels, my shoulders free of their burden.
“You—what?”
Sweat beaded along my forehead. The truth was out there now, hanging heavy between us. I couldn’t take it back, and frankly, I didn’t want to. “It was really fucking good sex, too.” Holy hell, why did I say that? Sometimes I sucked. “It’s been going on for a while.” That wasn’t any better. I tried to slide my features into something that resembled guilt. “I’m sorry, I should have told you.” I had to work extra hard to keep the smile off my face.
“But—” Bianca swiveled her head back at the boys. “You never even talk to him. You’re always talking to Corey.”
Wait…
My head snapped up, all the guilt rushing from my body like the flood gates had opened. Still, I squinted at her to make sure. “You like Nate?”
She hesitated, like she was afraid to admit it, afraid of my answer. “I’ve had the biggest crush on him for over a year.” Lament filled her tone for all she thought she’d lost.
She liked Nate! Nate, who’d barely said two full sentences to me in the entire month Corey and I were seeing each other. Nate, whose only relevant trait seemed to be his chiseled face and hardened abs that hopefully made up for his lack of personality. Nate, who never ever slept in his own room but didn’t have a girlfriend as far as I could tell.
The whole situation was so hilariously ridiculous to me, I burst out laughing. I’d been so terrified of Bianca crushing on Corey that I neglected to acknowledge the fact whenever she glanced in his direction, there was always another guy standing right next to him. I’d obsessed about her dancing with Corey and ignored all the dancing she did with Nate.
Bianca crossed her arms, her features hardening to ice. “Seriously
? You’re laughing at me?”
I spit out the truth before she could get angry. “I’m laughing because we’re idiots. I slept with Corey. Not Nate.”
“Oh.” Her arms fell to her sides and her body relaxed. “Oh!” She fanned the air in front of her. “You had SEX with him? With my Corey? Oh my God!” Bianca emphasized the word sex by screaming it while only whispering the rest of the sentence. The couple dancing next to us turned to stare. Bianca clasped her throat as if she was gasping for air.
I shrugged as heat flew to my cheeks. “It’s not a big deal.” She looked at me like I had just written a calculus problem on a napkin and asked her to solve it.
“And ew, now I know he’s good in bed. I did not want to know that about Corey!” Bianca covered her ears and pretended to hyperventilate.
My chest cinched tight. “Well, look at the bright side. Now you totally have my blessing to go after Nate. Go ahead, pull him onto the dance floor and kiss him.”
I eyed the way Nate placed a firm hand on the back of Corey’s shoulder, patting once, before sliding several shot glasses between his fingers. I still couldn’t figure out what she saw in Nate. I kept forgetting he existed.
She scrunched up her nose. “Ew. No. I won’t do that in public. It’s rude.”
Around us, several couples sucked face while gyrating their hips the same way Corey and I did in the bedroom. Before I could point that out, Corey thrust a shot glass into my hands and strung an arm around my shoulders. He did that sometimes, only for a second or two and he’d always balanced it by doing the same thing to Bianca next. An anvil tore through my gut and dropped straight to the floor at the giddy smile on her face. I had to do damage control. I had to—
“Corey! I can’t believe you!” Bianca took her shot from Corey’s other hand, then pushed him so hard he stumbled.
He strung his free hand over his heart. “What did I do?”
“Who!” Bianca said. “You mean, who did you do!”
His eyes flashed to me, smile waning. I downed the shot without waiting for the others. My voice came out scratchy. “Um, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“No. He’s talking to me.” Bianca clasped his fingers, forcing him to remove his arm from around me.
Panic shot through my gut like an arrow. I pleaded with my eyes from Bianca to Nate—talk to Nate! Not Corey!—but the two of them retreated into the far corner of the bar, shots in hand like weapons. That left me alone with Nate. He acknowledged my glance with an elongated blink, and the two of us stood in utter silence. Corey and Bianca whispered into each other’s ears, his palm resting on her shoulder. He flicked his face in my direction, smile completely flattened. My blood turned to sludge.
The song changed to a slow melodic one and here I stood statue-still next to a guy with his eyes closed swaying to the beat. I willed myself to think of something to say to Nate, but came up with nothing that didn’t involve me blurting the whole secret all over again. I couldn’t even talk about the weather. Upstate New York was always gray and cloudy with the threat of snow. What was I supposed to say? “So, Nate, think it’ll snow tomorrow?” The obvious answer was always “yes!”
I took a deep breath and tried the question that had been pestering me for weeks. “Where do you sleep?”
His eyes popped open, blood shot, and he squinted at me as if he were just noticing my presence for the first time ever. “Huh?”
“Spoiler alert: I think I’ve spent more time in your room this semester than you.”
His red eyes opened a fraction of a centimeter wider, which might be considered bugging out for expressionless him. “Oh, so you’re the sexcapades?” His eyes narrowed back to normal droopiness.
Corey and Bianca separated, and he stormed back to me. He swooped in with a hand on my back and guided me through the packed crowd. He had his back to me but the brief glimpse I caught of his straight-line lips made my tongue swell. My pulse tap tap tapped faster than the beat, making me feel out of sync, like I no longer had a place in the bar or in my clique.
When he spun around, he leaned way back, cocking his head and rubbing his chin with his index finger and thumb. “So. You burst.”
I clenched my teeth and avoided eye contact. “I’d blame the alcohol but that came after.” I tried to laugh. He didn’t join in. “I didn’t want to keep lying to Bianca.”
“Neither did I.” His lips curled into the slightest of smiles.
I exhaled and collapsed into him, pushing away the questions rising into the fog of my brain. Both of our legs parted to make way for the other’s knee, letting us grind closely. My hands rubbed all over his back. I had to keep touching him to make sure he was still real. He held his mouth so close to my ear that his staccato breathing sent chills down my spine.
“You’re not mad?”
He didn’t answer, just wrapped his arms around me and rocked me to the beat. I risked a kiss in public, planted on his neck, a safe spot until I became braver. I took the way he leaned into the kiss as an invitation. We were doing this. In full view of a packed bar. My lips trailed up his neck, grazing against the short stubble coating his skin. I hovered my mouth over his, giving him the opportunity to initiate a kiss, be the one to make what we had officially public, but he didn’t move any closer. “She asked me if I thought Nate liked her.”
I wasn’t sure why we were talking about this instead of kissing. But he seemed to be waiting for my response. “I think he does,” I said, just to say something and effectively end this topic of conversation.
We were so close that as his chest rose with his sigh, his stomach pressed firmly into mine. “You do? Why?” He stole a glance in Bianca’s direction, his chest stilling as though he were holding his breath for the answer. A sharp jolt of worry made my muscles tense. Crap.
I rippled my hand through his hair. “Lots of reasons.” Think of some, damn it! “The way he’s always looking at her.” When he has his eyes open and manages to aim them randomly in her direction… “The way he’s always checking up on her when we’re out together.” To make sure she pays him back when she owes him money… “Don’t you see it?” Please see it. Please don’t see the same thing everyone else sees about Bianca: that she’s gorgeous in a way I’m not.
Corey shrugged, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Hmmm, not really. But not like I can stop her.”
His words thudded into me like an avalanche. The way he said it sounded like he wanted to stop her. Possibly in one of those cliche movie tropes where he stormed into the church on her wedding day and coaxed her to leave her groom at the altar.
I was at a school that required decent grades—and a lot of money—to get in, so I knew the smart thing to do. Drop the conversation. Distract him with a kiss or a whispered promise of what to expect later. But my mouth betrayed me. “Are you okay with that? You seem upset.” I still had some brains left though that hadn’t been destroyed by alcohol, so I added a get out of jail free card for him, an excuse he could grab like a handle on a subway car to keep him from falling over. “I mean, I know you guys were friends before I came along so I’m not sure if it would be weird for you to see them together.”
“I guess I have to be okay with it, don’t I?” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know. I had a bit of a crush on her last year.”
I waited for the but, the loophole to his statement. But that’s in the past. But I’m totally over her. But the only but I got was in the form of silence, hanging off the end of his sentence like a steep cliff.
I’d gotten it all wrong. It wasn’t Bianca with the crush; it was Corey.
His words kept echoing in my head like a gong, drowning out the song, my racing heart. My hips revolved on auto-pilot, dancing with him as if nothing was wrong, but my head had checked out. I swiveled my neck to watch the whispered conversation flying between Bianca and Nate. My lips took up prayer: please like her, please kiss her, please take her far away from Corey.
Corey pulled back to studied my face. I tried to keep my features
even, forcing my mouth into the most half-assed smile that ever existed. He pursed his own. “Listen, I never did anything about it though. She’s a bit too, uh, tightly wound for me.” His arms encircled me tighter and his lips found my ear. “Besides, she’s not who I want anymore.”
I latched onto his declaration like a life raft, hoping what he said was true. I gripped his shoulder tightly, my hands balled into fists behind his back. We fell into the silent rhythm of dancing. The room spun around me and the crowd blurred like a photo taken with the shutter angle set too high. I squeezed him, hoping I could wring the feelings he ever had for her out of his body like a tube of toothpaste.
COREY DIDN’T INVITE ME back to his room that night. I wouldn’t have gotten much sleep if I’d been in his arms, but I got even less in my lonely room. The darkness wrapped around me, and I shivered in my tiny cot. Flashes of the way Corey shut down at Bianca’s crush confession pounded against my skull.
The next morning, dark circles hung below my lower lids, and the whites of my eyes looked like they’d been scorched in the sun. I shoved my sketchpad into a messenger bag for class and started to drop my cell inside too, but I froze. I took a deep breath and dialed Corey’s number before I chickened out. The high pitched bleats of the ringing phone ignited heart palpitations. I sprung from my bed and paced the room. Then I heard a click. My body tensed like an animation buffering to play.
“Hello?” His groggy voice sounded like he had no trouble getting to sleep.
“Um, hey.” I cleared my throat. “It’s Mac.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” he groaned.
