“Maybe I’m weird, but those kissing games feel so awkward.” My words slur together—kissygameshfeelsawkward—which makes me giggle.
He passes his door, his warm hand at my waist, keeping me from bumping into walls or falling down. “I agree. I’d rather control who I kiss than leave it to fate and an empty bottle,” he says softly, taking my key, unlocking my door and pushing it open.
“I wasn’t ready to go out onto the balcony with… well. I mean, we’re all kinda smashed. Balconies aren’t safe. Somebody could fall over the edge. Or something.” I lean against the open door, a blush creeping up my neck.
“You know, it might have been me you ended up with out there, not him,” I look up at him then—his brown eyes so dark they’re nearly black as he teases me about seven minutes we might have shared on Brooke’s balcony, doing… who knows what.
“Huh.”
He hands the key card back to me and smiles. “Goodnight, Emma.”
He turns back to his room, and I watch until he unlocks his door and pushes it open. “Emma?” he calls softly as I stumble into my room.
I catch my door before it closes, my heartbeat drumming in my ears, and answer without looking around the corner. “Yeah?”
“That’s definitely four.” He’s chuckling as his door closes with a click.
Chapter 13
REID
Emma and Graham are gone before I can react, thanks to the number of shots I’ve had. With exception of that one look between them, he seemed focused on Brooke all night, so the idea that he’d leap up and take Emma with him at some point was out of nowhere.
Tadd gets to his feet unsteadily after a quick glance between Brooke and me. “Quinton, help me get this baby into her room.” He gestures to Jenna, who’s curled up asleep on the floor. We’ve successfully set a fifteen-year-old on the road to corruption, as others did for each of us. Tadd nudges her semi-awake and he and Quinton each take one of her arms. “Thank God she weighs as much as a postage stamp,” Tadd says, propping her up.
Quinton closes his eyes, steadying himself with one arm around Jenna. “I’m going to hate myself in the morning.”
“I hate you now, man. I still don’t believe you’ve never had lobster.”
They both laugh, weaving towards the door, Jenna barely conscious between them.
“G’night. You two behave,” Tadd leers at Brooke and me, eyebrows raised, as the three of them stumble into the hallway.
The door closes behind them and we sit, staring at each other across the expanse of carpet. Neither of us says anything for a couple of minutes.
Finally, I incline my head towards her bed. “Once, for old times’ sake?”
Incredulous, she blinks, measuring how serious I am. Given that Emma just left the room with Graham, Brooke is drunk and looking hot and doable, and we’re in her room alone, I’m game if she is. For a few seconds—one, two, three—I think she might be. And then she shuts it down. “Not on your life.”
“So serious and bitter.” My mouth twists in amusement. “It wasn’t so bad.”
She gasps lightly, her mouth a small “O” as she blinks, and again, before she shutters it, there’s more naked emotion in her face than I thought she possessed. She gains control of it quickly, her eyes locked to mine. And then she crawls across the ten feet of space between us, onto my lap, straddling me, her knees at my hips. Kissing me, at first softly and then hard, like punishment, she wraps her arms around my neck, her nails piercing the skin through my t-shirt as her fingers rake across my shoulders and she grinds her pelvis against mine. Despite the alcohol in my blood, my body responds, though perhaps because of the alcohol in my blood, I don’t realize what she’s doing.
Without warning she recoils and slides off my lap, forcing my hands away from where they grip her waist. “It wasn’t so good, either.” Her tone is disinterested and her smile, glacial. She pushes herself upright and walks an erratic path to her bathroom, dismissing me. “You can go now, Reid. I want nothing from you.”
I stand and laugh, watch how her shoulders tighten at the sound. “Right. I forgot for a moment what a cold bitch you are, Brooke. I remember now. Don’t worry, you’re not nearly as difficult to leave as you assume.”
“Fuck you,” she says as I pull the door open. I chuckle as it shuts behind me, seemingly unaffected.
When I get to my room it takes every effort of restraint not to put a hole through the goddamned wall. Brooke was my first, and I was hers. We were young and stupid and for a brief space in time, I thought I loved her. I hadn’t, of course, any more than she loved me. As much as I wish I was unaffected by her, that’s impossible. No reason I can’t conceal it, though.
*** *** ***
Emma
While the room spins, I lie across the bed, calculating how many shots I had tonight. Definitely more than I’ve done before in one sitting. Running in the morning is out of the question; so much for new good habits. I remember to text Emily just before my battery dies, though the message is probably an incomprehensible jumble of letters, since the buttons on my phone keep shuffling.
I wake to a tapping noise and at first I’m convinced it’s coming from inside my head. I crack an eye open. My mouth feels like someone has wallpapered it with felt. Tap-tap-tap. Nope, definitely the door. The clock on the nightstand says it’s not quite ten a.m.
On my toes, I peer out the peephole. I unlock the door, open it a sliver and squint in the bright hallway lighting. “Graham?”