by Tabatha Kiss
I feign a chuckle as my stomach churns again.
Chapter 8
Drew
It’s more obvious than ever now. Her features. His laugh. The same cocky reaction they both have whenever one of them sinks a ball.
The dark-haired, golden-eyed Newburys.
Of course, they’re related.
A small crowd has gathered around the ping-pong table to watch. Jenna seems more interested in texting than playing, but it doesn’t bother me. The view across the table is much sweeter, anyway.
Heidi was stiff and nervous at first, but a few rounds of guidance from big brother and she was one of us. The more we play, the more she laughs, though I’m feeling a little giggly myself after nearly a full game of chugging cups. If we cared enough to keep score, they’d be winning, I think. Or are we?
Hell, who even cares?
“Hey, RPF!” Jenna nudges my ribs. “Wake up. It’s your turn.”
She’s called me that three times now. I still haven’t figured it out.
“All right! All right!” I pick up the ping-pong ball. “I’m gonna shink it this time.”
“You’re gonna what?” Seth teases.
“I’m gonna shink it!” I repeat on purpose.
“Then, shink it!”
“I’m gonna!”
Heidi laughs and I feel it linger in my chest.
“Or you can miss on purpose and take me upstairs,” Jenna says. The proposition is only meant for me, but she speaks so loudly everyone within earshot can hear it.
Heidi included. Her bright, red cheeks dip slightly, but she maintains the rest of her expression.
I better not miss.
I balance on my toes. I hold the ball loosely in my fingers. I look at Heidi one more time before taking aim.
I toss the ball at the last cup across the table.
It plops right into the middle and the crowd goes wild.
Seth grabs the cup and chugs it down before proudly smashing it against his chest. He wraps his arms around Heidi, taking her by surprise as he lifts her up and spins her around twice.
“We won, little sister!” he shouts.
Seth drops her back down, and she furrows her brow in confusion. “Wait, I thought we lost…” she says.
“No!” he says. “Everybody wins.”
I raise my cup. “Nobody loses!”
“Delta Xi!” we shout in unison.
“Delta Xi!” the room repeats with their cups held high.
We drink. I watch as Heidi shrugs her little shoulders and follows our lead with her cup of soda. She chuckles with her big brother and I smile, feeling good for doing my part in patching things up between them.
“Why don’t you guys chant the Alpha part, too?” she asks, curious.
Seth puffs out his chest, big and manly. “Because it’s redundant, baby!” he says, flexing his arms.
Heidi cringes. I don’t blame her at all.
Jenna’s arm slinks around mine. “So, what do you say, big kahuna?” she asks, biting her lip with the most obvious fuck-me eyes I’ve ever seen. “You want to dance? Or should we take this party upstairs?”
I politely retrieve my arm. “Sorry, Jenna. Not really in the mood tonight.”
“Oh.” She sneers with disappointment, but bounces right back. “Then, could you point me in the direction of your nearest brethren who would be in the mood?”
“Uh…” I scan the room, spotting Jack in the common room nestled between two giant speakers with his laptop. “Him,” I say, pointing.
Jenna follows my finger and nods. “The DJ?” she asks.
“Yup.”
She shrugs. “He’ll do. Thanks!”
And with that, she leaves, creeping into the crowd to stalk her prey.
Well, that was easy.
“Rematch!” Seth shouts at me.
I laugh as I take a step back from the table. “Nah, man. I’m out.”
“You give up?” he asks. “I win!”
“You win, I win, too!” I say.
We raise our cups again. “Delta Xi!”
The battle cry echoes throughout the room again.
I glance around, suddenly noticing that someone is missing. “Where’s Heidi?” I ask.
Seth squints, thinking hard. “Air!” he finally says. “She went outside to get some air.”
I pat him on the back as I step around the table. “You should switch to water,” I say.
“Dude…” He admires me. “Always looking out for me. I love you, man.”
I laugh. “I love you, too, buddy.”
As I weave through the thinning crowd, I check my phone for the time. It’s nearly 11 PM already. Man, tonight has gone by fast, but it’s still young. Still full of possibility.
I step outside onto the porch. A few couples linger on the banister, chatting quietly against the smooth music Jack switched on to change the mood. I guess it is about that time that some make their parties a little more private.
One girl sits by herself on the porch stairs.
I pause above her. “Hey, Ms. Fujimoto.”
Heidi glances up at me and chuckles softly. “Hey,” she says.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
She shifts a bit to the right, giving me room to sit down on the step beside her. I take a deep breath of the autumn air, attempting to cool off a bit of my buzz.
“Nice night,” I say.
Heidi bobs her head. “It’s on the surreal side for me, but…” I chuckle. “Yeah. It’s been nice.” She looks at me, then quickly turns her head again. “So, where’s Jenna?” she asks.
“Oh, she’s with Jack.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah, I think they’ll be very happy together.”
Again, a look of surprise. “I thought you two were hitting it off there.”
“Nah,” I say. “She’s not really my type.”
Heidi nods politely then turns away again, this time to stifle an adorable yawn.
“Tired?” I ask.
“It’s…” she composes herself, “a little past my bedtime.” She looks over her shoulder into the house. “If Jenna found herself a new boy toy, then I might be waiting here a while.”
“Why wait? I’ll walk you home.”
She straightens up the same way she did the first time I tried to do her a favor. “Oh, no,” she says, predictably. “I’ll be fine here. You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” I say. “I need to walk this buzz off, anyway. Shanty’s not too far, and…” I study her face. “I think we should talk.”
She blinks. After a quiet moment, she nods. “… Okay.”
I stand up and offer her my hand. She looks at it, her bright cheeks flushing softly in the dark before she takes it and rises off the stair.
“Yo, Heidi.”
She releases my hand and we turn around to find a guy briskly walking up the sidewalk toward the house.
“Hey, Bobby,” she says.
Bobby?
Who’s Bobby?
Before jealousy even gets a chance, the guy plows past us.
“Is Jenna in there?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Heidi answers.
“Thanks.”
He throws open the door and bolts right inside as Heidi takes her phone from her pocket.
I squint. “What was that about?” I ask.
“That…” Heidi smirks as she fires off a quick text, “was the sound of you dodging a massive bullet,” she quips.
“Ah.” I wince. “I suddenly feel terrible for Jack.”
She lowers her phone. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Jenna has a way of diffusing these things.”
I nod. “Then, shall we go?”
“I gave Jenna a head’s up that I’m leaving, so… yeah.” She smiles, nervous and adorable. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 9
Heidi
“So, I didn’t know that you were Heidi Newbury.”
I laugh as I s
tare at the sidewalk. A full block of nothing but silent steps, and Drew breaks the tension with that?
“I didn’t know that you were Seth’s best friend,” I say.
Drew nods. “He tell you that?”
“Yeah. He said you were a real shirt off his back type of guy.”
“Aw, shucks!” he says with a grin. “He oversold me!”
“He certainly did. You’ve been nothing but a big jerk to me since the moment we met.”
“My sincerest apologies,” he jokes. “He and I have been roommates since our freshman year.”
I raise a brow. “Really?”
“We lived in the dorms together, pledged Delta Xi together, made plans to go into business after graduation together…” He looks up at me. “But he’s never said anything about you.”
I shrug, not surprised. “We’re not close.”
“He said that.”
“He mention anything else about our family history?” I ask, embarrassed.
“Not much. Messy divorce. I don’t like to pry.”
“No, it’s okay. You can pry. I mean…” I clear my throat. “It was a long time ago, but… yeah. Messy would be the word.”
“You lived with your mom after?” he asks.
“And Seth lived with Dad,” I answer with a nod. “We still went to the same school, though, so we saw each other a lot. He was the popular jock type, I very much was not, and we…”
“Clashed,” he finishes.
“Nice way to put it. Yeah.” I look at him, our strides steady and equal. “He said you told him to apologize to me. For the stamps.”
Drew glances at my marked arm and nods. “I did.”
“Why?”
His expression changes, the answer obvious. “I don’t like seeing people hurt each other. Especially not people I care about.”
I give a brief smile as my stomach quivers with nerves. “You two must be really close,” I say.
Drew exhales. “Yeah,” he says. “We are.”
“So, then…” I come to a slow stop on the corner of Shanty Row. “We should probably cancel our date this week.”
Drew pauses a stride ahead and turns to face me. “You think so?” he says.
“I don’t think the first thing I should do here is get between my brother and his best friend. That’s a little more drama than I’m accustomed to…”
He nods once. “I don’t want to get between you guys, either. You seem to have a nice white flag thing going on right now.”
“It’s for the best,” I say, as much as I hate it.
“When you’re right, you’re right.” He looks down the street toward my house. “But please allow me to take you the rest of the way. If only to enjoy the last sixty seconds we’ll ever have together.”
I smile. “Sure.”
I step forward. Drew quickly matches my short-legged stride, perhaps to make the brief walk home last just a little bit longer.
“Maybe it is better this way,” Drew says as we reach my lawn. “We could have gone out and had zero chemistry. That’d be an entire night of our young lives completely wasted on each other.”
I chuckle as I step up onto the porch. “I’m feeling nothing for you already,” I quip.
“I’m three seconds away from deleting you from my phone forever.”
“I was going to wait until I got inside, but,” I reach into my dress pocket for my phone, “I’ll just do it right now.”
“Me, too!”
Drew grabs his phone from his pocket. The both of us swipe in the dark, the blue-lit screens illuminating our faces as we peek up at each other.
I swipe open his contact, but that’s as far as I get. I can’t bring myself to delete him forever.
I fake it.
“There,” I say as I turn off the screen. “All gone.”
He lowers his to his side. “All gone,” he repeats.
“We are officially acquaintances and nothing more.”
I take a step back toward the door.
Drew follows. “Then, that means I probably shouldn’t kiss you good night right now.”
My breath hitches. “Definitely not.”
“To be fair, though, if we wanted to do our diligence and make sure we’re only acquaintances and nothing more, then one kiss wouldn’t change that.”
“I don’t follow,” I say, my nerves buzzing.
“Say I don’t kiss you,” he says. “I walk off this porch, go home, and never look back. We could spend the rest of our lives wondering if there really was anything between us and we’d never know.”
I nod. “Okay...”
“But say I kissed you right now. Then, we’d know for sure. I could walk off this porch, go home, and never look back, but we’d have some closure to this brief yet tumultuous affair we’ve got going on here.”
“I see.”
Drew shifts forward, his forest green eyes reflecting at me beneath the porch light. “So, what do you say, Heidi Newbury?” he whispers. “How about we end this thing?”
I swallow hard. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out as my brain rumbles between my ears. Do we? Or don’t we? Should we? Or shouldn’t we? It’s just one kiss. One kiss never changed the world.
What’s the worst that could happen?
“Yeah,” I answer. “Let’s end it.”
Drew leans in another inch, then purposefully pauses. “Do you need to take an antihistamine first?”
I cringe. “Still not funny.”
He chuckles. “Sorry.”
Our lips graze in the dark for a full second before Drew tilts closer. It starts simple and small, as close-mouthed and chaste as a kiss could be, but then his hand comes to rest on my waist and pulls me even closer to him.
Fireworks blaze down my spine. I balance on the tips of my toes and wrap my arms around his neck. I don’t breathe. I don’t think. I feel nothing but the heat of his touch and the beauty of his lips gently urging mine to part with his. His fingertips dig into my back as he shifts forward. I stumble back against the door, helplessly pinned in place as I feel his tongue caress mine in my mouth.
Drew turns his head, breaking the kiss. “Uh-oh,” he says.
“Uh-oh?” I ask.
“We shouldn’t do that again.”
I nod. “Agreed.”
“That was...”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
I stand still, pinned in place on the door, until Drew releases my waist and takes a step back. I let my ankles drop. Somehow, I remain standing.
“You’re right,” I say. “We shouldn’t—”
Drew cups my face and crushes his mouth on mine again. I pull him back, slamming us hard against the door. His hands travel downward, briefly touching my breasts before inching around to settle on the small of my back. We trade kisses back and forth. We breathe each other’s air. I melt from my head down to my toes. If this doesn’t stop, I’ll become a puddle in his hands. If I did, would I really care?
“Shit,” Drew says, turning away again. “You taste too good.”
I’m not sure what to even say, so I say nothing rather than say the wrong thing. I welcome the cool autumn air in my lungs as I fight the deep urge to kiss him again.
“Heidi,” he whispers.
I tremble. “Yeah, Drew?”
His fingers dig into my hips. He draws me even closer to his body. He kisses me again with his mouth closed this time, determined not to taste even more of me. I try to do the same, but the thrill of his tongue is still warm on my lips. I want more. I need more, but the facts are more than clear.
He’s my big brother’s best friend.
I’m his best friend’s little sister.
Drew steps backward. “I should go,” he says, his hands abandoning me again.
I nod. I press my lips together. I do everything it takes to keep my heels glued to the porch. One step forward is all it would take to be in his arms again. I’m not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
&
nbsp; Drew turns around, deciding for us both. He touches his face, briefly pinching his bottom lip before pausing on the sidewalk and looking back.
“Good night, Heidi,” he says.
I smile. I can’t help it. “Good night, Drew.”
He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Smile at boys like that,” he says, walking away. “Just makes us weak.”
I wait for his back to turn and for him to lengthen the distance between us.
Then, my smile deepens.
Chapter 10
Drew
Don’t think about Heidi.
Don’t think about Heidi.
Don’t think about her tiny little waist. Don’t think about the way her hair shimmers in the light and smells like flowers. Don’t think about the way her golden eyes light up when she smiles and definitely do not think about her adorable plump lips—
I come. I come hard.
Jerking off during my morning shower should never feel this good.
I rest one arm on the tile wall while the other gives me a few finishing strokes. Cool water flows off my skin, washing the evidence down the drain, while I do exactly what I said I would not do when I started jerking off in the first place.
Heidi.
Well, that kiss was a mistake. I thought it would be a simple kiss; something small enough not to mean anything, but big enough to get her out of my system. But she was... fuck. If I think any more about it, I’ll just get hard again.
All it did was make me want more.
I finish my shower and enter the second-floor hallway with a towel wrapped tightly around my waist. I keep a cautionary hand in place just in case my dick starts up for round two before I make it to our room on the third floor.
Come on, man.
I’ve got shit to do today.
The door is ajar when I get there. One of Seth’s tube socks still hangs from the knob like a badge of honor. His guest from last night must have finally left.
I step inside and nudge it closed as Seth smirks at me from his desk on the left side of the room.