The three of us make our way upstairs, the stench of stale beer and cigarette butts filling my nostrils. I’ve been spoiled being with sweet Jess’ family for the past day and a half.
“Hey.” Josh hangs back as Jess makes her way excitedly up the stairs, each footstep bouncing faster than the last.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my chest and throat becoming tight as my eyes trail toward what he’s looking at. He’s staring at Jess’ ass like a drooling wolf.
He smacks his lips, Jess unaware that he’s leering at her like this. I can feel my nostrils flare with anger as I see her pretty face turn back to us, a naive smiling pulling at the corners of her lips.
“She with you?” Josh says, sticking me in the ribs with an elbow. My mind swims with what to say to him. “I might have a girl for you,” he adds with a whisper.
“Yeah. She’s with me.” The clenching in my jaw matches the clenching in my fists as I see Jess slip around a corner into a bedroom where there music is coming from. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Woah,” Josh says, stumbling up the last stair. “Are you going to knock me on my ass or something?” He laughs, but I don’t find this funny.
“I’m not interested in anything but her. Don’t you get that? You can have the girl with the skirt and no panties. I’m with her,” I hiss, pointing to the bedroom. “I don’t want to be an ungrateful guest, so let’s pretend this conversation never happened.”
“You’re right. I apologize. I just thought maybe you’d like to share. You know,” he adds, taking a swig of his skanky beer, “in the spirit of the holiday.”
When I remember how fucked up he is, my balled-up fists soften a little. I can feel where my fingernails dug into the palms of my hands. The only person leaving nail marks on me should be Jess. “Look, man. No judgement. But the girl in there is mine, and mine only. I know that might be hard for you to hear.”
“I have to say that it is. When I saw her yesterday coming over to us, the first thing I thought of was how she’d look with her lips wrapped around...a candy cane.”
Josh bursts out laughing and I’m about to pummel this fucker. I push past him and make my way through the hallway, turning right into the bedroom I saw Jess go into moments ago.
“Everything okay?” she asks, catching my eye from the corner of the room where she’s sitting on the corner of a low bed next to a couple of girls. “What was that out there?”
“It was nothing. Do you want to go?” I ask impatiently. I have half a mind to grab her and pull her out of here, but she looks like she wants to stay. Her eyes plead with me to calm the fuck down. I can’t help what Josh is making me feel.
He comes up behind me and slaps me on the back. “You just got here,” he says, clanking his beer into mine. The girls sitting with Jess and a few of the guys sitting on the other side of the room playing a first-person shooter video game from the comfort of beanbag chairs all holler out their wishes for us to stay.
Shrugging Josh off, I cross my arms and lean against the doorframe. “Okay,” I say. We’ll stay for one drink. But I’ve got a close eye on Jess. There’s no way I’m letting any of these people hurt her.
Jess
I’ve never been to a party like this. The girls next to me are chatting with me about their lives and their backgrounds. One of them is the organist for the choir at one of the local churches. I guess I never expected a choral musician to be someone who would spend their Christmas night drinking and playing video games, but it makes her very interesting. The other girl is a kindergarten teacher. Again, not something I would have guessed. They grew up together and are a few years younger than me.
“What high school did you go to?” Sarah, the organist asks. “I can’t believe we are both from this town and have never met before.” She smiles warmly and takes a pull from her beer and follows it up with a pull from her cigarette, ashing the end in an empty beer can.
“I went to Cooper,” I say, sipping my beer slowly. I’m not loving the taste, and the smoke is bothering my eyes a little, but it’s the season of trying new things.
“Cooper? My sister went there. That’s where all the smart people go.” The other girl, Sammy, crinkles her nose as her eyebrows come together at the center.
“That’s what they tell me,” I say. It’s true. It is a school for smart people. A single entrance exam, and if you passed you were in. I always thought my acceptance was a mistake. “Somehow, they let me in.”
“You stop.” I glance up and see Chris still standing by the door, taking in the scene. He winks and keeps his eyes on me as he finishes his drink. “Ready?”
“Almost,” I say, putting my beer down on the dirty carpeted floor at my feet and wiping the condensation from my hands on my jeans. Chris turns on his heel and goes out into the hallway, disappearing into the dark within a shadow.
The past two days have been so perfect and so warm despite the storm and chaos of everything and how unpredictable the course of events has turned out. I think back to yesterday, and to the silent way everything worked out since then. Maybe it was granddad looking after me somehow, or maybe not. But I hope that he’d be happy that I made that split-second decision to buy a Christmas tree for the family. Not because we were moving on and forgetting about him, but because we will always remember him and want to honor him.
Chris has figured so perfectly into everything. His smile and his body were irresistible. That was a given. As soon as I saw his sexy lips and eyes again, I knew there was no way I’d say no. But what’s more, I’ve ended up falling in love with him all over again over the past two days. I just need to figure out a way to tell him that.
And a way to tell him that I’ve decided to transfer back here for grad school.
My heart is nearly bursting out of my chest as everything finally starts to crystalize in my mind.
I look around the room and over toward the door. There’s nothing here I’m going to miss if I leave now. And if I don’t leave, I’ll be missing out on every hot, sweet, perfect moment when I’m alone with Chris. I can’t get enough of those moments.
Saying goodbye to the girls, I slip my coat onto my shoulders and wave as I leave. I don’t know where Chris is, and although I assumed he was going to stop in the bathroom quickly before we left, I don’t see the lights on behind any of the closed doors upstairs.
I go downstairs to see Josh standing awkwardly and alone in the living room, watching some football game on mute.
“Enjoying the show?” he says, his footing unsteady beneath him. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Please,” I say, inching toward him. “Tell me what I’m thinking.” I stand next to him, his eyes glazing over and looking blankly at the TV. I don’t want to feel sorry for him, because I don’t know what he’s feeling inside. But I can guess that he feels alone. I can guess that he’s not having a good time in his own home.
“You’re thinking you have something that I don’t,” he spits, stumbling back onto the couch in the middle of the room, nearly falling over the coffee table. “You think you’ve found something so fucking great.”
“Josh…” I start, but I don’t know what to say. He seems mixed up and confused, and I don’t want to argue with him. I don’t want to make him feel worse, and I’m sure I won’t be able to make him feel better. “Thank you for inviting us.” I turn, starting toward the stairs to find Chris.
“He’s probably in the bathroom getting his dick sucked right now. Your pretty boy.”
My heart freezes deep inside my chest and my breath catches on something in my throat.
“I don’t think so,” I say, shooting a look over my shoulder.
I put a foot on the first step, but I feel heavy and slow. I don’t want to go upstairs. I want to get the hell out of here. I turn my head to the side when I see something moving out of the corner of my eye. It’s Chris. A door creaks and then clicks shut, and then Sammy appears.
“No more drama,” Chris say, moving
Sammy by the arm to the couch, where she sits down next to Josh.
“Chris?” I say meekly and with a small voice. “What’s going on?”
Josh winks at me behind Chris, and the image of Sammy on her knees in front of Chris in some bedroom hidden at the back of the house flashes in front of my eyes. Maybe it’s the pounding music or the fact that I’ve just drank my second beer in my whole life, but my stomach churns into a knot and my knees go weak. Or maybe it’s the fact that I don’t know where Chris was for the past five minutes.
“Hey there, what’s wrong?” Josh rushes over to me and slips one of his huge arms around my back and over my shoulder. “I’ve got you.” He looks down into my eyes and flashes his signature smile, and a sickening swirl of heartache captures my chest.
“Can we just go?” I say quietly. I bound toward the door and into the night. The air hits me like a cold frost against my skin and I slip my arms tight around myself. I start around to the driver’s side of my truck but realize I feel too sick to drive.
“You’re passenger side tonight, babe,” Chris says, taking my keys from me and walking me around the front of the truck to the other door. “What’s the matter?”
I slip into the seat and put my knees forward toward the dashboard. I have no proof that Chris was doing anything wrong, and this could have all been a big misunderstanding. But still, the fact that I feel so rotten over just the idea that he could be with someone else is making me feel positively awful.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just started feeling a little bit queasy back there.” My heart pounds fast in my chest, and I unzip my coat quickly to get some air. I feel like it’s suffocating me.
“Not your kind of people,” Chris says, reaching over me to buckle him in. His arm is strong and as it slips past my chest I feel a little warmth spread inside me, calming me down a little. “I get it. Next time I’ll bring you to a Cub Scouts meeting.”
I shake my head, my thoughts tumbling and rattling around inside my brain, silently scolding myself. Chris and I aren’t even technically together, and he can do whatever he wants. Whoever he wants.
“I think I just want to go home,” I say. He presses his lips together and closes the door carefully before walking around to his side and hopping in.
“Whatever you’d like. Are you sure you don’t want to stay at my place tonight?” He shoots a look over at me, surprise and concern in his voice. “Or do you want me to stay with you?”
“Not tonight,” I say. “Not tonight.”
That feeling of relief I had when I woke up this morning? Oh, how I’d love to get that back.
Chris
I am a piece of shit. Just one look at the kind of place I used to hang out before she saved me and she’s shut down cold.
That’s all the more work I need to do to show her that I’m not letting her go. One look at her sleeping in the seat next to me and I want to pull over again and make her mine. I’ll do it on every street in our town, just so no one makes any fucking mistakes about it.
She might have a headache tomorrow. I should never have let her drink that beer. We roll slowly to a red light blocks from her house and I reach over to pop open the glove compartment to search for some painkillers to give her before I get her home.
I find a few drive-through receipts, an empty envelope and a letter with a few pages stapled behind it folded into thirds. The dim yellow light inside the glove compartment illuminating the letter shows a local university’s letterhead. I don’t want to invade her privacy, but I know what a packet from a university means, and I remember she said she was thinking of transferring schools.
Closing the glove compartment slowly as the light flashes to green, my eyes linger on her as she sleeps. Glowing Christmas lights from houses speeding past us on the local side road fall over her in waves. She’s the brightest of any of them. My cock starts to get hard as I think about falling into bed with her tonight, but if she isn’t feeling well, I’ll just have to go home and wait for her.
When we pull into her driveway, I nudge her awake. “Honey, your truck is going to turn back into a pumpkin in like five minutes, so you better go.”
As she wakes up, she seems a little bit disoriented. “Are we home?”
“Well, you’re home. Tell me if you want me to stay.”
“No. I’d better just go inside. Thank you for today,” she says. I lean to her and stop just before kissing her and instead trail my thumb along her bottom lip, painting her with my touch.
“Thank you for tomorrow.”
She forces a little smile and we get out. I make sure to get her to her door. With a few clicks of my keyring the doors to my silver Mustang unlock and I get in, buckle up, and blast a mix tape she made for me one year ago today.
Jess
I’m sluggish and tired as I go upstairs to my room, passing the fully lit Christmas tree in the living room. A narrow sliver of light is coming out of Jamie’s room, but I don’t duck in to say hi. Instead, I go right to the bathroom to wash up and get ready for bed.
Going through my routine, I think back to this afternoon and how Chris kissed me with the shaving cream on his face. It was so silly and such a small thing, and I can’t believe I made myself think it was something more than it was. I brush my teeth, wash my face and wrap up in a fluffy robe from the hallway linen closet.
This is the feeling I didn’t want to have. This is the feeling I was trying to avoid. Disappointment. Nothing’s perfect. Not now, not a year ago. I trudge along to my room and close the door behind me slowly. I check my phone to see if anyone’s texted me. It’s just Chris, telling me he’s arrived home okay.
“You were gone all night, little lady.” Jamie and I slide into a booth at Kaitlyn’s as she flips the sign on her front door over to let the world know she’s closed for the night. Flicking off the lights behind the counter, she leaves on the lights over the tables along with the colorful lights inside the windows. It feels intimate and safe to be in one of my favorite places with my best girlfriend and my sister, but I feel like a storm is about to hit me at any second on the inside.
“Oh my God. Please tell me you were with some random guy screwing all over a hotel room.” Kaitlyn sets a small silver tray down with three piping-hot cups of cocoa stuffed with a roasted marshmallow each.
“Hm. I think the screwing part might be accurate, but I don’t know about the random guy thing,” Jamie says, taking her drink and wrapping her fingers around it.
I look down and my face betrays me as a smile tugs at the corners of my lips. “Now, you know I wouldn’t have sex for the first time that way. With a random guy? No.” My body is responding to the memory of his touch, but my mind remains confused.
“Please tell me this did not have something to do with the mix tape,” Kaitlyn says, her wide eyes peeking out from behind wisps of her long bangs.
“Actually, I think this might have everything to do with the mix tape, and if by mix tape you mean Chris, and by Chris you mean sex.” Jaimie licks the corner of her marshmallow and winks at me and Kaitlyn.
“Yeah.” I scratch the back of my head and drum my fingers on the table. “It did have something to do with the mix tape, and also everything else you just mentioned a second ago.”
Both of the girls scream and I wince playfully, sticking my hands over my ears.
“How?” Kaitlyn says, pulling a leg up under her. “Wait. Huh?”
“Yeah,” Jamie says, waving a hand in the air. “He even came over and helped decorate a tree. You know that shit’s legit.”
“I’m happy if you are,” Kaitlyn says, looking from Jamie to me, “but I thought you wanted to leave all this all in the past. Make a clean break.”
I sigh loudly and struggle to not let the lump in my throat get the best of me. “That’s the thing. I was happy when nothing happened, and then I was thrilled when something finally did happen. And now I’m just confused. He took me to this party last night.”
“Party?” Jaimie raise
s an eyebrow at me and curls up a corner of her lip. “That’s not like you at all.”
“I know,” I say, “that’s the thing. I wanted to go because I wanted to be in with his group, or something. And then his weird friend made this weird comment to me, and now I don’t know what to think.”
I repeat the comment Josh made and the girls groan.
“That’s bullshit,” Jamie says. “Pure crap. No way.”
“Well, that can’t be all,” Kaitlyn says. “That’s a dumb comment, I agree. But is that all that made you upset?”
“Well, no,” I confess hesitantly. “I also saw him come out of a room with this girl. She was very nice, I happened to talk to her for a few minutes. Sweet girl.”
“Nope. No. Give me her name.” I can’t tell if my sister is really angry or just faking it for my benefit.
“It was probably nothing,” Kaitlyn says, opening her hands on the table. “I can’t imagine anything would happen so out in the open like that.”
“This is the whole thing I’m confused about. I felt so hurt and embarrassed in that moment, but then I realized that I had no reason to be. It’s too many emotions. It’s all too much. Having sex has made me feel so much more, I don’t know….”
“Vulnerable?” Jamie says, putting a hand on mine.
“Yeah. That. And it sucks. And I have no right to be upset, right?”
“I mean, you would, if something happened,” Kaitlyn says.
“Now all I can think about is the fact that he thinks I’m only here for a few more weeks, and how he probably assumes we’ll be apart after that. So what is this whole thing to him? Does it mean as much to him as it does to me?”
“Wait,” Jamie says, “what do you mean, he thinks you’re only here for a few more weeks?”
I bite my lower lip and smile. “I didn’t tell anyone yet because I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it, but I got into the vet medicine program.”
Insta-Hubby (A Billionaire Fake Relationship Romance) Page 21