by Shen, L. J.
Fitzpatrick swiveled to me. “Cole?” He wiggled his brows.
“Bouncing chicks is my side hustle.”
That was my official statement, anyway. Also that I wasn’t hung up on Luna Rexroth, who’d friend-zoned me so fucking hard even my nocturnal emissions were platonic at this point.
Hunter, an Irish polo prince—too posh to play football like me and too remarkably untalented at anything to be an artist like Vaughn—put two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle that pierced through the music. The guys around us clinked their beers, trying to bite down their excited grins. When we wanted a piece of ass, that meant they were in for a treat, too.
“Ladies, line up toward the entertainment room. Make it neat. No cutting in line. Chop, chop. If you’re lovely, daring, and willing, you’re an applicant we want to see. Just be sure to remember—we won’t call you tomorrow morning, won’t follow you on social media, and won’t acknowledge your existence in the hallways. But we will carry you with us forever, like hepatitis B.”
A herd of junior and senior girls scurried up the stairs of Vaughn’s mansion in pairs, whispering and giggling in each other’s ears. Vaughn threw parties every other weekend while his parents were in their Virginia castle, probably fucking the memory of their devil spawn out of each other’s minds. The girls lined up outside the entertainment room, spines rod-straight against the textured gray walls. The line started at the base of his spiral stairway, snaking all the up way to a heavy set of black doors.
Vaughn, Hunter, and I strolled past them silently, lit joints clutched between our teeth. I wore white, destroyed Balmain biker jeans and a shabby I Fucked Your Girlfriend and Didn’t Even Enjoy It tee that had cost me a grand, paired with vintage Gucci sneakers and a beanie I was pretty sure was made out of real unicorn fur or some shit. Vaughn still wore his painting attire and looked just a little dirtier than a third world-based hooker looking for her next fix, and Hunter was wearing a full-blown suit, bless his Great Gatsby, weird-ass heart.
Our names, moaned and whispered like a prayer among the buzzing girls, drowned in the angry tune pulsating against the walls.
“A Song for the Dead” by Queens of the Stone Age vibrated in my stomach as we glided the length of Vaughn’s hallway, which was complete with Gothic, high ceilings and giant paintings of his family members. It was actually creepier than a Stephen King book: Vaughn’s scowling face staring back at you, life-sized.
Let’s admit it, the fucker gave the Grim Reaper a run for his money in the menacing department. And he looked extra dead in those paintings.
Extra pale. Extra cruel. Extra Vaughn.
Since the girls couldn’t explicitly proposition us without staining their precious reputations—I’d always hated the double standard of guys are players, girls are sluts—they pretended to talk to each other, sipping their drinks.
We stopped to examine the line. The rest of the football and polo squad were behind us, loyal and on guard, like the good puppies they were.
I was captain of the All Saints’ football team, so I had that shiny quarterback title and shotgun rights. But Vaughn had the street cred of Dracula, and Hunter’s family was the fourth richest in North America, so suffice it to say, all our dicks were fool’s gold and had pussies in their cards tonight.
Hunter stroked his chin, making a whole show of it. Sometimes I truly hated him, but most of the time I was indifferent to his theatrics.
“You.” He pointed at a girl named Alice, with pixie blonde hair and huge hazel eyes. He curled his index, indicating for her to come closer. She exchanged looks with her friends, breathless giggles bubbling from her ample chest.
One of the girls pushed her toward us, whisper-shouting, “Oh my God, Al. Just go!”
“Take pictures,” a brunette coughed into her fist.
Hunter jerked his chin to Vaughn. The latter ran his arctic pupils along the line, careful and methodic. He looked like he was searching for someone specific. Someone who obviously wasn’t there.
“You’re choosing a fuck buddy, not a mortgage. Hurry up.” Hunter rolled his eyes, throwing an arm over Alice’s shoulder. She bathed in the attention, smiling up at him with stars in her eyes.
Vaughn ignored Hunter, as he did ninety percent of the people who talked to him.
I examined the line, my eyes settling on a girl named Arabella. She had huge blue eyes and tan skin. A senior, too. She reminded me a bit of Luna—when she wasn’t talking. But that was the thing about high school girls, wasn’t it? They always fucking talked…other than the one whose words I wanted desperately.
No. That one never spoke a word to me.
“Arabella, baby.” I opened my arms in her direction.
She unglued herself from the wall to strut toward me in her high, hot pink heels and black mini dress.
Vaughn finally picked a girl, though he was grunting like a caveman about it. I’d have made a mental note to ask him why, but Vaughn never talked about girls.
Or feelings.
Or, you know, life in general.
I wanted to tell him if he didn’t feel like dipping his dick in someone tonight, no one was forcing him. But clearly, that would have been hypocritical. Not to mention false.
We confiscated the girls’ phones before they walked into the room and dumped them into a fruit bowl outside the door, to be guarded by a designated freshman who wanted to fit in with the cool crowd.
What happened in Vaughn’s entertainment room stayed there, too. We weren’t bad guys, despite what people might have thought. We never spoke about the ladies who entered here—not between ourselves, and definitely not to other people. If the girls wanted to brag, that was their prerogative. But there were never any pictures, any vicious rumors, any drama. The rules were simple: you got in, you had your fun, and on Monday morning, you acted like nothing happened.
Because nothing really had happened, as far as we were concerned.
In the entertainment room, Hunter was full-blown fucking Alice against a pool table from behind while having a civilized, flat-toned conversation with her about her summer. He’d tugged her mini dress up and gone at it, barely even bothering to slide her panties aside.
Turned out she’d lost her virginity a few weeks earlier to some tool at Christian camp and needed a redo.
“I just want to come,” she whined.
“Then you’re not getting out of here until you do.”
Her fingers were buried in the holes of the pool table, her half-bare tits dragging along the green, fuzzy surface. Hunter smoked a cigarette, his eyes drifting to Spaced, a British comedy, on the huge, flat-screen TV in front of us while fucking her.
And they say guys are not good at multitasking.
Vaughn, who was obsessed with Spaced, stood against the wall, letting some chick I didn’t know suck his dick. Arabella stood next to me, waiting for some action, but I just propped my shoulder against the wall, angled in front of Vaughn, ignoring the girl on her knees between us.
“Hope she’ll go out-of-state,” Vaughn said, verbose, one hand holding the ashy hair of the girl beneath him, the other scrolling through his phone.
He didn’t have any social media profiles and was soundly against trying to impress anyone on purpose, just like me. I’d once caught him checking some chick’s Instagram, though he’d locked his phone as soon as I noticed. I never got her name, and it was pointless to ask.
Anyway, Vaughn was talking about Luna now, so that was my cue to check out. I hated talking to him about her.
“Haven’t you wasted enough years on this shit?” he probed, tucking his phone into his back pocket.
This shit? Oh, screw you, Spencer.
“Haven’t you?” I clipped through a locked jaw. “You hate girls so much you won’t even fuck them. Blowies are as far as you can manage without being repulsed by human touch. At least I’m capable of feeling.”
“I’m capable of feeling.” He lifted a cocky eyebrow, yawning. “Hate. Jealousy. Disdain.�
�� He looked down at the girl bobbing her head up and down, the apathy in his icicle eyes confirming no one was home behind them. “Besides, unreciprocated love is like a nice Jag—one you have to carry on your fucking back instead of driving. Nice and shiny on the outside, but such a drag to manage by yourself.”
“Drop dead.” I smiled cheerfully.
“Eventually, and at least I won’t die a virgin,” he said blandly, running his paint-smeared, rough hands through the girl’s silky, clean hair just to taint it.
I was about to knock his lights out mid-blowjob when Arabella dug her fingernails into my neck.
“You look a little tense. Let me help,” she purred. “I heard you were a kinky bastard, Knight Cole. Care to compromise me?”
I’d yet to pay her any attention, let alone touch her. I wasn’t stupid—she wasn’t here for me. They all came here for the story. For the glory. It didn’t matter who got them in the door as long as they were chosen.
“Not in the mood. But…”
I grabbed her jaw and yanked her into my embrace. She moaned as I crashed our lips together, her grunt of pleasure swallowed in my mouth. Her tongue tried to pry my lips open, but I slammed them together, ignoring the wrongness of it all. I never, ever, ever kissed girls like this, but I was too stoned to care, and besides, my resolve was thinning after years of getting slammed down by Luna.
I smeared her lipstick like it was war paint, burying my fingers in her hair and messing it so it looked like she’d gotten fucked into the next decade. Then I pulled away, smirking down at her. Lipstick had smeared all over her chin, nose, and cheeks. I could only guess I looked just as wild.
“Maybe some other time?” Hope flared in her eyes, her smile drunk with newfound power.
“In a heartbeat, baby.”
Arabella got her story.
I faked mine.
Twenty minutes later, we ambled out of the entertainment room, heading down to wrap up the party. I made a stop in the kitchen to grab my sixth beer and found Arabella, Alice, and Vaughn’s piece leaning against the kitchen island, giving their exaggerated versions of what had gone down to their doe-eyed friends.
I knew my secret was safe with Arabella. No girl would admit that an All Saints’ legend hadn’t touched her after taking her to the room. Truth was, I didn’t want any of the other chicks to set the record straight either, and the only thing kinky about me was my fondness for watching breath-play porn (don’t judge).
I swung the fridge open and looked around for the Bud Light. I was still reeling from Vaughn’s comments about Luna needing to go somewhere else. Somewhere far. The notion that I could forget her just went to show he’d never been in love.
And then there was the other thing. The reason I’d drunk myself to near-death tonight. I searched the kitchen counter for vodka and took a generous swig before resuming my hunt for beer.
Dear life,
It’s cool. You can stop throwing shit at me. I’m already neck-deep.
Yours,
KJC
My mind had started doing weird shit shortly after Mom’s parents, Grandma Charlene and Grandpa Paul, died in a car crash and left Mom an orphan. That was five years ago. I didn’t care about my losing them; it was Mom’s pain that killed me.
That’s when I’d first started secretly drinking, and whaddaya know—I never really stopped.
“Supersized burrito huge, not even kidding,” Arabella exclaimed behind me, perched against the island and looking thoroughly fucked as she fanned her face dramatically.
She obviously hadn’t noticed me, or if she had, she knew I wouldn’t contradict her story.
“Too huge. At first I was like—how am I going to take Knight Cole? Am I even ready for this? But he ate me out for, like, thirty minutes. When his tongue ring hit my clit, I swear I started speaking fluent Swedish.”
Gasps, snickers, and intimate questions exploded in the room. I shut the fridge, turning around with a beer in my hand, and bumped into a small thing.
A small, tan-skinned thing.
With molten silver eyes and a constellation of freckles on her nose and cheeks—a map I knew by heart.
Luna Rexroth.
I could practically hear the chip in my mask cracking open before I cocked my head to the side, nudging the base of the cold bottle against her nose and watching a drop of beer sweat make its way from the tip, dropping to her luscious, full lips. I tugged at a stray curl that bounced over her eye in hello.
Luna Rexroth was beautiful. Sure. But so were a lot of other girls. Difference was, Luna carried her beauty like it was something borrowed. Carefully yet casually, not making a fuss about it. She wouldn’t stand in line for anyone, anywhere. She’d stand out, glowing with quiet pride.
Luna wore a white T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves, boyfriend jeans, and a pair of dirty, checked Vans. No evidence of makeup on her smooth face. Tragically, it only enhanced how much more beautiful she was than the other made-up girls. By the look on her face, I realized she’d been privy to the conversation going on behind me in the kitchen. She always gave me that disappointed look. That you-can-do-better-than-this look.
But I didn’t think I could. Because the best—her—was not available to me. She’d made it perfectly clear.
Three times, in fact.
Three kisses.
All ending in disaster.
Kiss Numero Uno was a bit of a stretch, even I’ll admit.
I’d been twelve, and she’d been thirteen. We’d been in a waterpark, behind a giant blue slide. We were laughing and splashing each other, and I’d just gone for it, the spontaneous fucker that I was. Up until then, the idea of Luna and me was, well, more of a fact. Roses were red. The sun rose in the east. A seahorse could move its eyes in opposite directions (Moonshine told me that herself), and Luna Rexroth was going to be my girlfriend, then fiancée, then wife.
Alas, she’d turned away and let out a little gasp.
Because she couldn’t—wouldn’t—talk, she’d just shook her head. Then, probably seeing the sting on my face, she’d melted, pulling me into a hug. Our hot skin had met almost everywhere. It was the first time I’d realized why I had kissed her.
Boner. I’d had a boner. Which was…not great.
Kiss Numero Dos occurred when I was fourteen and had a pretty good grasp of the fact that my cock liked Luna just as much as the rest of me.
By then I’d learned a bunch of tricks to avoid attacking her with it, especially since we slept together every night.
I’d been a freshman, Luna a sophomore. I’d been gaining popularity at All Saints High thanks to my last name and ability to throw a fucking ball, which was something the rest of the football team wasn’t so good at.
Girls had been all over me, and I’d hoped Luna might’ve noticed all the notes that poured out of my locker whenever I opened it. We’d still been best friends. Nothing had changed. Well, other than me. I’d started to fill out my skin with muscles, and a few growth spurts had resulted in my reaching five-eleven seemingly overnight.
It had been nighttime when I’d climbed up to her window like I’d done every single night for years after our families went to sleep. When she’d opened it to let me in, I’d pressed my lips against hers, whispering, “Take two.”
Biggest fucking mistake I’d ever made. She nearly slammed the window on my fingers. It had grazed my nails before I’d pulled away. By some miracle I’d managed to hold on to her chimney, and it had taken Luna a second to realize what she’d done. Once she did, she’d pulled me back in and saved me from certain death.
That night, while I’d been pretending to sleep in her bed, she’d been for-real writing me a letter of apology, in which she’d explained that she loved me, but only saw us as friends.
This time, I’d accepted it. Not long-term, obviously. But I knew this was a Luna problem, not a Knight problem. I saw the way she looked at me when girls were around, when notes were passed to me, when my phone lit up with unanswered text messages.
There was hunger there. Desperation—that hot, green liquid that slithered into your soul when you watched something that was yours be admired by others.
And so, I continued to slip into her room every night. I got it. She needed time. Time? I had plenty.
I’d decided to show her I wasn’t some kind of obsessed stalker. That I was capable of moving on. To bring the point home, I’d stopped ignoring other girls’ advances. I’d started dating, texting back, and flirting.
I stayed closest to her, keeping my alliance firmly with the girl next door. But I also had a chain of girlfriends who came and went—a revolving door of glossy-lipped beauties who wore the right brands and said the right things. I paraded them around school and brought them over for family BBQs, expecting Luna to ease back into our friendship now that I wasn’t trying to suck her face every time she looked my way.
Ironically, that’s what brought on kiss number three.
Kiss Numero Tres happened when she was seventeen and I was sixteen. I call it The Kiss of Death, because the damage it inflicted on our relationship was huge. Even now, a year and a half later, I was still dealing with the echoes of its destruction. For instance, Luna before kiss number three would have told me she was coming to Vaughn’s party. Luna after kiss number three barely communicated with me about what she was doing or where she was going. We were still hanging out most days, but it had turned into a bad habit more than anything else.
Back to that kiss. I was fooling around with a girl named Noei at the time. But I’d still cleared the day for Luna’s seventeenth birthday. I’d bought us tickets to a museum, even though the carnival was in town, because Luna hated carnivals—and zoos, and Seaworld, and anyplace where animals were captured for human entertainment. I’d had it all planned out. Luna was a vegetarian, and a vegan curry place had opened in downtown Todos Santos, right across from the museum. I’d bought her a bunch of weird-ass shit from Brandy Melville and had a seahorse tattoo inked on my spine, hoping she’d get the underlying message: that she was my backbone.