Unspoken (The Woodlands)

by Jen Frederick

  The stranger held out his now-free hand to me. “Erik. Ryan’s roommate.”

  “AnnMarie. Ellie’s roommate.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder in the direction of our table. Erik peered past me.

  “The goddess from geology?” Erik asked. Both Ryan and I nodded.

  “She thinks Ryan’s gay and was asking her out to be his beard,” I told Erik, avoiding Ryan’s gaze.

  “Why’d she think that?” Erik asked.

  “Lacrosse connection,” I said. “She doesn’t like them.”

  Erik raised his eyebrows at this and tilted his head questioningly toward Ryan. Ryan just put his head in his hands.

  “She has good reason,” Ryan mumbled, but loudly enough so that we could hear. “The lacrosse club is filled with a bunch of assholes.” He lifted his head and looked at me. “I’m surprised you’re even standing this close to me.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. You don’t seem like an asshole to me.”

  “I’m not,” Ryan said, standing up and looking at me. “I swear it, and I’m not trying to have a beard.”

  “It’s true,” Erik piped up. “Not gay. I can tell.”

  “Dude, everyone can tell he’s not gay,” another guy next to us leaned in to say. Yep, we had quite the crowd.

  “It just took Ellie by surprise,” I said in her defense. “Plus you did act all caveman on her.”

  This made Ryan put his head down again. “I know. I can’t think right around her. She messes me up bad. I’ll probably be the only one to ever fail Rocks for Jocks because I can’t focus on anything but her.”

  “I’ll, ah, go put in a good word for you,” I offered. A few people clapped. I turned to go and then swiveled around. “Just out of curiosity, how do you all know he’s not gay?”

  “Oh my God, girl, did you see the hair on his chest? It’s obviously not manscaped.” Erik said this with obvious horror at my ignorance. I looked at Ryan’s chest but saw nothing wrong with it. I met Ryan’s eyes, and he just shrugged as if he didn’t know what was wrong either. Soon we were all staring at him, and Ryan, for all his amazing confidence, became flustered and dragged his hand across his upper chest. The motion made me giggle a little. The whole scenario was kind of hilarious if you thought about it.

  “I’ll be right back,” I promised and headed toward my table. This time, a small entourage of interested people, led by Erik, followed me. Ellie stood by the table, throwing back another shot and glaring daggers back toward Ryan.

  “Ellie, this is Erik, Ryan’s roommate,” I introduced them. Ellie reluctantly held out her hand.

  “I’m sorry you have to live with him,” she sniffed.

  “Me, too,” Erik replied. “I was hoping for a gay roommate who’d either fall totally in love with me or go trolling for men with me. Instead I got a sporty lacrosse straight dude who likes to read Shakespeare and won’t wax his chest.”

  “You’re a pretty awesome wingman,” I said to Erik after the recitation of Ryan’s assets.

  “I know,” he said, without any faux modesty. Ellie’s pissed-off look turned to uncertainty. As she nibbled on her lip, one of our entourage piped up, “Why don’t you give the poor boy a chance?”

  “Yeah, just a dance,” another voice said. Pretty soon the crowd was chanting dance, dance, dance. We all looked back to Ryan who, buoyed by the crowd support, no longer had his head in his hands but was walking toward us. Ellie threw her hands up in surrender and pushed through our crowd. Halfway across the dance floor, the two stopped a foot away from each other. The music spun down and there was a lull. Someone else yelled out, “Now kiss!”

  Ryan placed his arm around Ellie’s waist and waved his other arm in the air, gesturing for the DJ to spin up another song. He yelled out, “Play that funky music, white boy.”

  The crowd erupted in cheers, and Sasha and I dissolved into laughter. The dance floor was mobbed as everyone moved toward it to revel in the little drama that had played itself out. Sasha and I threw ourselves into the crowd, pushing until we found Ellie and Ryan draped around each other like they were trying to absorb each other. We pulled them apart and danced, jumping and grinding and swaying to the strange mix of K Pop and hard rap. As the night wore on, Ryan and Ellie became inseparable. Erik and Ryan had abandoned their table and taken up residence at ours. Sasha’s ex showed up, looking magnificent in pink, her hair teased out and standing a good four inches in a halo around her head. Victoria must have had her own invitation, as Sasha’s fourth went unused. Brian was off with some girl tonight, the opportunity to get laid by one girl outweighing hundreds in their underwear. One shake of Victoria’s hips and Sasha was back in her arms. It seemed like everyone was pairing up.

  Despite the sweat streaking down my back and the press of the bodies on the dance floor generating enough heat to warm the entire apartment complex, I suddenly felt cold. Chills warred with the sweat and dizziness hit me. I stumbled off the floor toward the table holding our clutches and drinks.

  I looked around me. Everyone was laughing and shouting at each other, throwing back drinks and designing black-light illuminated tattoos on each other. I tried once more to enter the fray on the dance floor, but after one song, I knew I had to go home because the crowd was only accentuating the stinging ache of loneliness.

  I grabbed at Sasha to let her know I was leaving. If I told Ellie, she’d demand to go with me, and I didn’t want to ruin her night. Sasha waved me off and said she’d make sure Ellie got home safely.

  Out in the entryway, I retrieved my coat and shrugged it on, the cotton canvas sticking to my sweaty body. I plucked at it, knowing that in a moment the material would be a worthless barrier to the chill of the winter night.

  “Need a cab?” the bouncer queried.

  I nodded my head. He picked up a phone and made a call. “Ten minutes,” he told me, hanging up his cell phone and tucking it into his pocket.

  “I’ll wait outside.” I needed a few moments of alone time. He gave me a dismissive nod, his head turning back to ogle the crowd inside.

  I took a step outside and inhaled the crisp night air. Initially the cold felt good. It cleared my head, and the quiet of the night, as opposed to the loud pounding of bass from the dance music, was a huge relief.

  Only the relief and clearheadedness didn’t last. The ache of being alone crept in again, insidiously, like smoke curling in and around the base of the floor and climbing the walls, silently and menacingly. I wanted Ellie and Ryan to work out because as tired of being ostracized as I felt, I didn’t want Ellie to feel that way. I needed to stop relying on her so heavily, to push her back onto campus and not allow her to regret that her college years were spent in exile with me.

  I rubbed my hands along my face. Feeling sorry for myself was worse than feeling lonely.

  Chapter Seventeen

  BO

  THE SITUATION WITH AM WAS confounding me. Given her past, I knew I had to let her make the first move, but exchanging lighthearted banter when I wanted to peel her clothing off with my teeth was wearing what little self-control I had down to a nub. Noah suggested heading down to the old zipper factory. A group of guys met to fight on Wednesday nights—a hump day celebration or something.

  There were no crowds there, and if you showed up, the expectation was that you wanted to fight. There were around ten of us there. We could have done this down at the Spartan Gym, but I supposed that Paulie wouldn’t want it to get around that we were trying to beat the shit out of each other instead of “training” or “working out.” But none of us wanted to be the best at exercising. We just wanted the opportunity to whale on each other for five minutes without interruption or judgment. I never asked why any of the other guys were there, and they didn’t ask me. It was bare knuckle fighting. Not everyone was even in very good shape. One guy had a tub in his belly but an iron jaw. My knuckles bore witness to his immovable facade.

  Regardless, my two-hour stint there left me feeling relaxed and good-humored, even if my ri
bs did ache from the blow delivered by the Pillsbury Doughboy. Who knew those guys were so hardy?

  I slowed down on East Second as a couple of guys clad only in what appeared to be jocks and jackets skipped across the street and disappeared into a bar. On the sidewalk, next to the entrance, I saw a dark-haired girl who looked somewhat like AM. I shook my head a little, knowing I had her on my mind, but when she moved to the side and her face was illuminated by the light, I realized it was AM.

  I slammed the brakes on, grateful I was almost at a stop and didn’t ram into anyone. I deployed the down button on the passenger window and leaned across the center console.

  “AM,” I yelled. She looked startled and came over to stand next to the car.

  “Bo?” She leaned down to peer inside.

  I reached over, pulled the door handle, and gave the passenger door a push. She gripped it indecisively for a moment and climbed in, but didn’t shut the door.

  “I was going to take a cab home,” she said, biting the side of her mouth.

  “You don’t need one now,” I declared. She shot me another glance and looked at the empty street.

  “Guess not.” She swung her legs inside and shut the door. I engaged the locks and took off.

  “What are you wearing under there?” I tilted my head toward her trench coat. A trench coat seemed an odd choice for club attire. Even in the dead of winter, girls seemed to be impervious to the cold with their miniskirts, high heels, and see-through tops. No one wore jackets. It was like she was on a top-secret mission smuggling booze.

  She shifted uncomfortably next to me, blushed, and looked out the window, which only heightened my curiosity. I glanced back at the bar she had been standing by and the two guys in their underwear flicked through my head. I shook it. Nah, that couldn’t be right. AM wouldn’t be wearing just her panties underneath that jacket.

  I tried a different tactic. “Where were you?” It came out hoarse, like I hadn’t drunk water for a week, but I couldn’t help it. All fluids in my body were pooling below the waist at the thought of her attired in nothing but a bra and panties. Thank God it was dark.

  “The Garden,” she said, unconcerned. Likely she’d not a clue as to what was swirling through my head.

  “What’s that?” I hadn’t heard of it before.

  “Gay bar.”

  And that’s the reason why. I saw no reason to go to a gay bar to drink. If I had to move it on the dance floor, it was for the express purpose of picking up a girl. But that would explain the two guys in jocks and, no, wait, it did not explain the guys in their underwear.

  “I saw two guys go inside with some briefs on. What’s that all about?”

  “Special invite-only party,” AM mumbled.

  “What’s that?”

  “Underwear party.”

  I clearly didn’t hear that right.

  “Underwear party?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw her nod her agreement. I took my eyes off the road and looked at her jacket. Would that I had X-ray vision right now.

  “Hey,” she said, her hand coming over to the steering wheel. I’d veered off into the gravel and was perilously close to the curb. I took the next two lefts and ended up in a low-lit parking lot. The bustle of the downtown was two miles behind us and the campus a few miles in front of us. It was a no-man’s land of closed businesses here.

  I put the car in park and turned in my seat. “Underwear party?” I repeated.

  “Why are we stopped?”

  Did she think she was making sense? Because she wasn’t. “You just said underwear party. I almost drove off the road at those words.”

  “I won’t talk about it,” she promised.

  “I still can’t drive. It’s not safe for either of us.”

  She rolled her eyes at me, but I was thinking seriously of our safety. Did she honestly believe I could drive knowing that she was wearing underwear under her trench coat? Did she not know that this was like every guy’s fantasy from the age that guys could have fantasies?

  “Fine,” she huffed. “It’s an invitation-only party. You go in your underwear.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “All these gay guys get to look at you in your underwear?” I was outraged.

  She nodded.

  “How do you know if they’re gay? Shit, I’d lie two ways to Sunday that I was gay to get into a shindig like that.”

  “I don’t know. And there are straight guys there. Ryan Collins was there.”

  That sneaky motherfucker. How did he get in there? We were going to have a talk after tonight, he and I.

  “Can we go home now?” AM said impatiently. “I’m kind of cold.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to yell back that of course she was cold. She was wearing her fucking underwear and nothing else. Instead, I shook my head and got out of the car. I did a few deep knee bends, tried to lift the car, and then rested my head against the roof, battling back all sorts of images in my head.

  I vaguely registered the car door opening and closing. Then felt the heat of AM’s body as she stood next to me.

  “Ah, what’re you doing?”

  “I have poor impulse control, AM.” I refused to look at her. Did I really think she needed to make the first move? How illegal was it if I just kidnapped her and locked her in my bedroom until she agreed to my demands? Very illegal, Bo, I counseled myself sternly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, I’m not ready to get back into an enclosed space with you,” I huffed. Could she not just go back into the car and pretend I wasn’t out here?

  I felt her soft hand on my arm. “Is everything okay?”

  I stood up and looked down at her. Even in her damn fine heels, she didn’t come up much higher than my neck. “I fought some guys tonight. A friendly workout to release some tension. I bruised my knuckles.” I showed her the scraped backs of my fingers. She hovered her hand over one of them but didn’t touch. “I got hit in the face.” I pointed to the reddish bruise forming at the top of my cheekbone on the right side. “I’ve got a helluva bruise on my ribs.” I pulled up the side of my shirt to expose the killer shot from Mr. Tubby. I heard her sharp inhale. “But I can’t feel even any of that because all the blood is in my shorts at the thought of you standing in front of me, all wrapped up quiet in that tan coat of yours, wearing some kind of crazy getup underneath, like a hidden surprise at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box.”

  I was breathing heavily at this recitation. AM’s hand was a hair’s-breadth away from my exposed ribs and everything in me wanted to lean into it and make contact.

  Her hand crept closer, and my stomach muscles contracted in anticipation. But then she curled her fingers into her hand. I allowed my shirt to drop down and heaved out a big breath.

  “Come on.” I gently took her arm and steered her toward the passenger door. I helped her inside, shut the door, walked slowly around the car, and dropped into the driver’s seat. “Sorry.”

  “I’m just,” she started and paused. “I don’t date guys from Central, and even if I did, you’ve already told me you’re a hookup-only kind of guy. I don’t want that.”

  God, when did I say that? I reviewed my conversations with her. But she wasn’t wrong. I was a bad bet. I hadn’t had a real relationship ever. Unlike Noah, who had always seemed to know he wanted his girl, Grace, I spent my time being the best in the moment because I was pretty sure I didn’t want or couldn’t sustain anything longer.

  “But it’d be good, AM.”

  She gave a laughing huff and replied, “That’s what worries me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not really good at separating the physical and the emotional aspects of things, and even though we’re young, I guess I just don’t want to have a series of casual hookups.” She said this like it was an embarrassing confessional, like it was somehow wrong to want something stable and loving. The embarrassment should have been mine.

&n
bsp; The trip to her apartment was too short. I pulled in and found a parking space toward the back, in a dark corner. Subconsciously perhaps, I was trying to get her to stay with me, alone, for just a few moments longer.

  But she made no move to get out of the car either. Yes, Bo were the words I wanted to hear from her mouth. Will you let me remove your jacket? Yes, Bo. Will you allow me to lick you from the base of your neck into the valley of your breasts? Yes, Bo. Will you let me remove whatever delectable pieces of lace and satin you have on and let me warm you with my body? Yes, Bo.

  Her mouth never opened. Instead we sat in charged silence. My hands curled around the steering wheel and her fingers fretted the end of her belt.

  “AM.” I broke the silence. “I have a lot of things stacked against me, but—”

  Before another word could come out of my mouth, AM leaned over and kissed me squarely. My mouth opened in surprise and her delicate tongue poked inside, almost hesitantly. Immediately, my hand went up to the nape of her neck and pressed her more insistently against me. I stroked her tongue with my own, confidently, and she moaned into my mouth, the vibrations sending a shiver of desire from my mouth to my toes. I had waited for this moment for what seemed so long, since last semester when I first winked at her.

  I hadn’t realized how much I wanted her kisses until her lips were moving softly against mine. I wanted to drink her down and eat her up until I’d devoured every inch of her. I pressed my mouth against hers harder. The slickness of her tongue, the wet sounds our mouths were making, everything was making the tightness in my jeans nearly unbearable, but I couldn’t stop kissing her.

  I palmed her head in my hand and angled her so that I could penetrate deeper. So that I could taste every inch of her. She returned my kisses with the same fierceness, making tiny moans of pleasure that made my cock stiffer with every sound.

  Nothing else made contact between us. Her hands remained in her lap. My other hand gripped the steering wheel, lest I end this moment with any sudden asshole moves.

  She pulled back, and initially I fought it, but then I released her. We were both breathing heavily. I leaned toward her and pressed my nose against her neck and this time felt her body shake in response. I wanted to beg to come inside, but she issued no such invitation.