Unraveling Josh

by Edie Danford

  How had it come to this? I couldn’t stop wondering. Kelsey and Chelle had been awesome together last year. A couple of smartass, smartas-hell women in love—so gooey-eyed and glowing over each other it had been hard to be around them sometimes. Then things had fallen apart in the spring. I didn’t know the details. I just knew they’d fought and tried to get back together a half-dozen times. And over the summer Kelsey and I had texted and she’d seemed her old self. A couple of new women had made appearances on her Instagram. And I’d assumed she’d moved on. Until I’d bumped into Chelle coming out of Kelsey’s room a few times this quarter.

  So what had happened to that amazing love glow? Had it been destroyed? Had it morphed into something completely destructive and hateful and uncontrolled? Maybe there was no explanation for it. Maybe it had just…disappeared.

  “Nothing,” I told her, squeezing her hand. “Just thinking. You want more water?”

  She shook her head. “What were you thinkin’ ’bout?”

  I figured it was better to confess my worries about Josh and Pete than to tell her I was thinking about Chelle, so I said, “About how badly I fucked up with Josh. And with Pete. Because I was a wimp and didn’t tell either of them the whole truth.”

  “Truth.” She nodded. “It’s a hard, painful thing. Learned that lesson again tonight.”

  I ran my hand up her arm, petting gently. “I’m so sorry, Kelse.” She made a soft, whimpering noise. “You know that no matter what happened between you and Chelle—no matter what you did or didn’t do—you didn’t deserve her abuse. That shit is wrong no matter what.”

  “I know,” she whispered. I wasn’t sure whether she believed it, but I was gonna be around for the long haul to make sure she had the best chance for believing.

  “Tell me what happened with Pete and Josh. Tell me how you fucked up.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t want to tell her. But the room was dark, she was in pain, our souls were aching and I felt like I had to let it go—I felt like maybe Kelsey needed to hear that other people fucked up too.

  I sat up, took a sip of water and told her.

  When I finished—it took a while because I included the top-ten highlights (lowlights?) of the last five years—she sat up too. “Go find Josh,” she said. “Now. Find him and tell him everything. He might not understand everything, but he needs to hear it from you and not from Pete.”

  “But I don’t want to leave you—”

  “Jesus, Nick! Just go.” She gave me a shove. Tears were welling in her eyes again.

  “Okay, okay. I’m gonna find Lena or someone to check in on you. If you don’t let me do that, I’m not going.”

  “Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes in what seemed like a painful action. “As long as you do it fast.”

  I gave her a gentle kiss, covered her with a soft afghan and left her room door partially open. After finding my jacket—buried under piles of Pete’s stuff—I sent texts to both him and Josh. Where are you?

  In the time I got down the stairs, checked in with Lena and headed out the door, I hadn’t received a response from either of them. I jogged toward the orange glow a block away on frat row, my gut churning and my fingers sweating. I felt like I should be praying. I felt like I was heading into hell.

  Josh

  I HAD OFFICIALLY outgrown Ellery College parties. Fen House had been unbelievably bad—even Pete had agreed that between the awful music (eighties hair bands) and the lame-ass games (a variation on beer pong that involved something that looked alarmingly like enema bags) that we should get the hell out of there. We’d followed the sound of decent music and ended up at Green House.

  Pete was dancing—dude had moves and had attracted quite the entourage in the space of twenty minutes—and I was chatting with Johnny Reed, the guy I’d worked out with before I’d busted out with hives last week.

  Johnny was cool. But the dude he was with—Gabriel something—was pretty much an asshole. I didn’t mind the occasional flash of ego or conceit in a guy. Sometimes I even liked it—certain displays of arrogance from Nick could bring me to my knees, for example. But Gabriel’s snide comments about everything and everyone grated.

  Right now Gabriel’s gaze was fixed on Pete. “Who’d you say the twink was?” he asked.

  “Pete. A friend of a friend,” I said. “From California visiting for the weekend.”

  “That would explain the boots. And the jacket. And the spray tan. And the every other little thing.” Gabriel snorted. “Nice…if you go for that kind of thing.”

  “And you do,” Johnny said, laughing. “Because he’s cute and he’s alive.”

  “True, true,” Gabriel admitted, no shame. Pete had started up a slow grind with a short guy—I think it was the dude who worked at the library’s café. He looked as if he’d struck gold as he put his hands under Pete’s flowy shirt and stroked his torso. “He’s way, way out of Charles’s league. Might be time to move in.”

  “Um…” My fingers clenched around my beer bottle. I was really hating this. Because who the hell was I to be social director—or even worse, babysitter—and tell Pete what or who he should or shouldn’t do?

  I thought we should go back to Vegan House and check in with Nick and Kelsey. We’d been gone for a while and had seen quite a few Ellery shenanigans. Also, this Gabriel guy seemed like a prick. My instincts were screaming at me to protect Pete from him. But, yeah, seemed like Pete was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Also, it was likely he wouldn’t appreciate my interference.

  “You’re not a player in that game, are you, Pahlke?” Gabriel looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “No,” I said. “But my guy—the friend who Pete is here visiting—might want to know what’s going on. It would be good to check in with him.”

  Speaking of checking in… I pulled my phone from my pocket. I hadn’t checked messages in a while and I needed to tell Nick where we were.

  “And who is your guy?” Gabriel asked.

  Johnny laughed. “You mean you don’t know?” He said it with a bunch of exaggerated dismay.

  I held back a sigh and glanced up from my phone’s screen. I didn’t want to participate in this kind of conversation. I’d become aware that Nick had a rep in certain Ellery circles—I’d teased him for being a social butterfly, but he’d said he was more like socially notorious—and he’d told me people had been razzing him for toning down the partying this quarter. I was happy to be the reason for it, selfishly glad to have him to myself, but this was the first time I’d been confronted with the for-real gossip.

  Gabriel looked from me to Johnny and back. “Nope,” he said. “I don’t know. I missed the first part of the quarter. But you’ve definitely spiked my curiosity.”

  Johnny raised his beer to me. After taking a long drink he said, “Our boy Josh has conquered none other than Naughty Nick McQueen. Completely took him off the market as far as anyone can tell. Cheers to the Fen-men, right?” Johnny tried to punch me on the shoulder, but missed. I realized he was trashed—one of those guys who hid it well and then suddenly it all came sloshing out with nasty words and sloppy smiles.

  Gabriel laughed. Obnoxiously. “McQueen? No. Fucking. Way.” His dark gaze performed a head-to-toe survey of my body. Feeling like I was under glass at a butcher’s counter, I gave him a look, like what the hell? because I didn’t want to be as rude as he was and say exactly what was on my mind.

  He didn’t seem fazed by my expression in the slightest. He said to me, “You must have the stamina—and a few other qualities—of a rhino.”

  Johnny snorted. “Jesus, Gabriel—”

  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” I asked, feeling heat rise rapid-fire along the back of my neck and up the sides of my face.

  Gabriel raised one stocky shoulder and then let it fall. “Your guy Nick was the busiest top on campus last year. Don’t think there was a willing ass—and maybe a few unwilling ones—he left unfucked.”

  Jesus. How the hell was I sup
posed to respond to that?

  “Oh, they were definitely all willing,” Johnny said. “As soon as the rumors started about the size of his dick, they were lining up at his door—not so much to get nailed but to get the so-called Nick experience.”

  More heat stoked the skin on my face, spreading to my chest, down my back. I was beginning to itch. The tiny bumps of a few holdout hives prickled against my clothes. I took a step sideways, widening my stance, bolstering the sudden weakness in my legs. I hadn’t been sleeping well all week—I’d missed Nick—and the only thing I’d eaten since eleven a.m. was a wedge of cheese, a few crackers and beer and wine. If my knees were feeling jiggly and my mind was reeling, I had a good excuse. If I punched this guy Gabriel in the nuts, I could blame sleep deprivation and starvation, right?

  But I wasn’t a frat guy anymore. I wasn’t a drunk, jealous, insecure idiot who thought of people in terms of who, what, where and how they fucked. As my gaze traveled from Johnny’s and Gabriel’s smiling faces to the faces of all the other people milling around on the lawn, for the second time in the space of an hour I felt way too old to be on this campus. And, honestly, the feeling held some relief. I was relieved I wasn’t an undergrad. I was relieved I wasn’t obligated to live with, eat with, go out with and breathe with some of these people. Most of these people. Almost all of these people.

  Where the hell was Nick?

  I ignored Johnny and Gabriel and looked at my phone. There was a message from Nick saying he was headed out and asking where we were.

  I texted him with our locale and Get here soon if you can. I didn’t want to make him leave Kelsey, but God, I really wanted to see him. It seemed like he was the only person who could make this scene tolerable. I shoved the phone in my pocket and retrieved a stick of gum. My mouth tasted like shit and tension was riding me hard.

  “How long have you known Nick?” Gabriel asked as I pocketed my phone.

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t wanted this guy’s attention on Pete and now I was finding I liked it even less on me. “Since summer,” I said, exhaling.

  “You didn’t know him in Chicago at all?” Johnny asked. “You’re all from there, right?”

  Gabriel commented, “Big fucking place, Chicago.”

  I shrugged. “Actually, Nick and I went to the same high school, but he’s younger so we didn’t really connect. Pete went to Lake Woods High too.”

  “Lake Woods… That reminds me.” Gabriel glanced at Johnny. “Remember that place I took you to in Boystown at the beginning of the summer?” He paused to leer. “We met that hot-shit bartender—Mike Reilly? He grew up in Lake Woods.” He looked at me. “You know Mike?”

  I shook my head. There were probably ten thousand guys named Mike Reilly in Chicagoland. I didn’t remember ever meeting one.

  “How ’bout you, J-man?” Gabriel kept his gaze on Johnny. “You remember? Totally ripped. With the ace of spades tat and the Prince Albert?”

  “Um, yeah. I think I do remember Mike.” Johnny grinned. “That was a fine, fine night.”

  “Well, Mike is good friends with Nick,” Gabriel said. “Went to high school with him. Had a few tales to tell.”

  I bit down hard on my gum. They must be talking about the Mike from the Cancun pic. Mike who had been Nick’s “first”.

  Jesus. I didn’t want to think about this shit. Didn’t want to know this shit. I hated gossip.

  “Who’s good friends with Nick?” a new voice asked loudly.

  Pete. He was at my side suddenly, grinning, his tan skin shiny with exertion, his voice juiced with energy.

  “I’m sort of friends with Nick,” Gabriel said, homing in on Pete with a trying-too-hard smile. “And I’m also sort of friends with a friend of Nick’s…dude named Mike Reilly? Bartender?”

  “No way!” Pete bounced in his suede boots. “Small world, right? I’m great friends with both Nick and Mike. Have been since forever.”

  “Awesome,” Gabriel said. “Then you must know about this thing they had going on last summer. Some kind of fuck contest where they tallied their hookups and ranked them. Really sick concept. I wanted in on it, but Mike said it was a closed group.”

  I stared at Gabriel’s gorgeous face—it hit me that he looked a lot like Lenny Kravitz back in his dreadlock days. But his good looks didn’t make what he’d said any more palatable. Or easier to understand.

  What the hell? Fuck contest. Online. With rankings.

  Pete laughed his crazy laugh. “Oh my God. The Notch Spot! Not only do I know about it, I’m the founder!”

  “For real?” Gabriel asked, eyebrows rising.

  “Yep,” Pete said proudly.

  I knew from the second he’d uttered the words that I did not want to know anything else about the “Notch Spot”. But I couldn’t control Johnny’s comment, “Oh my God, more details needed!” or Gabriel’s breathy laughter. This is what happened with gossip. People traveled down paths they shouldn’t go, never knowing who the hell they might tread on, or what shit they might uncover.

  “I am so fucking honored to meet you.” Gabriel was offering Pete his hand.

  “Thanks,” Pete said, shaking Gabriel’s hand with a flourish. “But I’ve been way, way low in scoring any notches lately. Nothing compared to the other guys. I was hoping to make up for some of my lack with a trip here to visit Nicky.” He gave me a sidelong glance.

  I was beginning to hate Pete’s guts even though I knew he was Nick’s bestie. This Notch Spot shit sounded like the most demeaning, nasty, immature kind of hookup shit ever. Not even remotely down any alley I wanted to travel. I cast a glance at the sidewalk that would take me away from campus, considering the fastest way to make an escape.

  “You might find some parties willing to fill your lack.” Johnny was saying to Pete. He and Gabriel exchanged flirty glances and I had a sudden vision of the three of them going off somewhere together to carry on. Get it on. What the fuck ever. Fine with me, as long as I wasn’t involved. But Nick might worry about Pete.

  I looked in the direction of the bonfire’s glow. Where the hell was Nick?

  “So you know Nicky?” Pete asked. I turned to see him gazing coyly at Gabriel, even though Pete obviously didn’t need to work to score any more points in that game. “He totally won the Notch award for the summer.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Mike was telling us Nick was having a good run back at the beginning of summer.”

  “You know what?” I said, shifting my weight from my bum foot, ignoring the itch skittering up my thighs and arms. “Maybe it’s not so good to talk about people who aren’t here to defend themselves, people who might not appreciate—”

  “Defend themselves?” Pete sawed out a laugh. “Nicky would crow this from the highest weathervane in fricking New England.” He waved a hand vaguely toward the library tower that was all lit up in the distant sky. “Nick just kept getting better as the summer season progressed,” Pete told Gabriel, all proud papa.

  The slow-churning mess in my stomach kicked up to fast and ominous.

  “Nick’s crowning glory of the summer was Mr. Joshua Pahlke here.” Pete put his hands on hips and looked at me with a shit-eating grin. “Blew us all out of the water with the extra points he got for fucking his teenage fantasy. Although I have to say I’m mad at you, Josh.” His grin turned into a pout. “Looks like you might’ve taken Nicky right out of the game. Permanently.”

  I stared at him. I had no idea what he was talking about. Extra points? Teenage fantasy?

  “Wait,” Johnny said, glancing from Pete to Gabriel to me. “So you guys put points on the types of guys you fuck? That is seriously like whoa.”

  “I know, right?” Pete’s smile gleamed devilishly in the weird orange light. “Jonathan—another guy in our group—is a statistics whiz. He came up with a matrix. Lemme show you.”

  I watched—my toes curling in my shoes, my brain spewing out fruitless commands to my feet to flee—as Pete pulled out his phone from his tight jeans. His fingernail
tap-tap-tapped at the screen. He looked down at it and nodded. “See?” he said excitedly. “Here it is. Labor Day weekend. Josh earned shitloads of points for Nick, so he’s at the very top of the list. But back in June I got nailed by Xander Shaw—you know him? He stars in that new teen superhero show on Fox? He’s a celeb so he has me coming in a close second.”

  As Pete handed his phone to Gabriel—they were standing on either side of me so the phone passed right under my nose—I caught a glimpse of some pictures and some big red numbers. One image looked like my face. One of them looked like a cock.

  I took a step back. My jaw ached. I’d been chewing my gum as if it were the glue keeping my skull from disintegrating.

  Gabriel and Johnny looked down at the screen, laughing and making comments. “Way to go, Josh! Fen-men always rise to the top, right?” And, “Hey, man—what did he give you as a reward for this kind of score?” And, “Jaysus, look at the sweet ass on this dude—I’d tap the hell out of that…”

  Pete suddenly cried out, saying with supercharged enthusiasm, “Oh my God, I love this song! Who wants to dance?”

  I tried to take a breath that would actually get oxygen into my lungs. I was feeling freakily disconnected from everything. The people standing right next to me. The party. Ellery. Vermont. The fucking planet.

  Gabriel handed Pete his phone and I recoiled as it came near me. I stumbled, super dizzy now. I needed to breathe, needed to pull myself together enough so I could leave…

  Pete was singing loudly, “If you’re horny, let’s do it!”

  Gabriel joined in, laughing. “Ride it, my pony…”

  My gum had turned into a foul-tasting lump and I wanted more than anything to spit it out. I glanced around the lawn, past the dance floor, past the milling people. Fastest way home would be via the path to the left of the house, through the backyard and out into the alley.

  I headed that direction. I wasn’t sure if Pete and company noticed I was leaving. I didn’t give a fuck. As I passed by the house—the gold lights smacking me in the face, the funky beat of Ginuwine razoring my ears—I spat out my gum in a trashcan full of empty Solo cups, swallowing convulsively as my stomach churned. When I got to the orange-brown darkness of the alley I paused, inhaling the scent of damp leaves and beer and wood smoke.