by Rachel Shane
His pelvis trust against me a few times, a warm up, my body sinking deep into the bed with each one. Our hips found a tangoing rhythm. The pressure inside me started to build again, and I dug my nails into his shoulders. He lifted his head, eyes glinting with mischief. “Hold on tight.”
Before I even had time to react, his arms tightened around me and he flipped us both over, never breaking stride. I straddled him, straightening my back, his sculpted chest acting as my handlebars. I’d always folded up in this position with Ryan but I let my body guide me, riding him with shallow dips. I moved faster than he had when he was in control as I followed the wave of pleasure my body demanded. One of his hands braced my lower back while his other rubbed against me. Sensation slammed into his touch. “Holy shit.” I gritted my teeth against the soft moans sneaking in between my ragged breaths. “Oh God. I’m—”
He flipped me over again.
I let out a groan of frustration. I’d have to start all over, building right back up. “What is this, ADHD sex?”
He laughed. “Just trying to figure out what will make you scream. Those wimpy moans weren’t cutting it.”
He lifted one of my legs straight in the air, forcing my knee to touch my nose. He rested my ankle on his shoulder, holding it in place, while my other leg stayed flat. On his knees, he swiveled his hips in a circular motion. Each revolution spiraled sensation through me and released a gasp. The pressure returned again in an instant, simmering like a pot about to boil. “I think you found it,” I cried out before the scream he’d been waiting for ripped from my throat, toes curling. My body pulsated in tiny earthquakes that throbbed long after the aftershock. After a few more thrusts, he let out a scream of his own and collapsed against me, his face digging into my neck. We reeked of each other’s bodies. “You’re amazing,” he whispered.
Two thoughts entered my mind simultaneously:
1. This is what I had been missing out on. After this I was pretty sure sex with Ryan didn’t even count.
2. Oh God, Bianca was going to kill me.
THE NEXT MORNING—OKAY, it was more like afternoon because our one-night stand became a three-in-one-night stand—Corey walked me downstairs. At the bottom landing, he paused. Last night, the open floor plan had contained numerous leather couches, ornate wooden tables, and a large TV. Now it contained only dust.
“What happened to your furniture?”
He scratched the back of his head. “Fucking rivalry with another frat. I can’t believe those asshats started up the prank war so early this year.” At the doorway, he planted a sweet kiss on my forehead. “I had a great time last night, Mac.”
I was going to melt, right there, in the middle of Beta Chi’s living room. “Me too.”
On the way back to my dorm, my phone buzzed with a text. I fumbled it out of my purse and my stomach flopped to the floor. Bianca. Meet me at Ali Babba’s in ten minutes.
I looked down at my outfit in panic. Though my clothes from last night could pass as late lunch clothes, they were also from last night. As in, when I fled the bar with Bianca’s best friend without alerting her to my whereabouts. As in, the clothes that spent more time crumpled on the floor than on my body overnight. Before I could even respond, another text came in: I just talked to Corey.
I swallowed hard. No backing out now. She knew. And he told her. Ugh.
I threw my hair into a messy bun, spritzed perfume from my emergency tube in my purse, and switched directions.
By the time I reached the restaurant, my hands were in full on maraca-shaking mode. My head swiveled in a panic at all the empty tables, none of which contained Bianca. Monochromatic hues of sea foam blue lit the restaurant, creating a subtle backdrop for a mural of lavish gardens that decorated the entire span of the wall space.
I sank into a booth by the window, my back ramrod straight. As soon as my breathing evened out, my mind chose this very moment to supply me with the worst advise ever in the form of an instant replay from last night. Corey’s cheek scraping against my inner thigh. The pressure building deep within my core. I slapped open the menu and mouthed the words on the page in an attempt to distract myself.
Bianca sauntered in twenty minutes late, looking like a beauty queen in her jeans, sneakers, and a Rho Sigma fitted hoodie. Once again, I was dressed totally wrong.
“Ew. Are you still wearing your clothes from last night?”
My eyes flew to her, squinting in confusion. “I thought you talked to Corey?”
She tilted her head at me as she dropped into the seat. “What does one thing have to do with the other?”
My rapid pulse beat in my neck. It seemed like we were speaking in different languages, misinterpreting each other’s translations. I spoke each word slowly. “What exactly did he say to you?”
She leaned back, studying me. “That he walked you home last night.”
My pulse increased. “Oh. Yeah. That…” was not even true.
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “But obviously that’s a lie.” Her hand traced the air in front of my body, indicating last night’s clothes.
Gulp. I took a deep breath. “Right, I…uh…I didn’t go home yet.”
“It’s three o’clock!” She crossed her arms. “Okay. I’m waiting. What’s going on here, Mackenzie?”
I tore at the corner of my napkin. He hadn’t told her. He lied to her. Was that because he wanted me to be the one to tell her, girl code and all? Or he wanted to keep what happened a secret?
“Something happened between you and Corey, didn’t it?” Her eyes narrowed into slits.
“Umm,” my voice softened.
“This isn’t a trick question.”
A text vibrated in my pocket, and I actually let out a relieved breath. A distraction. The cell fumbled in my clammy hands and scattered across the floor where it landed at the feet of the waitress. She bent to scoop it up, but I launched myself for it at an angle, like I was sliding into home plate for the winning run. I yanked it out of her hands, expecting an unimportant text from my dad or my roommate, but when I spotted Corey’s name cushioned in a text bubble, I froze.
Let’s keep what happened between us for now, okay?
A new text popped up, a clear after thought: Can’t wait to see you again, babe.
All the color drained from my face. He wanted to keep us a secret. My throat swelled as I plopped back into my seat with a new heaviness.
“Well?” Bianca’s words pierced the silence. I’d entirely forgotten she was there…and waiting for my answer to what happened between Corey and me last night. If I told her, I’d betray his request, which would effectively end anything further from happening between us. And if I didn’t tell her, the lie would sit here, a third wheel in our friendship, always unwelcome.
I lifted my eyes to meet her piercing green ones. My brain decided to be extremely unhelpful and check out of the situation entirely, offering me no loopholes or excuses other than the truth. “I went home with him.” Her eyes widened. I rushed in with the first lie I could think of, “And passed out on his couch.”
My muscles tightened, bracing for her to lash out or maybe burst into tears.
A wrinkle bridged the skin between her perfectly sculpted brows. “Wait, do you like him? I’m confused.”
Bile churned in my stomach at what I was about to say. “No. I was just really drunk and couldn’t remember where I lived.”
I cringed. Oh God. Worst excuse ever. Sure, school had only encompassed a few days so far but she couldn’t possibly believe I’d developed that level of alcohol amnesia.
But Bianca burst out laughing. “Oh my God! Nate must have been so confused when he came home and found a stray girl on his couch!” She guffawed so loud, her palm slapped the formica table.
I blinked at her. Nate never came home last night. In fact, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he should have. I shrugged, noncommittal.
She stopped laughing. “But wait, it’s almost three. Why are you still in your clothe
s from last night?”
Crap. I snatched my water glass off the table and took a sip to stall for time. “Don’t be mad, I already ate.” I hadn’t. In fact, my stomach was gurgling so loud the cook in the back was probably whipping up dishes in emergency mode. “They snuck me some food their chef cooked for lunch.” The best lies were foolproof or at least gave me an excuse to text Corey back later so he’d corroborate the tale.
Bianca’s crimson lipstick cracked when she smiled. “I’ll have to remember to thank Corey for taking care of you. They’re such a great guys.” And then…she sighed. A happy sigh.
The sigh of someone who had a crush. A big one.
When I got back to the dorm, my roommate, Fallon Horowitz, sat on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest, a novel propped open on top of them. Her blond hair spilled around her shoulders, her big blue eyes flying to me. She had that corn-fed glow to her skin, like she’d grown up on a farm milking cows all her life and not in the brand name jungle of Long Island where she actually hailed. Her parents grew their crop of choice: hedge funds. She slapped her book shut. “What is this?” She flourished her hand toward my pale blue blanket made up to hospital room standards. “Is this an empty bed?”
“Damn, I hoped you hadn’t come home either and therefore wouldn’t notice.” She’d met her boyfriend, Liam, the first weekend of freshman year and they’d be inseparable ever since. Before she could rush in with more questions, I shook a camera bag at her. “I have something for you.”
I’d signed it out of the art building on my way back to the dorm. Yesterday, after our first class, she told me she was thinking of changing majors because she was lacking inspiration for our first painting assignment in her major, my minor. I was here to help with that problem.
She grabbed the bag from my hand. “Were you in the graphics lab all night?”
I chuckled. Last year, that would have been a valid guess. As a 3D animation major, it was my second home. Plus it had Skype so I could talk to Ryan while I did work. “Nope.”
“Details!” She pursed her lips at the bag. “I already have a camera.”
“Yeah, a point and click one. This one gives you exposure settings and all that. You’ll get better lighting.”
Fallon flipped the black device around and examined it from all angles. “I don’t know how to use it.”
The bed bounced as I plopped down next to her. “I know. I took Intro To Photography last year. I’ll teach you.” I went on to explain all about the camera.
When I was finished with my tutorial, she blinked at me as if she were waiting for my next set of instructions.
I gestured to the door. “So get out there and start snapping away!”
She ran her finger along the canvas bag. “I’m not sure what to take a picture of.”
I tapped the USB hook-up. “The point is to find inspiration through the lens finder. Scenery, people walking on campus, the way the light hits the statues on the quad, stuff like that. Hopefully you’ll find a subject worth replicating in paint.”
“Mackenzie, this is really sweet, but…I want to paint like you. You never look at pictures for inspiration. It all comes out of your head. That series you did with photorealistic crowd shots from your classes? You’re amazing.”
You’re amazing. The same words Corey had said after we’d first had sex. Words Ryan had never uttered in all three and a half years together.
“Plenty of people paint this way. Vermeer set up a pin hole camera and traced his paintings onto a canvas.” I tromped to Fallon’s standard-issue Grade B for boring wooden desk and rummaged through her drawers until I found what I was looking for. I held up her sketchbook from last year and flipped through the pages. Figure drawings that captured the emotions of the models. Self-portraits that each conveyed that deer-in-headlights look Fallon always seemed to have. “Look at these. They’re damn good. I don’t know why you’re so down on yourself. You copied these from life, and they’re perfect. You can do the same with a photo.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll try your method. But only if I get details about your night. I’m dying here!”
I opened my mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. For an entire year now, Fallon knew everything about me from my penchant for binging on sunflower seeds in the middle of the night to which underwear I wore most often—the purple lacy ones. It didn’t seem right to keep something this huge from her. After all, she’d taken both the LIRR and NJ Transit a total of four hours to console me after Ryan crumpled three point five years of our life over a snuffed out campfire on what was supposed to be our anniversary spent in a single sleeping bag under the stars.
But Corey’s text embedded into my mind. Let’s keep what happened between us for now, okay? Still, he had no idea who Fallon was.
So I told her everything.
I was a ball of nerves at our first sorority Chapter meeting of the semester. The secret about Corey and me seemed so huge, I gasped for air as it suffocated me. I lined up in alphabetical order with my pledge class, hopping from foot to foot. With last names at the beginning of the alphabet, several sisters separated me from Bianca and Erin and I usually hated the few minutes of silence. Now, I welcomed the separation, if only to give myself extra time to calm the hell down. I thought when I joined a sorority I’d instantly have one hundred new best friends, but it turned out cliques formed inside the main group. We acted as a unified front in public, but in private, we fled to separate corners and congregated with our own kind.
Once inside the large room, I weaved through seated bodies until I reached Bianca and Erin along the back wall. I dropped onto the floral carpet into the empty space they saved for me. Only seniors got to sit elevated on couches. Different floral patterns warred for supremacy in the room: the rug an ornate oriental design, cobalt blue couches with tiny flower appliqués, drapes patterned with big round roses. It was like the sorority told their interior decorator, “We really want people to know we’re girls. Please conform to every stereotype there is. Don’t worry about matching.”
I twiddled my hands in my lap, my knee rattling. Bianca placed a palm on my leg to steady me. “What are you so jumpy about?”
My heart leapt into my throat. “N—Nothing.” Everything.
Erin pulled my hair back from my neck. “Oh my God. Is that a hickie?”
“No!” My hand flew to my neck. “A…rash.”
Nearby, a few girls turned to me, wrinkling their nose. Erin shook her head, smile wide, as if she didn’t believe me. Bianca squinted at me in confusion.
A loud clap at the front of the room signaled the start of the meeting. Our president, Layla Davies, sat in a winged back chair she treated as a throne. If it wasn’t ridiculous to wear a crown, I bet she’d proudly display a sparkling one on top of her her dark black bob. “Welcome back, ladies,” she said.
Fifty hands went into the air and snapped, though Bianca turned her snap into a finger gun and aimed it at Layla. She wasn’t exactly at the top of our Friends List. Last year during pledging, she’d been the harshest, mentally hazing us by testing us on meaningless information and then scolding us when we got it wrong. Most of our other pledge tasks had involved bonding activities, like casually interviewing the other sisters to get to know them better, or passing a candle around in a dark room and sharing secrets.
“Before we discuss which frats we want to party with first—”
“Beta Chi!” someone shouted and a few snaps rang out.
Layla glared at us until all chatter ceased. “Well, then. You’ve just demonstrated that my assumption was correct. Before we get to the fun stuff, we need to re-hash the rules.”
I rolled my eyes at Bianca. The rules were clear and simple: don’t fuck up. Well, that and pay dues on time, don’t pledge another sorority, and keep trade secrets hush hush.
“As a member of Rho Sigma,” Layla continued. “You represent us, whether on campus or off. If you do something bad, it reflects bad on the whole house.” She shifted in her seat, clearly
pausing for dramatic effect. “Need I remind you of the cautionary tale of the on campus fraternity that got kicked off a few years ago.”
Erin groaned. “Not this again.”
But Layla launched into the same old spiel. “One of their underage members was caught drinking in the small park in front of their house on a nice sunny day. Two violations right there: underage drinking and open containers outside.”
Bianca widened her eyes and whispered, “The horror!”
“That’s all it took. The fraternity was done for, their house bulldozed and turned into the new science building.”
Another pause while Layla clearly played dun dun dun music inside her own mind.
“One fraternity member caused the entire house to fall due to his stupid actions.”
Someone in the center raised her hand. “I heard it was actually a few members drinking on the lawn while playing football, but only one was underage.”
Layla shrugged as if those were minor details. The threat was still the same. If we didn’t adhere to the standards Rho Sigma set forth, we could be next.
A few days later on a school night, Bianca didn’t feel like going out. Which meant I had to. If Corey and I were keeping what happened between us a secret, maybe that would explain why he hadn’t come out with us the last few nights: he was afraid our chemistry would spill over and alert Bianca. At least I hoped that was the case because I couldn’t bear the alternative: he only wanted a one-night stand. Aside from accepting my friend request on the campus social media site, he hadn’t called me since our night together. So I casually put “Out at Quigley’s. Shots are on me! ;-)” as my status message in the hope he might see it. And do something about it.
Despite Fallon’s firm anti-bar stance, I begged her to go out to Quigley’s. Like a dutiful friend, she rubbed my coral lipstick all over her sealed lips, my secret squashed inside. She squeezed her toes into my highest heels and teetered each time she tried to dance, shaking her hips in a way that didn’t even count. I couldn’t possibly have been much company; my eyes didn’t leave the door the entire night. I caught her yawning several times while I sucked back glasses packed with caffeine. Only a few hardcore drinkers were out that night, and I felt like a true lush. I even did a solo shot of Smurf on the Red for good measure.