by Lane, Bayli
Thankfully, their pondering eyes became unfocused on us with the amount of games happening. Most of the guys end playing videogames or head outside for a game of corn hole.
We aren’t so lucky about Clarissa. Colton moves closer to me and leans down to whisper something into my ear, Clarissa’s eyes zoom in on the exact location of Colton’s soft lips against my skin. I try to hide the wobbling of my knees when he kisses that place behind my ear, but I can’t. I close my eyes and then open them to find Colton smiling at me. He knows exactly how that kiss affects me. Then I move my focus over to where Clarissa is standing and find her staring at us, open mouthed, and then she starts giggling. Giggling. She covers her mouth and nose but continues on with her giggle fest. I watch, biting my lower lip to keep the giddy laugh from escaping my mouth as well. She notices and laughs harder. I wave my hand at her, telling her, begging her, to stop! She’s going to embarrass me. I know it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of when.
“What’s going on?” Colton leans down and murmurs. His lips graze my cheek as he pulls away to glance at me.
When I open my mouth to answer a small laugh escapes. I cover it with my left hand and then glare over at Clarissa. She’s watching us. Colton looks over at her and then back at me. His face relaxes as he realizes that nothing is actually wrong, but instead that Clarissa and I are having a silent conversation from across the room.
“I think it’s safe to say that every single one of our friends knows that something happened.” I look back over at Clarissa and she’s mouthing, “I told you.” Yes, yes, Clarissa… I know. You knew this was going to happen at some point. As much as I tried to fight it, I knew it would happen too. I fought it, but here I am anyway.
Colton’s dimple appears. “I think they knew as soon as we walked away from the party earlier.” He smiles and waves at Clarissa with raised eyebrows. “Clarissa seems a little… overly excited,” he suggests and laughs.
“Are we supposed to tell them or something?” I ask. “I mean it’s not really any of their business right?” I continue. I fluster with the thought of having to explain anything to our friends. I don’t know what to say… so we made out! Who cares! No big deal. Well, it does feel like a big deal to me, but to Colton it’s just another girl. I’m not going to get my hopes up, and there’s no reason to make it uncomfortable by letting our friends believe we’re like an “item” or something when we aren’t. We’re just friends with some sexual tension between us, and we’re going to have fun. That’s it. No attachments. No boyfriend/girlfriend name-calling. No falling in love! It’s simple. Colton is a cool, exciting, sexy-as-hell friend, and that’s why I wanted and still want to kiss him. That’s not what relationships are. Plus, Colton doesn’t do relationships.
Seeing how worked up I’m getting, Colton puts his hand on my lower back and pushes me to the side of the kitchen where no one is standing. His hands move up to my shoulders, as he looks me deeply in the eyes. “Lilly, we don’t have to tell them anything unless we want to. Do you want to?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“I could have guessed that by how freaked out you just got in there. It’s no one else’s business but ours. Just relax, okay?” He waits for a response, but I don’t have one. “You good?” He looks at my lips.
I suck in a shaky breath, and then let it out slowly. I can tell he’s thinking about kissing me again, but doesn’t want to do it in front of everyone here. I’m not sure if that means he’s embarrassed by me, or if he’s just trying to be polite since I was nervous about our friends over-thinking things between us. I have to admit, even if only to myself, that I don’t like the possibility of him being embarrassed to kiss me in front of other people. I’m sure he’s kissed other girls in public before. Not that I really want to be kissed in public; I’m not sure I’m ready for that to get back to Lauren or Sander. It’s just the possibility that he doesn’t want to be seen getting physical with me in public that has me emotionally irritated.
I knew this would happen. I’m already letting myself get attached. See… this is why it’s never good to just have fun with a guy unless there is some kind of commitment there. I’m already mad, because he didn’t kiss me in the kitchen at a barbeque? That seems ridiculous even in my head, yet I still feel the dissatisfaction.
In the middle of my inner turmoil, Colton grabs my hand and pulls me into his side. He wraps his left arm around my waist and holds me tightly against him as he begins to speak with a group of guys about his band’s next gig. He doesn’t seem to realize he’s even done it, but I sure as hell notice. I have to clench my teeth to keep from smiling like a lovesick teenager with her first, real crush. I’m thankful he put an end to my emotional war before I decided to leave the party or that I’d made a mistake by making out with him just a little over an hour ago. Nope, back to plain old fun.
I wrap my right arm around Colton and lean into him. I know this can’t help with possible rumors, but friends can do this too, right? Right. I look around Colton’s arm and find Clarissa making her way over to us, a smile still plastered on her face. I don’t think it will ever leave. She’s definitely over-estimated what’s going on between Colton and me, and I will have to let her down gently. That’ll have to happen later. She wiggles her skinny self in between the guys talking to Colton. Her red hair peeks through them first and then the rest of her. She stands in front of Colton and me and looks at our arms wrapped around one another and then back to Colton’s face and then to mine. She puts her hands on her hips. “Damn, I’m good,” she says outright.
Colton raises an eyebrow in confusion, but he still grins at her. He can’t seem to not smile at Clarissa. I, however, just shake my head. She’s so sure of herself. Clarissa probably thinks she’s the one who caused this all to happen. In a way, I suppose she is. She’s the one that brought me to that first party when I met Colton. That attraction was automatic, of course. But if she wouldn’t have invited me, I may have never met him.
The idea of not knowing Colton makes me feel uneasy. Now that I know him, now that he’s in my life, I don’t want him to ever leave it. I wouldn’t be the same person if I hadn’t met Colton that evening. He’s brought happiness to my life when I would’ve been beyond depressed. He’s brought comfort, friendship, and electricity to a life that would have been scary and confusing after losing my boyfriend. He’s made me laugh and teased me. He reminds me that even without Sander, I can have a future. I’m not sure I would have realized those things without him.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Colton says to Clarissa, ending his conversation with the guys.
“Sure,” she says. She looks at him. “Oh I get it,” she laughs. “You actually think you’re going to keep this from us. Don’t you think that ship has sailed? We knew the moment she walked through the door that tonight was different.”
“Oh, you did not!” The words stumble from me. “We were just talking,” I say pathetically.
“Yeah.” Clarissa begins, “That’s why both of you have been smiling from ear to ear and can’t seem to keep your hands to yourselves. Mhmm. Sounds like a good talk to me.”
My cheeks brighten; Colton just smiles wider. He chuckles a bit and then runs his finger across my pink cheeks. “You already knew she knew,” he says gently.
I roll my eyes. That doesn’t mean I wanted to say it out loud to anyone.
Clarissa puffs out a breath. “What’s the big deal! You would have told me later anyway,” she whines.
“Maybe not,” I mutter.
Her face falls, “You weren’t going to tell me?”
I smile at Colton. “We’ll be back in a little bit, okay,” I say.
He nods his head and tells me we’ll catch up later.
I grab Clarissa’s hand and lead her out back. The backyard isn’t very big so most people stay inside during get-togethers. The corn hole game has already been put away. There’s an empty porch swing that sits in the right corner of the fenced in grass.
I lead Clarissa to it and plop down onto the wooden seat. She follows suit. I kick my feet at the ground causing the bench to start swinging backward and forward. I continue kicking.
“I don’t want you to think we’re doing anything other than having fun,” I say to her.
Clarissa looks at me underneath her long black eyelashes. “What do you mean?”
The swing jerks backward—I kicked to hard. “All we did was kiss. It’s not like we’re together or anything, okay?”
She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think I’m following.”
I moan with frustration. “Yes, you do. You’re just being difficult,” I begin, “I admit, Colton is hot. Like seriously hot. I’ve wanted to kiss him for a while now, and I’m glad I finally got to. It was fun.” I pause and look at her. “But that’s all this is going to be—fun. He’s not my boyfriend; we aren’t going to date or anything like that.”
“That looked like more than friendship to me,” Clarissa explains. “That looked like you two wanted the entire world to see you were together.”
My eyes widen. “No way! We didn’t kiss or anything!”
Clarissa crosses her legs. “Lilly, do you really think that’s the only way to show people around you that you are taken? Colton was all but pissing on you, telling all the other guys around that you are his.”
“But I’m not his,” I argue.
“You sure about that?” she asks kindly.
“I’m nobody’s.” I look down at my hands and rub them against my jeans.
“Well then you should probably tell Colton that. I don’t think he got the memo.”
“Oh please! You’re the one that told me he likes to mess around with a bunch of different girls! You said he doesn’t do relationships,” I tell her.
“I also told you that he’s different with you. I’ve never seen him act like that with a girl before. He’s in to you.”
Clarissa is wrong about Colton. He wasn’t trying to lay claim to what’s his, he was merely still high from our exchange earlier. There’s a clear difference between the two. I’m still feeling a bit high from finally learning the soft but strong feel of his lips against mine and how he took control but still laid gentle hands against my body. The images of Colton’s room makes my entire body crave to feel his touch again.
Still, the high of being with him is slowly beginning to fade into deep-rooted guilt. Guilt shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t be gnawing on my spirit like a soul devouring demon. I’m not in the wrong. Sander cheated on me. It’s apparent he doesn’t want us to work out any longer, so why should I feel anything but happy about my rendezvous with Colton?
I walk back in through the group of people chatting and relaxing, searching for the man that has the power to leave me breathless and knees weak. I hear him before I see him. The deep, husky sound reverberates through the house and to my ears. I walk towards the sound and find him laughing with a pretty and petite blonde woman. She, like Colton, has a sleeve of tattoos. Her hair is bleached blonde with a thick bang cut straight across her forehead that covers her eyebrows. It makes her heavily made up eyes stand out strikingly against her platinum locks. She’s wearing black skinny jeans and a black, loose fitting tank top with a white skull in the center across her tiny breasts.
I hate her instantaneously. It’s obvious Colton has found the next woman he wants to take back to his room and show a good time. My face pales, my stomach drops, and my knees go weak for a completely different reason than earlier. I’m shaking all over with fury, an anger with no justification. I know that when I came over here, the moment I started having feelings for Colton, that it could never be anything more.
When I walked inside, I was planning on talking to Colton, maybe kissing him a little more, but now I just want to go home and pretend I didn’t just see him hitting on a woman who is pretty in a unique and quirky kind of way. She’s probably more of Colton’s type anyway. Who knows where she has piercings! Ugh. Grunting, I turn on my heel and head the opposite direction towards the front door.
I don’t look back to see if anyone follows me. I know no one saw me leave, especially not Colton—he’s too caught up with the little pixie bitch. I grind my teeth together as I open my car door and then pull away from his house. Just friends having a little bit a fun. Who cares if he hooks up with some other girl?
I am confused. Colton is obviously attracted to me or he wouldn’t have made the moves he did today. However, I’m even more confused because he was getting touchy -feely at the party, whispering, letting his lips and rings run across my ear and cheek, his arm making itself at home around my hips. I know why he was doing it.
He most likely assumed we were going to get heated again after the party. I kind of thought we would too. Then he found a girl he liked better. A chick he thought was hotter; he’d probably bang her tonight. Ugh.
I shake my head and try to clear my mind as I turn into the parking lot for the dorms. I need to just be happy that I got to make out with him—it was fun! I would do it again even if I knew he’d be with another girl five minutes later, that’s how good of a kisser he is.
Forcing myself to just be relieved I didn’t make a fool out of myself when I threw myself against him in his bedroom, I unlock my door and walk inside. Lauren is home. It’s the first time she’s been back since last Sunday. She’s been either ignoring my texts and phone calls or replying with short, one worded answers. Every time she texts me something like, “k,” or “fine,” I want to toss my phone across the room and watch it shatter into a billion tiny pieces against a wall. Seeing her sit on her bed and on her computer wearing cheerleading shorts and a blue tank top and long soft socks on, like nothing has happened between us, like our friendship hasn’t been rocked to its very core, like we aren’t on the verge of losing the most important and longest friendship either of us has ever had, nearly drives me over the edge and off the cliff of bat-shit crazy. As if the night hasn’t been confusing enough with Colton, now I have to figure out how to handle Lauren. It feels like I’m playing a dangerous game of chicken.
Instead of two cars heading for one another into a deathly collision, there are four separate cars. Lauren has her own, Sander in another, Colton, and finally me. We each have our own cars, we rev our engines, and we take off like bats out of hell. Our tires screech against the street trying to speed up, my foot pushing the pedal completely to the floorboard. We’re all headed directly towards one another. Sander across from me, Lauren across from Colton, like a deadly cross, except instead of this cross being our savior, it’s the end. The only way to win is to slam your foot on the brakes, stopping your car before it collides with the three other cars. The only question is who’s going to hit their brakes? Who’s going to put a stop to the horrendous crash bound to happen?
I step further inside my room and walk lightly across the cold floor, just like I would walk if the ground were made of egg shells instead of polished wood. Lauren doesn’t look up from her laptop until I’m a few feet away from her. A closed lip grin forms on her face as she takes her headphone out of her ears. She looks different. It has only been a week, yet she looks sick. Her cheeks are a bit hollow, and she has zits breaking out across her forehead. Her normally vivid, blue eyes are droopy and glassy.
My anger dissipates and trepidation takes its place. “Lauren…” I say carefully and stretch my hand out to touch her hair soothingly. It’s slick with grease. “Lauren, are you sick? Do I need to take you to the doctor?”
Lauren jumps up and grabs my arms. Her fingers sting the skin of my arms as her nails dig into my forearm. “You can’t take me anywhere! You can’t!” she says frantically. She’s jittery, her teeth jumping together in a crunching rhythm.
“Why not?” I step closer and lift my arm away from her grasp and reach to her head. “Do you have a fever?” She swats my hand away like a cat shoos at a dog trying to attack it.
“I’m fine!” Her pitch reaches an all-time high. Her shoulders rock forward, and she looks d
own at her hands. A loud crash comes from the hallway. Lauren jumps and looks around, distraught. “What was that?” she asks as tears well in her red eyes.
“It was just someone in the hallway.” Clarity seeps into me and I realize exactly what’s wrong with my friend. My throat tightens and my eyes widen as I fight back the unwanted emotions flooding through me and threatening to drown me. Not her too. “Lauren what did you take?” I ask and pull her over to the bed to set her down. At least with Lauren I don’t have to worry about her hurting me, because even if she did try it wouldn’t do nearly the amount of damage that Sander did. I’m not frightened for my wellbeing; instead I’m worried that Lauren has taken well over the amount her body can handle. I don’t know anything about drugs or the symptoms of a normal hit or what to look for if she overdosed.
“Lauren.” I grab her cheek and force her to face me. She doesn’t blink at all. Her eyes wander the room instead of focusing on me. Her head begins to fall forward as she struggles to lift the weight of it back up. A few seconds later, her head falls back down again. This can’t be normal. But she told me not to take her to the doctor, and if she’s just high I don’t want to take her somewhere and have her end up in trouble.
If I don’t take her though, will she die? Is that the consequence if I don’t take her? I don’t know, and the only other option I can think of is to call Sander and find out if I need to grab her and go, call an ambulance, or just let her come down from the high.
The phone rings for what feels like an hour but is truly only a few short seconds. My breathing has increased drastically from the nerves, my heart pounding so incredibly hard that I can feel it from my skull to the very tips of my toes.
“Hey baby girl,” Sander’s voice soothes the wound of my nerves.