Normally, I’d have told someone like Tansy to fuck off long before now. Despite her touchiness, though, Tansy’s a sweet girl. Once, when the cheer squad had been practicing on the field with the football team, she’d erupted in tears over landing on a butterfly after a failed stunt. She cries whenever the Leopards lose a game. If I told her to leave me alone, she’d no doubt cry again. And if there’s anything I fucking hate more than a girl with personal space issues, it’s one that’s crying.
Unless it’s one crying about her broken vagina.
“What’s so funny?” Tansy pouts.
“Nothing.” My grin drops. As Tansy yaps on, I take another sweep of the room, telling myself that I’m not looking for a swinging red ponytail.
Except it wouldn’t be in a ponytail, would it? Because hair bands have elastic. Elastic has latex.
“—said I can’t do a split. Me! Can you believe that? I’m way more flexible than—Spencer?”
“Hm?” I snap out of it, focus on Tansy. What had she said? “Who’s flexible?”
Where the fuck is she?
Tansy’s too-wide mouth curls into a coy smile. “I’m flexible.” That ever-present clutching hand slips from my arm to my belt, her fingers looping into the waistband of my jeans. “Wanna see?”
She presses forward, hips grazing mine. And she feels the lump under the denim. With a glance up through her lashes, she whispers, “Wow, that quick, huh?”
No. As much as my dick twitches—and it does, because Tansy’s a fit cheerleader and I’m a red-blooded man whose last sexual encounter ended in an emergency clinic and a release by my own hand after I returned home, alone—that’s not what she feels in my pocket. And the reminder of that object, that stupid thing I’ve been carrying around—even though the person I’d intended giving it to has shown neither head nor tails here—is enough to make my jaw clench.
This is her fucking house party. She should be here.
I need to get away from Tansy. No matter how flexible she is, her hands roaming my body don’t feel right. They’re too decisive, too sure of exactly where to put themselves, to go right for what she wants. It’s intrusive. Claustrophobic.
Closing my eyes—and pushing out thoughts of another pair of hands, warm and soft and slowly exploring my skin, as though not sure where to start but reveling in the journey all the same—I step away from Tansy, only to be blocked by the damn wall again. When I open my eyes, I nod over her shoulder. “Hart’s taking off his damn shirt.”
Her eyes widen, and her head almost turns. Almost. But Hart takes off his shirt all the goddamn time, and it’s nothing fucking new. I’m the real prize tonight. Her hand clutches my waistband tighter.
“Fuck, now he’s daring Morris to take his shirt off.”
That gets her attention. Her head swivels. Her hand drops. I slip out before she can see both my friends are still clothed. Or realizes that Morris, in a million years, would never casually strip in the middle of a party.
I set my cup on a side table and duck into the stairway, unseen.
I tell myself I’ll find the bathroom. Hide there until Tansy finds another victim. Or leaves. I ignore that there’s a bathroom off the kitchen.
A sign hangs on the first door off the landing. ‘Pants-Free Zone’, it reads. I snort, thinking Hart needs a matching sign for his room.
The next door has no sign. I open it, then immediately shut it. Mason lived at Main Desire for a time last semester. The explosion of clothes and glitter and jewelry has Natalie’s signature chaos all over it. Just the other week, Rowe pulled out a sports bra, five bracelets, and a glue gun from between the cushions of the couch she’d crashed on.
There are two doors left. One open, revealing a clean bathroom.
The other closed, displaying another sparkly sign. ‘Do not disturb’. But Natalie’s added a ‘Please’ to the beginning. Crossed out the ‘do not’.
Please disturb.
I open it. The sign says please, after all.
“I’m not hiding!”
For a moment, I wonder if I’m hearing things, because I don’t see the girl that voice belongs to. But then a head of shiny red hair pops up from the other side of the bed.
Hazel eyes widen when they see me. “Oh, it’s you,” Kennedy says. Then she hurriedly waves a hand at the door. “Quick, close it. I am hiding.”
I shut it. Kennedy disappears around the bed again, and I take a moment to look around.
Her room is all white furniture, grey and blue details. Not a little unlike one of those rooms in a back-to-college store catalog.
Or an ice palace, if I’m honest. Everything in its place, from the textbooks on top of her dresser, lined up according to size, to the slotted organizers of pens and sticky notes on the desk. One side of the closet is slid open, revealing rows of outfits arranged by color, each hanger a finger’s width apart.
I wonder, if I open one of those dresser drawers, will each item be carefully creased and grouped just so? Where would I find blue and green plaid flannel? Separated by tops and bottoms, or folded together with other matching sets? Where does she keep red lace?
Before I go full on creep and poke around her panty drawer, I face the largest object in the room. The one I should ignore but draws my eye all the same, like that disobedient button on
