Page 32 of Take You

There was something about Kane’s friend Fox especially that I couldn’t quite pin down. He had an intensity about him that, on the one hand, made me uneasy, but on the other, really turned me on. The chemistry between us had been wild, but he also gave off a vibe of quiet solemnity that had made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and not in a sexy way.

I was so lost in my thoughts as I floated around the cafeteria, trying to work out what I could stomach eating without barfing it back up again, that it was a while before I was dimly aware of a commotion, and even longer before I realized that it was directed toward me. As I looked up from the chiller cabinet I was peering inside, it was like the moment in every teen movie nightmare sequence where the lead character dreams they’ve gone to school naked, and every other student in the whole place is pointing and laughing at them.

Actually, it was hauntingly similar to so many ritual humiliations I’d witnessed, except this time, instead of being the instigator, and the one leading the laughter and jeering at someone else’s expense, I was on the receiving end.

I had no idea what to do or say, and for a brief moment I did think that maybe I was asleep. If I was, I needed to bitch-slap my unconscious self for just having made me sit through the most boring lecture in the history of lectures—that shit had been very real, and very dull. As I was trying to work out what the fuck was going on, and what I should do, someone approached me and tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned around to face her, she presented me with her phone.

“Hey. Excuse me, is this you? It is, isn’t it?” She angled the screen my way, affording me a better view.

It took me way too long to figure out what I was looking at, and as the realization dawned on me, the feeling of nausea I’d been battling intensified about a hundred-fold, and I gulped frantically, trying to fight back the bitter bile that was burning its way up my throat.

The last thing I needed to add to the public embarrassment I was going through was to lose my lunch in front of the entire very-crowded cafeteria. Not that there was any lunch to lose—I’d felt so wretched as I’d hauled myself out of bed and into classes, that I’d skipped breakfast. That was almost worse—dry retching and choking on next to nothing would be even more of a hideous spectacle.

“How...? Where...?”

“Oh what, you haven’t seen it?” She didn’t even try to contain her delight at uncovering this sparkling gem of gossip. She stopped just shy of rubbing her hands together with glee, but only just.

I shook my head, dumbfounded. Coherent speech wasn’t an option at that point.

“Well, you must have been living under a rock, as you’re surely the only person who hasn’t. It’s all over The Vine—HU’s internal social media network—and we also all got an email.”

Not a rock as such, but a heavy boulder of guilt and shame, and a hangover that had me leaving late to lectures, and forgetting my phone in the rush to get out the door. I hadn’t been on social media all day. Fuck.

I ran from the cafeteria, and just barely made it into a bathroom cubicle in time to hurl the bile that had been building up into the toilet bowl. When I was done, I slid down the wall to the floor, gross though it was. I had way bigger fish to fry than worrying about bathroom germs.

I drew my legs up, rested my elbows on my bent knees, and hung my head between them. My breathing was ragged, and each breath seemed to tear at my throat like I’d swallowed a string of razor blades. I stayed that way for a while, both hiding and trying to calm down.

I wasn’t sure exactly how long I was in there, but when I emerged sometime later, I felt slightly more in control, though no less freaked out.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I jumped a mile in the air, and my heart was beating so fast and hard, I was sure it was about to tear out of my chest. I clamped my mouth shut, as I felt the bile rise again. I didn’t want to have to sprint back into the bathroom.

“Kane.” My voice was a dry croak.

“Yeah. We must stop meeting like this. I messaged you a few times, but got no answer, so I figured I’d come looking for you, given that everyone’s talking about the video. Having an idea of the Engineering classes for the day, it wasn’t too hard to track you down. In fact, you’re kind of like a real life Gretel from Hansel and Gretel, except instead of walking into the forest leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, you’re doing the walk of shame around campus leaving a trail of pointing fingers and wagging tongues in your wake.” The grin on his face just about broke me.

“How can you stand there and smile about it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“What do you mean, why wouldn’t you?”

“Umm... which part didn’t you understand? It’s a pretty simple concept. I see no reason not to smile.” He shrugged with faux nonchalance.

“There’s a sex tape of us circulating on college social media.”

“I’m aware.” Why the fuck did he sound so smug?

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Like I said, why wouldn’t I be? Fox and I look great, and so do you. We make a hot trio.”

“What the hell are you talking about? It’s a video of us having a threesome, and now the world has seen it.”

“Yeah, well, that’s nothing new for us—the threesome part, I mean. Why do you think we have the rooms set up like an apartment? I’ll give you a clue: it’s not so that we can study together. Three-ways are kind of a thing for us. I mean, we do fuck separately—as you’ve already experienced—but that tends to be the exception, rather than the rule. More often than not, it’s a family affair. It’s kind of how we’ve always rolled. Since...” his face took on a strange expression momentarily “...Since forever.”

I had no idea what was going on. It was as though I’d been zapped to another dimension, but nobody had told me. Everything was the same as it did in the normal world, except for the weird things Kane was saying, and everything about his body language. I couldn’t fathom why he was so different to how he’d been on previous occasions. It was like he’d had a total personality transplant.

“But how did they take the video?” My head was totally scrambled as I struggled to figure out the situation.

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