Page 23 of Cream

13

LUNA

My head’s spinning, but my heart is racing and adrenaline is pouring through me as I strut out of the bathroom with my chin up and my shoulders back. I’m still feeling more than a little tipsy, but the floor doesn’t feel like Jell-O anymore, so that’s good.

I spot Craig, one of UVM’s hockey players, over by the makeshift bar in the corner of the room and rush over to him. We sort of know each other from a class project last semester where I did basically all the work.

“Hey, dickhead” is my opening line. I catch him mid-laugh with some blonde, and he looks over at me with glassy eyes. It takes him a minute, but he remembers me.

“Yo, Looney!” He introduces me to the blonde. “Tanya, this is Looney! She basically helped me pass Stats last semester!”

“Luna, actually,” I correct him, smiling at the blonde. “Listen, Craig. I need you for about five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” He snorts. “I can give you way more than that, Looney!”

He slips his arm around my shoulders and widens his stance, glancing down between his legs suggestively.

“Yeah, no. We are not having sex, okay?”

“Huh?” He sounds almost insulted. “Well then what do you need me for?”

“See that guy over there?” I ask, pointing to Brent, still conversing with the mystery girl. “I’m gonna go talk to him, and I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend. My new boyfriend.”

“Pretend?” Craig’s eyes light up as he discovers a new angle–so he thinks. “So I can like, feel you up and stuff?”

“No. You can’t feel me up and stuff. Just act protective of me. Say we’ve been dating for three weeks. Say I came to one of your stupid games. And if he tries to take me away to talk to me, you don’t let him. Okay?”

I can see Craig’s base, male, primal brain working overtime as he tries to think of another way to get in my pants. But he’s stumped, and that deflates him.

“So if I don’t get to feel you up? And we’re not having sex? What am I getting out of this?”

Tanya sighs and walks off, causing Craig to call after her. She ignores him and vanishes into the crowd. He turns back to me, looking annoyed.

“See what you just did, Looney? She was good to go–!”

“You owe me, Craig! Your ass would have failed out of this school if it weren’t for me. I put hours of time into help you. You can’t help me for five minutes?”

Craig looks in Tanya’s direction like a sad puppy, then over to Brent. Finally, it sinks in, and he nods his head.

“Fine. Five minutes.”

It’s really starting to hit me now. Whatever amount of adrenaline was firing through me doubles as Craig takes control and starts leading me through the party toward Brent. So this is what it’s like to be a hockey player’s girl.

A little voice in the back of my head is telling me It’s not too late to turn back! but I ignore it and press on. When we’re no less than ten steps away from him, Brent notices us.

His eyes go to me first, then instantly move to Craig. His entire demeanor shifts. His smile vanishes. The skin on his face tightens. His lips pucker. His gaze turns into that of a predator.

I instantly realize that this was a bad idea and move to turn back, but Craig holds me firm and opens his big, fat, drunken jock mouth.

“The hell are you doing here, bro?” he bellows. “You don’t go to UVM.”

No point in fighting it now. Just have to go with it.

I put on my best smile and pretend that Craig is my boyfriend and I’m having the time of my life.

Brent glares at Craig with eyes that surely have lasers of death behind them. Between his height and his broad shoulders and muscular frame, he’s so intimidating that it doesn’t take long before a circle has formed around us of drunk college kids, all of them whispering to each other that “some shit is about to go down.”

Yup. Bad idea, Looney.

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