Page 24 of Cream

“What’s your name?” Brent growls.

“Craig.” I can hear his cockiness has dropped a notch from its normal level.

Brent nods and steps forward. “Craig. I’m going to need you to take your arm off Luna right now. And I’m only going to tell you once.”

A chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” simmers throughout the crowd as all eyes train on Craig.

“Yeah? Or what–?” Craig starts to say, but before he can finish his “what,” I poke him hard in the ribs to shut him up. It’s that look in Brent’s eyes that has me convinced that he doesn’t care about the fact that he’s got ten years on Craig. If Craig doesn’t listen to him right now, he’s going to get it.

“Do it,” I whisper.

“Are you sure?” he whispers back. But I feel him slowly releasing me, giving me the ability to shrug out from under his arm, relieving some of the tension from the situation.

I feel a hand on my back and Emily’s whisper in my ear.

“What in God’s name are you doing?”

I can’t even turn around to face her because my eyes are on Brent. More specifically, the girl standing next to him that he’s been chatting up this whole time.

So she’s the one who got him into the party. She’s the one trying to put the moves on him. I don’t know her, but there’s something familiar looking about her. Maybe she was in one of my classes?

“Crashing college parties, Brent?” I ask, my voice seething with rage. I point my nail at the girl standing beside him. “Or is picking up college girls and making them feel special just a fetish of yours? What’s your agenda with her?”

The girl shifts awkwardly. “Um, I should go–”

“No, you should stay,” I tell her. “Don’t you wanna hear the sweet, juicy, tea I have on this guy?”

“Luna, stop,” Brent says in his best daddy voice. “This isn’t what you think it is.”

“Oh, it’s not?” I laugh. The floor is starting to feel a lot like Jell-O again, and the room is starting to spin like I’m on a carousel. “Because it sure looks like it!”

“Luna, why don’t we go talk somewhere?” Brent asks, taking me by the hand. He starts to pull me away from the spectators, but Craig starts to intervene.

“Hang on there, pal–” But all it takes is one glare from Brent to get him to back off. The next thing I know, I’m being pulled over into a corner. For some reason, the girl Brent was with follows behind us like a brand-new puppy.

“What are you doing?” I glare at her. “Why don’t you go talk to one of the jocks? They’d probably be less dickish than this guy.”

The girl looks so innocent. It almost breaks my heart that she’s gotten herself tangled up with Brent, who no doubt has some ulterior motive for hitting on her tonight.

“You need to calm down, Luna,” Brent says, his voice low and calm. “This is Chloe, Claire’s little sister. Claire asked me to come here tonight because there’s a guy on campus who’s been harassing Chloe, and she wanted me to look out and make sure nothing happened.”

I don’t know if I’m just imagining things or not, but all of a sudden, I start feeling warm inside. It’s right in my chest too, so I better not just be feeling like I’m about to puke again.

“Seriously?” I ask.

Brent and Chloe both nod. “Seriously,” she says.

Brent is looking at me right now the way he would look at me when we were together: his eyes filled with a bright twinkle and his lips twisted up in the most charming way imaginable.

Even if it was only a couple of days we spent together, nothing I do now to convince myself that he’s a terrible man can keep me from looking back on those days and feeling anything but elated.

“And what? Chloe just happened to be at this party tonight so you and I could just run into each other?” I ask. “What was that? Pure coincidence?”

Brent smiles and steps closer. He looms over me like a statue of masculinity. And even through the smell of cologne and perfume and beer and vape flavors, the scent of him through it all and settles familiarly in my nostrils.

“No, not coincidence.” Brent smiles, taking both my hands in his. “I’d say that’s the universe telling us something.”

My head is spinning now, but it has nothing to do with how much I’ve had to drink.

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