Page 4 of Faking the Play

Hearing Ryan use that nickname cracked something inside me, and everything came pouring out. The looks in the store. The text from Jason. The pictures, and that accusation.

The crash of something in the kitchen at the end of my story had the three of us turning in that direction. Ethan gripped a frying pan so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Fury flashed in his eyes, and his normally smiling face wore an expression I’d never seen on him before.

“I’m gonna kill the fucker,” Ethan said quietly.

“One of Jason’s friends could’ve gotten his phone and sent themselves the pictures.” Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. Jason used facial recognition to lock his phone. He’d mentioned it to his buddies once when one of them complained about his girlfriend wanting access to his text messages.

“You could go to the police about this,” Logan said. “There are a lot of prosecutors who want to start setting precedents about revenge porn.”

My cheeks flushed at his word choice, and I knew I couldn’t do it. “No. There’s no proof he did anything, and he’s smart enough to cover his tracks.”

That was the problem with dating a fellow academic. Intelligent people could be as awful as anyone, but it was harder to prove anything.

“You could go to the school about it,” Logan suggested. “He won’t get jail time, but there’d at least be a punishment of some kind.”

“That’s if they believe me over him,” I pointed out. “Plus, there’s that accusation about my professor—”

“Anyone who knows you knows that’s total bullshit,” Ryan said. “Even if you weren’t fucking brilliant, you’d never sleep with a teacher.”

“You’d never fuck anyone for a job,” Ethan said. Some of the anger had left his face, but he still wasn’t back to his normal smiling self. “We could be your character witnesses.”

At that, I couldn’t help myself. “You guys haven’t done more than say hi to me in seven years. How do you know I haven’t changed into someone who’ll do whatever it takes to get ahead? Even sleeping with Dr. Isenberg?”

Logan shook his head, a contrite expression on his face. “First, I’m sorry. We never should’ve dumped you like that. We might’ve been moving in two different directions back then, but it shouldn’t have broken up our friendship.”

“What he’s trying to say is that we were stupid little bastards,” Ethan said. “And we should’ve made this right a long time ago.”

“So let us help you now.” Ryan sat on my other side. “What can we do?”

Everyone was looking at me with such intensity that I took a large gulp of my water…and choked. As I sputtered and coughed, my hand shook, threatening to spill the rest of the glass. One of the guys took it from me and the other pounded on my back as tears flooded my eyes.

A memory surged forward of the last time we’d all been together, sitting around in the treehouse Logan’s dad had bought him as an apology for breaking a promise. For some reason, my stomach had been a bundle of nerves, and I’d done the same thing. Took a big drink and inhaled at the same time.

Despite the tears streaming down my cheeks and how rough my throat felt, for a brief moment, I felt safe.

And once I could talk again, I’d make sure the guys knew I’d forgiven them for everything that happened in our pasts. Even if we were only ever acquaintances from here on out, at least they’d be back in my life in some way.

Chapter three

Logan

Iwanted to drive her back to her dorm, but Amelia said she’d calmed down enough to walk back to Newsom Hall on her own. She claimed she wanted time to think.

Personally, I thought she spent too much time thinking, but it wasn’t my call to make. We’d fixed some of the damage we did to her when we were kids, and I hoped we’d be able to build that friendship again, but right now, it wasn’t our place to do anything more than make suggestions and offers.

“We fucked up,” Ethan announced as soon as we were back in the apartment. “We never should’ve listened to those assholes who said we couldn’t be friends with a skinny, brainy kid.”

“She’s definitely not skinny anymore,” Ryan said, his voice rough. “You guys really need to check out these pictures.”

“We are going to figure out how to get them off the internet, right?” Ethan asked. “I mean, Darak could do it, right?”

“That’s actually a really good idea,” I said.

“I do have them occasionally.” He sounded mildly insulted.

Then both of us shut up completely because we were staring at Ryan’s phone. Or rather, more specifically, the very naked picture of Amelia on Ryan’s screen.

I let out a low whistle, unable to stop myself. I was furious that her ex had done this to her, taken something so private and intimate and posted it for everyone to see.

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