Page 12 of Filthy Little Secret

“You need another drink, Mark?” Jeffery says.

I gaze at my empty Solo cup.

I don’t. I’m a little buzzed, and that’s how I’d like to keep it. Not interested in waking up on the bathroom floor, which I’ve done a few times since I found out what Greg was doing behind my back two months ago.

He slides his arm out from behind me, snatches my cup, and hops up. As he heads around the bonfire, he turns back to me and offers a wink. “I got you, kid.”

Goosebumps race up and down my body, and I consider how much I’d need to drink to have sex with him.

He stumbles and nearly trips into someone cast in a dark shadow on the other side of the fire.

“’Scuse me,” he says, sounding as insincere as I imagine he can.

The shadowy figure steps forward, into the fire’s light.

It’s Tim.

I want to disappear.

He hasn’t done anything wrong, but he reminds me of my weakness right now. Of how much I want his touch. Need his lips against me. I imagine his breath against my body, his scruff rubbing across my flesh in just the right way.

In my drunkenness, I allow myself to go back to those two brief, but erotic encounters. Just the other day we were fucking in the stairwell at the school. How messed up am I to be fucking in public like that?

Since my breakup with Greg, Dad’s hooked me up with enough Lexapro to last a lifetime. I haven’t been taking it, though, which is probably why I’m making these horrible life choices. I know Dad cares about my happiness, but it seems like Mom’s influence is partially the reason he’s so eager to prescribe me with enough antidepressants to keep me from being a bother to her…or to our family.

Tim, his hands in his jacket pockets, walks around the fire, moving slowly...like a predator. Like he did that night when he followed me into that basement. When he gave me that look that made me feel hot and disgusting at the same time.

I hate myself for the shift in the crotch of my jeans.

Keith said he had to study tonight, so he didn’t think he’d be able to make it. I’m hoping he sticks to his plan because him coming here would be a disaster. He was so hurt by Tim’s rejection that he spent more than a few drunken nights crying on my shoulder the way I cried on his when I found out about Greg. And I’m not looking forward to staying up with him until four in the morning as he relives every conversation he had with Tim—every night they shared that made him think their relationship was more than it was.

Tim greets a few of the guys on a nearby bench. They stand up and hug it out before he sits with them.

I imagine he’ll just ignore me, which is fine. Although I wish I wasn’t completely alone right now because it sets me up to look like a total loser in front of him.

I sit up. I’m gonna own it.

I try to keep myself from eyeing him, but the harder I try, the more my glance pulls his way, and we keep catching each other’s gazes.

He doesn’t look like he’s judging me. Not for tonight or for those things we’ve done together.

I wonder if he’d be interested in having another go. He sure didn’t seem like it the way he stormed out of the hall, leaving me to pick up my clothes and get back to class, to pretend nothing happened despite the sweat rushing down my face and my warm—surely red—cheeks.

A group of guys step out from the back of the house and make their way toward the fire. As they get close, I see Greg and Morgan within the group, holding hands.

The blood in my face drains.

I want to die.

Even worse, Keith is with them.

Of course he is.

I know it isn’t right to expect a buddy to choose sides when shit like this happens between friends, but I can’t deny I wish Keith would have decided Greg and Morgan were such big assholes they didn’t deserve his friendship.

Obviously, that isn’t the case. And I shouldn’t be surprised. Keith and Greg have the same major—take several classes together, so I can’t blame him. But I do a little bit.

God, there’s too much room on this couch.

---