Page 56 of Honey Pot

So I went digging. Cael was a mess. Drugs, alcohol, experimentation. It seemed like he had done everything in his power to piss off his Dad over the last seven years. All while still pretending to be that sweet boy with his bright smile. An all-star athlete, on the baseball field and off, he was stumbling through theminefield of his own mind. I wanted to ask him about it, about why he did the drugs and drank himself into that state, but it really wasn’t any of my business anymore.

“Knock knock.” Ella’s voice floated to me from the doorway.

She leaned against it, dressed in her navy shirt and jeans from work, blonde hair tucked up away from her face. I had looked closer at her as well, letting jealousy get the better of me, but only found more sadness and understood within three lines of the article why she and Cael had bonded. It wasn’t romantic. Their souls were just missing a piece that the other was able to fill in ways that no one else could. Platonic in the heaviest sense. Ella had lost her brother, Cael had lost himself, and when they found each other, the scales became balanced again.

“Sorry.” I pressed pause on my music. “Was it too loud?”

“No.” Ella waved a hand in the air and stood up straight. “There’s a Halloween party at Delta tonight. Arlo is away in Dallas, so I was wondering if you’d be my date?”

A Halloween party.

“Zoey and I are going to the thrift store to find something to wear,” she added, when I didn’t answer her immediately.

Old Clementine would have declined, Halloween was never my favorite, but the new Clementine was a different monster, so I nodded, and Ella went from nervous to excited in a millisecond. It was the perfect opportunity to remind Cael he wasn’t courting the same seventeen-year-old by the creek.

“I have an idea.” I smiled at her and she cocked her head to the side.

“Oh, I like the look in your eye.” She laughed.

“Do you have a key for the equipment room?” I asked.

Delta was packed, making the party at Hilly’s look like child’s play. The entire house was dark, lit only by flashing white lights and hanging purple bulbs, which gave everything an eerie feeling.

“God, I hate the east coast, it’s freezing outside.” Zoey climbed from the car and tiptoed in her tennis shoes across the grass. “But, shit, we look so hot!”

She was right. We looked really good. Ella had done her part well. Sneaking down to the stadium, she’d lifted three specific Hornets jerseys from the locker room. Zoey had hers buttoned up, her legs bare except for her short spanks underneath the hem. Van’s jersey was like a dress on her, but she looked amazing with her long brown hair in two high pigtails and a smear of dark makeup across her cheek.

Ella did a flirty spin, resting her baseball bat over her shoulders. Her blonde hair fell around her face in soft curls, which had matching markings to Zoey. Arlo’s jersey rode up on her thighs, exposing the tight jean shorts beneath.

“Take a picture for me?” She handed me her phone and pulled at the undone buttons of Arlo’s jersey to expose the white bra beneath, the long chain and ring dangling between the swell. “Ibeggedhim not to go to Dallas this weekend,” she said, taking her phone back with a mischievous grin. “The least I can do is make him regret his very responsible adult decision.”

“Looking good, ladies!” Jensen and Todd hung from the railing of Delta in matching mustard and ketchup outfits.

“They look like idiots,” Zoey huffed, linking her arm to mine.

We walked up the steps of Delta and into the house to find Van arguing with Dean. Van was dressed as a pirate and his head snapped to where we were. I could have sworn a stream of drool dripped from his open mouth.

Dean looked cute in what might have been a toga but was definitely just a white sheet with a knot on his muscular shoulder. His eyes ran over me with a cautious look on his handsome face, a storm brewing, but he wasn’t the attention I cared about. Cael, in all his half-naked glory, lay lazily over the staircase, with two girls chatting on either side of him. His blue eyes flickered over me and a wicked smile formed on his face at the sight.

Cael’s jersey hung over my shoulders, buttoned in the middle by two small buttons that did nothing to hide the lacy, black, harnessed bra beneath it. Oureyes didn’t leave each other’s as Zoey pulled from my grip and slipped into Van’s, or when the jersey slipped open and exposed my thighs, but I could see the restraint flickering over his sharp features. His fingers gripped tightly to the bottle he was holding, and the muscle in his jaw ticked.

“Hey.” Zoey tugged gently on one of the two braids she had laced with navy ribbon, so we really looked at the part. “Come on.” She dragged me through the house, that was crowded with people, to the kitchen, and Van handed me a solo cup full of what smelled like lighter fluid.

“Jungle Juice.” He laughed and kissed Zoey on the cheek.

“It smells disgusting.” I laughed back.

“Itisdisgusting, bottoms up.” Van tapped two fingers to his chest and the rest of the men in the room followed.

“Drink the Kool-Aid, Mary.” Ella giggled, pressing her fingers under my cup and lifting it to my lips. “It’ll be good for you.”

The entire college experience was foreign to me. I had gone, I had studied, and I had even participated in after-school activities, but nothing to the extent of how the students at Harbor University did. Their parties felt like a moving time capsule. It was as if they were dragged straight from a 90s slasher film. It was intoxicating.

“What are you supposed to be anyways?” Dean appeared from our left, his eyes on me as he sipped from his cup.

“We’rebat bunnies.” Ella lifted herself onto the counter and leaned forward with her fingers curling around the edge.

“How degrading of you,” Dean joked and slid in beside her, his height still eclipsing her as he leaned over and whispered something that brought a smile to her face.

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