Page 82 of The Friend Zone

“It used to be a storage area,” I explain. “For the most part it still is. But there’s a room that’s used for secret meetings and initiation tasks.” I taste bitterness in my mouth at the thought that my initiation happened in that room. “The fraternity safe is in that room. The brothers who have valuables they want to keep safe, give them to the president for safekeeping in the safe.”

Bay nods. “Yeah, we have something similar at Zeta Theta Beta. It used to see a lot of use during events like next week’s gala with the alumni. Every sister would keep their most expensive jewelry in there. I’m glad the house burned down before anyone could give me anything to put in there.”

Ryker squeezes her hand in a comforting way. “Aren’t those safes fireproof usually?”

“Yeah,” Bay sighs. “But the firefighters were adamant that the house was too dangerous to let us in. The frame with sorority charter that was hanging above our mantle made it almost unscathed, but the captain who directed the rescue went in himself to retrieve it.”

“Anyway,” I let them into the relatively small, square room. “Let’s hope we have better luck than with the asshole’s laptop.”

The floors and the walls are all unfinished concrete. The only furniture in the room is a wooden table that sits eight people, a bookshelf a six foot long trunk and a small wooden bar.

“What the fuck is that?” Ryker barks out a laugh.

A life size portrait of Topher in his hockey uniform is hanging on the wall opposite the table.

I fight the urge to punch our president’s arrogant smile on canvas, since doing so to the flesh and blood version might get me expelled from school. “Every president has their portrait hanging in the house.” I explain.

“Yeah,” Bay snorts. “But it usually isn’t that big. Mine was hanging in the dining room. I shouldn’t be surprised though, Topher has always been pretentious. I’m assuming it ended up here because of its ridiculous size?”

I confirm Bay’s hunch. “Yeah. He insisted he wanted it hanging in the living room but the other brothers weren’t happy. There was a vote and Topher lost, so it got relegated here. Anyway, the safe is just behind the portrait.”

I move the large framed canvas to reveal the cast iron door of a safe built into the wall.

“Go figure,” Ryker muses. “We need a combination.” He points to the twelve number keypad on the safe’s door.

Bay kneels on the floor to better examine the keypad. “Following the principle Topher used to choose the password for his laptop, we have two options. It’s either one, two, three, four,” she keys in the combination to no avail. “Or if he wanted to take that idea up a notch, it can only be zero, zero, zero, zero. Yup, it’s opening.”

I shake my head. “Dude, I’ve always thought Topher was a dickhead, but this?”

Ryker agrees with me. “He’s just so arrogant that he thinks no one would figure out the simplest thing ever.”

“In all fairness,” Bay shrugs. “We probably wouldn’t have thought about it if he could have shut up about it. I just remember him telling me his theory when he found out that I don’t use a passcode on my phone because I kept forgetting itand getting locked out. He was trying to be helpful by suggesting something so easy that no one would ever guess it.”

Ryker kneels next to her to help her look inside. “I guess we should thank his big mouth, or we would have never figured it out.”

After a few moments, Bay’s shoulders sag. “Nothing. All there is in here is the fraternity petty cash, Topher’s Rolex watch and his presidential gold pin. There’s no trace of any hard drives or flash drives.”

Her tank top rides up when she stands up, revealing a sliver of Bay’s soft, flat stomach.

I ogle her without an ounce of shame, my fingers itching to reach out for her and pull her to me, like I did earlier in the kitchen.

I miss having Bay in my arms so much that it hurts more than the worst injury I’ve ever experienced on the ice.

If we can’t find that video, I’m fucked.

Trust her.

Ryker’s words the other night in Bridgeport echo in my ears and my mind is made up. I would rather endure the embarrassment when Topher releases the video, than lose Bay forever. It might be too late anyway, but if I didn’t try to mend things between us and get her to give me another chance, I would regret it for as long as I live. Of course I’ll have to warn my family and that won’t be fun. But if I have a chance with Bay, I’m prepared to endure my parents’ disappointment.

“What the fuck is this?” Bay’s surprised question pulls me out of my deliberations.

I know what she’s looking at even before she moves to the side to show us.

“Ah yeah,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. “That’s the fraternity dick measuring chart.”

“The—what?” Bay and Ryker ask.

I roll my eyes, frustrated. “Yeah that was another one of Topher’s great ideas. When he became president, he wanted to establish a ranking system to allocate the rooms in the house. So he made us come down here one by one and measured the length of our dicks.”

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