Page 79 of Elusion

Benji smirks in response and sips his beer.

The smile Callie’s been fighting slowly spreads, and she says, “I’ve heard wonderful things about your tongue.”

Brooke’s eyes double in size as my jaw drops open, and Benji spits out his beer.

“Fuck, Calico,” he chokes out. Obviously in on the joke, he covers his face with a hand, trying not to laugh.

“The problem is,” she continues, “the lap you’re sitting on belongs to my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend?

“Boyfriend?” Brooke speaks my thought.

More than anyone else, I require a repeat of the word.

“Boyfriend. And I’d really love for you to move.”

Whatever Brooke’s reaction, I miss it, my eyes locked on Callie. All I know is, she vacates my lap, and the smell of her dissipates.

Callie slips down into her own seat. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

I seize ahold of the chair and yank her over. “You are fucking incredible, you know that?”

She laughs. I lean in to kiss her, but her mouth becomes a moving target when Benji slides her in the opposite direction.

“My date,” he says.

“My girlfriend,” I counter. It sounds much better out loud than in my head.

Benji tips his head to the side. “Our girlfriend.”

I fully intend to argue until Felicia texts. Duty calls. “Whatever. You and your death trap have our girlfriend home in twenty minutes.”

After a quick forehead kiss, I leave the bar with one more girlfriend than I had upon arrival. A short drive back to the coffee shop to pick up Felicia and another to drop her off at the dorms concludes Date Night—a rather positive experience, all in all. Now, maybe someday, I’ll experience one with Callie.

I beat them to the house, so I head upstairs for a shower. Shampoo streams directly into my eyes at the sound of someone coming into the bathroom.

“Don’t say I never gave you anything,” Benji says.

The door shuts. I wipe my eyes and poke my head around the shower curtain. “Uh, hi?”

Callie laughs. “Thank God. He said there was a fifty-fifty shot of it being Gavin in here. Three boyfriends sounded exhausting.”

“Get your sexy ass in here, you difficult woman.”

She complies with my demand, and we add another perfect way to end the day to the list.

We haven’t even crawled out of bed in the morning when Callie’s phone goes off. Lauren’s text says she and the douche-lord, Tyler, plan to go out of town for a few days. The question barely leaves her mouth before I agree to go with her for the weekend.

After our last classes, my bag goes in the car—well, my Jeep due to the superior sound system—and we drive the three hours to Waymore. Following a near catastrophe involving Cate’s hair and scissors, we suffer through a movie night with Connor. His choice of genre is always horror. So much carnage. So much gore. He attempts to explain his fascination, but it remains lost on me.

Overnight, Cate miraculously transformed into a dog, so we spend most of Saturday leading her around on a leash. For a demanding little girl, she makes an even more taxing puppy. Supper needs to be eaten out of a bowl but not on the floor because that’s, “Ew, Jordan.”

Once I’ve taken our giggly canine on her evening walk, I take a shower. As I finish getting dressed, Callie appears in the doorway. She smiles at me through the mirror, clearly up to something. I drag the towel over my hair once more and drop it in the laundry basket.

“What do you want from me?” I ask.

She hesitates, chewing on her lip. “Pete’s birthday party’s tonight.”

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