Page 4 of Surviving Lies

I was bombarded by people as I approached the party. Friends, other fraternity brothers, even people I didn’t recognize. It was overwhelming. It would’ve been a nice welcome if I’d been in a better headspace, but all I could think about was seeing Ty. I nodded at everyone, smiled, but they must have thought I was a total bitch. I didn’t stop to talk to anyone, just kept walking. My eyes scanned everyone as I did, and there was no sign of him.

He must have been inside.

I pushed the slider open and was met with a wall of heat, the A/C not keeping up because of the number of people. I stood there for a minute, my eyes trying to adjust to the darker room once inside.

The kitchen was immediately to my left, with tons of booze bottles on the island. Behind that was a living room, and that was where they had a keg set up. It looked like that was where most of the pledges were, tapping and pouring from the keg by a bar.

That’s where I found him. He was by the keg. He’d been watching me since I’d come in. I couldn’t read his look at all, which scared me a bit. Our eyes locked on each other, neither breaking the stare.

He looked mostly the same since the few months I’d seen him last. His golden locks were a bit more golden, the tips lightened by the summer sun, it appeared. His tanned skin made his light whiskey eyes pop even more from across the room. He looked like he’d been hitting the gym more than usual. Still not the total gym rat body, which I was happy about. But his muscles looked a bit thicker.

He looked more like a man. Less like a boy.

As he looked at me, refusing to take his eyes off of me, he leaned down and started talking into someone’s ear. Only then did I realize he was talking to Xander, who immediately found me in the crowd. He nodded at whatever Ty said, then said something back. Ty nodded to Xander, never taking his eyes off mine.

I still hadn’t moved.

I stood even more frozen as Ty walked toward me, guiding himself through the crowd effortlessly.

I stood, almost in fear of what this meant as he approached, afraid of what could and would happen once we talked.

What did this mean?

Chapter 2

Ty

“Christ, Ty, move your ass, dude.” I couldn’t remember the name of the frat brother yelling at me, which was a problem. Rushing required me to know all of them and how they wiped their asses, too. But there were so many of them and I didn’t spend enough time this summer learning them like I needed to.

This summer.

This summer sucked. For so many reasons, but mostly because of Becca. I didn’t blame her for breaking up with me. I was an asshole. Still was. But there were some things that needed to be the way they were, and I didn’t have a choice.

I wasn’t supposed to meet someone like Becca, someone who would make me want to fall in love. But she was right there, almost from the first day of freshman year. And it was super easy while we were at school to pretend that everything was OK.

But it wasn’t OK. It never was, but she didn’t know that. She only got an inkling there was a problem when we would go to my hometown for the weekend, to my house. But I was too much of a chickenshit to fess up and tell her what was going on in my life back at home. The real reason my parents treated her the way they did. Like she wasn’t my girlfriend.

Because they had no idea she was.

“Hey, man, how ya doing?” I felt his hand on my back, and it startled me out of my dazed thoughts. I turned to see Xander, his hand held out.

“Hey,” I greeted him with equal enthusiasm, grabbing his hand firmly. “Dude, how was your summer?” Xander was one of the future guys in the frat I was most looking forward to calling “brother.” I stood by and watched how he handled everything he and Lanie went through last year. It made me feel like a bigger piece of shit for how I handled things with Becca. But I could only hope I could learn a thing or two from him over time.

“Well, from the sounds of it, my summer was better than yours.” He motioned his head toward the back of the house, which only meant one thing.

He had already seen Becca.

“Um, yeah, so I’m guessing Becca got here?” I asked.

His eyebrows lifted high and his eyes widened before a tilt to his head told me that things did not go well in the other apartment. “You could say that,” Xander replied, his tone holding a warning. “Man, I don’t know what fuckin’ happened between you two, and I don’t want to know, but she’s in a bad way. Can’t say I’ve ever seen Becca Reynolds quite like that.” And then he started walking away, working on getting some cases of beer for the party.

“Xander, dude, wait!” I whisper yelled. “You can’t leave me hanging like that.”

I ran to him behind the makeshift bar. We, the pledges, pushed the dining-room table close to the wall and put side tables next to it to protect the booze. The place was already filling up, students more than ready to party after a long summer away from their friends. Soon enough, it would be standing room only and the newcomers would have to move it to the yard. It was the responsibility of us pledges to keep an eye on the booze during the party, serving the guests but making sure it didn’t go missing as well.

And then, when the party was over, it was our responsibility to clean the entire house. This pledging shit kinda sucked.

Xander was already with some frat brothers by the time I caught up to him, so I couldn’t fucking talk to him. I made eye contact with him before I walked away, hoping he would know I needed to talk.

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