The moment they stopped pretending this was only for a weekend, they had to abandon the blissful innocence of now and ask the question of when. When would they be together again? When would one of them gamble their life as they knew it to relocate?
Was that a risk either of them was willing to take? Would it work out, or was this yet another massive mistake?
Was this an insane conversation to have with someone you’d never even truly dated?
Reece swallowed, his throat dry. “Charlie, I—”
A bro collided with Reece’s shoulder as he shoved his way to the stage. The boy’s cup went sailing, dumping beer all over Reece’s jeans. “Sorry!” the guy shouted before barreling onward.
“Shit.” Reece winced and shook the alcohol from his leg. “This is my last pair of pants.”
Charlotte blinked, still waiting for the end of his sentence. But the spell was broken, the volume on the party dialing up a notch. The crowd had gotten thicker. She took a step back as Reece bent over to brush at the spill, and bodies pressed against her from behind, nudging her sideways.
“Let’s go find napkins,” she suggested, claustrophobic.
He nodded, and she gestured for him to take the lead.
The party reached its zenith, with hundreds of kids crammed side by side under the tent’s cover. Reece didn’t take her hand this time and she toddled after him, dodging elbows and wandering hands.
They found a stack of paper napkins on the far edge of the bar. Charlotte watched uneasily as Reece blotted at the wet patch on his thigh. “I’m going to smell like PBR all night,” he said ruefully. “Eau de fraternité.”
Charlotte handed him a fresh napkin in exchange for the soaked wad of paper. “Didn’t you know?” she asked, deadpan. “That cologne’s all the rage this year.”
Reece flashed a thin smile. He pressed the napkin against the stain and scanned the crowd for their friends. The party was an amorphous blob of hipsters, their intoxicated faces blurring together. As the night went on, alumni shrank away from the noise and HU’s true students reclaimed the tent.
“We’re never going to find them again,” he said.
Charlotte studied his face in profile. The purple party lights deepened the shadows under his eyes, leaching his skin of its usual happy glow. She bit the inside of her cheek.
Me too. Charlie, I—
What was the rest of the sentence?
She hated this feeling: this anxious hunger for his attention. It was ridiculous—she wasn’t a teenager clinging to the smallest hint that he still wanted her. She didn’t want to regret speaking up, not when she so rarely asked for what she wanted.
But did it even matter? She knew all along that Reece’s affection was a library book checked out on loan. At the end of this, she had to give him back.
“They’ll pop up,” she said. “Jackie will get hungry.”
That earned a genuine laugh, albeit a soft one. She wanted to catch it and cup it between her fingers like a firefly.
Reece finally looked at her again, his dark eyes softening as he took in her hopeful face. The brittleness left his body and he leaned sideways against the bar, bringing him closer to her level.
It was ridiculous, how the slightest change in his body language calmed her down. His fingers toyed with the strap of her overalls, lightly tugging the denim.
“You’re right,” he said. “Do you want to get out of here? It’s so loud.”
“Oh god, please,” she all but moaned.
Reece grinned at her obvious relief and stood to leave. But then his smile vanished from his face. The light went out in his eyes as he looked over her shoulder.
Charlotte watched with dread as a wave of tension rippled through his body, his posture coiling tight. “What is it?” she asked.
What had she said wrong now? Paranoia flared bright.
Reece was still looking over her shoulder, his eyes narrowing.
A waft of familiar cologne settled in around her shoulders. The true eau du fraternité, base notes of cedar and white-collar crime. The blood drained from Charlotte’s face. Understanding arrived with sharp clarity.
No. Not you. Not now.
“Hey, Thorny!”
Her stomach convulsed. She knew that voice by heart. In truth, she’d never forgotten it. She heard it in her nightmares, and the dreams that woke her up guilty and ashamed at four in the morning. She suspected it would follow her to the grave.
Ben’s voice was slick and deceptively light. An ex-boyfriend’s taunt disguised as an old friend’s inside joke.
Reece searched her face, silently asking her what to do. But there was nothing really, nothing to make this overdue collision less awful. Nothing short of going back in time to undo the worst years of her life.
Charlotte’s body went rigid. The time warp was complete. Autopilot took over.
She turned around to face her ex-boyfriend. “Ben!” she cried out through the dryness in her throat. “Hi!” She sounded bubbly and shrill to her own ears, the chatter of a panicked flight attendant on a plane falling from the sky. A manic smile cracked across her mouth.
She couldn’t process all of him, not as the tent pulsed with noise and movement around her. Details lodged into her brain in staggered seconds: his slicked-back helmet of blond hair; his wide leer; the humorless darkness in his eyes. Ben wore the expensive black bomber jacket and dark jeans from the panel, too stylish for a sweaty college party, or for a supposed leftist activist. Beautiful camouflage to attract and trap.
An old desire flared in her throat, that quivering urge to debase herself for his approval, or for her safety.
“I was hoping I’d see you here,” Ben said in a feline purr. He took a step forward, his cologne overpowering. She couldn’t step back, couldn’t move at all.
