Silas
Looking at her now, I don’t know how I put up with Amy for so long. She’s always been so insecure. Paranoid to a fault. Even tonight, weeks since we broke up, she still can’t resist the way her eyes wander in my direction. Sparing glances over her shoulder when she thinks I’m not looking. It’s so obvious. She believes she’s got the upper hand by avoiding me all night, but it’s not punishment when I know she’s obsessed with me noticing she’s ignoring me. It’s so high school, I want to gag.
“Are we ever going to come to one of these things where Casey doesn’t set off a manhunt?” I say to Lawson, who’s standing beside me next to the empty photo booth.
Moments ago, it was like déjà vu all over again. A sudden frantic sprint to figure out where Sloane’s perpetually misplaced little sister wandered off to. Turns out it was the same as last year. Except this time, it ended with Lucas being escorted out of the building by two plainclothes officers.
“I didn’t have Lucas pegged as the type,” I remark. “Doesn’t get much more cold-blooded than leaving a girl trapped in a sinking car.”
Lawson barely grunts a response. He’s still nursing the bruises from his bro-down with Fenn the other night. Looks worse than that time he got cornered by the older brother of that chick he took to the Bahamas and left at the airport because he got drunk and wandered his way onto someone else’s private jet.
“What do you think happens to him now?” I ask.
Lawson shrugs as he hits his flask again.
I grin. “Are you still sulking?”
Since the fight with Fenn, the little clique with RJ and Sloane won’t give him the time of day anymore. I don’t see the problem, frankly. Screw them all. I’m tired of them and their grudges, taking fights to heart and abandoning friends left and right. Look at me and Lawson—we fought outside the bar, exchanged some harsh words, and then put it behind us. Sloane and her crew really ought to follow that lead. And if they can’t, well, then who needs ’em.
But Lawson is like the dog abandoned on the side of the road, looking longingly at the bumper as it drives away.
“Fuck them,” I advise. “Who gives a shit?”
“At this rate,” he murmurs at the rim of the flask, “I don’t think any one of them would piss on me if I were on fire.”
“So then get over it and move on. What’s the point being all depressed over people who don’t matter?”
Lawson shrugs again and tilts the flask back. “They were my friends.”
Whatever. He’s bumming me out. If I stick around much longer, I might throw myself off the roof.
I notice Mila and Oliver at a table with some Ballard people, and stalk off, tired of Lawson’s sulking. Skirting the dance floor, I wander over in their direction. Mila’s the first one to catch my eye and jerk her head to call me over.
She greets me with a smirk. “Silas.”
“Mila,” I mimic.
She’s looking good. I’m surprised the faculty chaperones let her walk in here with that neckline. Her tits are practically spilling out of her tight red dress. I forgot how hot Mila is when she’s trying. Though from here, it seems like she isn’t getting the attention from Oliver that she’d prefer. She’s staring at the side of his face while he talks to his buddies.
“I don’t know what you did to Amy,” she says with a vicious grin, “but I think it was an improvement.”
“If you say so.” I help myself to a seat beside her. “That’s been over a long time.”
Oliver laughs to himself. “Dude, she hates your guts. I’d keep an eye on your drink. Wouldn’t put it past her to slip you some poison.”
“If it’d make this dance over sooner, I might like it.”
They all laugh, but I’m only half kidding. It’s like every year I forget how unbearably lame these things are. And predictably disappointing.
“I definitely wore the wrong shoes,” Mila says. She throws her feet in my lap with a sad pout. “Get these things off me. Please. Find a plastic butter knife and start sawing at my ankles.”
I grin at her. “I cannot in good conscience let you walk around this gym barefoot.”
“Unless you want to get ringworm.” Oliver makes a gagging face.
Christ, I’d give anything to be enrolled at Ballard again. Just get the hell out of fuckup school. I think that place has managed to rub off on me, dragging me down to its level. I don’t how I’ll survive another semester without dropping IQ points.
Mila suddenly gets a weird look on her face. I follow her gaze toward RJ and Sloane, who just sauntered back inside to grab her purse and his jacket from a table.
“God, not you too,” I say at the expression of longing.
“Shut up.” She kicks me in the stomach. “You don’t have any room to talk.”
“Still pining over the one that got away?” Oliver dodges when she swings her arm to smack his shoulder. “He’s coming this way. Hurry up and flash your tits at him.”
Sloane’s storm-gray eyes look right through me as she and RJ pass our table. Then her gaze flits toward Mila, her full lips turning up at the corners.
“He’s a good kisser, huh?” she mocks, pulling RJ by the hand behind her.
Mila turns away, absolutely fuming as she moves her legs from my lap. If daggers could fly out of her eyeballs, Sloane would be a goner.
Oliver is grinning like an idiot. “What was that about?”
“Bitch,” she hisses.
Like a dog with a bone, Oliver doesn’t let up. “What, you kissed RJ? When the hell did that happen?”
Mila rolls her eyes, bitterly gnawing on the inside of her cheek. “He was at that dorm party last week, remember? Spent the whole night hitting on me. Then we made out a little.”
Ballard’s quarterback snorts a laugh. “Oh, shit. That’s hilarious. Where the hell was I?”
“Last week?” I pipe up, confused. “They were together then.” And as I recall from swim practice, RJ was quite insistent about the unbreakable nature of their relationship.
“And apparently she set the whole thing up,” Mila says through clenched teeth.
“Why?” Oliver asks with a blank look.
“To make me look stupid. Because Sloane’s a shitty person.”
“Seriously?” I don’t mean to laugh at her, but it’s sort of sad. “Don’t you ever get tired of coveting everything Sloane has?”
Mila flips me the bird. “Aren’t you tired of coveting Sloane?”
“Dude.” Oliver cracks up. “Burn!”
He’s such a child.
“On that note, I think it’s time for another drink,” I announce, standing up.
Mila kicks my shin. “Get me one too.”
“Get it yourself.”
She twists her lips at the challenge and slowly rises to her feet. “You know, I might kinda like this new Silas.”
“Good for you.”
Oliver becomes distracted by something his running back says and absently taps Mila’s arm to ask her to bring him back a drink too. Together, Mila and I go to the refreshment tables and grab a couple of bottles of sparkling water. It’s hotter than hell in here and starting to smell like a dumpster full of broken perfume and cologne bottles baking in an alley behind a fast-food restaurant.
“So, what is it about Sloane’s toys that makes you so damn jealous?” I tease Mila.
“It must be fascinating to be so delusional,” she bites back. “What’s it like inside your head?”
“How far did it get?” I try to smother a smirk, but I can’t stop imagining how ridiculous Mila looked thinking she had a shot with RJ. “Just the tip, or…?”
“Fuck off.” She meanders away from the table toward the alcove that leads to the locker rooms. Goading me to follow her. “You know you’re, like, completely obsessed with them.”
I admire her ass beneath the stretchy red material of her dress. “I’m not the one getting caught up in their weird role-playing kinks.”
“You wish.”
“If I wanted Sloane, I could have her. She’s not worth the trouble.”
Slowly, I back Mila into the darkened alcove, just out of sight of the crowded room. Mila narrows her eyes. Like a dare. Testing me.
“What about Amy?” she taunts. “She’s also too much trouble?”
I press her back against the cold, painted cinder-block wall, my hands biting into her slender hips.
“I guess I bore easy.”
“You bored now?”
“Not yet.”
I cover her mouth with mine and pry her lips open with my tongue. Her body goes soft against me, kissing me back. Her fingernails lightly scratch across my scalp as her tongue teases mine.
I suppose some part of me always found Mila attractive. Despite what Amy thinks, I’d never paid much attention to anyone else while we were together. It never would have occurred to me then to wonder about my prospects with Mila Whitlock. Now, all bets are off.
When she lets out a quiet sigh, I open her legs with my knee and slip my hand under her dress. Skimming it toward the flushed skin on her inner thigh. Up to the warm, clenching place that makes her bite my bottom lip.
I dip beneath her panties and slide one finger inside her. My thumb finds the spot that makes her legs shake. She’s so wet.
“Where did this Silas come from?” she says breathlessly against my mouth.
I don’t respond. Grinding my hand against her core and making her breath catch in her throat.
Mila scrapes her teeth against the side of my neck. “Are you pretending I’m Sloane?”
“Does it matter?” I add another finger, thrusting it deeper inside her. “You’re pretending I’m RJ. Or Duke. Or whoever else Sloane has that you can’t.”
Mila arches her back. Tugging at my shirt, my jacket. Urging me on.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Oliver pass by the entrance of the alcove. Even though he doesn’t notice us, I make no attempt to remain undetected, not bothering to slow my movements. Mila, however, senses something’s different and opens her eyes. Just past the corner where we’re all but holding our breath, we hear Oliver asking if anyone’s seen her.
Mila runs her tongue across her bottom lip. She begins fucking herself on my hand, hiking her knee up around my hip. Shoulders pressed into the wall.
It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Fingering this chick while her date is twenty feet away, oblivious.
Not a total waste of a night, after all.