: Chapter 20

What sounds like half of Clement’s basketball team is outside, and I’m in Vincent’s bed with my bare legs tangled between his. I’m not a party person to begin with, but this? This is a nightmare. Vincent must see the panic painted across my face, because the annoyed twist of his lips immediately falls into something far more solemn.

“You’re fine,” he whispers. “The door’s locked. It’s fine.”

But it’s not fine. His teammates are outside his door, and I’m naked from the waist down, save for my mismatched cat socks. I’ve never been so afraid—or so frustrated, because I almost had everything I’ve ever fantasized about. I think there are actual tears welling up in my eyes.

“Are you kidding me?” I whine.

Vincent pushes himself up to his knees, eyebrows pinched with determination.

“I’ll get rid of them,” he whispers.

“I’m hiding in your bathroom,” I whisper back, rolling away from him.

“You don’t have to—”

I’m already scrambling off the side of the bed, ducking down to pick up my jeans.

“Knight!” Jabari calls again, and he’s parroted by a few other voices before someone bangs on the door again. It makes me suddenly and inexplicably furious.

“Where the fuck is my underwear?” I hiss. “I don’t want your friends to see me like this!”

Vincent makes a face, then gives a pointed look down at his own crotch, where his unbuttoned jeans are stretched taut over a rapidly softening yet still impressive erection. Right. I’m sure he doesn’t exactly want to be seen by his friends right now either.

It seems like a bad time to point out that they’ve ruined our happy ending in more than one sense of the phrase.

While I duck into the bathroom, Vincent presses his cheek to his bedroom door. He clears his throat twice, but his voice is still incriminatingly low and rumbling when he speaks.

“Hey, Jabari?”

“What’s up?” Jabari’s response comes muffled through the wood.

Vincent’s mouth opens, and I’m about a hundred percent certain he wants to say fuck off, but what comes out is: “Can you give me, like, twenty minutes? I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You’re ready. No more procrastinating.”

“Henderson,” Vincent croaks. “I swear to God. Ten minutes. Fuck, I’ll take five.”

“Nah, man. C’mon. We’re on a mission to—”

“Fuck. Off.”

Vincent turns to me, his expression one straight out of a Shakespearean tragedy. Without a single word exchanged, I know we both understand that his teammates aren’t going anywhere until they get what they want.

Vincent crosses the room in a few angry strides and snatches his wallet off his bedside table, hesitates, then comes toward me instead of heading right for his door. He presses a hand to the wall just outside the bathroom and leans in to look at me.

“I’ll take them down the hall and get them to do another round of shots or something,” he whispers. “You can sneak out when the coast is clear, and I’ll meet you downstairs. Or—or you can stay here, and I can come back?”

Even as he suggests this with a spark of hope in his eyes, I can tell he knows it’s going to be impossible to slip away from his friends again.

It’s not fair. I’m not ready for tonight to be over.

“I should go downstairs,” I say, moving to shut the door.

“Kendall.”

I freeze and meet his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I might hate your friends,” I reply.

“That makes two of us.”

Vincent turns to go.

“Wait,” I say. He does. I wrap one hand around the back of his neck, my fingers tangling in his thoroughly rumpled hair, and pull myself up onto my toes to kiss him. Vincent returns the gesture with equal fervor, rocking against me so eagerly that I have to arch my back and shift my feet to accommodate him. Our lips separate with a wet smack.

“One for the road,” I whisper.

Vincent shakes his head. “This isn’t helping with the boner.”

He kisses me again—this time on the forehead—and then takes a step back and exhales hard. For a long moment, we stare at each other. I try to memorize this moment—to soak it all in—just in case it’s all I ever get.

It doesn’t feel like an ending, a hopeful part of me whispers.

And oh. Oh no.

I told myself I could be a grown-up about this. I told myself I could have one night to stop being such a coward and have some fun. But here I am, getting immediately and inordinately attached to the first boy I’ve ever felt this way about. I want Vincent to do something completely disproportionate to the situation, like storm downstairs, cut the speakers, and send everyone else home. I wish he’d be a romance hero, even if that’s ridiculous.

Jabari Henderson pounds on the door again.

“Go,” I tell Vincent, giving him a little push—one last excuse to touch his chest.

The look he shoots me over his shoulder as he crosses his room is both agonized and apologetic. I hide next to the shower, out of sight, and listen to a long moment of silence before he unlocks his bedroom door and tugs it open.

“Took you long enough,” someone in the hall shouts.

“Sorry, sorry,” Vincent says apologetically. He’s a surprisingly good actor. “Couldn’t find my wallet. Jabari, you still have any tequila in your room?”

The answer is: “Oh, hell yeah.”

Vincent slips through the door, pulling it tight behind him. I listen for the telltale sound of fading footsteps and merriment as he shepherds his teammates down the hall.

I stand in Vincent’s bathroom, my back pressed to the wall, and stare at my reflection in the mirror. My hair is wrecked. My lipstick is gone. My face is flushed, and there are pink spots on my neck—not quite hickeys, but maybe they will be tomorrow. I hope they will be. I want concrete reminders of what we did. I want souvenirs, dammit.

Because otherwise, I might not believe this happened.

He brought me to orgasm. In the middle of his own birthday party.

For a moment, the giddiness cuts through my anxiety. I grin at my own reflection. But the longer I stare, the more my dazed smile falls and the more my stomach knots.

It was perfect. He was perfect. It was like something straight out of the best kind of romance novel, where the boy worships the girl and actually pays attention to what makes her feel good. There wasn’t a single moment when I didn’t like what Vincent was doing—and I don’t mind if he’s had tons of practice, because I’m not about to slut-shame anyone, but it’s hitting me that the whole encounter was fairly lopsided.

For fuck’s sake, he didn’t even come.

He gave, and he gave, and even when I pawed at his pants and demanded to see his dick, he seemed hesitant. And I know he wanted me. He said so. I saw the desire in his eyes, and I can’t think of another reason why a boy would look at a girl like that. But now that I’m alone in his bathroom, my hands shaking as I smooth down the front of my wrinkled bodysuit, I wonder how much of that was in my own head.

A knot forms in my throat.

I can’t explain it. I can’t put my finger on it.

I just feel like I’ve done something wrong.

• • •

Despite my best efforts, I can’t locate my underwear. I know I took it off, and I know I chucked it somewhere vaguely in the direction of the desk, but it’s nowhere to be found. Apparently, I’ve launched it into another dimension. I give up after a few minutes of searching and tug my jeans back on over my snapped-up bodysuit, blushing hard at the memory of Vincent’s face when I undressed.

This. I love this thing.

I huff and scrub my hands over my face. I just had the best orgasm of my life. I just did everything I’ve been wanting to do. I don’t know why I feel so off-kilter.

Legs still shaky from my orgasm, I pull open Vincent’s door and check both ways before I slip out into the hall, undetected, and stumble downstairs into the dining room. The crush of the crowd doesn’t help my anxiety. There’s no sign of Nina around the beer pong tables. I do a lap around the kitchen. I’m about to brave the living room when I hear the unmistakable sound of Nina calling out my name.

She’s in a little hallway off the kitchen, between a sliding glass door that leads to a back porch and a small door that must be a closet or a pantry. From here, I can see straight into the entry hall, where people are pouring up and down the stairs and in and out of the front door.

“Harper really wasn’t kidding about half the school coming,” I mutter.

“Where have you been?” Nina demands. Then she registers the sight of me, with my mussed hair and missing lipstick, and her eyes blow wide. “Oh my God. You didn’t.”

I try to smile. “I did.”

The grin that splits Nina’s face dissolves when the small door behind her clicks and swings open. It’s a laundry room. I catch sight of a double stack of washers and dryers before my eyes land on Harper, whose mascara is gone and whose eyes are pink and watery.

She’s been crying.

She never cries.

“What happened?” I demand.

“It’s nothing,” Harper snaps, sniffling hard. “I’m getting some jungle juice.”

“Harper, wait—”

She’s already shouldering her way into the kitchen.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, Nina grabs my arm and leans in.

“We saw Jabari with another girl,” she whispers as well as one can whisper in the middle of a crowded house party. “He was upstairs with Harper and a bunch of the team, and he got a text, and he said he’d be right back, but then Harper followed him down here a few minutes later and we saw them. He was holding her hand. He was taking her to the bar. And Harper played it cool, but then we overheard one of his teammates talking about some sort of big team mission to get someone laid and—”

Nina stops talking abruptly, her face crumpling as she takes in my rumpled hair and missing lipstick. She thought they were talking about Jabari. But now that she’s said it out loud—and now that she’s seen me—I think she realizes they were probably talking about someone else.

The birthday boy.