Unspoken (The Woodlands) (20 page)

Ryan let her go, and Ellie stumbled back. She brought her hand up to her lips, and I saw it was trembling.

“I’m not gay, honey,” Ryan said and then placed his hand on his crotch. “And this is all for you.”

Ellie raised her hand. For a moment it looked like she was going to slap him, but then she turned on her heel and stomped back to our table. Sasha followed her immediately, but I paused. My attention was arrested when Ryan’s face tightened as he watched Ellie walk away.

“Fuck,” he muttered and hit his fist hard against the table, making it rock on its pedestal. A dark-haired guy with washboard abs walked up wearing tight green underwear with a fluorescent band and dollar bills poking out of the waist. He was carrying a mixed drink in one hand and a beer in the other.

“What’d I miss?” he asked, directing the question toward me but handing the beer to Ryan. Ryan took the beer and swallowed about half of it.

“Just me, fucking it up,” Ryan said, swiping a forearm against his mouth.

The stranger held out his now-free hand to me. “Erik. Ryan’s roommate.”

“AnnMarie. Ellie’s roommate.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder in the direction of our table. Erik peered past me.

“The goddess from geology?” Erik asked. Both Ryan and I nodded.

“She thinks Ryan’s gay and was asking her out to be his beard,” I told Erik, avoiding Ryan’s gaze.

“Why’d she think that?” Erik asked.

“Lacrosse connection,” I said. “She doesn’t like them.”

Erik raised his eyebrows at this and tilted his head questioningly toward Ryan. Ryan just put his head in his hands.

“She has good reason,” Ryan mumbled, but loudly enough so that we could hear. “The lacrosse club is filled with a bunch of assholes.” He lifted his head and looked at me. “I’m surprised you’re even standing this close to me.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. You don’t seem like an asshole to me.”

“I’m not,” Ryan said, standing up and looking at me. “I swear it, and I’m not trying to have a beard.”

“It’s true,” Erik piped up. “Not gay. I can tell.”

“Dude,
everyone
can tell he’s not gay,” another guy next to us leaned in to say. Yep, we had quite the crowd.

“It just took Ellie by surprise,” I said in her defense. “Plus you did act all caveman on her.”

This made Ryan put his head down again. “I know. I can’t think right around her. She messes me up bad. I’ll probably be the only one to ever fail Rocks for Jocks because I can’t focus on anything but her.”

“I’ll, ah, go put in a good word for you,” I offered. A few people clapped. I turned to go and then swiveled around. “Just out of curiosity, how do you all know he’s not gay?”

“Oh my God, girl, did you see the hair on his chest? It’s obviously not manscaped.” Erik said this with obvious horror at my ignorance. I looked at Ryan’s chest but saw nothing wrong with it. I met Ryan’s eyes, and he just shrugged as if he didn’t know what was wrong either. Soon we were all staring at him, and Ryan, for all his amazing confidence, became flustered and dragged his hand across his upper chest. The motion made me giggle a little. The whole scenario was kind of hilarious if you thought about it.

“I’ll be right back,” I promised and headed toward my table. This time, a small entourage of interested people, led by Erik, followed me. Ellie stood by the table, throwing back another shot and glaring daggers back toward Ryan.

“Ellie, this is Erik, Ryan’s roommate,” I introduced them. Ellie reluctantly held out her hand.

“I’m sorry you have to live with him,” she sniffed.

“Me, too,” Erik replied. “I was hoping for a gay roommate who’d either fall totally in love with me or go trolling for men with me. Instead I got a sporty lacrosse straight dude who likes to read Shakespeare and won’t wax his chest.”

“You’re a pretty awesome wingman,” I said to Erik after the recitation of Ryan’s assets.

“I know,” he said, without any faux modesty. Ellie’s pissed-off look turned to uncertainty. As she nibbled on her lip, one of our entourage piped up, “Why don’t you give the poor boy a chance?”

“Yeah, just a dance,” another voice said. Pretty soon the crowd was chanting
dance, dance, dance
. We all looked back to Ryan who, buoyed by the crowd support, no longer had his head in his hands but was walking toward us. Ellie threw her hands up in surrender and pushed through our crowd. Halfway across the dance floor, the two stopped a foot away from each other. The music spun down and there was a lull. Someone else yelled out, “Now kiss!”

Ryan placed his arm around Ellie’s waist and waved his other arm in the air, gesturing for the DJ to spin up another song. He yelled out, “Play that funky music, white boy.”

The crowd erupted in cheers, and Sasha and I dissolved into laughter. The dance floor was mobbed as everyone moved toward it to revel in the little drama that had played itself out. Sasha and I threw ourselves into the crowd, pushing until we found Ellie and Ryan draped around each other like they were trying to absorb each other. We pulled them apart and danced, jumping and grinding and swaying to the strange mix of K Pop and hard rap. As the night wore on, Ryan and Ellie became inseparable. Erik and Ryan had abandoned their table and taken up residence at ours. Sasha’s ex showed up, looking magnificent in pink, her hair teased out and standing a good four inches in a halo around her head. Victoria must have had her own invitation, as Sasha’s fourth went unused. Brian was off with some girl tonight, the opportunity to get laid by one girl outweighing hundreds in their underwear. One shake of Victoria’s hips and Sasha was back in her arms. It seemed like everyone was pairing up.

Despite the sweat streaking down my back and the press of the bodies on the dance floor generating enough heat to warm the entire apartment complex, I suddenly felt cold. Chills warred with the sweat and dizziness hit me. I stumbled off the floor toward the table holding our clutches and drinks.

I looked around me. Everyone was laughing and shouting at each other, throwing back drinks and designing black-light illuminated tattoos on each other. I tried once more to enter the fray on the dance floor, but after one song, I knew I had to go home because the crowd was only accentuating the stinging ache of loneliness.

I grabbed at Sasha to let her know I was leaving. If I told Ellie, she’d demand to go with me, and I didn’t want to ruin her night. Sasha waved me off and said she’d make sure Ellie got home safely.

Out in the entryway, I retrieved my coat and shrugged it on, the cotton canvas sticking to my sweaty body. I plucked at it, knowing that in a moment the material would be a worthless barrier to the chill of the winter night.

“Need a cab?” the bouncer queried.

I nodded my head. He picked up a phone and made a call. “Ten minutes,” he told me, hanging up his cell phone and tucking it into his pocket.

“I’ll wait outside.” I needed a few moments of alone time. He gave me a dismissive nod, his head turning back to ogle the crowd inside.

I took a step outside and inhaled the crisp night air. Initially the cold felt good. It cleared my head, and the quiet of the night, as opposed to the loud pounding of bass from the dance music, was a huge relief.

Only the relief and clearheadedness didn’t last. The ache of being alone crept in again, insidiously, like smoke curling in and around the base of the floor and climbing the walls, silently and menacingly. I wanted Ellie and Ryan to work out because as tired of being ostracized as I felt, I didn’t want Ellie to feel that way. I needed to stop relying on her so heavily, to push her back onto campus and not allow her to regret that her college years were spent in exile with me.

I rubbed my hands along my face. Feeling sorry for myself was worse than feeling lonely.

Chapter Seventeen

BO

T
HE
SITUATION
WITH
AM
WAS
confounding me. Given her past, I knew I had to let her make the first move, but exchanging lighthearted banter when I wanted to peel her clothing off with my teeth was wearing what little self-control I had down to a nub. Noah suggested heading down to the old zipper factory. A group of guys met to fight on Wednesday nights—a hump day celebration or something.

There were no crowds there, and if you showed up, the expectation was that you wanted to fight. There were around ten of us there. We could have done this down at the Spartan Gym, but I supposed that Paulie wouldn’t want it to get around that we were trying to beat the shit out of each other instead of “training” or “working out.” But none of us wanted to be the best at exercising. We just wanted the opportunity to whale on each other for five minutes without interruption or judgment. I never asked why any of the other guys were there, and they didn’t ask me. It was bare knuckle fighting. Not everyone was even in very good shape. One guy had a tub in his belly but an iron jaw. My knuckles bore witness to his immovable facade.

Regardless, my two-hour stint there left me feeling relaxed and good-humored, even if my ribs did ache from the blow delivered by the Pillsbury Doughboy. Who knew those guys were so hardy?

I slowed down on East Second as a couple of guys clad only in what appeared to be jocks and jackets skipped across the street and disappeared into a bar. On the sidewalk, next to the entrance, I saw a dark-haired girl who looked somewhat like AM. I shook my head a little, knowing I had her on my mind, but when she moved to the side and her face was illuminated by the light, I realized it
was
AM.

I slammed the brakes on, grateful I was almost at a stop and didn’t ram into anyone. I deployed the down button on the passenger window and leaned across the center console.

“AM,” I yelled. She looked startled and came over to stand next to the car.

“Bo?” She leaned down to peer inside.

I reached over, pulled the door handle, and gave the passenger door a push. She gripped it indecisively for a moment and climbed in, but didn’t shut the door.

“I was going to take a cab home,” she said, biting the side of her mouth.

“You don’t need one now,” I declared. She shot me another glance and looked at the empty street.

“Guess not.” She swung her legs inside and shut the door. I engaged the locks and took off.

“What are you wearing under there?” I tilted my head toward her trench coat. A trench coat seemed an odd choice for club attire. Even in the dead of winter, girls seemed to be impervious to the cold with their miniskirts, high heels, and see-through tops. No one wore jackets. It was like she was on a top-secret mission smuggling booze.

She shifted uncomfortably next to me, blushed, and looked out the window, which only heightened my curiosity. I glanced back at the bar she had been standing by and the two guys in their underwear flicked through my head. I shook it.
Nah,
that couldn’t be right. AM wouldn’t be wearing just her panties underneath that jacket.

I tried a different tactic. “Where were you?” It came out hoarse, like I hadn’t drunk water for a week, but I couldn’t help it. All fluids in my body were pooling below the waist at the thought of her attired in nothing but a bra and panties. Thank God it was dark.

“The Garden,” she said, unconcerned. Likely she’d not a clue as to what was swirling through my head.

“What’s that?” I hadn’t heard of it before.

“Gay bar.”

And that’s the reason why. I saw no reason to go to a gay bar to drink. If I had to move it on the dance floor, it was for the express purpose of picking up a girl. But that would explain the two guys in jocks and, no, wait, it did
not
explain the guys in their underwear.

“I saw two guys go inside with some briefs on. What’s that all about?”

“Special invite-only party,” AM mumbled.

“What’s that?”

“Underwear party.”

I clearly didn’t hear that right.

“Underwear party?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw her nod her agreement. I took my eyes off the road and looked at her jacket. Would that I had X-ray vision right now.

“Hey,” she said, her hand coming over to the steering wheel. I’d veered off into the gravel and was perilously close to the curb. I took the next two lefts and ended up in a low-lit parking lot. The bustle of the downtown was two miles behind us and the campus a few miles in front of us. It was a no-man’s land of closed businesses here.

I put the car in park and turned in my seat. “Underwear party?” I repeated.

“Why are we stopped?”

Did she think she was making sense? Because she wasn’t. “You just said underwear party. I almost drove off the road at those words.”

“I won’t talk about it,” she promised.

“I still can’t drive. It’s not safe for either of us.”

She rolled her eyes at me, but I was thinking seriously of our safety. Did she honestly believe I could drive knowing that she was wearing underwear under her trench coat? Did she not know that this was like every guy’s fantasy from the age that guys could have fantasies?

“Fine,” she huffed. “It’s an invitation-only party. You go in your underwear.”

“Everyone?”

“Yes.”