“Did you think you wouldn’t see me?”

“Um …” His eyes flick to mine. “Does that question have a right answer?”

“Pay up, people!” Bridget shouts. Scott extends his hand, a ten-dollar bill sticking out between his fingers.

“Where am I supposed to put this?”

I’ve got money sticking out of my pocket, and the twenty plastered to my neck is poking me in my ear. I look heavenward, feigning exasperation. “Anywhere you want, big boy.”

That cracks us both up.

He puts it in my pocket.

I wonder if he’s been drinking, too.

I wonder why he’s here. If he came thinking he’d see me. If he was looking forward to it.

One of the players sets a shot in front of me and plunks another down in front of Scott.

Bridget blows the whistle. “DRINK!”

I open my jaw wide. Put my head down, suck up my shot, knock it back. My eyes don’t sting anymore. My lips are sticky and sweet, my hands cold from being out of my pockets so long. Scott gets his shot down, too, and pulls another ten from his wallet.

“I’m supposed to do this again now?” he asks.

“You’re allowed.”

“Oh, it’s a privilege.”

I beam at him. “It’s definitely a privilege. And it’s for a good cause.”

This time, he tucks the money in my coat. It’s zipped up to my scarf, so when he wraps his fingers around the collar, just for a second, he’s touching a perfectly innocent bit of chest real estate about five inches north of my boobs. And even that through a couple of layers of clothing.

But our eyes meet, and I know what he did, and so does he.

Whistle. “DRINK!”

This one goes down funny. I start to choke, and I have to grip the train track for a second, cold iron through brown leather, sucking air into my nose. In my peripheral vision, I notice a disturbance. Movement. A ripple of aggression.

“Not your turn, dude,” I hear Krishna say.

“I get to go again.” Scott.

“I don’t care.”

I know that voice.

I look up and see West, down on one knee across from me.

He must have shoved to the front of the line. Barged right in and removed Scott, which is totally not allowed. If anyone else had done it, Krishna would have had them kicked out, but West is West, and they’re friends.

West is West, and he’s got some kind of point he wants to make. God knows what it is.

His jaw is tight. There’s a line between his eyebrows, a hardness to his mouth. I wonder how long he’s been watching and what kind of right he thinks he has here, anyway.

The muscle in his jaw flexes, his teeth grinding together.

“You’re here for a blow job?”

“No.”

I cross my arms, pouting. “Well, blow jobs are what’s on offer. Are you in or are you out?”

Someone slides a shot down the tracks to the space in front of him. Bridget shouts, “Pay up!”

West frowns, opens his wallet, takes out a bill.

He extends it to me.

“You’re supposed to put it on me.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Everybody’s doing that.”

He hesitates, and I think he won’t. He seems troubled by all this, not sure if I’m being exploited, exploiting myself.

I’m not sure, either, but I want to tell him that sometimes you just have to trust the way it feels. You have to believe that happy things can make you happy and wrong things feel wrong.

I want to tell him that tonight he has to trust me to know what I want, instead of making up my mind for me.

He’s not in charge of me. He never was.

We were never going out. We weren’t friends. And I haven’t spent every hour since I last saw him two nights ago feeling brokenhearted, furious, betrayed.

Behind him, Scott is waiting. Hopeful Scott. Nice, ordinary, possible Scott. A guy I could take home to meet my dad. He must have driven all the way from Carter tonight for me.

It’s a shame Scott’s not who I want.

I reach out, grab West’s wrist, and drag his hand to my chest. “This is a good spot.”

Our eyes meet. He stuffs the bill inside my coat, down into my cleavage, his long fingers tamping it like an explosive.

I haven’t been this close to him since before break. Only in my dreams. Only in my bed in the dark, remembering the sound of his voice in my ear, the heat of his body, the slide of his tongue.

The whistle blows. “DRINK!”

I keep my eyes on West as I bend down to take the shot. He doesn’t drink his. He just watches me.

He watches me swallow it.

He’s watching me when I open my eyes.

Maybe it’s because I’m drunk, but I don’t think so. I think it’s because I’m tired of doing what everyone expects me to. I’m tired of waiting around to be claimed, telling myself it’s what I want.

I’m tired of being afraid of what might happen.

It already happened.

So I reach across the tracks, leaning way over with my ass in the air, pick up his shot, and knock it back with my eyes closed.

Then I look right into his eyes. I lick my lips, slow and seductive.

And that’s all it takes.

West reaches out, fists his hands in my coat, and yanks me into him. We meet at the mouth.

It’s the most obscene kiss of my life. Deep and hard, gasping hot, sticky-sweet, messy.

It turns out that West doesn’t even need words to make the point he came here to make.

Mine, his mouth says. Mine, mine, mine.

But I’m not. I’m my own. And I grab his hair, pull it, scratch his neck, punishing him for not getting that. For doing this, for never having done this before—I don’t know. Punishing him for torturing me.

It goes on, and I’m vaguely aware of somebody whooping. Maybe lots of somebodys. I don’t care. My hands clench and unclench at his hips. He’s saying my name. Kissing down my neck to my throat. He’s catching his breath, pressing his forehead against mine.

And then he’s standing up, leaving me cold. Alone.

He shoots a glare at Scott and walks away.

It’s only then that I understand how deeply, righteously, incandescently furious I am.


I’m stripped to my bra, dancing in a heaving mass of shirtless, sweaty, smiling, grinding women.

I’m safe, and I’m drunk, and I’m tired of men writing their claims on my body.

Slut, Nate wrote, and I believed him.

Mine, West wrote, and I let him, I melted, I gave him my surrender and my tongue, but I’m mad now. I’ve had enough of his shit. Enough.

Quinn’s at my hip, bumping my ass, lifting my hand and twirling me around. Two girls are hugging, kissing with tongue in front of me. Bridget’s dancing with Krishna, a beer in her hand.

There’s a reason the rugby party is popular beyond the blow jobs, and it has a lot to do with the pile of shirts on the stage by the DJ. We’re down to our sports bras, lace bras, acres of exposed flesh, girls who are too fat and too thin and just right, and none of us cares. We’re here to dance. We’re here for one another.

There’s a line dance. I don’t know the steps. They’re simple, but I keep forgetting them, crashing into people, spinning out too far on the twirl and losing my balance, finding it again. When I fall, hands reach out to clasp mine and lift me up. Bodies press into me, a hugging sisterhood of thrusting hips and lifted arms, sunglasses and duckface, bathed in disco-ball light.

I’m not bad. I’m not good. I’m just alive. I’m just here, dancing.

I love everyone. Everyone loves me. We’re heat and sweat, young and beautiful, sexy, together. Not one of these women would hurt me.

I drink and I’m drunk. I dance and I’m breathing, moving, living.

We’re in the middle of the dance floor, the center of everything, and sometimes I think I catch sight of him at the edge of the room.

Boots and crossed legs, leaning against the wall. Hooded eyes. Watching.

Sometimes I think I see pants with whales on them. A smirking smile that knows too much. A dimple that made me think I was safe when I never was, no matter how nice his parents are or how good his manners.

But I’m angry and I’m dancing and I don’t care.

Fuck them.

Fuck them both.


“I don’t want to see him.”

“Shh!”

“What? I’m whispering.”

I trip over something, and Quinn gets my elbow and helps me up. We’re in West’s apartment. I’m still drunk, but I’m sober enough to know this is a bad idea.

“You don’t have to see him,” Krishna says. “He’s sleeping. Keep your trap shut, and you’ll be fine.”

Quinn turns on the TV, and a wall of sound blasts out and knocks me down. “Whoa,” I say from the floor.

“Shit!” She starts giggling.

She and Krishna are fighting for the remote. I’m thinking about whether I should leave, but Bridget helps me up and shoves a cold bottle of water in my hand, so I drink that instead. I close my eyes, savoring every freezing, quenching, amazing swallow.

The sound drops off to a hush. The apartment smells like West’s apartment, and it’s full of memories I don’t want right now—except, of course, that I always want them and I always want him and there’s nothing I can do about it.

The water soothes my throat, at least. My feelings will have to wait for some other night.

I open my eyes because my balance is off, which is much more obvious now that we’re not at the party. Bridget is right up in my face, tucking my hair behind my ear, and I have to stick a hand out and brace myself against a cabinet so her beer-smelling concern doesn’t bowl me over again.