Page 5 of Play the Part (Marsford Bay #2)

HUXLEY

I wanted to leave.

I even made it all the way outside, but my feet never left the porch. I told myself I was only staying because Sophia was my ride back home. We live together now. I smoked two cigarettes back to back, muttering complaints into the cold night before I stepped back in.

Now, we’re all gathered around the dining room table, and I’m trying to choke down some mashed potatoes while Connie is sitting a few chairs opposite me.

The yellow of her blouse brings out the gold in her red hair, and I fight the urge to stab a fork into my eye at even noticing such a detail.

I shouldn’t care.

I don’t care.

She hasn’t tried to address me since she first walked into the kitchen, and I haven’t said a word to anyone since we sat down to eat. Luckily for me, it’s not completely out of character.

I’ve been out of prison for sixteen months now, but people still walk on eggshells around me—especially Ozzy’s friends. At least that means they leave me alone most of the time. But I’d rather not be here to begin with.

It all feels so fake. Especially when Ozzy tries to play the patriarch of the family.

Give me a fucking break.

Dishes full of food that still taste too rich for me are passed around, everyone chattering excitedly about how good everything looks.

Sophia, who is sitting to my right, elbows me in the ribs.

My head snaps to my side.

“The hell was that for?” I grit out.

“You look like you’re planning to murder someone,” she says from the side of her mouth.

“Maybe I am.”

Sophia is one of the few who hasn’t treated me any differently since I’ve been out. She disregards my comment and, with both hands, gestures for me to smile like a stage mom prompting her kid on stage.

I glare even harder, but she simply presses her lips together and looks away, unbothered.

“So Connie,” I hear Michelle, one of James’ friends, say from somewhere to my left. I grow still, listening in without looking over. “How long are you staying in town for? Just for Thanksgiving?”

I’m burning a hole into my plate, pushing some veggies around while I wait for Connie to answer.

“Actually, I was thinking of staying until January.”

James chimes in, her voice pitched high in excitement. “You are?”

Sudden dread at the news turns into a lump in my throat, and I finally look up.

Connie’s attention is on James sitting beside her while she toys with her wine glass. “Yeah, I figured, why not?” She shrugs. “It’s not as if I have much waiting for me back in LA.”

The table falls unusually quiet. I might not be online much, but even I know why everyone is suddenly acting weird.

Connie’s cheeks turn slightly rosy. She laughs, trying to break the tension, and looks around the table breezily, although her gaze never finds mine.

“It’s okay, guys,” she finally says with a dry chuckle. “You can ask me about it. I don’t mind.”

There’s a loaded second where everyone at the table seems to deliberate until Michelle launches into a barrage of questions about Oliver Campisi and Connie’s glitzy Hollywood life. She answers them all with humor and a smile, the energy around the table easing back into casual conversation.

The mention of her ex pisses me off, but I pretend not to be remotely affected while I wrestle with the goading fact that she’ll now be around a lot more often.

Worse is that she’s been ignoring me since the engagement party; she just disappeared, never to be heard from again, and she’s still ignoring me now.

I slowly lose my appetite.

I’ve been lying in bed, in the pitch black of my room, staring at my ceiling for over an hour.

Sophia and I came back from Ozzy’s a while ago. It must be close to two a.m. by now. She wanted us to watch Die Hard together, but I opted for sitting in silence in my bedroom instead. Even I know my attitude was especially sour tonight, but Sophia didn’t push it.

“Your loss,” she said.

As if watching Die Hard for the thousandth time since we were kids would be a life-altering event or something. The TV turned off some time ago, so she must have gone to bed.

But I’m wide awake.

I pat for my phone next to me. Squinting at the brightness, I turn it down, my screen cracked in multiple places, but still functional. I broke it on one of my first days at the construction site this summer. Never bothered fixing it.

I tap on the Instagram icon. I’m not active on the app, it’s my old account from before I went to prison.

I almost deleted the entire thing when I first got out.

There was something excruciatingly nostalgic about seeing my life frozen in time like that.

Perpetually eighteen with his whole life in front of him.

But I never did delete it. Maybe I like the pain it offers.

I pull up Connie’s page. I don’t follow her, but she’s the first handle that pops up in my search bar. I’ve stared at her pictures and videos countless times over the past year. It’s embarrassing. I would deny all of it if she ever found out.

I’ve convinced myself that the reason I haven’t been able to forget about her is simple. She was just my first taste of normal after getting out of prison. It’s not like I didn’t get laid during those five years, but … situations were different then.

Connie’s hands on my skin felt like freedom that night.

Fucking idiot.

It was nothing but a quick fuck over a bathroom sink.

We didn’t even talk afterward. She just fixed herself up and left me standing there. I felt fucking stupid. The next time I heard her name, she was dating that pretty boy from LA.

Been feeling stupid ever since.

I scroll down her feed and find my favorite picture of her. I don’t even know why I like it so much. It’s just a picture of her holding a margarita and smiling at the camera. I’d rather not think about who took the picture.

Instead, I stare at the crinkle of skin near her eyes.

The small dimple on her right cheek. The small heart tattoo on her middle finger.

I shift my position in bed, lying further back into the mattress and palm my dick.

I keep staring at her picture, my cock growing hard under my grip, and deliberate just tugging one out.

I tsk loudly, annoyed with myself, and pull my hand away.

Closing the app, I open my text messages and find my conversation thread with Selina.

You up?