Page 5

Joey

I ended up getting the pretty sunset photo I wanted through the window of the plane I’d been able to change my ticket to on the way to the airport.

With the unrelenting need to get out of the hotel as quickly as possible, I didn’t bother looking for Callum, Erin, or Dad to let them know what had happened. Our parents had booked and paid for our hotel rooms for another two nights, and the last thing I wanted to do was request another room and chance running into Amelia accidentally and get caught up in a scene. The weekend was supposed to be about Erin and Dad, not whatever drama Amelia might cause if we randomly saw each other in the hotel breakfast room.

I shot my family a group message to let them know I was headed home early because of unexpected course work but heaped praise on the ceremony and reception. Dad and Erin had outdone themselves organizing everything, and I wanted them to know that.

Because I’d slept a little on the plane, I ended up being wide awake by the time I made it back to the frat house just before eleven that night. I dumped my luggage in my room to sort out in the morning and headed for the kitchen to see if there was any ice cream I could liberate from the freezer.

“Hey man, you’re back early. How was it?”

I poked my head around the freezer door to see one of my good frat friends fumbling with a box of pop-tarts on the other side of the kitchen island. “Hey, Bobby. Yeah, it was good. Real good. Erin looked gorgeous. I haven’t seen Dad in a tux for quite a while either, so that was fun, too.”

The blast of cold air to my cheeks made me realize I still had the freezer door open, so I grabbed the cookies and cream ice cream and wrenched the lid off as I headed for the cutlery drawer.

“Uh oh.”

I dug around in the drawer for a spoon before looking up at him with a raised eyebrow. “What?”

He tilted his head and frowned at me. “You’re eating ice cream.”

I mirrored his actions. “Yeah. So?”

He narrowed his eyes, dumped the pop-tarts on the bench, and planted his hands flat on the counter. “You only eat ice cream when something’s happened. What happened?”

It was honestly really annoying that a good friend could pull this sort of bullshit when all you wanted to do was wallow in self-pity. I wondered if I could distract him with one of his favorite topics: himself. “I’m assuming it’s quiet in the house tonight because everyone decided to go to that house party down on Elmwood. Why aren’t you there too?”

He shrugged. “Got a final report due first thing on Monday. Figured I’d get more done here while it was quiet than at the library. Stop trying to change the subject. Spill.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. When he wouldn’t allow himself to get sidetracked, Bobby had the focus of a predator. I felt pretty confident that he’d taken Ritalin to help him get through finals in the past, so I couldn’t be too surprised he was hyper focused tonight.

Figuring it’d be easier to just rip the band-aid off, I blurted, “Found Amelia in bed with someone else just before the reception wrapped up.”

“Fuck, Joey,” he drawled, shock clear on his face if the dinner-plate-sized eyes were any indication. “I thought you two were end goals. We all did.”

I shrugged, then let my shoulders sag. I knew what Bobby meant. Everyone at the frat house loved Amelia, but they didn’t know her like I did. I was the only one who saw and heard the bitchiness and vitriol that constantly streamed from her mouth when it was just the two of us. She might put on a kind mask in public, but underneath, she was rotten to the core.

It didn’t stop me from being upset with myself that I’d wasted so much time with her. That was what the ice cream was for, not the fact that I’d found her cheating on me. And if nothing else, that told me everything I needed to know about the end of our relationship.

Bobby started moving around the kitchen, pulling out one of the family sized blocks of chocolate from the pantry and dumping it in front of me before rummaging around above the refrigerator for something.

“What are you doing?” I asked, picking up the plain block of chocolate. “I don’t need this.”

“Shut up,” he said, voice muffled while he stretched high enough to poke around the back of the shelf until he shouted a triumphant “Aha!” and pulled a half full bottle of vodka from the depths of the cupboard and plonked it with the chocolate. “Yes, you do. You’re going to take all these comfort foods”—he eyed the vodka—“and drink, and you’re going to disappear into your room and watch some porn and jerk off so much that you fall asleep from cum dehydration and limp dick exhaustion.”

I blinked at him.

He smirked and shrugged. “What? It’s a legitimate condition.”

“Pretty sure it isn’t.”

“It totally is.”

“I honestly think if I get dehydrated it will be because you’re forcing me to drink months-old cheap alcohol rather than masturbating too much.”

“But at least you’d be choking the chicken.”

“Please don’t.”

“Blowing your own horn?”

“Stop.”

“Five finger shuffle?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I grabbed the chocolate, ice cream, and vodka, and decided it was best for my sanity to escape to my room and lock the door.

“Spanking the monkey? Badgering the witness.” He followed me down the hall. “Dialing the rotary phone!”

“You don’t even know what a rotary phone is.”

“No, but it sounds fucking exceptional.”

I rolled my eyes and shut the door in his face.

“You’re welcome!”

“I didn’t say thank you!” I called back as I placed everything on my desk for future consumption. It did seem a little unreasonable to not at least try to eat and drink some of the makeshift picnic before I went to sleep.

“You’re still welcome!”

“God fucking shit on a flaming stick! Marshall!! Where the fuck are you? I need help! ”

I jerked awake at the sound of yelling coming from down the hall. Groaning, I peeked drowsily at the clock, realizing I’d only been asleep for three hours. It was far too early to be woken up when I had nowhere else to be, considering I was supposed to still be in Houston until tomorrow afternoon.

I rolled over, hugged my pillow to my ears, and fell back asleep.

Limp dick exhaustion was totally a thing.

When I did eventually wake up, I decided today was a perfect day to stay in bed and read.

I hadn’t read purely for relaxation in months, what with my heavy course load and Amelia’s constant demands for a couple’s social life .

I rolled my eyes at the memory of her telling me that we needed to be the ones others aspired to on campus and what better way to do that than by posting our entire life on social media. Whatever. I didn’t aspire to be anything other than who I genuinely was, but Amelia hadn’t been happy with that for ages, always pretending to be something she wasn’t.

I wondered if she’d faked everything for so long that she didn’t know any better.

Oh, well. She wasn’t my problem anymore.

I got myself comfortable, pulled up the Kindle app on my phone, and started scrolling to see what looked interesting.

Huh. Cora Rose had a new book out in her Unexpected series.

Fuck, she had multiple new books out. How the hell had I missed them all? Had I really been that busy?

I settled in and began reading. Today was going to be a good day.

“Please, please, please.”

A groan echoed down the hall, waking me up early for the second morning in a row.

I groaned to myself, wondering why anyone would be awake so early. I mean, sure, I’d been up most of the night and all day yesterday catching up on my personal reading, but it was Sunday morning, for God’s sake. Sundays were the best day of the week to sleep in.

“I need to come. Please let me come. I need it so bad. Let me have it. Oh, God—”

My eyes flew open. Was that Jacob?!

“That’s it, Jake.”

And Drew?!? They were best friends, but as far as I was aware, they weren’t fucking. As much as Jacob wanted to, that was. What the hell had I missed yesterday?

“Make all the noises.”

Oh, God, please don’t.

“I want to hear you.”

I didn’t! I really, really didn’t!

Fucking hell. I shoved my pillow over my ears and prayed for the ground to swallow me whole and get me out of this hellscape of listening to two of my frat brothers fuck like energizer bunnies.

The reverberation of a bed smacking against a wall was strong enough to feel in my bed. With every shudder to my bed, I cringed.

I mean, if this was what they wanted, then all the power to them. I just didn’t want to be subjected to having to listen to them. Or feel my bed shake from their exercising .

Ugh.

Having to think about two of my good friends boning was too weird for a Sunday morning.

A scream split the air as the rhythmic thumping slowed, then stopped entirely.

Well, at least somebody had a happy ending.

A deep groan made me recalculate that to two somebodies.

Fuck my life.

I rolled over, pulled the blankets over my head, and went back to sleep.

“Joey! Get your ass out here and talk to me like a real man, damn it!”

It was mid-afternoon and my quiet and relaxing weekend had obviously just come to an abrupt end. Amelia was outside the frat house, screaming at the top of her lungs.

Marshall, our chapter president, poked his head in my open door just as I was putting my phone down. So much for reading for the rest of the day. “You okay to deal with this? Or do you want me to?”

I grimaced. As much as I’d love him to get rid of my ex-girlfriend for me, I knew it had to be me. She’d never leave if I didn’t make her. “Might as well get this over with.”

As I slowly made my way towards the front door of the frat house, the sound of her yelling and screeching continued unabated. For someone who was so hellbent on a positive social media presence , she sure was making a racket.

The number of my frat brothers who had their phones out recording her made me think maybe that was precisely the point.

Was she going to try to throw me under the bus for what she did? It certainly appeared like she might. Maybe she thought if she made enough noise, I’d rush out to quiet her.

Newsflash, darlin’. I didn’t care anymore.

Marshall opened the front door and stood to the side for support as I leaned against the door frame, crossed my arms, and sighed with disinterest. “What do you want, Amelia?”

“There you are, you limp-dicked swine!”

Wow. She was really going to start things off like that, was she? Okay, then.

I stood there silently, not moving except to raise an eyebrow.

She stormed up the steps of the porch and started stabbing me in the chest with one of her sharply pointed fingernails. “You abandoned me in bumfuck nowhere, you prick!”

“It wasn’t bumfuck nowhere, Amelia,” I said calmly, but still not moving a muscle. “It was Houston, Texas.”

“You still abandoned me!”

“No, I didn’t.” I looked behind her at all our neighbors with their phones out, recording the latest gossip. I shrugged and sighed. If it was gossip that they wanted, Amelia had no one to blame but herself for them getting it. “I left you grinding away on the cock of a hotel worker. You didn’t even realize I was there for most of it. I wouldn’t call that abandonment. I’d call that cheating on your loyal two-year boyfriend who’d done fuck all to deserve such treatment.”

She reared back like I’d slapped her, her jaw dropping wide enough that she could probably fit three cocks in it easily. Hell, she probably had at one point.

I was so tired of it all.

Voices erupted around us as gossip started generating over what I’d just declared. At one point, I overheard, “Wait. I thought it was a groomsman she fucked?”

The color drained from her face as she finally realized her error. She hadn’t expected me to call her bluff in such a public way. She’d obviously thought I wouldn’t want the attention and would usher her inside and away from prying eyes and ears.

She’d wildly miscalculated my degree of caring about what people thought of me. And I no longer gave two shits about what people thought about her.

She’d done this to herself.

Once she got over her shock, she started the waterworks. “You don’t care about me at all, do you?” She started sobbing the crocodile tears I’d seen dozens of times before. “I’ve never been so upset, Joey! How could you?”

Glancing across at Marshall, I pursed my lips and then sighed. Time to end this production. “Amelia?”

“Yes, baby?” She sniffed, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“If you were really upset about me leaving you there, why did you continue to stay there the entire weekend and not try to contact me once?”

Her gaze turned murderous as she curled her fingers into claws and took a step forward to try to stab me in the eyes with her nails.

Thankfully, Marshall grabbed her around her waist and hauled her off the porch. “Alright, Amelia. Time to go.”

“No! You can’t make me!” She fought like a wildcat in his arms, never taking her eyes from mine. “I’m the wronged person here! I did nothing wrong!”

Holding onto the edge of the front door, I waited until Marshall deposited her with some of our neighbors and speed-walked back to our front door before letting out another long sigh. “Goodbye, Amelia.”

I turned around and, for the second time in three days, shut the door on her and didn’t look back.