Page 11 of Try Me

As I rounded a bend in the sidewalk, I cut across the quad to the old tower, but it wasn’t until I came around the backside that I spotted Mark leaning up against the beige bricks, staring down at his phone. One of the tower’s spotlights was out, casting half the edifice in shadow.

Mark stuffed the phone into his back pocket and eyed my approach warily. When we were twelve, he’d shot up what had seemed like a whole foot over a single summer. We’d joked about it, though I’d been green with envy until I caught up a year later. He still had an inch on me. He also had denim-blue eyes and the kind of American-pie smile that old ladies cooed at and younger ones dropped their panties for. I’d always liked it aimed in my direction. It sure as shit wasn’t there now, though—not that I’d expected it to be.

The manicured grass muffled my approach, and I stopped ten feet from his defensive posture, sweeping a gaze side to side. I wasn’t anticipating an ambush, but you never knew.

“You’re alone,” I said. So alone it sent an unwarranted wave of heat through my gut. “Didn’t bring your frat brothers to finish the job?” On a better night, it would’ve sounded like a sultry tease. Right then, it sounded like I was goading him, and I supposed I was.

“Did you think I would?” Mark folded his arms over his chest. Along his forearm, his index finger tapped restlessly. It made me restless, too.

“Nah. I guess that’s not your style. So what, then?”

When he didn’t answer immediately, my gaze dropped to follow his to the dark splotch on my tee, fallout from his knuckles splitting my lip earlier. “I’m not dealing anymore, so if that’s what you’re after, you’re S-O-L.” I slid my hands from my pockets and wandered a little closer. His biceps twitched with coiled energy. They were still as bulky and defined as they’d been during his b-ball days. I wondered if he still played. Mark had been good. Not good enough for the walk-on offer I’d gotten, but good enough to keep me on my toes in high school.

“I’m not,” he finally replied, and I thought I detected a little surprise for my statement. Guess the rumors were more persistent than I’d been aware of.

“Want to even the score yourself, then?” I left him with enough room between us in case he did, and I could tell by the way his fists clenched at his side that he was considering how good it might feel to get one more shot in.

Go again?he’d ask back in the days when we used to play one-on-one in his driveway. We’d play for hours until his mom came out and demanded we come inside for dinner. My arms would be aching and limp, but I’d have kept going as long as he kept asking. That was what it’d been like between us.

I steeled myself, waiting. He’d gotten my ribs good earlier, and judging by the swelling near his eye, I figured a retaliatory face shot would be even more tempting now.

Instead, Mark rubbed his hands over the stubble on his cheeks and pushed off the wall. “You know what? Fuck this.”

Fuckthat. I stepped in, shoving him back against the wall with a forearm to his chest and searched his expression, way too curious for my own good. “What’d you want, Farrow?”Farrow. Like old times. Fuck. If I could mark my downfall, this moment would be it.

“Nothing.”

I tightened my grip when he tried to push it off, and then took another step closer, waiting.The warm glide of his skin underneath my touch. Soft gasps of sound. The solid clasp of his hands on my hips. How tight he’d held them. Bruisingly tight. How much I’d fucking loved it.

Mark cleared his throat. “What you said about Cam earlier, was that true?”

Frustration punctured my vague arousal, and I let my hand drop away. “I didn’t give him the shit. I wasn’t selling that kind of stuff.”

“But you got the E that time I…” He stalled out, and it made me wonder if the same images filtered behind his eyelids that did mine. Cam cracking up next to me in the backseat of Mark’s car after he’d picked us up from a club we’d been partying at. How, for one brief second, our gazes had connected in the rearview mirror and it set off a shower of sparks in my chest. Mark had felt it, too, I was certain.

“Did Cam tell you that?” Damn, how far down the rabbit hole had the guy taken everyone surrounding him? I thought it’d just been me.

Mark’s face screwed up, gaze running over mine like he was looking for evidence that I was lying. “Not exactly, but I figured. I mean, I know for a fact you were dealing weed.”

“Yeah, and that’s it.Cam’sthe one who got the E the night you picked us up.” When Cam had said he’d find us a ride home from the club, I’d had no idea it’d end up being with Mark. The next time I’d had any kind of communication with him was a month later when Cam landed himself in the hospital. “I assume he got the pills from the same place.” I had my guesses. “I wasn’t with him at the time.”

“But you were with him the night he OD’d,” Mark countered.

“Yeah, earlier in the night I was. And then he told me to fuck off, so I did. He was all agitated. I have no clue why, but he was sober when I left him.” I told Mark the truth he’d never requested before and that I’d never offered out of pride. Or ego. Whichever. They both regularly bit me in the ass. “He wouldn’t return any of my messages, so I figured he was serious about the fucking-off part. The end.” I shrugged. “I’m not about chasing guys around, Farrow—” He laughed softly, ironically, and I glared. “Next thing I know, some asshole—that’d be you—was blowing up my phone.” I raked my knuckles over the brick wall, felt it bite into my skin. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation rightnow.” It was at least a year overdue. But then again, I’d never had a reason to give a shit about clearing my name with him, especially considering everything that had gone down in high school. Seemed moot, pointless, impossible.

Mark fell silent, digesting the influx of information. I knew he’d been the one to find Cam unresponsive on the floor of the room they shared in the fraternity house, and that he’d gone with him to the hospital. But that was where my knowledge ended.

“Shit.” He scrubbed his hands down his face again. “Okay. Yeah. Whatever.”

“That’s all you wanted?” I studied him. I didn’t buy that it was that easy.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?” I angled toward him. I shouldn’t have. I really fucking shouldn’t have. My impulse control had clearly taken the night off, and he’d always been the biggest test of it. Mark Farrow, the boy I’d crushed on before I even knew what a crush was. The first guy I’d ever jacked off to. The first guy I’d ever wanted to kiss. The first guy who’d ever touched meexactlythe fucking way I’d wanted to be touched. The only guy I could never have.

Mark’s gaze dropped to the fingertips I let drift lightly over the hem of his tee. A muscle along his jaw twitched.

“How drunk are you, Farrow?” His name felt too soft in my mouth, shapeless with disuse. I pushed aside a sudden pang of longing for the times when I’d said it daily. He shivered as I dipped behind the cotton tee, ran my knuckles over the hot skin of his abdomen. Hard lines, smooth ridges that rippled beneath my touch. He still kept himself in wicked shape.