Page 12 of Learning Curve

To a party on Sorority Row to see a girl I have absolutely no business seeing. God help me.

Scottie

Steam filters off the grass in front of the Delta Omega house as some of the frat lackeys hose down the slip ’n slide again with water and bubbles. The air is cool, but the ground is still warm from the sun of the day, and the difference in temperature shrouds the front yard partiers in a cloud.

I let the curtains fall back into place and turn back to the party inside. It’s loud—so much so I can’t even make out the song that’s playing—and there are bodies everywhere. Some people are dancing, some people are chugging beers out of helmets with funnels, and a whole other contingent is playing flip cup on the dining room table.

I shove through a group of giggling girls and head toward the group of cheerleaders that’s congregated in front of the kitchen, glancing back toward where I’ve just come from more times than I’d like to admit on the way.

I am at my first college party, action all around me, and I can’t keep my eyes off the stupid door.

A frat guy snags a stack of pizza boxes from an Uber Eats driver, and two more groups of scantily clad girls trickle through the door on arrival, but still, there’s no sign of Finn Hayes.

“You waiting on someone, Scottie?” Nadine questions, her eyes narrowing on me as I make it to my teammates.

I shake my head. “Just wanted to see what they were doing out there. Two Delta Omegas just did the slip ’n slide together in their bras.”

Nadine laughs at that. “I bet that had the tongues wagging.”

“Come have a drink with me!” Dane slurs as he roughly wraps his arm around my shoulders, fresh from the kitchen with a new drink. His big frame makes me trip over my shoes, and he laughs when my hip bone careens into a nearby chair. So does Nadine.

I wince from the discomfort. That’ll probably leave a bruise.

“Uh-oh…looks like your boyfriend is shit-faced, Scottie,” Kayla, one of the cheerleaders I came to the party with, comments. It could be catty, but from her tone and what I know about her, she seems to be saying it sympathetically.

“Don’t be such a downer, Kay,” Nadine purrs and flashes a wink at my lazy-eyed and loose-lipped boyfriend. “Let the man have some fun.”

“Damn straight, sweetheart! Let the man have some fucking fun!” Dane agrees enthusiastically.

Nadine giggles, but I don’t see the humor. Instead, I stand on my tiptoes to whisper into Dane’s ear. “Don’t you think you’ve had a little too much to drink? Don’t forget you’re in season right now. Technically, we both are.”

Once you make any team at Dickson, you have to sign a contract that pledges you won’t drink or do drugs of any sort while in season. If the university finds out you’ve broken that contract, they’ll kick you off the team. And they’re allowed to test any time they want to.

“Damn it, Scottie,” Dane snaps back, shoving me away from him hard enough that my back impacts the wall this time. His gray eyes grow dark with annoyance as he stares down at me. I don’t think he’s actively trying to hurt me, but the booze has pretty much ensured he’s not feeling remorse either. “Why do you always have to be such a killjoy?”

“Hey there, buddy,” a different male voice chastises from behind before stepping in between us. “Go easy on your girl, yeah?”

“Suck my dick, Boden,” Dane retorts to the Blake Boden, his teammate and nationally recognized starting quarterback for the Dickson Dragons.

Blake’s gaze moves to mine, a concerned warmth making his eyes look like the Caribbean, and I shake my head toward him. It’s a silent I’m okay, even though I’m not necessarily feeling it.

At the end of our senior year, Dane really got into drinking more heavily, and sadly, it only seems to enhance every asshole bone in his body. We wouldn’t have lasted two years if this was the way he’d always been, but the majority of our relationship was different. We were different.

He was different.

He used to pick flowers for me from the front of the school and write notes to me during class, and every Friday night, we did movie night in his parents’ basement, just the two of us. I still have the fake movie stubs he made me for all of them.

But when he acts like this, I have to fight my inner-child instincts to go fetal and cower in the corner. He reminds me too much of my mom before my dad divorced her and took full custody of my sister Wren and me. Our mom always turned into the worst kind of drunk when left to her own devices.

She’s been to rehab too many times to count—her latest stint having just finished up a month before I graduated. Wren and I still haven’t given in to her requests to see us. She says she’s really turned over a new leaf this time, but after seeing her as nothing but a mean drunk for most of my life, her words don’t hold any power.

Blake Boden eyes me for a long moment before three bouncy Delta Omegas wearing Boden jerseys that have been cut to reveal everything but their nipples drag him toward the large living room of the house, where a makeshift dance floor has been created in front of the DJ.

I watch as Blake smiles down at the girls, dancing with all three of them in a way that makes it apparent this isn’t his first time handling more than one woman. I guess that’s how it goes when you’re the star quarterback of the school. Add in the fact that Blake is single and has the kind of shaggy strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes that would make most girls my age describe him as stupid hot, I have a feeling he rarely spends his nights alone.

“You coming, Scottie?” Dane asks, unconcerned with Blake Boden on the dance floor or any of his own transgressions against me.

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

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