Page 49 of Jaded

Is my heart beating faster than usual?

He catches me looking, and his brown eyes sparkle as he flashes me a grin. “Going down, Taylor.”

“Sure.” My voice comes out in a dry croak. “We’ll see about that.”

The table explodes into action, and life whittles down to this game. We shout and cheer and boo and slosh beer. The girl beside me jumps up and down when it’s my turn to drink. And across the table, Olli grins as he sets his cup down the instant before I do.

Damn me for overfilling my cup.

Naturally, he flips his cup up and over in a neat flick of his wrist, and I’ve set my team up to trail.

We lose.

Olli grins even wider.

I agree to another round, because how can I resist with him smirking at me like that?

We lose again. Olli keeps smiling. I agree to another. Another. I get caught up in the excitement, or maybe it’s Olli’s sparkling eyes that catch me, inviting me to relax into the gentle hum of the booze, a music all its own.

The night flies, or time simply ceases to exist.

By the time the flip-cup game dissolves, the party has doubled in size, making conversation all but impossible. Music throbs from the open living room, where a few dozen people cram into the back corner, singing and dancing and jumping and shouting in a cacophony of noise and motion.

There was a time I’d have joined them, if only for the purpose of finding a willing partner for the night. But that was years ago.

Tonight . . .

My eyes land on Olli again, as he slides away from the table. A girl I don’t recognize nudges up beside him to murmur something against his ear. His grin widens, and something flares deep inside my gut, something out of place, something I shouldn’t be able to identify as jealousy.

I jerk away from the table.

Elbows stutter against me as I edge towards the wall. I should try to find Holls, see if we can’t dominate the beer pong table like the good old days, but I don’t see him anywhere.

Fuck, it’s been so long since I’ve been to a party, I have no idea what to do. It’s stifling, chaotic. Like instead of escaping my demons, I’m inviting them to come roost.

I really don’t belong here, haven’t belonged here for probably a decade. A younger version of myself, a version that was a worse father, would have found more booze, more drugs, to wash away the guilt.

But I’m not that man anymore. Don’t want to be.

I should leave.

With new determination, I press towards the kitchen and thedoor—

“Nathaniel!” Charlie bellows across a sea of people, and my heart plummets to my shoes. He’s wedged up against the island, surrounded by pretty girls who don’t realize he’s both gay and taken.

“Charlie, I was just—”

“You need a drink!” He holds out a bottle of vodka, and his mouth slides into a lazy grin. He’s high as fuck. I don’t need to know him as my best friend to know that much. “Nattie. Girls, this is Nat. Taylor. He’s . . . a man with secrets.”

“Hey.” I offer a tight smile, strangely disinterested in more than a cursory glance at each. Why . . . Four pretty girls are smiling at me, why do I not care? And why, like I’ve lost control of my own senses, do my eyes lift past the girls, past the crowd, to the tall athletic man leaning in the doorway.

He’s smiling at the good-looking young guy beside him.

Another unpleasant feeling uncoils in my gut, and this I definitely identify as jealousy. Odd, because I’ve never been jealous over a girl or a partner this way—

My heart’s beating far too fast.

Shit.

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