Page 8 of Secondhand Smoke

“What did I do last night?”

“Tried to choke Jasmine to death.”

“Shit.” More tea. “Did I dream it, or were you and Jockstrap and she…”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. How’d that go?”

“Pretty good up until that whole strangling thing.”

“Right.”

“She wanted it to be you.”

“Come again?”

Tango sighed, stared at the toes of his boots. “A while back, she asked if I’d ask you if…”

Aidan started to grin, and it turned into a gasp of pain as the movement plucked at his headache. “Shit. Yeah, okay, that woulda been fun.” Some faint memory from last night grabbed at him, tried to take a firmer hold. “Wait…did you…did you kiss me?”

“And you enjoyed it,” Tango deadpanned. “I’m a very good kisser.”

They held one another’s gazes a moment, Aidan’s watery with exhaustion and pain.

Then they both smiled together, sad, regretful smiles.

“I didn’t hurt her, did I?” Aidan asked quietly. “If I’d been in my right mind, I swear, bro, I never–”

“She’s a little shookup, but physically she’s fine.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah.” Tango gave him a level stare. “I haven’t ever seen you like that. Violent with one of the girls. That was Mercy’s old game, not yours.”

Aidan swallowed more tea, kicking himself mentally.

“Tell me about Tonya.”

“She’s trying to trap me.”

Tango’s mouth tugged in a sideways frown. “No offense, but what the hell would she want to do that for?”

“She–” His mind went blank.

“She’s rich, she’s gorgeous, her dad has connections. She’s got everything she wants. What would she be trying to get out of you?”

Wasn’t that a giant slap across the face?

“Nothing,” Aidan muttered. “She wouldn’t want anything from me.”

~*~

“No, no, I’m not calling in sick.” Sam cranked hard on the wheel with one hand, her other occupied with the cellphone she held clamped to her ear. The battleship that was her ’83 Caprice dipped hard into the turn, brakes squealing. “I’m just going to be late is all. Can one of the TAs slap a sign on my room door or something?”

Her colleague, and new head of the English department, Conrad Pitts, sighed deeply. She could envision him taking his glasses off, rubbing at his eyes. “I can’t spare any of them. Look, Samantha, if you can’t make it in today–”

“But Icanmake it,” she insisted, panic ratcheting another notch in her chest. “As soon as I find my sister–”

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