Page 35 of Wild Card
But when I’m surrounded by friends and celebrating Joss & Colt who are some of the best people I know, I forget all the potential problems. For a while, I even forget that Tobias is supposed to be here tonight. Until the time gets later, and he still hasn’t shown. Fashionably late is his thing, but this is way beyond that. Food, cake, even presents have been finished off at this point, and he’s not here. I’m starting to wonder if he stayed at home to eat his own pint of ice cream and avoid the crowd. Maybe he doesn’t feel like discussing his sex tape with everyone—I know if I’d been the woman in it, I definitely wouldn’t be here.
I’m not the only one wondering about him though because a few minutes later Colt asks if anyone has seen him. Joss and Xander discuss he’s missing and it’s obvious they haven’t seen the tape.
“You guys haven’t seen the news?” I ask, dreading the idea of having to tell them but also feeling like it’d be weird if they found out I knew and didn’t say anything.
“What news?” Harper looks up at me suspiciously.
“Uh… If you don’t know, I don’t think I want to be the one to say,” I respond nervously when I confirm my suspicions. Now I have to explain how I know, and they don’t. Shit. “I just accidentally found out when I was scrolling earlier because it’s trending now.” That’s close enough to the truth. I could have found out that way.
“What’s trending?” Joss’s eyes snap to me. “I’ve been too busy helping Violet prep.”
“Same,” Harper answers.
Everyone in the room turns to stare at me, and I feel the heat crawling up my neck. I keep reminding myself that I’m not the one in the video. This video at least. But it still feels awkward as hell to be the one to tell them.
“Uh… here. I’ll forward it to you, Harper.” I look at my best friend as I reach for my phone.
Harper’s suspicious look grows, but she doesn’t say anything, pulling her phone out of her purse instead. I send the message, hearing it ding on her phone and bracing for her reaction. She opens and her eyes go wide. She gasps as she turns to Xander.
“Oh. Oh fuck. Um, Alex. Here, you can… yeah, you can look at this.” She throws the phone to him, panicking no doubt at the site of staring at his best friend’s ass on full display in the video.
“What is it?” He looks between the two of us confused before he looks at the phone. “Oh…” Sudden realization laces through his tone. “Yeah. Fuck…” He takes a deep breath and shakes his head.
“Is someone going to fill us in?” Joss looks to me and then to Harper, her brows climbing.
Xander turns the phone so she can see, no doubt reading the clickbait headline and glimpsing the above-the-fold still shot from the video.
Colt’s face goes stark white before he yells.
“God fucking damn it! I’ve told him so many times.”
The conversation descends into a discussion of what it will mean for Tobias’s career and whether he took the video, or the woman did. Joss is particularly defensive of him, glancing up at me.
“It doesn’t even look like he necessarily knew this was being taken,” Joss comments as she looks closer at it, and Colt teases her about her intense interest in his friend’s sex tape.
“I’m just saying. Talk to him first before you assume he did it.” Joss looks at me pointedly when she hands the phone back to Harper.
Everyone agrees to quit discussing it until Tobias is here to explain himself and goes off to their various Halloween-themed activities around the party. Half of them bobbing for apples and the others playing some board game where one of them pretends to be a ghost helping them to solve a crime. I follow with my drink and watch amused at everything that’s going on, but I can’t bring myself to participate.
Still too shellshocked by the sex tape and concerned that Tobias not being here says a lot more than anyone else thinks it does. I wonder briefly if he’s with his agent and publicist right now, and if they’ll ask him to do something similar to what Xander and Harper did. He might have to date her, or at least fake it.
Whatever they decide, it’s going to be his new priority and any fun we might have been having before is probably over. I knew this would be short-lived, but I hadn’t truly accepted how soon that end was coming. Now I’m going to have to figure out how to keep attending get-togethers like this with our friends, seeing him with other women—for real—and not acting like I’m still hoping for one more one-night stand.
The party is winding down,and I start thinking about heading home when Xander bursts into the room looking distraught and overwhelmed. My heart bottoms out when I see him. Somehow, I just know. Between him not being here, the gut feeling I have, and the panic on Xander’s face. I know something happened to Tobias.
He confirms my fears a moment later, announcing Tobias has been in a motorcycle accident. My heart shatters in my chest, tears threatening, and I can’t even move for several seconds.
I have instant regret that I didn’t go to see him. Insist we come to this party together or even offer to skip it and eat that stupid pint of ice cream together. Do something—anything—to let him know he had someone here for him.
But I have to figure out how to look calm. As far as they know, he’s just an acquaintance to me and the whole room is spinning with movement.
Everyone grabs their stuff and practically runs to their cars, piling into as few as possible while Ben furiously dials Tobias’s brother, Easton, and a friend of Ben’s from college. I get into the car with Harper and Violet. Staring ahead into the void because I don’t know how to keep my emotions concealed. I feel like crying. I’m heartbroken for him and so scared for what lies ahead at the hospital.
* * *
The waitingroom closest to where they have Tobias looks like a combination between a crisis management center and the Seattle Phantom locker room. I have no idea why I’m still here because there are at least a dozen friends and family members standing around, and it’s well after midnight at this point. I’m sure everyone else is starting to wonder why I’m here too. But I can’t bring myself to leave, even if it seems like I don’t belong here.
Tobias is ultimately nothing more to me than a one-night stand and a possible costar in a sex tape that thankfully turned out not to be ours. If it wasn’t for the fact that we share so many friends, I wouldn’t be allowed in here at all—probably be banned from coming anywhere near him. But as it stands, I can stay close, and selfishly I want to.
