Page 6 of The Amazing Alpha Tau Fratmas Experience
“Nice,” I said, and he flashed me an easy smile.
“I can’t shop for shit, but I’m great at negotiating,” he said. Then he looked closer, and his brow furrowed. “You okay, baby?”
“I’m fine,” I said, too fast to be convincing. Shit. If there was one person who could tell when I was worried about something, it was Trey. Okay, and maybe Marty, but that was because he had a weird superpower for reading people, so it didn’t count.
Trey raised his eyebrows and hummed. I hated when he did that. If he was going to call me out on my bullshit, couldn’t he at least do it openly?
Okay, so I didn’t really hate it. I didn’t hate anything about Trey, except possibly the fact he was impossible to hate. Trey was just about the only person in the world who got me, which was simultaneously gratifyingandmortifying, and left me feeling uncomfortably exposed. Which was something else I hated, naturally. But I couldn’t even hold it against him because I was, without question, in love with him.
I’d nevertoldhim that because, well, see everything about me. But he knew it. He was too smart to not know it.
And it wasn’t like he’d said it either, and that was okay. I couldn’t be more of an emotionally repressed WASP if I painted stripes on myself and shoved a stinger up my ass, and Trey understood that. He hadn’t even minded when it took a year for me to be comfortable telling people we were together—not because I didn’t want people to know I was with Trey, but because it wasn’t anyone’s business except ours. So the fact he hadn’t said he loved me and forced me to acknowledge I had reciprocal feelings proved it.
Trey got me.
Which was probably why the corners of his mouth were turned down as he watched me carefully. He knew I was in a bad mood. And then, out of the blue, he said, “Hey, you’re not scared of flying, are you?”
“What? No.” I gave him a sideways look to see if he was kidding, but he was still regarding me too intently for my liking, so I pointed to the clown salt and pepper shakers and said, “I should get these for my mom. They’re antique, so she’ll be obligated to like them, but she’ll never ever use them.”
“She’d write you out of the will for that.”
“I’ll get them for Bax instead then. He and Mak will love them.” My brother, Bax, and his wife, Mak, actually would get a kick out of the ugly clowns, so I considered buying them for a moment, then decided against it. I honestly didn’t want to ever see the clowns again in my life, even if it was only on the few occasions a year that I stayed at Bax and Mak’s place.
And there was that pang again. The Christmas pang I’d told myself I wasn’t going to feel. Even if I bought the clowns, I wouldn’t get to see my mother’s horrified expression when Bax opened them. I wouldn’t see Bax’s grin. I wouldn’t get to see anyone, except whatever poor sucker was DoorDashing on Christmas Day.
I wouldn’t even have Marty’s dumb dog to keep me company.
Not that Ineededcompany, I reminded myself. I was fine being alone. It was just one day, and the cultural significance of it was entirely arbitrary. Case in point: my parents were having a second Christmas celebration with me once they were home and my internship was done. The actual date didn’tmatter. It wasn’t that I was going to miss Christmas, not really, just that it would be slightly delayed in my case.
Of course, I was going to have to dodge some awkward questions from my parents about why I wasn’t bringing Trey to what my mother insisted on calling Talbot-Smithmas. It was charmingly playful of her, which I didn’t entirely trust. The point was, asking Trey to second Christmas would mean explaining why I hadn’t been with my family on December twenty-fifth, and I hadn’t quite figured out how to explain that small detail away.
I probably wasn’t going to be one of those attorneys who impressed the judge with my sharp, quick rhetoric, was I? Not even after all those years of debate clubs. No, that was the sort of lawyer Trey would be—which was just another reminder that this internship, stupid as it was, would be so much better for him than for me.
“Scout?” he asked me, his voice low and calm as always, and somehow more effective than an army of torturers would be when it came to getting through my defenses. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I still need to pack,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, but it was a handy diversion.
“Okay,” he said. “Want to stop for donuts on the way back?”
“No,” I lied, rolling my eyes.
We stopped for donuts.
When we got back to Alpha Tau, there was a game of flag football happening on the front lawn. It was mostly our guys, but there were a few from other houses along Fraternity Row. The day was cold, and even though the guys were dressed warmly, they were still moving restlessly to keep from getting cold between plays. The frost-bitten grass, where they hadn’t already trod it into mud, crunched under their shoes.
Trey set the donut boxes down on the front steps. “What’s everyone doing out here? It’s freezing.”
Charlie was red-faced with the cold. His cheeks almost matched his hair. He jogged over to the steps and grabbed a donut. “Dalton just got here.”
Marty hadn’t seen his boyfriend in a couple of weeks, and I had no doubt he was making up for lost time. But still.
“Marty’s supposed to put a sock on his bedroom doorknob,” I said, “not the front door of the entire house.”
Charlie shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t really know how all of us hanging out in the living room turned into flag football,” he said. “But here we are. You guys wanna join?”
“Absolutely not,” I said and pushed my way inside the house.
Marty might have been loud and enthusiastic about everything in his life—sex included, presumably—but the Alpha Tau house was old, venerable, and predated drywall. The doors and walls were solid. If I could hardly hear Casey’s awful taste in music when I was walking past his room, I very much doubted Marty and Dalton could raise that much of a racket.
