How wrong I was.
Last night, I ran at the track, pushing myself faster and faster, trying to marathon Autumn out of my system. I ran until I puked, then walked home hollowed out with exhaustion. I’d opened the door to the unmistakable rhythm of a headboard banging against the wall, and Autumn’s cries filling the rooms of the apartment.
It slammed me in the chest. Rock bottom. The absolute worst. Nothing could bring me lower.
I’d immediately turned around and headed for Matt Decker’s place, and a sleepless night on his couch, but had forgotten nearly all of my books for class. Naturally, I timed my return to get them perfectly with Autumn emerging from Connor’s room. There she stood, straight from Connor’s bed, looking freshly fucked and so damn beautiful I could hardly breathe.
“Why the hell was she wearing my shirt?” I muttered under my breath as I stalked down the quiet street toward the university, trying to outpace the memory of Autumn, her copper hair tousled, her legs bare and showing porcelain skin. My shirt barely covering her nakedness.
A raging hard-on began to strain at the front of my jeans.
“For fuck’s sake.”
I walked faster, nearly a jog, but I couldn’t get away from how badly I wanted her.
Feeling like the world’s biggest jackass, I found a bathroom on campus—mercifully empty—on the first floor of the Business and Economics Building. I locked myself in the handicap stall, grabbed a wad of toilet paper off the roll, yanked my fly open and took myself in hand.
I was rock-hard. Autumn in my shirt and nothing else would haunt me until I died if I didn’t do something. I closed my eyes, letting my fertile imagination reset the scene as my hand worked to give me some relief.
“I thought you left,” she says, biting her lower lip that's still swollen from my kisses. She rests one bare foot on the other and her eyes rake me up and down. The way we fucked all night with relentless abandon is reflected in the hazel depths of her eyes, darkening them with renewed want.
“I did,” I say, my voice thick with need. “I came back.”
“For me?” she asks coyly.
I nod. My bag drops to the ground.
“What are you waiting for?” Then her sweet smile fades and she lowers her hands to the tops of her thighs, lifting my shirt an inch. “Come here, Weston, and put your mouth on me.”
In three long strides, I’m in front of her, kneeling, pressing my tongue into her…
I bit back a sound and barely managed to contain it to a grunt. Tasting Autumn in my fevered imagination, I came hard. My body shuddered with release, delirium suffusing me and leaving me drained.
I leaned against the stall with one hand, sucking in deep breaths. Someone came in the bathroom to take a piss. I tossed the wad of paper in the toilet, tucked myself back in my jeans and flushed.
Fucking pathetic, I thought, grabbing my bag.
I washed my hands and got the hell out of there, hoping the cold air would bring me around. Hoping that jerking off to my best friend’s new girlfriend would relieve some of the deep ache in my gut—and heart, if I were being honest. The physical lust was satiated for the time being, but that pang of longing ate away at me from the inside out.
I miss our talks.
“Me too,” I’d nearly replied, but of course that wouldn’t fly. The more Autumn and I spoke, the more I knew her and spent time with her, the harder it would be on me.
They’re sleeping together.
I stopped midstride and sagged against the wall of the Econ building and took a minute to gather up what I felt and push it down.
“You’re surprised, Sock Boy?” I muttered. “Keep going.”
After Econ—a new economics class, since I’d dropped the one Autumn took too—I grabbed a coffee at the student union, then headed to Professor Ondiwuje’s poetry class. I sat slouched in my seat, my pen twirling around and around as the echo of Autumn’s voice on the other side of Connor’s bedroom door resounded in my head. I gripped the pen so tightly my knuckles turned white and then nearly dropped it in shock as a hand clapped my shoulder.
I whipped around to see Connor in the row behind me.
“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” I hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m auditing the class,” he whispered back, looking calm, relaxed, confident, and radiating his own brand of I got epically laid last night.
I could’ve hated him if he didn’t look so happy. Then a sense of territorial defensiveness washed over me.