Hazed (Palm South University)

“And if I do?”

He takes a long, slow breath, letting it out through his nose before he says, “Then, I’ll wish you and my brother well, and I’ll leave you alone. For good.” He swallows. “Forever.”

Those words spark more tears in my eyes, but I don’t know what to say back. And after a moment’s pause, Jarrett crosses the space between us, slides his hands to frame my face and tilts my head until his lips brush my hairline.

“Please,” he pleads with the kiss. “Come back to me.”

I can feel the tension in his arms, the bend of his brows even though I can’t see them as he presses one final kiss and releases me like it kills him to do so. He turns and leaves me like that, not even looking back once, and in less than ten seconds, he’s on the elevator again and out of sight.

I stumble back, hand flying up to press against the still-warm spot where his lips were.

Erin comes out of her room to refill her water, frowning at the sight of me. “Who was that?”

“Jarrett,” I whisper.

“Jarrett?!” She shakes her head, leaning a hip against the kitchen island. “What did he want?”

When I look at her, I can’t fight back the tears that gloss over my eyes, no matter how hard I try to. “Me.” I shake my head. “He wants me.”

Erin’s face goes slack. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” I say on a mix of a laugh and a scoff, and I look back down the hall to where he disappeared. “Oh, shit is right.”

THE OMEGA CHI FORMAL always symbolized the end of an era to me.

It was the end of one semester and the beginning of the next, a send-off to spring and a welcome to summer, a turning of the tides to new leadership and new opportunity.

But that’s because, in the past, I always had more yet to come.

I always had a next semester, a next year, a summer break, and then a welcome back to campus.

But this time?

It’s the end.

The semester has zoomed by so fast I feel dizzy from it. And now, climbing onto the bus after partying all night with my brothers at our formal, it’s really starting to hit me.

This is it.

I took my last tests this week, and my family is flying in for graduation in just a few days.

This was my last fraternity event.

Tomorrow, I’ll start packing up my room at the house, only this time, I won’t be coming back.

There’s no more time to think about what comes next, because the future is here. It’s been knocking on my door for months, and now that I’m looking it in the face, I can’t push it off any longer.

What are you going to do, it’s asking me.

And I have no choice but to answer.

Along with the flurry of events that mark the end of a semester, my mind has also been a tornado ever since Erin flew out of my room like it was on fire.

Ever since I kissed her.

Even still, I’m torn about how I feel regarding that day. Part of me is so angry, I could punch my own damn self in the balls. After all this time being patient and waiting for the right opportunity, being there for her while remembering she belonged to someone else, focusing on our friendship and trying to ignore my true feelings for her, and then I go and blow it, making my move on the day she’s literally crying on my shoulder over another dude.

But the other part of me isn’t sorry at all.

This feeling between us has been building for months. No, years. It’s always been there, humming under the surface like a volcano waiting to erupt.

And I couldn’t fight it anymore.

In that moment, with Erin sitting on my bed, her eyes puffy and red and tears staining her cheeks, all I wanted was to comfort her and show her how special she is, how much she means to me.

And I did just that.

The way she leaned into the kiss, too, tells me that she feels the same way I do.

But the way she ran away tells me I don’t know shit.

She was supposed to be here tonight, at my last formal, at my last Omega Chi event ever. I invited her to come with me the day after my family left from family weekend, and she told me she’d be honored. She promised me she’d be here.

Of course, that was before the kiss.

I wonder if that’s how I’ll refer to my life now, before the kiss and after the kiss, BK and AK. Because in my gut, I know nothing will ever be the same again.

There’s no going back.

That’s why when the bus dumps me and the rest of my brothers off at the Omega Chi house, instead of joining all of them inside for the afterparty, I slip around back to my truck and fire up the engine.