Before (After 5)

Something he wants to talk to me about? I have better things to do, like show Zed who’s really the king here. I look back to where Tessa’s standing, and notice that Zed’s joined her.

Of course that creep is by her side the moment I’m not around.

Tessa’s still drinking; she shouldn’t be drinking this much. She’s going to feel like absolute shit tomorrow. Of course, this is how Zed plans to get her.

“Look how cute they are.” I hear a voice, and glancing over, I find Steph next to me, a wine cooler in her hand. Her red hair is messy, falling down around her face.

I look back to Zed and Tessa, this time paying more attention to the way she sighs while staring directly into his eyes. She seems comfortable; her shoulders are relaxed and her eyes are soft. Nothing like how she is around me. She doesn’t know Zed any better than she knows me, so why the difference? Is it because, unlike me, he leans against the countertop with his eyes focused only on her eyes? He doesn’t let her chest distract him. He leans into her as she smiles at him. He’s going the good-cop-to-my-bad-cop route, it would seem.

Damn, he’s better than I’d imagined.

Tessa looks toward the door, and Steph jumps back, pulling my arm. I nudge her off.

Steph’s eyes are bloodshot, her pupils tiny black dots in a sea of red. “Don’t tell her I’m here. I’m sick of babysitting her,” she says, and rolls her eyes. Steph doesn’t even try to place nice when Tessa’s not around. Grade-A bitch.

A drunk blonde in a skintight dress passes by, winking at me. I remember her . . . I think?

“You brought her here,” I remind Steph, keeping my voice light. I’m not interested in this at all. Not even sure why I brought it up, really.

“So? I’m bored with her for tonight, and she’s for you two to play with, remember?” She shrugs and walks away from me.

Well . . .

“You’re going to lose if you just stand around like a creep!” Steph shouts as reaches the front door and takes the hand of that weird dude she was complaining about just last week.

I’m going to lose?

Please. No chance.

But I’m also not going to stand here in this doorway like a damn creep.

I walk back into the living room and find a seat on the couch. I’ll wait for her to come to me. She’s going to get bored with Zed and his stupid conversation about science and plants, saving the world one flower at a time, all that bullshit. I suppose he believes it, maybe, but with that guy you can never really tell either way. More likely he knows on some subconscious level that only plants can stand to be around him.

In due course, Tessa finds her way into the living room, Zed latched on to her side like a damn lost puppy. She doesn’t even notice that I’m in the same room as she sits down on the floor with my crew, only a few feet away.

I feel a squeeze on my bicep and turn just as the blonde from a moment ago wraps her arms around my stomach, holding me tight.

“Hardinnnn . . .” she says with such a drunk lilt that I suddenly can’t tell if she’s trying to molest me or just keep the room from spinning. “It’s good to see you again. Be even better to feel you . . .”

I push her back a little, trying to disengage. But alcohol has made her a persistent octopus, and she grabs me again. Finally, I shift over near one of the frat “brothers” whose name I can never remember, and wrap one of her arms around his shoulder. Sure enough, the rest of her follows suit and she slurs “S-Steeeve, long time no see . . .” as I sneak off, my annoyance with the night rising with each step my boots make across the stained carpet.

“Do the buses run all night?” I hear Tessa ask, clearly gone past buzzed and straight into drunk now. Her voice is thicker. I watch her lips, the bottom one popping out more than the top. She’s speaking slowly, teetering on the line of slurring her words.

I force myself to stop listening to her and walk back into the kitchen. She’s not my problem—I have no reason to care if she’s drunk or not. Less than ten seconds later, I turn the corner and go back into the living room, my feet stopping in front of where Tessa sits on the floor.

When she sees me, this snotty girl rolls her eyes. She seems to do this a hell of a lot.

Not to Zed, though. Never to Zed.

“You and Zed, then?” I raise a brow at her, and she stumbles as she gets to her feet. How much did she drink? Her eyes are clear as they meet mine; I can’t tell.

I reach out for her arm as she pushes past. “Let go of me, Hardin!” Her arms fly into the air, and I try not to laugh at her dramatics. Her eyes move around the room like she’s looking for something to throw at me. “I’m just trying to find out about the bus.”

She pushes past me, her shoulder bumping into mine, and I gently grab hold of her arm to steady her.

“Chill out . . . it’s three a.m. There is no bus.” I let go of her arm and watch realization hit her. “Your newfound alcoholic lifestyle has you stuck here again.”

The humor in this is undeniable. She’s so adamant about hating this scene—yet here she is again, staying the night.

She stares blankly at me, all big eyes and pouty lips, and I take a moment to pour salt onto her wounded ego.

“Unless you want to go home with Zed . . .” I nod toward the living room, and she scowls.

Without a word, she walks off.

What’s the point of this? Me following her around, trying to get a rise out of her? There’s no point, and really it’s a waste of my time. She seems to play the game just as well as I do.

When I get back to my room, I grab a book from the shelf and pull my shirt up and over my head, tossing it onto the floor and then adding my jeans to the mess. I open the novel to a random page and begin to read:

What use were anger and protestations against her silly credulity? We parted that night—hostile; but next day beheld me on the road to Wuthering Heights, by the side of my wilful young mistress’s pony. I couldn’t bear to witness her sorrow: to see her pale, dejected countenance, and heavy eyes: and I yielded, in the faint hope that Linton himself might prove, by his reception of us, how little of the tale was founded on fact.

A blond Catherine sat there, at the edge of the moors, with her hair tied back in a bow as red as the blood running through his veins. She wasn’t thinking; she was lost. She turned to him, her voice ringing through the air between them. “Hardin?”