STRIPPED (The Slate Brothers 3)

I weave through the party. Everyone has clearly been beating me when it comes to drinking— I’m barely tipsy now, and all around me I see the telltale wild eyes and pink cheeks of total inebriation. If I’d thought the scent of alcohol was overpowering inside the house before, it’s nothing compared to how it smells now; I’m pretty sure that a single match would cause the entire place to explode just from the fumes.

I spot Trishelle through the crowd. She’s leaning against a wall with a group of cheerleaders, and they’re talking in a huddle, occasionally peering over their shoulders at the rest of the crowd, then turning back to one another and giggling. I try to get Trishelle’s attention, but she’s too involved in the huddle, leaving me no choice but to tap her on the shoulder. She spins around; her eyes fall a little when she sees it’s only me, and I have to admit, it stings.

“I think I’ll go home,” I say quickly, very aware that the other girls are waiting impatiently for Trishelle’s attention to return to them.

“What? You can’t!” Trishelle says, sounding panicked.

“I really need to. I just— I’ll explain later. Nothing serious or anything,” I add, not that she’d asked.

“It’s just…” Trishelle leans in close, so that only I can hear her. “If you leave early, it’ll be weird for me— you know, I bring a friend to a party, she sits by herself outside, then she bails?”

“How did you know I was sitting by myself outside?”

“I saw you,” Trishelle says.

I tilt my head to the side. “You saw me sitting alone outside and didn’t come to see what was up?”

Trishelle winces and gives me an apologetic look. “I was in the middle of a conversation with the captain, and she’s the sort of person you don’t walk away from.”

“Yeah,” I say flatly. Trishelle doesn’t react— I think she might be too drunk to know how pissed off she’s making me.

“Just give me another hour,” Trishelle says, grabbing my hand.

“Sure. Fine,” I mutter, then turn to walk away. Tyson had a point before— I am totally letting Trishelle walk all over me. I suppose I didn’t see the warning signs since I’ve never been a doormat before— and Trishelle has never been like this before.

Or is this who she was all along, she just hadn’t made the cheerleading squad back in high school, so there was no way know?

I don’t want to go back to the front steps, since apparently I’m being watched --and judged—for being by myself out there. I duck instead out a sliding glass door toward the back of the house, which leads me to a deck lined in string lights. I weave through a decent size crowd to get to the stairs, which I follow down to the darkened— but blissfully quiet— backyard.

I admire those tough as nails type girls who never shed a tear…but I’m definitely not one of them. That said, I cry in private. I’ve learned that the more I try to fight crying, or tell myself I’m being ridiculous, or shame myself for feeling human emotions, the more awful I’ll look afterward. If I just go ahead and let the tears flow, I can usually avoid the puffy eyes, red nose, and salt-raw cheeks that trigger everyone’s curiosity and pity. When I get stressed out and feel the tears coming, I just find a place to quietly cry it out, dab my eyes, take deep breaths, and then can usually resume by regularly scheduled life without too much trouble.

Underneath the deck there are a few iron patio chairs that I don’t think get a lot of use. I dust them with my hands just in case there are spiders, then sit down and bring on the tears. This sucks. This party sucks, Trishelle sucks, and at the moment, college basically sucks. I didn’t love my high school or hometown or anything, but I least that place was routine. Here, I can apparently lose my best friend to cheerleading bitches and make an ass of myself all in the same five minutes. Why does higher education have to come with a whole new round of social hurdles?

I take a few long, deep breaths, but I’m clearly not done with the tears yet. I let out another round, grateful that the music and noise from the top of the deck drowns out the sound of my sniffling and huffing.

“What are you doing?” a familiar voice asks.

I spin around, mortified— tears are streaming down my face and I know my cheeks are red. There’s no way to play this off.

Of course it’s Tyson Slate standing there.

He’s leaning against one of the deck pillars, and I don’t know how exactly, but it’s somehow clear to me that he didn’t just arrive— that he’s been watching me sit here and weep like a little girl since the moment I began, and just now spoke up. His face is shadowed, so even if he wasn’t freakishly unreadable, I still wouldn’t know what he was thinking.