2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Nick

Bruce Springsteen's ‘Dancing in the Dark' blared through the large stereo speakers in my bedroom as I shook my ass and sang along to the lyrics. I never got tired of this song.

I stared into my full-length mirror and popped up the collar of my hot pink polo shirt. Then I grabbed my comb off my dresser and fixed my bangs, brushing them upward. Once I had my hair just right, I sprayed it with an ungodly amount of hairspray to keep every strand in place.

I turned to the Miami Vice poster and spread my arms out to Don Johnson and Michael Phillip Thomas. "Well? How do I look? Fucking good, right?"

After I put my small silver hoop in my ear, I grabbed the beige sports coat and shrugged it on, rolling up the sleeves below the elbows and popping the collar on the jacket, too.

The phone rang in my room, and I snatched the receiver and pressed it to my chest. "I got it!" I yelled at my family so they wouldn't answer.

"Hello?"

"Nick! You almost ready for this party? It's gonna be bitchin', man. Everyone's gonna be there," Caleb said.

"Mad excited for this party, my man. I'm about ready. After I grab Lauren, I'll swing by and pick you up."

"Well, book it. I need to get drunk tonight and find someone to fuck. I snagged Dad's bourbon stash."

I snorted a laugh. "He's not going to miss being short a bottle?"

"Nah, he's got tons of shit. He won't miss one. I'll replace it later. We need to grab some smokes on the way, too."

"No prob."

I rarely smoked, but I tended to do it more when I was drinking. My stepbrother, Logan, smoked way more, which was weird because he was an athlete. I was, too, playing on the varsity tennis team, which was how I got my athletic scholarship to Stanford, along with straight As . But smoking winded me if I did it too much.

"There's supposed to be some college chicks partying tonight, too, from George Mason. Fresh meat!"

I rolled my eyes. "Don't you ever get bored with hopping from one girl to the next?"

"It's like you don't even know me."

I snorted a laugh. "Whatever… Gotta bounce. See you soon."

I hung up, spritzed on Polo cologne, and ran downstairs, jumping the last four steps and landing on the hard tile in the foyer.

This summer was going to be radical between parties, saving up money from my job, and moving to California with my girl. After graduation, we planned to get married and have some kids. I wasn't sure if we would come back to Virginia or stay in California, but we'd probably stay there. Maybe we could find a place close to the beach. That would be bitchin'. Maybe I could even learn to surf.

I stepped into the kitchen with flowery yellow wallpaper and sat down at the kitchen table.

"Jesus, Nick. You're a herd of elephants coming down the stairs," Mom said, feeding Hannah some rice cereal on her lap while my stepdad unpacked bags of McDonald's burgers and fries for dinner.

"You always say that," I said.

"Because you always sound like that. Can't you walk down the stairs like a normal human being?"

"I'm a teenager. Aren't we supposed to make a lot of noise?"

Mom rolled her brown eyes and smiled. I looked a lot like her, sharing our dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, though I had my dad's Greek blood and olive skin while Mom's skin was fair.

I kissed the wispy, dark blond hair on my baby sister's head and sat down at the dinner table.

Hannah had been a complete surprise. My stepdad and mom never planned to have more kids, but a year ago, out came the cutest fucking thing I'd ever seen. I'd always wanted siblings, and I finally got two of them. Well, Logan hadn't been much of a brother, but at least I had Hannah.

Wyatt, my stepdad, tossed a wrapped burger my way, and I caught it. "Eat up. If you're going to be drinking, I don't want you doing it on an empty stomach. If you get even slightly buzzed and no one is sober to drive, you call us. Understand? I don't care what time it is."

"Yessir," I said, shoving half the burger into my mouth and washing it down with a Coke before eating a handful of fries.

I adored Wyatt. He took care of my mom and was more of a father to me than my own dad, who'd abandoned Mom and me when I was seven, forcing her to find work after being a stay-at- home mom the entire time. Eventually, she went to real estate school and now manages the branch office in Vienna. She does amazingly well, proving she never needed that piece of shit.

"Is Logan going with you?" he asked.

I shrugged, though I knew he wouldn't. "I doubt it."

Logan had hated me ever since his dad married Mom, resenting our new family. I didn't really blame him after losing his mom, but it's been five years now. I mean, come on. I'd never done shit to him, and he still fucking hated me. And fuck did we have some brawls over the years. Hell if I was going to let him push me around. I'd wanted so much for him to like me, and I really tried in the beginning, but eventually, I gave up. You just couldn't make someone like you.

Mom sighed. "It makes sense to go together. Summer will be over before you know it, and you boys will be off to different colleges. You two are the same age. I'd hoped you both would've learned to get along and grow close by now."

"I'm sorry, Nick. I really wish Logan would've come around."

I shrugged again. What was there to say? Wyatt and Mom tried hard to make us get along, but Logan was stubborn as fuck. Whatever. It was no skin off my back. Soon, we wouldn't see each other again except on holidays. Eventually, I suppose we'd be nothing more than two people who barely knew each other despite sharing the same family. It was kind of weird, honestly.

Wyatt stepped into the foyer and yelled up the stairs. "Logan! Come down to eat before the food gets cold."

He returned and sat at the kitchen table next to Mom, taking Hannah from her to feed her applesauce. "Eat, Mia."

My mother smiled gratefully and unwrapped a burger.

Soon, Logan came walking in and sat his surly self down at the kitchen table, not saying a damn word as he unwrapped a burger and shoved about ten fries into his mouth, chasing them down with his root beer.

My stepfather and stepbrother looked very little alike. Wyatt had dark blond hair and blue eyes, while Logan's hair was more brown than blond with hazel-green eyes. He must have looked like his mother, although Wyatt and Logan had the same build with lean muscle, broad shoulders, and stood at six-foot-three. I only just reached six feet when I wore shoes.

"I'm going to tell you what I told your brother—"

"He's not my brother."

I swore it didn't even hurt anymore. I'd always wanted a brother, and once I got one, he hated me. It had stung each time he'd said that about me. Eventually, I gave up caring.

That was a lie. It still stung, but I didn't let it get to me as much anymore. Soon, it would be just my girl and me, living it up in sunny Cali. College was going to be fucking righteous.

"Logan, can you not for five minutes?" his father sighed. "You're an adult now. Act like one."

Logan stood, scraping the chair across the linoleum floor, and grabbed a second burger. "Whatever. I'm gonna split."

Before he walked out, his father stopped him. "I'm going to tell you the same thing I told Nick. If you get drunk, call Mia or me, no matter what time. Understood?"

"Yeah."

"And both of you wear your seatbelts."

When the front door slammed, Wyatt looked at me with a sheepish smile. "I really wish you two would get along. I'm sorry he's so damn moody all the time."

"Whatever. It's fine," I said, standing and grabbing one more burger for the road.

"While Logan takes that road trip with Hunter, Wyatt and I have talked about going to Nags Head Beach in North Carolina for a week during the last week of July. That will give us time to get you packed and shipped off to Stanford. Why don't you ask Lauren to talk to her parents and see if she can go with us?"

"That sounds stellar. I'll ask."

After finishing off my food, I stood, kissed Mom on the cheek, high-fived Wyatt, and snuffled my baby sister, making her giggle.

"Later!" I yelled as I walked out.

I hopped into my silver Ford Escort and drove off to pick up my best girl and my best friend.

"Fuck, man. This party is raging," Caleb said as we walked into Will's house, who was a buddy of mine from high school and also on the varsity tennis team. "I'm so gonna get fucking laid tonight."

I was, too, once I snuck Lauren into my bedroom later tonight.

Caleb pulled a comb from his back pocket and ran it through his perfectly parted, nearly white, blond hair. His pale brown eyes twinkled, filled with arrogant mischief. He wore a silky-looking gray button-up with a thin burgundy tie and jeans. The girls loved him, despite being a player, because he didn't only look like a damn model, but he was nice to them and never trash-talked about them. He was just oddly hyper-sexual. Sometimes I worried about his constant need to get his fix with sex.

"You're so gnarly," Lauren said to him, scrunching her cute button nose. "Why must everything be about getting laid?"

"Uh, duh, I'm a dude."

"No guy is that sexual," she said, looking at me as if I had any control over Caleb. Instead, I grabbed her hand and kissed it. "You look gorgeous tonight, not that you don't always look gorgeous."

"You don't fool me, Nicolas Theodoropoulos. I know when I'm being manipulated."

I feigned hurt. "Fine, but I'm not lying either."

She really did look stunning. Her strawberry blonde hair was crimped and teased. I especially loved the splash of freckles across her nose. She wore baggy jeans, a cropped blue T-shirt, and an oversized yellow sweater spilling off her slender shoulder.

Lauren rolled her tawny-brown eyes, but she smiled anyway.

"Speaking of getting laid," I said, waggling my brows.

She snorted a laugh. "Ugh… men! Is sex all you think about?"

"Yes," Caleb and I said at the same time.

I tugged on her hand, and we stepped inside to the raging party, playing Madonna's ‘Into the Groove.'

"Oh, I love this song! Let's dance, Nicky!"

Still holding her hand, I led her toward the kitchen. "Drink first."

We worked our way through the mixed crowd of former high school students and college students I didn't know, high fiving, shaking hands, and patting backs along the way. Yeah, I was pretty popular, even for a tennis player. Logan should've been the most popular one, and he was, in a way, but he was way too broody and introverted. Despite his cool vibe, the girls saw him as the unreachable bad boy, and the guys mirrored his personality. Not me, though. I loved being the center of attention and the life of the party.

Once we stepped into the kitchen, I snagged a raspberry cooler for Lauren and a beer for me. Caleb already had run off somewhere, hunting down a girl for the night, no doubt.

"Come on, Nicky. Let's dance. They're playing our song."

Sure enough, I recognized ‘Take My Breath Away' by Berlin. Lauren and I had lost our virginities to that song, full of sweaty fumbling in the dim light of my bedroom.

I threaded our fingers together and led her to the living room, where the furniture had been shoved aside to make room for a dance floor.

Lauren wrapped an arm around my neck and pressed her body against mine while taking a sip of her cooler. I pressed my face to her throat, inhaling her familiar flowery scent I couldn't name if my life depended on it, and swayed with her.

I got lost in the song and the movement of our bodies pressed together when something tugged my attention. Do you know that tingly feeling you get when someone's thinking about you or watching you, making your ears burn? That's how I always felt when Logan was nearby.

When I looked up, I found him holding up the wall with his back and his foot propped up. His arm was wrapped around himself, giving off his ‘don't talk to me' energy as he cradled a beer, scowling at me. His long bangs fell over his thick, furrowed brows, giving him a weirdly sexy vibe. No wonder everyone wanted to be him or be with him, except for me.

Standing next to him was his best friend, Hunter, who was actually cool and way nicer than Logan, at least to me.

When Logan didn't look away, I gave him the finger. Hunter burst out laughing as I went back to dancing with my girl, loving her big tits pressed against my chest. I couldn't wait to suck on them tonight.

By the end of the song, Lauren saw her friends sitting on one of the sofas and dragged me over there by my hand. She hugged Shelly and Denise and sat down with them.

"Babe? Can you grab us another drink?" Lauren asked me.

"Coming right up, my love."

Lauren winked and wiggled her fingers as I went off to grab her another cooler. In the kitchen, I took a shot of something lemony before grabbing myself a beer. I felt instantly loose and relaxed, though I had to tone down the drinking if I wanted to drive home.

I didn't bother to look at Logan skulking in the corner, feeling his eyes burning a hole in me. What was his fucking damage? Even at a party, he couldn't enjoy himself. He was looking surlier than usual, too. I'd seen him party before. He was usually livelier than this, even if he was broody all the time, so I wasn't sure what was going on tonight. Was he still pissed about the ‘ brothers ' comment from Wyatt? Lame.

"Holy shit, Lauren. You got into Columbia?" Shelly screeched for the fucking world to hear, including yours truly.

What the actual fuck?

"I know! Can you believe it?"

I stopped dead in my tracks, unnoticed by them, as I overheard Lauren making life plans without me as my future disintegrated into dust.

"But I haven't told Nick yet, so this stays between us."

I put her strawberry cooler on the coffee table a little too hard, spilling some on my hand. "Don't bother. I heard. Like, what the hell, Lauren? We had a plan. What is this shit about Columbia?"

Shelly and Denise folded their arms, standing sentry next to Lauren. "Hey, don't wig out, Nick. She has a right to choose what school she wants to go to."

"Stay out of this, Shelly ," I snapped.

Lauren turned to face me with her large, soft doe eyes. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish, struggling to find her words or a fucking lie as she stood there. "I… I've been meaning to tell you, Nicky."

I wrapped my arms around myself as nausea roiled around in my stomach, and my hands shook. Lauren and I were a team. We'd been making plans together for over two years, and suddenly, she just pulled the rug out from under me without talking to me about it. My mouth went dry, and my jaw clenched, willing my eyes not to get wet in front of everyone as the humiliation washed over me.

"Oh, yeah? And when were you meaning to tell me? The day before you left for New York City? What the fuck happened to California? What's wrong with Stanford? It's a damn good school."

I chugged my beer down and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. "Well?"

Of course, the party took that opportunity to go silent as everyone watched me break up with the only girl who'd ever been in my life.

Lauren couldn't even look at me as she played with the hem of her sweater. "I… I applied to Columbia when I applied to Stanford, and I got in. It's a hard school to get into, Nicky." She looked up at me with eyes begging to understand. "But don't you see? I did this on my own? I got in!" Her excitement tried to bubble to the surface, but I wouldn't let it.

"You also got into Stanford on your own." Why was she changing shit up now? And why couldn't we have talked about this? "If you'd told me you wanted to go to Columbia, I could've applied there, too."

"Because… I want to do this on my own."

My gut twisted and turned as if I was dropping out of a plane with no parachute to break my fall. "Without me."

The music came back on, and everyone went back to dancing and drinking, turning the noise into a muffled din as I tuned it out, solely focused on Lauren.

"I love you, Nicky, but… I don't want to marry my high school sweetheart. There's a whole big world I want to see and experience. I don't want to go to college just to settle down when I graduate."

I swung my hands in the air. "So? I mean, that's cool and all… if we'd talked about it! Get a fucking career. My mom has a great one! Kids can wait. Did you think I wouldn't understand or wouldn't want you to become successful? We talked about what we wanted, and you said nothing about wanting anything else."

She looked away again and sucked her bottom lip in. "It's just… you seemed so settled, and at first, I thought it was something I wanted, too, but now…"

I rubbed my chest where my heart was beating hard enough to chip away at my bones, bit by bit. I couldn't believe we were doing this, and in front of everyone at the party when we should've talked about all this privately a long time ago.

"Are you… breaking up with me, Lauren? Because there's no way to keep dating me in Cali and you in New York. What did you have planned? Periodic phone calls? Write each other fucking letters? Meet up for holidays?"

Tears suddenly spilled out of her eyes, and her lips trembled. "I'm so sorry, Nicky. I'd been meaning to talk to you about all this, but just didn't know how. We have a few months left… we don't have to break up yet."

My eyes stung and tried to leak, but I wouldn't let them—not in front of everyone, and especially not in front of Lauren.

"What was your plan? To use me until you finished with me? Toss me aside?"

"What? No, that's not it—"

"Did you even love me?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"But you don't love enough to be honest with me."

"Nicky, please…"

"Forget it. We're over right this second."

"Nick?"

I turned around and headed straight into the kitchen as she called out to me, but I ignored her. Fuck her.

Hold it together, Nick. Hold it together.

But I couldn't. I shoved my way through the crowd, ignoring people who had no idea what had happened and those who overheard everything, taking shuddered breaths and not letting my lip tremble. When I reached the kitchen, I snagged a bottle of some amber liquid and headed outside.

I should've gone home. Instead, I planned to drink this aching pain away.

Two and a half years with Lauren, and for what? For her to give up on me because she didn't want to settle with her high school boyfriend. What the fuck was that about?

Worst party ever.

I found a quiet corner by the pool, stretched out in a lounge chair, and chugged a fourth of the bottle, choking when I came up for air. The burn felt good, distracting me from my pain and loss. I pounded my chest with a fist when I burped, and the alcohol threatened to come up.

Friends, acquaintances, and people I didn't know splashed and played in the pool, girls sitting on their boyfriends' shoulders as they wrestled, all oblivious to my shattering world.

What was I going to do now? Lauren was all I knew.

It's funny how people just quickly dismissed me, as if my feelings didn't matter. Dad walked out, never to talk to me again, uncaring about how damaging that had been. Lauren just made entire life-changing plans, not bothering to care enough about my feelings to talk to me about it. Logan hated me for simply fucking existing. I tried so hard to get people to like me, and for what?

I gave everyone at the party the bird as I gulped down more liquor.

Fuck people.