I don’t want to look.
Shit.
I need out of this room.
I need out of this room now.
Staying here will only lead to more overthinking of the hows and whys of last night.
Hastily pulling on a rumpled T-shirt and sweats, I beat feet to the bathroom. Then I curse myself around the toothbrush shoved in my mouth for not pulling on socks to protect me from the chill seeping through the soles of said feet as I stand at the sink.
The evolution of last night’s events has me choking on Colgate suds. My mind stutters like the rainbow wheel of death that likes to taunt me when my MacBook tries to give me a heart attack.
Freaking Kay—this is all her fault. Sure, it was Emma who suggested I agree to be one of my class’s Greet Geek users, but it was Kay who pushed me over the undecided line.
She just had to go and fall in love with Mason.
You know what?
Mason is actually the one I should blame. Kay was nowhere near this pushy until he inserted himself into our lives. It’s because of him that Kay wields new softly uttered sentences to break down more of my walls.
“You know I know how scary it is to put yourself out there.” She typically says this one with a squeeze to my forearm.
“Remember how hard you fought being our friend?” This one usually has her wiggling fingers in my face, making it so the light reflects off the emerald birthstone ring she wears to represent how important I am in her life. I especially hate when she does that. It makes me all emotional and uncomfortable.
“Sometimes, the risk of stepping outside your comfort zone comes with rewards you never expected.” The googly heart eyes she gives Mason—the complete antithesis of any kind of love match she would have ever said she wanted for herself—whenever she says this one could make a person ill with how sickly sweet it is. Thankfully I am usually too busy choking on the implication of that statement to puke.
I can never admit how much Kay’s urgings make me want to give in.
It’s too much of a risk.
Sure, Kay put her anonymity in jeopardy by being with Mason.
But…
Doing something crazy like admitting my feelings for Quinn…
Yeah, that’s only asking for my whole world to blow up. I cannot, absolutely cannot, risk losing my friends by potentially putting them in the position where they would have to choose between one of us. Especially not when I fear I would come out the loser in that scenario.
The rich aroma of coffee drifts beneath the bathroom door, hitting my nose and breaking me from the mental musings chasing me like the ghosts in Ms. Pac-Man.
Ugh!
I exit the bathroom and pad down the short hall, my steps coming to an abrupt halt when I find all of my roommates scattered about our living room.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I blink at the scene in front of me, questioning if I fell back asleep or am having some sort of hangover hallucination.
What in the…
Trav twirls side to side, the ends of a neon green and hot pink hibiscus flower Hawaiian print shirt clutched in his hands. “You can’t tell me I don’t look fly as fuck in this.”
Mason groans and chucks one of the throw pillows at him. “We should have never agreed to let you come,” he mutters, shifting Kay around on his lap and helping himself to a sip of her coffee.
Kay’s awake? How late did I sleep?
Trav dodges the projectile pillow and blows a raspberry at Mason. “You’re just jelly I pull this shit off better than you ever could.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Mason responds dryly.
It’s only been a few weeks since the nine of us moved into the penthouse Mason purchased near campus, but scenes like this are quickly becoming the new normal.
“CK!” Trav shouts, perking up at the sight of me. Herkie may be the yellow lab in this house, but Travis McQueen can be like a damn Golden Retriever with all his energy.
Yeah…
I massage the ridge of my brow, desperate for that coffee if I’m going to deal.
“CK,” Trav whines, and someone—I think it’s Alex—mutters about him being a tantruming toddler not getting attention.
“What’s up, Trav?” I drop my hand from my head and force my attention to him.
“Tell your friends to stop being haters.”
“My friends?” I arch a pounding-along-with-my-heartbeat brow.
Trav folds his arms across his chest, a look of determination overtaking his features. “I refuse to claim ownership of Mase when he’s acting like an asshole.”
“And what makes today different from any other day?” My question sets the others off on a series of oohs and shouted burns.
“The disrespect in this house is unreal,” Mason complains, but the smile curling at the edges of his mouth is all I need to see to know he didn’t take offense to my teasing.
“You’ll live.” Kay pats his cheek, then squeals when Mason growls and covers her mouth with his own.
A collective groan filters throughout the room, and more than one person mimes gagging at the lovebirds.
“Blah!” A streak of red hair whipping through the air has my gaze tracking to Quinn sitting cross-legged on the floor, her torso folded over her legs from her dramatic flop forward. How do I know it was dramatic? Well…she’s now tipped over onto her side, back of her hand pressed to her forehead with a sigh. “Dios mío. Get a room.”
Distantly I hear Kevin add a deadpan “There’s one right upstairs,” but all my attention is homed in on the knee waving around in the air thanks to Quinn’s still bent leg. It’s all Look at me! Look at me!
Dammit!
I am looking at it. I’m looking at it and the long bronzed leg with a thick toned thigh and lean calf bracketing it.
Clearing the lust suddenly clogging my throat, I hook a thumb at Kaysonova—their ship name, in case you were wondering—and croak out, “When are those two not sucking face?”
My question garners a round of finger guns from the room because it’s true. The PDA in this penthouse is definitely on the high side of the spectrum.
“You fuckers may have jokes, but the only reason Kay and I are even down here and not”—Mason arches a brow and points at the open door of the master suite visible in the loft-style floor plan—“up there is because”—his finger drops accusatorially at Quinn—“our bed got a bit too crowded this morning.”
“Oh shit.” Trav rushes toward the wall of glass that makes up the apartment’s outer wall, glancing up at the sky with a hand shielding his eyes. “I think I just saw a pig fly.” He turns back to the room with a dropped jaw and comically wide eyes.
“What the hell are you going on about?” Mason asks, almost reluctantly.
“What? I’m just saying…” Trav pops a shoulder, lumbering back to the group. “I would have thought we’d see flying swine before we ever heard about the Casanova complaining about having multiple women in bed with him.” He winks, and Mason flips him off while Kay just rolls her eyes.
I’m missing something here…
My gaze bounces around the room, trying to figure out just what that something is, but I get distracted by the blush now staining Quinn’s cheeks.
“Yeah, right.” Emma snorts, attempting to cover the distinctive sound by smothering her face with one of the throw pillows. “I think we could all safely say Mase is too damn caveman”—her mouth pulls into a smirk over the edge of the barely lowered pillow at the use of his pet name from Kay—“to share Kay with anyone.” She lays the pillow across her lap, angling her body to face Quinn. “Even if that person is our smoking-hot mamacita.”