She blinked at me and then threw back her head and laughed. “I love you so fricking much, Elise.”
“Well, I love you, too,” Natalie said, kissing the top of my head. Nessa squeezed my knee.
“Now, why don’t you tell us exactly what happened?”
“And we’re going to need details. Because at least somebody got laid last night,” Natalie said with a laugh, and I shook my head.
“You are beautiful, hilarious, and brilliant. Usually, I put brilliant first, but I felt like saying beautiful this time.”
“Well, you’re right, I am all those things,” Natalie said and laughed. “And yet, no man. Still a virgin. I may die one. It will be horrible.”
Corinne snorted as she sat on the chair opposite us. “You’re not going to die a virgin. I mean, I might die a virgin, but at least half of our house knows how to get laid.”
I narrowed my eyes at Corinne.
“You could have slept with Timmy, Tommy, and Danny, all in high school.”
“Could you have any more small-town names?” Nessa said, snorting.
“Maybe,” Corinne said. “But now, Tommy and Timmy are getting married. At twenty. And Danny is in jail. Aren’t we glad that I didn’t sleep with any of them?”
“You still could have slept with Tommy or Timmy. They’re both pansexual,” I said.
“And completely in love with each other since like the sixth grade. Once they finally let themselves feel that and got to know those emotions, I would have just been in the way. I didn’t need them. And we have done a great job of moving the conversation from your fulfilled sex life to my lack of one. Good job,” Corinne said, narrowing her eyes.
I blushed, then took a sip of my coffee. “Great coffee,” I said, and Nessa beamed.
“Thank you. I like the fact that I know exactly how you like it. You would think after a couple of semesters of being your roommate, I’d be good at it, but I still sometimes get it wrong.”
“You got it right this time. Thank you.” I let out a breath. “Okay, what do you want to know?” I groaned as they all talked at once.
“Was it good?”
“Did he treat you right?”
“How big was it?”
I looked over at sweet and innocent Natalie and widened my eyes. “That is your question?” I asked with a laugh.
She looked just about as shocked as I felt.
“I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth.”
“But I want to know that, too,” Corinne said, laughing.
“I’m not talking about that. I will say that it was nice, hot, the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. And the only time it will ever happen.”
They all stared at me.
“Why?” Nessa finally asked.
I shrugged. “We both said that we didn’t want a relationship, that we didn’t have time for one. And it was kind of fun with the whole one-night stand thing on the table.”
“You told him you just wanted one night?” Natalie asked, aghast.
“I think this is my fault,” Corinne said, cringing. “One-night stands never end up as one-night stands. Not if they’re good.”
“Well, this one will.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course. Shit.” I pulled out my phone and texted quickly.
Me: I’m home. Sorry. The girls ambushed me.
A moment passed, and the girls just stared at me as I looked at my phone.
Dillon: Glad you’re home. I was about to send out the National Guard to check on you. That or me and Pacey and my truck. I had fun. Will I see you at coffee?
I blushed, then bit my lip.
Me: Maybe. We’ll see. Bye.
Dillon: LOL Okay. Have a good day, Elise.
I let out a sigh and set down my phone as the three girls continued staring at me.
“You are such a goner,” Nessa said.
“A complete goner,” Natalie agreed.
I looked up at my best friend, and Corinne just smiled. “Oh, I’m going to start taking bets on a two-night stand.”
I narrowed my eyes and tossed a throw pillow at her.
“Don’t spill your coffee. I’ll be really annoyed if I have to get coffee stains out of the fabric.”
I kept glaring at Corinne. “No bets.”
“Oh, there will be bets,” she said, laughing. “Now, do we go two nights? Three? Or do we just go straight to wedding bells?”
The girls all started laughing, talking over one another, and I slumped into my chair, sipping my coffee and ignoring them.
My phone was warm against my thigh, and I suddenly wanted to reach out and text him. To say something.
I didn’t. It was important that I didn’t.
But I had no idea what I was supposed to do next.
Chapter 5
Dillon
“And now we’re going to focus on what Dickens was truly trying to convey in Great Expectations.”
I barely resisted the urge to growl. I had thought we’d spent the past forty-five minutes of class trying to convey what the content meant. But I guess I had been wrong. Apparently, we were going to dive deeper, at least in the last five minutes of class. And then I had a feeling our assignment for the evening would be to find the rest.
I was exhausted, couldn’t focus, and already hated this class.
The annoying part was that I wanted to like this one. It was my last English-focused track. Sadly, the creative writing class I had wanted to take had been full by the time I was able to sign up. I would be able to register my schedule on time like everybody else next semester, rather than a little behind like I had this time thanks to late enrollment. Either way, it wouldn’t help me this semester. I’d be taking a couple of additional science classes and labs for the rest of my college career, and then I’d move to the business and accounting track.
I was going for a business management degree specialization with an operations management minor. I had thought about going with project management, but I wanted to stick with what Brendan had done so we could work together when adding onto the Connolly businesses. I’d had my name changed legally over a year ago now, and it was nice to think that I was a Connolly in truth, rather than the last name my mother had given me. It had taken longer than Cameron or I had wanted to get it done, but I’d had to become an adult rather than his ward to make it happen, thanks to legal issues that made my brain hurt.
I’d always thought life was a little unfair with the way I hadn’t gotten to meet my brothers’ foster parents. Jack and Rose Connolly had built their bar and brewery and had made it brilliant. When Rose died, Jack had ended up alone in the bar, getting older and unable to handle it all. My brothers had had a huge fight over me, though they hadn’t known it at the time, and had ended up leaving Jack alone to run things. When Jack died, my three brothers came back, each bitter and angry. Still, they had somehow found a way to communicate with each other and make the brewery even better in Jack’s and Rose’s names.
And, along the way, they had added me to the group, a true brother rather than a tagalong. It’d taken me a long time to realize how I fit in, and now that I had, I was trying to find my way on my own, as well. This was a road I had never known before—one I had never thought to be on. But I needed to find how to be the man I needed to become without my brothers helping me every step of the way. It was as if they wanted to put an entire childhood of being a big brother into one area, and it could sometimes be overwhelming. I wanted to prove that I could do this and make them proud of me. And to make that happen, I’d had to move out. I’d had to work on not having them pay for everything. Hence the scholarship, the new university, and trying to find a major that I liked.