But she had that little jaw of hers set, still determined to play whatever game she was playing.
I smiled. “She never told you, huh?”
B just shrugged, absentmindedly playing with her hair. “I figured you saw on social media or something.”
“Yeah, right,” Jenna said on a giggle. “This asshole deleted me after he broke my heart.”
I cocked a brow, noting the wicked smile on Jenna’s lips. I’d seen it a thousand times before, knew it like the back of my hand.
She was flirting.
And one little glance at B told me it was driving her insane.
I let my eyes sweep over Jenna, and while she was still as gorgeous as ever, I only did it to get under B’s skin.
Because if she wanted to play this fucking game, she’d learn soon enough that I wasn’t one to lose.
“I seem to remember being on the other side of that heartbreak,” I mused.
B shot to her feet suddenly, looping her arm through Jenna’s before she could respond. “We should make the rounds, I want to introduce you to everyone.”
But Jenna didn’t take her eyes off me. “Yeah, in a minute. I think Jamie needs a drink.”
I did need a refill, but I looked at B, hoping she would stop this before we had to go any further. When she didn’t say anything, I sighed, looking back at Jenna with a smile.
“That I do. Escort me?” I asked, holding out my arm.
Jenna dropped B without a second thought, looping her arm through mine, instead. “Of course.”
And that was just the beginning of our sick little game that night.
B couldn’t keep her eyes off me and Jenna for the next half hour, though she didn’t move to join us. She just watched us from her perch, drinking angrily from her flask and pretending like she didn’t care. It was driving me mad, whatever it was that she was doing, but I didn’t know how to reach her other than to play along.
Jenna was easy to talk to — she always had been. It was part of the reason we’d dated for as long as we had. She filled me in on how college in New York was going while I told her about my life in California, and we reminisced on old times, laughing at the stories we swapped.
All the while, I felt B’s eyes on me, and I wished for her to come and pull me away.
Time passed in a buzzed blur, and Jenna and I eventually found our way to the fire pit where Ethan and Shayla were.
Just in time to watch B stumble over and sit in Ethan’s lap.
My tongue was sandpaper as I watched him grip her hip in his hand, pulling her closer, holding onto her like she was his. Technically, in that moment, she was.
But I knew the truth.
B had always belonged to me.
She always would.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“Hey,” she said back with a smile.
I tore my eyes away from them, focusing on Jenna. Her words were something along the sounds of Charlie Brown’s teacher, though, as I kept my peripheral vision on B, grinding my teeth when Ethan grabbed her chin and kissed her.
I tried to focus on what Jenna was talking about, tried to focus on anything but what Ethan and B were doing, what they were talking about, but it was useless.
Fortunately, B made the first move.
“We should play a game,” she said to the group.
Jenna clapped her hands together. “Oh! Yes! How about Never Have I Ever?”
“Classic choice, bestie,” B said, and I knew from the way she sloshed some of her beer out of her cup when lifting it that she was drunk. Too drunk.
Her eyes held promises for a dangerous night ahead.
“We’re a little old for games, don’t you think?” I said, and I meant it in more ways than one as I stared at B.
She just shrugged. “You don’t have to play. Tina just showed up, why don’t you go get her a drink and leave us kids alone?”
I had to fight from rolling my eyes.
Jenna quirked a brow at me. “Girlfriend?”
B was smiling all sweet and innocent at me, like she’d caught me in some trap. But she was a fool, and as childish as it was, I wanted to make her feel like one.
“No. B has some weird obsession with my Economics project partner and can’t let it go.”
B rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Stay or go, I don’t care. Ethan, you go first.”
I knew then that Ethan wasn’t okay — likely with the amount of alcohol his girlfriend had consumed. He was always worried about his reputation, about how the campus perceived him — especially since he was running for president. “Okay. Never have I ever had a one-night stand.”
Jenna and I drank without hesitating, and I winked at her over my cup. But when I finished drinking, my eyes found B.
She hadn’t lifted hers.
“Not drinking, B?”
“Nope,” she said, and then hurriedly tried to change the subject. “Your turn.”
“You’ve never had a one-night stand?” I pushed, leaning my elbows on my knees. I cocked a brow at her, challenging.
“I was her first,” Ethan said. My stomach soured, rolling even more when he pulled her into him and kissed her cheek before saying, “Her only.”
B kissed him quickly, but I knew she was feeling just as sick as I was.
“How sweet,” Jenna cooed.
“Yeah. So sweet,” I deadpanned, but I couldn’t cool the angry fire raging inside me at the sight of them. B thought he was so perfect, that he was some tender little bunny that could never hurt anything or anyone.
She didn’t know the way he talked about her when he first met her, before I knew who it was he’d met.
He’d called me after their first night partying at PSU and told me he found his fuck buddy for the summer, that she was a virgin, and he couldn’t wait to defile her. He’d joked about it and, being the asshole that I was, I’d joked about it, too.
Because I didn’t know it was her.
But now, everything had changed, and it was time to call him on his shit.
I was fucking tired of the games.
“So, my turn, huh?” I snipped. “Hmmm… Never have I ever had a threesome.”
B smiled at Jenna, for reasons unbeknownst to me until I read her side of the story, but that smile didn’t stay in place long once she realized Ethan was taking a drink.
“Wait, seriously?”
Ethan cringed. “I was a freshman, I thought it was cool at the time. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Oh,” B said. And I saw it, the moment she realized he could lie to her, that he could keep something from her.
That he wasn’t the saint she’d made him out to be.
“Are you mad?” Ethan asked.
B’s eyes found mine, and she glared, like she knew what I was trying to do.
I just smiled back.
“Of course not,” she said. “It was before me. No big deal.”
She smiled, letting Ethan kiss her neck as she took another drink.
“Your turn,” she said to Jenna.
The game went on, and honestly, I lost focus with how hard I was trying not to storm over to B and rip her out of Ethan’s lap. I wanted to throw her over my shoulder like a fucking caveman and take her back to my dorm. I wanted to demand she stop this shit and talk to me like a fucking adult.
I did laugh a bit to myself when Shayla said she’d never had sex on the beach, which promptly made B choke on her beer before racing off to refill it just to escape the situation.