“Check, check!” Gemma pushes me toward the couch, Arden grunting behind her at the move. We both roll our eyes and ignore him. Quickly, I pull up my grade page on the university portal and wait an eternity for the page to load.
And then it does.
A.
I got an A on my molecular cell biology class.
My eyes find Arden’s first and I break into a smile that I didn’t think I could muster about school work. “I got an A.”
His smile matches mine and the pride in his eyes threatens to drown me.
“That’s it, we’re celebrating!” Gemma grabs my arm and pushes me into my bedroom. “Let’s pick out an outfit. We’re going to the party at KA.”
“Oh, I don’t—”
“Nope. Hush, we’ve been working too damn hard to not party just as hard,” she says. As we walk past Arden, still standing by the door, she comments, “You too, boyfriend. Get your Sunday best on. The nerds are going out.”
Within twenty minutes, the three of us are strolling into the Kappa Alpha house, Gemma immediately flitting off like a little fairy toward the keg. Arden and I opt for the bottles in the kitchen cooler.
“Do you want to go sit in the living room?” Arden asks, his hand on the small of my back. I nod and he guides us toward an empty couch in a secluded corner. Arden sits and then pulls me down on his lap.
“Did you bring me here to seduce me?”
His chuckle is deep and reverberates throughout my entire body. “If I wanted to seduce you, we wouldn’t have left the apartment.” He kisses my cheek and then settles me deeper onto his lap.
We sip our drinks and watch the crowd. After a few minutes, Gemma runs over to us and pulls me off Arden’s lap. I could cry at the lack of contact.
“Let’s go, bitch. We’re dancing.” I want to protest. I want to stay exactly where I am. But, we did come here to celebrate and I dolovethis song. I allow Gemma to drag me to the dance floor and we shake our hips with abandon to the next few songs.
For a while, Arden sits in the same seat, watching us, his face inscrutable. During the last song, I look over to him, but he’s gone.
Probably went to the bathroom.
I keep dancing with Gemma, swaying back and forth, sweating profusely. I’m having an absolute blast. And then I see it.
Arden’s standing in the doorway, a little blonde whispering something in his ear. He’s looking at her and she’s looking at him and suddenly I want to puke. I stop moving altogether.
He leans down, looking at something she’s showing him on her phone and then he lets her get closer to hear whatever bullshit she’s saying. He looks at the phone then smiles at her and I feel like someone has punched me in the gut.He smiled at her.
He types something into her phone then she looks at me and widens her eyes.
Then he looks at me.
Within a millisecond, I’m out of the room, through the kitchen and into the backyard. It’s freezing out here but the fire pit is warm so I pace back and forth in front of it for a few seconds to calm down.
We’re not exclusive. We’re not anything, really. We said if one of us becomes interested in someone else, we would stop. He has every right to show interest in someone else.
Then why does this hurt so fucking much?
“Stop,” Arden’s voice is in my ear but he knows better than to touch me. “You should know better than this.”
I whip around on him. “Excuse me?”
“Have I everevergiven you any indication that I’m interested in anyone but you for the past couple months?” I start pacing again, not meeting his eye.
“We both said that—”
“Danika. Have I shown interest in anyone else?”