Fifty miles out.
Mirror selfie. Low-hanging pants, v-cut on full display, bare skin, no tattoos, the kind of build that comes from actually doing something physical. No face. Bio reads:Busy. Tired. Here anyway. Bad at this, but enthusiastic.
I swipe right. My phone dings almost immediately.
Match.
Fifty miles means he’s probably at the other university — theone without a hockey team or anyone I know. Good. I can work with that. We set it up quickly, clean: his roommate’s out tonight, he sends me an address. About forty five minutes from campus.
I set my phone down and feel the tension in my shoulders drop about two degrees. It’s not a solution. I know that. But I’m wound up too tight and I need to fuck someone like I hate them enough to get this thing with Rhys out of my head.
Tonight is all I need it to be.
????????
I’m tense the entire drive. Grabbing the steering wheel so hard it’s going to crack. Trees thin out into wide driveways and real landscaping and the kind of neighborhood that doesn’t feel like a college town anymore. Nice. Expensive. Whoever this is lives well and far and has absolutely nothing to do with my life.
Perfect.
The house is at the end of a tree-lined street and it's — nice. Actually nice. Not college nice. Nice nice. Two stories, stone front, warm light coming through the windows, the kind of place that makes you understand immediately that whoever lives here did not grow up worrying about things the way most people worry about things.
I park on the street and sit there for a second.
Walk up and knock hesitantly.
The door opens.
The ground shifts under my feet.
Actually, I wish the ground would just swallow me whole.
????????
Rhys Callahan. No shirt. Abs and tattoos on full display. Grey sweatpants. Hair slightly messy. Looking at me with an expression that starts off blank and then — slowly, over three of the longest seconds of my life — becomes the most entertainedI have ever seen another person be.
His dark eyes glitter with humor and his smile is wide, white teeth gleaming like a predator who’s just caught his prey. Like I just confirmed all of his suspicious. Like he was right about everything he said at the coffee shop.
“No,” I say, backing up.
“Hey—”
“No. What the fuck.” I take another step back. “What is this?”
“I live here.”
“Your distance said fifty miles—”
“I live about fifty minutes off campus.” He leans against the doorframe, relaxed, like this is a perfectly normal day. “I’m on campus all the time so it doesn’t really matter. I drive in once a day and leave at night. I like the neighborhood.”
“Your profile had no tattoos—” I gesture to his body. He’s covered in tattoos. A canvas filled with ink as chaotic as he is.
“That profile’s old.” A shrug. Casual. Unbothered. “You never asked about tattoos. You never even asked for my name, Jamie.” He’s so smug, I’m finding it harder to control myself.
“I shouldn’t have to—” I stop. “This is insane.”
“You wanna come in?”
“No.”
