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As he took another sip of his drink, I figured he was flirting. At least, I thought he was flirting with me. I really was an inept fool when it came to the opposite sex. Maybe Beth was right, and it was time to bring out my inner slut. Get some good, old vitamin D—and I didn’t mean the sun.
He asked me what I was majoring in, what classes I was taking. After I told him mine, I asked about him. He was majoring in business and minoring in marketing; I had no idea what you could do with something like that.
We talked, we laughed… we inched closer to each other on the sofa. Brandon finished his drink, and he set the cup down on the carpet, putting an arm around my shoulders on the back cushion of the couch. It grew all too easy to stare into the depths of his blue gaze and lose myself in them.
He was funny. He said a lot of funny things. Or maybe I was just primed to laugh a lot. Brandon had a good sense of humor; it made it easy to be comfortable around him.
I didn’t know how long we sat there and talked. It felt like hours. And then, after we’d talked for that long, something happened. Brandon shifted the way he sat, so the top half of his body leaned toward me instead of away. I let him pull me in close, and when his gaze fell to my mouth, I might’ve parted my lips in wait.
Brandon finished closing the distance between us, bringing his mouth to mine. He kissed me tentatively at first, like he wasn’t sure it’d be well-received.
Hell, at that point, I’d stopped thinking about what Ishoulddo and focused on what Iwantedto do, and what I wanted to do was make out with this guy until my lips got sore. So that’s what I did—I brought a hand to the back of his head and kissed him harder.
It was a little touch and go, mainly because it’d been so long since I’d kissed anyone, but I liked to think I got the hang of it after a little while.
The sound of someone stumbling in the hall was the only reason we parted lips, and we both glanced at the drunk dude mumbling something about needing to make himself some pizza rolls right fucking now. The guy saw us, waved and said hi—though he totally slurred it—and kept shuffling his feet as he walked right on by.
Hmm. This wasn’t exactly the most private place.
“I live on the eighth floor,” Brandon said, knowing exactly what I was thinking. “We could go there to get more privacy.”
Going to his place, though nearby, wasn’t something I was comfortable with. “No. Let’s go to my place.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think to take them back.
What was I doing? Offering to bring a guy back to Creed’s place? My heart pounded harder at the thought.
Brandon grinned and nodded. “Sure. Yeah, let’s go.” He got up, offering me his hand, which I took after I texted Beth that I was finding my own way home tonight.
I didn’t miss the messages from Creed, asking—no,demandingto know where I’d gone, if I’d made it there safe, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. He’d see I was safe soon enough. Safe and with company.
Brandon didn’t have a car, so we had to walk back to Creed’s place. I’d be lying if I said I was fine with that. My feet were really starting to hurt, and the added time to get there meant I had more time to wonder if this was a good idea.
But, you know what? I was nineteen years old. If I wanted to hook up with a cute guy I’d met at a party, I’d do it. I was an adult. I could make my own decisions. It was better than hiring someone to sleep with, on the scale of things.
Cough, cough, Creed.
As we walked through downtown, we talked a bit more. The more we talked, the more I realized Brandon might be a cute guy, nice enough, but he wasn’t all that smart. He brought up some video he saw on TikTok about some conspiracy theory about the moon, and that’s when the shiny image I’d built up of him in my head started to crumble and dim a bit.
But, you know what? That was fine. Everyone could believe whatever they wanted. We didn’t need to agree on everything just to hook up.
When we arrived at the foot of the tall building Creed lived at, Brandon craned his neck back and asked, incredulous, “You livehere?”
“Yeah, come on.” I pulled him up to the front doors, where a doorman stood. “He’s with me,” I told the worker, and together, we entered the lobby hand in hand. As I led us to the elevators in the back of the large, grandiose lobby, Brandon kept muttering about how cool it was, how he’d always wondered what the inside of this building was like.
I guess I couldn’t blame him; it’s exactly how I’d acted the first time I’d walked inside and saw how fancy it was.
We got on the elevator, and the worker recognized me and hit the correct floor for us. As the doors slid closed, Brandon mumbled, “Shit. This place is so fancy. How do you afford it?”
“I live with my brother,” I said.
“And he won’t mind me there?” Now his excitement to be inside this building was mixed with concern, as if he worried Creed would kick him out or something.
Let him try. Brandon was my guest. I was allowed to have guests over, wasn’t I?
I gave Brandon a smile. “It’ll be fine.” Really, I didn’t care how Creed took it. He wasn’t my legal guardian. Sure, he was doing me a favor by letting me stay with him, but he wasn’t a parent. He couldn’t control whether or not I brought someone home.
And if he did… well, I guess I could always spend the night at Brandon’s place, even though sleeping at a stranger’s place wasn’t something I wanted to do. If Creed threw a fit and forced me to make that decision, I’d have to go, just to prove a point.
I was so tired of trying to be the best I could be, so tired of having so much responsibility. I was nineteen. Wasn’t this my time to live a little? Wasn’t this when I should be having fun and enjoying myself before life threw itself at me, full-force? That’s how it was supposed to be, but life always had other plans for me.
