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Celeste begins gesticulating wildly, silent. It doesn’t take long for her to catch on and text me.
Celeste: Unmute me right now!
After I show Lee the message, he turns to the laptop camera and shoves his middle finger in the air. Their house must have been fun growing up.
“I promise not to abandon you,” he says. “You’ve got to be my wingwoman. I’m trying to get wifed up to an earl or a baron. You wouldn’t take that away from me, right?”
This sucks. A part of me would rather let them go together instead of me to avoid disappointing either one of them. Except I really want to go. And I can’t very well stand up Lord Tulley.
I need to think about it.
“I’m going to take a bath,” I tell them, then hurry upstairs before Lee can drag me back by my hair.
A few minutes later, I drop myself into a hot tub with the lights off, music on, and a book I’m reading for my English lit class on my phone.
It occurs to me after my toes begin to prune and the bubbles have almost dissipated that I should have given more credence to Lee’s warning about the house rule. If I’d been more faithful to the one and only tenet of the flat, I wouldn’t be staring down the possibility that Jack and I have irrevocably changed the dynamic not only of our relationship but all of us. Things were good here before. I don’t want it to be awkward now.
When the water’s gone lukewarm, I towel off and return to my room to put on pajamas. I’d considered going back to the libraryafter dinner, but now I’m not in the mood. All my energy has been sapped by the descending fallout dropping in slow motion. I haven’t been here even one whole semester, and I’ve already fucked it.
In bed, I continue my reading until there’s a knock at my door.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” I call.
Jack opens the door to peer inside. “Hey.”
“Oh.” I sit up against my headboard. “Thought you were Lee.”
“Can I come in for a minute?”
Well, damn. I’d just gotten all comfortable and sullen about not having this talk, and now I’m not sure if I’m prepared. Still, the waiting will be more excruciating.
“Sure.”
He walks in, his tall frame encased in plaid pants and a faded black hoodie, blond hair damp as if he’d just had a shower. Droplets of water gather at his temples, one trickling down and falling onto his cheek. He wipes it away and closes the door behind him, then plasters himself against it as if trying to stand as far from me as possible.
I consider proposing he stand in the hallway making hand gestures, but his preoccupied expression says he wouldn’t see the humor in it.
“What’s up?” I prompt.
I slide out of bed and get up, because it feels weird lying under the covers while he remains upright. Like I’m a queen receiving her audience or something.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Jack starts, his voice gruff.
“Oh. Okay.” Most of my irritation with him evaporates with that simple admission.
“For kissing you. That was stupid. I was drunk, but I can’t blame it entirely on that. I don’t know what went through my head before I did it.” He pauses, then curses under his breath. “That’s a lie. I know what I was thinking.”
Just like that, my throat becomes arid. “What were you thinking?”
“You know what.”
The air shifts, thickens with tension.
My teeth dig into my lip as I lift my gaze to his. “Do I?”
“There’s something here.” He gestures between us. “Been there for a while, no?”
Since the day I moved in, I almost say.
