J A C O B
I had always been a hot topic at school. It had been like that for as long as I could remember, and I didn't want it to be any other way. I liked being on other people's mouths. I also liked other people's mouths. That was a big problem for me, some would say, because apparently it made me a fuckboy.
I didn't resent the title. Jacob Miller, voted most likely to steal your girl. What could I say? I was good like that. I had won some sort of genetic jackpot at birth and now nothing could stop me. People shouldn't be allowed this much power, but who was I to complain?
I was winning at life. I could have any girl I wanted, and I wanted a lot of them. If that made me a fuckboy, then so be it. At least, I wasn't going around calling it love. The world was full of hypocrites bringing out the big L-word to justify the implications of their own sexual drives. Just fuck and be done with it.
I was sure in a few years scientists would come out and say love was actually a made-up human emotion, something more about attention and jealousy and insecurity than anything else entirely. I was sure I would be getting a lot of calls then, all of them girls saying they were sorry they called me all those names when I stopped texting. Until then, I would just have to continue being misunderstood. I didn't mind. Most times, girls that tried to understand me did it under the sheets. So no, I didn't mind at all.
I wouldn't mind if someone tried tonight either. I was throwing a party to celebrate the end of summer. We all agreed coming back to school shouldn't be a celebration, but we wanted summer to go out with a bang.
"Who's coming?" Edward asked, leaning against my Porsche. I had wanted a Tesla, but my parents had refused giving me a copy of my brother's car. Derek had loved hearing it. He had gotten himself one before going off to some third world country in Africa, probably to help build better jungles, I wasn't sure.
Something to come back for, he had said. He rarely did. I suspected Derek wanted to be everywhere except home. He had fucked off to London when he was eighteen and came back with a diploma from some architecture school good enough to convince most employers to fart out job offer after job offer. None of those offers had been good enough to make him stay apparently. My parents were, after all, considering spending Christmas in Africa with him. I would rather die.
I threw my bag on the backseat of my car. I felt very much alive thinking about the plan for tonight...Who was coming?
"Everyone," I said. Edward frowned. I didn't think this needed any more explaining, but apparently, I was wrong. "Everyone that matters, Eds."
He frowned again. It meant, come on, don't be shitty. I didn't think I was being shitty, so I ignored it altogether. I was sure the girls camping outside a concert for a boy band wouldn't want me crashing their movie marathons. Was it not fair to expect the same kind of decency in return? But Edward had a flawed judgment sometimes. He thought it wasn't fun to switch Luke's Adderall for mints and then draw dicks on his face when he kept falling asleep in class, even if the whole thing was completely harmless. Luke didn't need Adderall. He was a teenager. He was supposed to be falling asleep in class. He probably just had rich parents who liked throwing money at problems.
Edward had a different opinion. Of course. Edward Amin, the next Gandhi.
"Well," he said now, stepping away from my car. The day was over, and we both had things to do before tonight. "I'm gonna head out. I'm excited for tonight."
I had been looking at the locker room doors, watching the cheerleaders come out in small groups, gym bags slung over their shoulders, hair probably smelling of fruit shampoos.
She was the last one to leave. I heard her before I saw her.
"Smell this lotion I bought last week," she was saying. Her friend came out first, walking backward so she could smell her outstretched hands as they stepped into the parking lot.
"She's definitely coming," I told Edward, elbowing him before he could walk over to his car.
He groaned, "Dude, I fell on this arm literally half an hour ago."
"Sorry." I had forgotten it. We had to stop practice to get him ice it and everything. "Look at her though."
Edward was rubbing his arm where I had dug my elbow in it. He wasn't even looking.
"Who?" Well, of course.
I didn't answer. I wasn't going to waste my English if he was going to be a dumbass. When he finally looked up, he did it with eyes squinted, as if he was suddenly visually impaired. I rolled my own.
"I don't know who you're talking about," was his conclusion.
Granted, there were still other girls in the parking lot, shoving bags into trunks and bitching about whoever had twirled at the wrong time during practice. They might as well all be invisible.
"Who do you think?" I frowned.
"I literally have no clue," he said, unbothered.
"The Asian girl."
"Oh, you mean Kylie Green?"
"I don't know her name." I shrugged, looking at her go along with her friend. "She's the one next to the girl banging Coach Sargent."
A black girl of long handsome overcoats but tiny, tiny tops, the kind of girl you wished got the office across from you when you finally made it into some typical glass-walled big shot company so you could keep fueling your office sexual fantasy. At school, she was the girl voted most likely to go down on you under the school bleachers. I hadn't been that lucky yet, but only because most guys who were ended up in the hospital, courtesy of her ex.
"I doubt that's true," Edward said. Of course. "But yeah, that's Kylie. How do you not know her name? She's president of the student body. I'm pretty sure she's the cheer captain too."
I shrugged, "Positions of power don't really do it for me."
"On others, maybe," Edward said. "I doubt being team captain doesn't get you going."
It did, "It does."
Edward's eyes followed the girls as they walked across the parking lot, "Didn't she blow you off the other day?"
"She's playing hard to get." I shrugged. "It's cute."
"Or maybe she's just not interested," Edward suggested, a look of amusement crossing his face. "I hear it happens every full moon."
"You fucking wish it did," I said, elbowing him again.
"Dude!" He said it so loudly now, some girls turned around to look. Most of them had been in the backseat of my car already. Did they share their stories at sleepovers or was I an unspoken thing between them? I liked the idea of both.
"Tonight," I told Edward. "You'll see."
"I would rather not," he said with a frown of misplaced disgust instead of pain. Edward had walked in on me with a girl before. I hadn't minded. Sit and learn, I had thought and said. Edward hadn't. Instead, he had performed a disappearing act right then and there, and then avoided eye contact for the rest of the day. Shame.
I told him to put his vagina away, "I'm sure she'll bring her friend tonight. You're not exactly Coach Sargent, but she'll probably give you a chance. I hear she gives most guys one."
He gave me the same look again, the one that said, come on, don't be shitty.
"You've met the coach's kids," he said, as if that said it all.
"Yes, cause kids have been saving marriages for years." I almost laughed, closing the car door, and putting the key in the ignition. "I'm not judging her either. Coach Sargent's a fucking catch. I'm happy for her."
Coach Sargent was a man who would have made it to the hall of fame if only he hadn't bent his knee in at a college game. He was married, yes, and he did have a little boy and a little girl at home, but so what? That never stopped anyone before.
"Right," I said when his frown intensified. "I'll see you tonight, princess."
I was a whore for house parties, especially if they were mine. There was something about having a bunch of people who all wanted to get absolutely fucked up under the same roof that got me going in a way most things couldn't.
I had thrown many parties over the years. Having a mother in the senate and a father calling shots in some big office downtown meant having them farting out work trips like a gassy kid on a beans and lentils diet. It meant an empty house every other week. It meant my mother's marble counters covered in bottles of spirits and mixers. It meant towers of plastic cups, opening the door to the interior pool, and closing the ones to all the bedrooms and offices upstairs. It meant pushing the couches into corners of the living room and pulling the lights from under my bed. It meant too many people in any given room of the house, and lights up until the sunrise.
I had already welcomed a small country into my house when she finally arrived. I saw the Mercedes ease into a stop by the side of the long serpent driveway that led up to my house. My parents had given up the good old Hampton homes over a sort of glass box instead. A work of art, they called it. It was without ego â perhaps because it sheltered plenty â the classic less-is-better-type situation. Most days, I didn't know how to feel about it. Today I decided not to. Kylie Green was, after all, easing her Mercedes into my driveway.
I was sure this had happened plenty of times before. This couldn't possibly be the only time she had joined in on one of my parties. It was just the first one I paid attention to. Edward had wondered how this was possible when he first came in.
"I was thinking about it," he said as he sipped from his drink, a cocktail he had insisted on making himself. "How come you're only going for Kylie now?"
I had been wondering the same thing, but the answer had come to me soon enough, I supposed. For starters, I didn't go for anyone. People came to me. That was it. That was the start and end of it.
I had told Edward, "Why should I go out shopping when I could have it delivered at home?"
He didn't get it. I didn't care.
"Now," I had said all the same. "Sometimes there's someone that's collection only, and because that someone looks like she does, you do it."
"Why is this a shopping metaphor?" Edward had asked. I hadn't replied.
A handful of girls got out of Kylie's car, none of them looking like a designated driver. I loved it. It meant they either cared little for their lives or were intending on staying over. I loved mostly the later one.
I watched Kylie lead the way up the driveway. High heels, and long legs in high wasted jeans, and then skin â so much skin â under a tight see-through top.
"Copy and paste yourself into my bed please," I said under my breath.
Edward was yet to finish adding songs to tonight's playlist. His drink was gone already. I wanted to punch his bad arm.
"Dude."
He looked up from his phone to look at me, his fingers still typing away song names even if his eyes weren't on it anymore.
"What?"
"Look who's here," I said, eyes back on chasing Kylie up the driveway. She was holding a bottle of wine.
"Yeah, good luck with that," Edward said, like he didn't believe in luck. "I just wanna get fucked tonight."
"Yeah, me too." Was it not obvious? I slapped the side of his head. His hair moved and then fell back into the same exact place. "That's literally what I want."
"Not like that."
"So this is where you tuck yourself in at night," someone said behind us.
We both turned around. Edward was already smiling.
"Look who decided to show up." I smiled, making a mental note not to mention her name at all. She didn't need to know I had it already. Girls and their need for approval was perhaps the best love story of all time.
"Thought you might like the pleasure of our company," she said. "Can't say I'm not a good Samaritan."
"Well, I think I can," I said, pulling my phone from my pocket. "See, your number is not on here yet."
"Do you really wanna play that game?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Oh, you don't even know," I said when they started moving for the door, stepping in front of it. Her face went sour, but only for a second, then she was smirking like she knew better, her eyes like a cat's. I returned the gesture. "Your friends can come in, of course."
Her friends were busy giving Edward song suggestions. He wasn't the best wingman in the world.
"Once they're finished indulging Eds over there," I added.
She frowned, "Do you even know my name?"
"Whose fault is that?"
Edward caught me saying this and sent me a look. Again, not the best wingman in the world. Kylie didn't notice, rolling her eyes instead, her fingers playing with her necklace.
"Not mine." She shrugged. It wasn't. She was right. According to Edward, she had built herself a reputation good enough that people didn't ask her name anymore.
"Right, let's try again," I said then. Next to me, Edward was offering the girls cocktails and they were grinning and following him inside. Maybe he wasn't such a bad wingman after all.
Kylie frowned some more as they left.
"Hi," I said, starting again. "I'm Jacob, and I sure am glad your parents made sweet, sweet love to have you. Can we talk about it more over text someday?"
Kylie turned her eyes to me again and offered me a tempted smile. It said, almost, almost, almost.
"My parents didn't have sex to have me."
"Really? Then how did the universe come up with you?"
The golden light from the front porch turned the skin of her cheekbones into glitter.
"This thing called embryo adoption and two women rich enough to pay for it."
Lesbians. Well, of course. There was no other way now that she said it. Only someone raised by lesbians could say no to me.
"Cool," I said. "I'm sure they gave you a phone though."
She laughed. She looked even better then. If she didn't give me her phone number soon, I would have to call the police. This had to be illegal.
"They did," she said. "But I'm not supposed to give my phone number to strangers. Now, are we going to stand here all night?"
"You don't seem like you wanna go in enough, so why not?"
She rolled her eyes again. I considered walking in myself and closing the door on her. Playing hard to get was cute, but not that cute.
"My name's Kylie," she said, massaging her temples. Her hand was a slender thing of rings and manicured nails, something out of a perfume commercial. "I'm sure that's enough to keep your ego intact for one night, no?"
I smiled, "We're gonna have a lot of fun together, aren't we?"
"Jacob!!" someone called from inside the house. I turned around. A girl in an exceptionally short dress could barely hold herself up in the middle of the hallway. "What are you doing? Come! Edward's making everyone cocktails!"
I turned to Kylie, and offered her my best smirk, "I better go, or I'll make a sex offender out of her."
Kylie laughed again. This time it just meant I was funny.
"I guess I'll just go home then," she said, taking a step back that asked to be undone.
"Well, you can stay for a while if you really want," I said, already inside, my eyes traveling her once again, a trip you did once and spent the rest of your life wanting to do again. "It would be a shame if it turned out you dressed up for nothing."
She smirked. Did she think she was winning?
"Really?" She was already walking in with me, fitting her hand in mine when I offered. Inside, Edward's playlist finally got the attention he thought it deserved, playing loud enough to make you want to move to it. All around us, people did, stopping their sing-along only long enough to down their drinks.
"We better catch up," I said, leading us to the kitchen. Edward was gone and so were the girls, the bottles of rum asking for a trash can. I looked at her bottle of wine, "Do you need something for that?"
She smiled like I was stupid for even asking, and then bent down to take one of her high heels off. She slapped the bottle open with it. It was very much possible that I had a boner waiting to happen. The people around us cheered. I stepped closer. I wanted them all gone, but privacy wasn't exactly possible in parties like these.
"I stand corrected," I said over the music, getting myself a drink. She took a few sips of hers, her dark lips a must-see around the seal of the bottle. I downed my rum and coke.
"Truth or Dare?" she asked. She looked unbothered by the third of wine sitting in her stomach right now. I suspected most days almost nothing sat in her stomach at all.
"Dare," I said. I wasn't exactly planning on telling her the name of my first pet, was I?
"Take off your shirt." She was looking me in the eyes as she said it. I poured myself another drink, downed it, and then did it. She took a few more sips of hers.
A girl sitting on one of the counters pulled away from a kiss to look at me, and then went back to it with more tongue. One of the guys around the kitchen table cheered before smashing a beer can on his forehead.
"My body is not an object, Kirsty," I said, like I minded that she thought it was. I had worked it into one, had I not?
"Kylie," she said. "You know that."
Did she really think I did?
"My turn." I smirked, "Truth or Dare?"
"Dare." I guess she wasn't planning on giving me the name of her first pet either.
"Finish your bottle." I was looking at her wine. It was half empty already.
"Are you trying to get me drunk?" she asked, but she was already taking the bottle up to her lips.
"I'm trying to get you," I corrected her. I didn't think she heard it. Everyone in the kitchen had caught sight of her overturned bottle and had started cheering her on.
Her cheeks were a dark shade of red when she finally put the bottle down. It was completely empty. I didn't think I could be this turned on. It didn't seem healthy.
"Right," she said, blinking the dizziness away. "Let's go dance this away."
I grabbed the bottle of rum and held my finger up to her as I downed as much of it as I could. It left a trail of fire behind as it went down. I felt like I was burning inside out.
Kylie's hand slipped into mine when I put the bottle down. She was burning too.
"Nice," Kylie said suddenly, stopping by one of the couches where people crowded like pillows. She was looking at something on the other end of the room.
I looked too. Edward was leaning against one of the cold stone walls my father was so proud of he couldn't have any family photos on it. He was talking his ass out to Kylie's friend. She seemed to be talking her ass out too.
"Do we have to talk that much too?" I asked Kylie, but her hands were suddenly on me, pulling me into the crowd of people jumping up and down to whatever song had started playing.
I let her pull me. My head was a separate thing from my body. I thought I might have left it somewhere on the kitchen counter. In the living room, my body moved to its own accord. No, to the accord of the people around me.
Kylie's hands were on my shoulders, and I would have pulled her closer if some other girl hadn't thrown herself at me from behind, circling my shoulders and kissing my cheek.
"I've been looking everywhere for you!" she screamed over the music, pulling through the people around us so she could stand just by my side. I had some class I couldn't think of with her. We had a group project together once. I was sure we had finished it in my bed.
"Me too," I said. I wasn't sure what I was saying. I wanted her gone, but I had just made her laugh somehow and I was sure one of her hands had slid down to my stomach.
Kylie was on the move. I reached my hand to her before she could disappear in the people around us.
"Where are you going?"
She turned only her head at me, "Dancing with someone who can. No hard feelings."
She was gone in the blink of an eye. The whole night was. Blink. The girl from the class I couldn't remember stepped in front of me. Blink. We were making out against one of the living room cold stone walls. Blink. I was doing shots in the kitchen. Blink. Some guy threw up in the sink. Blink. Kylie was pushing me into the pool. Blink. I was pressing her against the wall of it. Blink.
"You know what I would kill for right now?" she was asking. Her voice was worlds away. She had her legs wrapped around my waist, and her hands on my shoulders. The smell of chlorine mixed with her perfume, and I was sure I was going to finish the night either kneeling next to a toilet or kneeling in front of her. I was hoping for the second one.
"What?" My voice didn't come from my mouth. Or maybe it did. Maybe I was just fucked.
"Molly," she said, mouth pressed against my ear. My stomach needed pumping.
"Who the fuck is Molly?"
She laughed. I wanted to kiss her. No. I wanted her to kiss me. No. I wanted her to want me to kiss her. No. I wanted to throw up.
"Right," I said, pulling away from her and reaching the edge of the pool. "I'm out."
"What? Because I laughed?" She wasn't laughing anymore, but her mouth was still home to a world-eating grin. "Come on, don't be such a boy!"
I shook my head, pushing myself off the pool. Standing up was suddenly the hardest thing I ever had to do.
"Where are you going?" Kylie asked again, looking up at me with disappointment all over her face.
"I need another drink." Absolute lie. Just the smell of rum right now would have made me throw up. I was going to. I was going to lock myself in a bathroom and die.
Did I want her to think I couldn't hold my alcohol? No. So lying it was.
"Get us molly," she said again. Great. She was making no sense. Maybe she was the one who couldn't hold her alcohol.
"I don't even know who Molly is."
"You're such an idiot." She laughed so hard she almost choked on pool water.
I was about to answer when I saw Edward and Kylie's friend against the other side of the pool. Her hands were in his hair, her leg around him as he held her by the waist. They were making out. And I was all the way here, about to throw up. The world owed me one.