It hadn’t hurt that I’d had the guys with me. Listening to them breathe in their sleep was the most soothing sound in the universe.
Tears threatened, and I pushed them back down. Crying solved nothing. I’d known what I was getting into.
In the distance, away from campus, something blazed. There were high rises under construction in the center of town, a tribute to the dichotomy between the haves and the have nots in this small Pennsylvania town. Lots of expensive homes were being built just blocks from overflowing homeless shelters.
My head pounded harder. I hated fire. I had before I’d experienced escaping a burning building but my detest of it intensified for sure. I needed something for my head. I had pain pills in my purse, and I took two. The only thing that really helped was time but sometimes this took the edge off a little bit.
I grabbed my phone. I’d put on the do-not-disturb function when I’d gone to bed, but I could see now I had three messages. There was a group text from Maven where both he and Banyan texted. Chance didn’t, but I suspected he was still out cold. Banyan had sent me a sad face and Maven had typed out texts.
I feel really bad about tonight. I feel like I should have known you would hate this party, and I screwed up asking you to come. I’m sorry. You’re important to me. To all of us. Don’t disappear. Please. Have brunch with us tomorrow. Might just be Banyan and me. Chance may be down for the count until school on Monday. But come.
I sighed. The last thing I wanted to do was stare at the screen with my head pounding. Maven had taken the time to write that and it filled my soul that he did. They mattered to me. I thought I understood the rules of this or at least I pretended to.
I sent a note to all of them.
I’m sorry I left like that. I don’t do overwhelmed well, and I’m not good with crowds. If anyone screwed this up, it’s me. It’s not like I didn’t know who you guys were and what your life was like here. I’m weird. Everyone loves parties. Except me. Anyway, I can’t come to brunch. Migraine headache has hit me hard. I’m lying in the dark, ignoring the sirens and wondering if my head might actually explode. Good night.
I set down the phone and rolled it over so I couldn’t see the screen. On do-not-disturb I shouldn’t see the texts, but if they texted a lot in a row very fast sometimes the settings let it through. I needed the dark.
An hour later, I wasn’t better, and I hadn’t been able to fall back asleep. Each minute was like my own personal hell, and I knew from experience it might get worse before it got better. Particularly because I’d woken up with it.
The door swung open and the light flipped on, blinding me. I cried out in pain.
“Hey, R.J., careful. She’s sleeping,” Molly said before she flipped off the light. “Oh, no. Giovanna, are you okay?”
“What’s the problem?” Like Chance earlier, R.J. slurred his words. “It’s just a little light.”
I tried to sit up, still shielding my eyes should he decide to flip the unforgiving dorm light back on. “I have a headache.”
Molly sucked in an audible breath. “Oh no, again? I’m sorry. She gets these sometimes. Do you need something? I can’t find my car keys, and he is insisting on a WaWa run.”
The local convenience store had the best coffee and late night sandwiches. It was a go-to stop for people after they’d been partying. Molly at least seemed sober. Usually, I’d offer to drive her car for her just to be sure but as it was I didn’t have it in me.
R.J. flipped on the light again, and I cried out.
“Seriously, Randolph John, why are you doing that? Her head hurts.”
He groaned. “You can’t find the keys in the dark. Be fast about it. Sorry, Giovanna but you can deal for two seconds can’t you? Don’t blame me. Blame your crazy friend since she once again misplaced her keys.”
I’d seen them somewhere. On the floor, maybe. The fastest way I was getting back to the quiet darkness was to find them for her. I stumbled out of bed and practically threw myself on the floor. I wished I could have said I did that on purpose, but my balance was off or maybe I was just exhausted.
“Heard you went to SPiI tonight. Why? You too good to come to my house?”
I stared up at him. There was a halo around his head that really didn’t look like it belonged there. R.J. was considered really attractive, but there had always been something about him that had screamed skeevy to me. He had brown hair that he wore slicked back and muscles on top of his muscles. R.J. spent all of this time in the gym. I wasn’t even sure he went to class, except he met Molly in a survey of communication class, so I knew he’d shown up at least once.
“I…” I shook my head. No, I couldn’t talk to him. Not then.
Molly leaned over the side of her chest of drawers. “Oh, yes, they’re down here. Right by the desk.”
That was right. That was where I’d seen them.
“Hey.” R.J. stank of cigarette smoke and when he grabbed me I got a good dose of it. I gagged. “I’m talking to you. Are you going to puke?”
I shook my head, trying to pull my arm back. What was happening here? Molly grabbed her keys off the ground and whirled around. “R.J?”
“Hey.” I hadn’t heard Banyan come in, but suddenly he was there, ripping R.J. off me. “Don’t you touch her, you piece of shit.”
R.J. shoved out of his hold which didn’t stop Banyan from knocking him back into the wall again. My pictures from an art show I’d been to in Kenya when I was ten went flying.
“Think you’re going to hurt me, asshole?” R.J. shouted in his face.
“What do you think you’re doing putting your hands on her? Huh? Huh?” With each huh, Banyan got louder.
Molly and I both cried out, lunging for them, but Maven, who must have arrived, got there first. “What the fuck?” he yelled.
“He had his hands on Giovanna.”
Maven hissed out a long breath. “Did he now? I thought we had a talk about this three years ago, asshat? You putting your hands on people who don’t belong to you. Need a reminder about what happened then?”
“Try it and see what happens,” R.J. shouted back.
“Stop.” I rushed forward. My vision blurred, and my head throbbed right above my temple. It didn’t matter. I had to stop what was happening. I grabbed onto Banyan’s arm. “Please. What’s going on?”
Banyan let go of R.J. and stepped back, but Maven stayed in R.J.’s personal space. “You stay away from her. Am I clear?”
R.J. yanked Molly against him. “They’re roommates. So guess what? I get to be here, and you don’t own the dorms, assholes. You think you run this school? You don’t. Which one of these douchebags is your boyfriend, Giovanna?”
“She doesn’t have to answer you.” Banyan charged forward and might have swung at R.J. if Maven hadn’t pulled him back. My heart raced. Were they going to really fight right there in my dorm room?
R.J. yanked on Molly and they were out the door. I stood there, trying to catch my breath. What had just happened? I couldn’t even think.
“Hey.” Chance was suddenly in front of me. Was I not noticing them coming in because I was so out of it or had they developed some sort of transporter technology? “What in the hell?”
Chance smelled like he’d showered. He pulled me against him. “She has a migraine. Get the lights off. Shit.”
A second after he instructed, Maven flipped off the lights.
“I came in. He had a death grip on her arm. If the lights were on you could see finger marks on her.”
Could they? Now that he mentioned it, my arm hurt but not nearly as badly as my head. I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve got you.” Chance kissed my head. “Come on. Lie down. I was so drunk before. I’m sorry. I was probably a real asshole. I’m not drinking like that anymore. I’m too old for that shit.”
I didn’t want to talk about it. “I can’t right now.”
“I know.”
Maven crossed to us, touching the side of my head. “I’m sorry. He’s a
bad guy. The worst kind. I…”
“We both lost it. I knew your roommate dated him, but I didn’t stop to think about the fact that meant he’d be in here with you while you’re in your pajamas.”
I was wearing them. I’d completely forgotten and that meant I was currently dressed in a pair of shorts and a white tank top. Our dorm rooms were hot, sometimes scorching. “I don’t feel well.”
“What do you need?” Maven asked, quietly. “Have you taken something?”
I must have nodded because I was quickly bundled up into a jacket as though I were a toddler who couldn’t quite dress herself. I was halfway out of the dorm before I realized it. “I can’t go back to that party. It might kill me.”
“Party is over. Kicked everyone out at twelve-thirty so campus safety would go away. It started at four. More than enough time.” Banyan kept his voice low. “House is quiet. Your bed isn’t big enough for any of us to hold you.”
Had we discussed this? I didn’t know. All I could think about was the constant and miserable throbbing of my head.
When my head hit Banyan’s pillow I didn’t care where I was. But they were right. The house was silent. It didn’t even feel like the same place. I closed my eyes.
Chapter 3
I opened my eye to test out the feeling. After a migraine, even when the pain had passed, there was a period of time when I felt fragile. It was though I wasn’t strong enough to really take sensory input at full blast even after the worst of the pain had passed. None of it made sense the few times I’d tried to describe it to my mother so I’d quit doing so. Her response that my paternal grandmother had migraines with her period too hadn’t really solved anything.
Just another thing I’d learned early on I was expected to endure silently.
It took me a moment to remember where I was. This was Banyan’s room at his fraternity house. The colors on the wall had changed since last I’d been in it, which meant he’d spent part of the day before painting the shade of red that graced the window area now. The scent of paint was there, slightly, and some of the ease of it might be because the window was slightly ajar, which let the paint fumes out but let the cold air in.
I wasn’t particularly cold, however, because I was on the bed with three warm, male bodies who were acting, at that moment, like a heater. I was sleeping on Maven’s arm. Depending on how long I’d been that way he was probably not comfortable. His eyes were closed and nothing on his face indicated discomfort, which had to be a good thing. Banyan was turned toward me. I couldn’t see him, but I recognized his hand across my waist. He had the slightest bit of the same color paint on his knuckles. Banyan really had beautiful fingers. It was funny to notice something like that about people. I could see Chance asleep next to Maven, his back facing Maven’s side and his arm slightly off the bed.
Banyan had said they had bigger beds than me, which was true, but they were still not as big as the ones in Manhattan and not one of them could be at all comfortable.
They’d come to me because my head hurt.
Of course that had ended in a fight in my room I was lucky didn’t wake the whole dorm.
I looked down at my arm. Sure enough I did have a bruise where R.J. had grabbed me. Why had he done that? And what had Maven meant when he was yelling at R.J. about things that happened before? Small details I’d earlier been unable to focus on were coming back to me.
This was the version of these guys I knew. Not the ones who were running their frat house, drinking too much, and being grabbed on my random girls who were okay with knocking me over. I wanted this part, but not that other.
Totally not fair of me.
They probably wanted this version of me, and not the one who had to go home because she couldn’t take crowds or function like a regular twenty year old.
Chance shifted on the edge of the bed, turning over to face Maven and me. His eyes fluttered open and he winced. I understood the sentiment. The sun was brutal and mean. Or at least it was right then.
He smiled at me, shifting his arm so that it was over Maven’s head on the pillow to touch the top of my head. “How you feeling?”
“Not great,” I whispered back. “Can we talk? Today?”
Chance furrowed his eyebrows. “Sure.”
Maven muttered something but didn’t stir, and Chance moved his hand back. He closed his eyes again, rolling back over so that his back was to Maven. I guessed we weren’t moving. Not yet anyway. I followed suit.
The day finally did begin several hours later when Banyan got up from the bed. A torrent of energy, once he was awake we were all up.
He leaned down over me, kissing my cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“Not quite one hundred percent but better. Thanks for coming and getting me.”
Maven rubbed his eyes open. “Well, we were all sitting here feeling like shit that you were feeling bad. It made sense to come see if you needed anything since you weren’t answering your phone.”
Chance sat up slowly. “I’d kind of woken up enough and sobered up enough to pull my shit together. Of course I’d have hurried even more if I knew these two were going to encounter R.J. Nothing good comes from that.”
“Coffee good or bad for you right now?” Banyan tugged on the end of my hair.
“Good, but listen.” I tugged the blankets up myself a little bit. I was in my pajamas, and that was it. I had no clothes here to change into since they’d put me in one of their coats and brought me home with them. All of that would be fine were we alone here like Christmas but we weren’t. “Am I right in assuming all the residents of this house are probably downstairs? And any guests they had for the evening?”
Maven nodded. “About two thirds of them more or less. The other third are probably with whomever they went home with. Why?”
“I’m walking out of here dressed like this? It’s not ideal. Plus, all three of you being in here with me is probably weird right?”
Chance stretched his arms over his head before he got up. “Guess we didn’t think this one through all that well did we?”
“We don’t address it. Let them speculate if they want to.” Maven got out of the bed, stretching enough that his shirt rode up a little bit showing his belly button. I squirmed. Last night had been the first time I hadn’t been physically intimate with any of them practically since meeting them. Maven eyed me watching him, lifting his eyebrows slowly. I quickly looked down.
I loved sex and I loved it with all of them. But we’d never had the kind of relationship, not even in New York, when we’d had it all together. I wasn’t really in the mood to try it now with all of their frat brothers downstairs.
Even if looking at them was making me very, very aware of how handsome all three of them were.
Banyan held out his hand to me. “Come on. Let’s get the going downstairs over with.”
“Wrap yourself back up in my coat and we’ll get you home as fast as we can. Next time we need to remember clothes. You can keep them in my room,” Chance offered. “Always have them here.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest. “Okay, I’ll do that. Um, about last night.”
Banyan kissed the side of my cheek. “I can’t promise not to beat on R.J. if I see him grabbing you again. I controlled myself last night. He’s still standing. But if he puts his hands on you in any way again. He’s going down. That’s just how it is. I’m a lover not a fighter but you’re my… friend.”
“That’s not the part I meant.” I had to get up and it was easier to move than not when doing this. “Let’s face it. I can’t really just hop into your lives now that we’re back, right? I don’t really fit in downstairs. I wanted to run out the door the second I got through it. That’s on me, not you. None of you have done anything wrong. This is your life here. It just can’t work for me. And what you said to me, Chance, it really made me think about things. Maybe we have to stop before this gets any harder.”
Banyan raised his eyebrows. “What did you say, Chance?”
> “I don’t know, actually. I know that sucks. I… Let’s talk about it, Vonni.” He took my hand. “Can you guys give us a minute?”
Maven sighed. “Yes. Nothing is ending. If you don’t want to come to parties, don’t come to them. I couldn’t give two shits. Truly. I… You matter to us and I know that we matter to you. I can see that we do. Don’t throw this away.”
I agreed. “Okay.”
Banyan knocked his shoulder into Chance. “Whatever shitty drunk thing you said, apologize. He doesn’t mean it. That’s why Chance doesn’t drink like that.”
“I’m going to do a little damage control. I’m going to say I passed out on Banyan’s floor and don’t remember last night.” Maven rubbed his eyes.
Banyan grinned. “Awesome. That way your reputation only has to survive having spent the night with me, Giovanna.”
“Who knows, I could be that girl who was so obsessed to get to you she knocked me over? I mean, you must be that good, Banyan.”
He laughed, throwing his head back. “I have to tell you, I don’t know who she was.”
Maven patted Banyan on the back. “Don’t tell her that. It doesn’t make you look good.”
They exited, and I steeled my spine. Chance leaned against the wall, waiting for me to speak. “Do you really not remember or are you just pretending you don’t?”
Chance quirked his mouth into a smirk. “I love how you always cut to the chase of things. It makes me always be truthful, too.” He walked toward me. “No, I don’t remember.” He shook his head. “Kind of a problem to be blacking out. I know. I won’t do that again.”
“I wasn’t judging you.” My lack of interest in their parties didn’t mean I got to say what they did and didn’t do.
“I’m judging me and clearly I did something.” He tugged on the edge of my hair. “Tell me.”
I sighed. “All right, listen. You said some things. Wanted to know if I would have spoken to you years ago in psych. I said I would have. You said sometimes you think about that, how if you had spoken to me back then we’d have gotten together and then a year from now we’d be engaged.” He paled, but I was unfortunately not done. “And that you didn’t know what to do with any of this because the other guys liked me, too. How any of this could work. That kind of thing.”