Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye
Chapter 7
Junior year…
The firepit burnsin the center of the six of us. My father’s lakehouse is almost in the middle of nowhere; the nearest neighbor is across the long lake, nothing but a white light in the misty distance.
It’s the perfect place to do whatever we want with no consequences.
Of course, there aren’t many deep, dark desires between us. Drugs, sometimes. Alcohol, a lot. Sex — obviously. If I can find a girl out here in the middle of nowhere, which isn’t super likely.
“I’m just saying, though. This would be the perfect place to murder somebody,” I explain. “I’m not saying—” Larissa laughs, smacking her forehead with her hand.
“Guys, we’re so fucking stupid,” she says. “Gunnar has clearly brought us out here to kill us.”
“It’s true. I heard all the Raynes have to kill someone before they turn eighteen or they don’t get their inheritance,” Andie says casually. The group explodes in laughter that carries over the far stretch of the still, dark lake.
I lean closer to the fire and waggle my eyebrows, knowing it looks more stupid than creepy to be lit from below like that, and Andie tips back her head and laughs. Logan strides up to us with his ridiculously long legs and rattles the beer bottles he brought out from the house.
When Aurelia takes hers, she makes a big show of flicking off the cap and licking the rim of the glass bottle, making eye contact with me. As if I don’t know what she’s doing, I raise my bottle in the air and smile at her. She smirks back.
She’s been trying to jump on my dick for as long as I’ve known her. She has always been cute, with her long mermaid hair, big eyes and petite body, but something happened to her over the last few months.
Two somethings, to be more specific.
And she sure as hell knows it, wearing that push-up bra and tiny crop top. It’s like her true persona started to show up clear as day at the same time as her nipples started showing up through her shirts. Now she spends all day flirting, fluttering her lashes, trying to draw attention to her tongue, her ass, her tits. The attitude isn’t my thing, especially the pretend-cutesy thing she does.
“Let’s play a game,” I say. The sun is almost totally down, and the timed porch lights haven’t turned on yet. We’re in that evening nighttime limbo where the air smells sweet, a light buzz from alcohol warms our skin and loosens us up. With just a little pushing, tonight could be one of those perfect nights we remember forever.
“Strip trivia,” Aurelia says, and Logan cheers.
“Let’s do it,” Larissa whoops. I have no idea why they’re for it, out of everybody, because they fucking suck at trivia. The strip version is a game I came up with one night when we were drinking in my basement with the cards from a Trivial Pursuit board game. The two girls ended up in their underwear and ended the game before it went any further.
“Fuckin’ fine with me,” Logan says, rubbing his hands together. He also ended up in his underwear, come to think of it. But that isn’t a super uncommon occurrence for Logan.
Every time he and Larissa get to a certain level of alcohol in their systems, they end up ‘sneaking away’ to fuck. So I can see why he’d be all for this game.
“I don’t understand why you three want to play this game,” Andie laughs, reading my mind.
“They just love being naked,” I say, and now Cole is laughing too.
“You guys are gonna get destroyed,” he says, and takes a swig of beer, moving around to get comfortable.
For a second, I see Andie and Cole look at each other and smile, and I feel a bizarre twist of jealousy. Ever since they’ve been hanging out, hooking up, or whatever it is they’ve started doing, Andie hasn’t been so available to me. I’ve been missing them both, and realizing that it’s the two of them who are by far my favorite people in our little group. Not that I’d ever say that out loud. Never any need for drama.
We don’t have the cards, so we have to make up questions. One rule is that the question has to be something a couple of people in the group can reasonably be expected to know, or figure out. Nothing unfair, which I think is unfair in itself.
“Just let the girls take their clothes off if that’s what they want,” I say, and Logan butt scoots across the grass to high five me.
Almost immediately, Aurelia and Larissa are in their underwear, and Logan’s shirt and hoodie are off. The questions weren’t hard — it’s more of a challenge to think of fair questions than it is to answer them — but my jacket is off and so is Andie’s sweater. Cole is perfect, unflappable as always, and lets us know by loudly stretching and rearranging his still-present clothes, which makes Andie giggle.
Another twist of jealousy.
Friends shouldn’t be allowed to date in their friend group, that’s all I’m saying. Have some kind of secret other relationship just for them; secret jokes that their other friends aren’t in on. But it’s whatever. Logan and Larissa are different. Logan is so FOMO that he just fucks her until he’s done and then runs right back into the room to ask what he’s missed.
But when Logan gasps, it brings me back to the present; to the rest of the group. I hadn’t realized I’d been staring at Andie, the goosebumps of cold on her bared arms. I turn to see that Aurelia has hooked her hand around the nape of Larissa’s neck and is batting at the blonde’s tongue with hers. Larissa is so surprised that she snorts with laughter, which makes me helpless with that rare kind of head-lolling, shoulder-shaking laughter. So much for Aurelia trying to be sexy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Andie’s gaze. She grins at me, letting me know we are most definitely thinking exactly the same thing right now.
For some reason, another twist of jealousy in my stomach. But is that really jealousy?
What the hell is it?
“Let’s change this to a new game,” Aurelia purrs, recovering swiftly. “Last guy in the circle to get hard wins…” She draws out the ‘s’, and then bites her lip, looking over at me. I lift my beer at her again and smile, exactly like I did before. A nonsensical response, which makes her frown. (Andie would have laughed.)
“How are you gonna check,” Logan points out. Then, croakier, “Oh, God, how are you gonna check?”
Aurelia lifts Larissa’s hand and rests it on Logan’s thigh, then moves closer to me and rests her hand on my knee. With her eyes twinkling in the firelight, and with something else, she is undeniably beautiful. I should be responding to how much she wants me, and I think, not for the first time, that there might be something wrong with me.
I like girls, I like what sex I’ve had. After I spent all summer helping out my cousin Spencer renovate this lakehouse and working out, I get plenty of female attention. It’s just that no one really interests me post-orgasm, which makes fucking a friend seem like a really bad idea.
“Larissa,” Aurelia says, her tone bossy. “Kiss me again.” Larissa giggles, embarrassed, and as Aurelia leans in she hisses, “Don’t snort.”
I lose my shit, but I hide it by turning away and bringing my beer bottle up to my face. Aurelia, while she makes out messily with her friend, snakes her hand up my thigh. Larissa finds Logan’s dick and gasps.
“Logan loses.”
“Obviously Logan loses,” Logan says, swigging his beer while she squeezes him through his pants.
“And Gunnar …” Aurelia bites her lip as if her own forwardness is taking her by surprise. “Are you hard?”
I’m not fucking hard; I can’t stop laughing.
“I can fix that,” she breathes, and climbs into my lap. She has never been forceful like this before. She kisses a line up my neck, and I stare over her shoulder, my lips in a line and my eyebrows scrunched. Andie gasps, pointing over at us for Cole, who claps and whistles. “What about Cole?” Aurelia asks over her shoulder, moving her hips in my lap. She’s rubbing her thin panties up and down my dick through my pants. This would be so fucking sexy if I had even the tiniest amount of interest in her. Why the hell don’t I?
“Cole is always hard,” Andie says, and then smiles. Cole licks his lips and then grins back at her. They never do this, talk about whatever sex life they have, and I wonder if she’s saying it now because everybody else has coupled up.
I wonder if she feels weird about watching someone grind on my lap. The idea gives me a strange thrill. And I’m not too crazy about that.
Aurelia wants us to, what? All have sex, out here, right now? Shit. I lock eyes with Andie, watching her face light up with laughter watching me get straddled against my will. Then her expression deepens into something serious, her usually playful eyes thoughtful and narrowing. Is she thinking this is going to turn into group sex too? My cock springs to life, out of nowhere, pushing against Aurelia’s panties.
“There’s my Gunnar,” she whispers in my ear in a cutesy little girl voice. I hate that. I really, really hate that. I pick her up and set her down on the grass, her mouth hanging open. I step over Larissa, whose hand is inside Logan’s jeans now, moving up and down while they loudly, drunkenly kiss. As I head inside, I notice Cole is doing the same thing as me. Escaping.
He laughs awkwardly. “Didn’t like where that was headed,” he explains, and I look him up and down and nod. Something about it strikes me as weird. Group sex isn’t for everyone, but we all know he’s hooking up with Andie. Why is he leaving her out there, with all that going on, instead of leaving with her?
I frown at him as he heads up the stairs inside, quickly, like he was just looking for an excuse to finally be alone. He’s tapping furiously on his phone screen. Texting someone. He looks away for a second, pulls in a shuddering breath, and when he catches my eye he looks like he’s been caught in the act. More than that — he looks fucking terrified.
Does my best friend have a secret?