Someone, probably a boy in a polo shirt with the colr inappropriately buttoned, either too high or too low, had the music set to a pylist that sounded more like noise than music. Electronica of some kind, which had never been something that Vio had liked, and certainly had never been something that Seb had liked, and it was nothing like the music that she had heard when she came to a frat party in the fall, just the one.

  But, if there was a blessing, it was that none of the girls had wanted to dance, and that meant that Vio could stand at the edge of the party in peace, and she could do it with Anna and Lucy squeezed up against her. Margot and Cam had disappeared somewhere, and Vio was starting to feel a little peeved that Margot kept abandoning them to go make out with her boyfriend. When she mentioned this to Lucy, though, Lucy rolled her eyes and grinned.

  “She’s just keeping him away,” she said. “Thinks it’ll be easier on you if he’s not around. Not that she’s upset that she needs to go stick her tongue down his throat.”

  “Ew,” said Anna. Vio giggled. Anna grinned at her. “C’mon, let’s get something to drink. We don’t have to do anything, but I at least want to be drunker.”

  “Do they charge?” asked Vio, and Anna snorted.

  “God, you’re adorable,” she said, and Vio gave her a look. “No, they don’t charge. It’s not a bar.”

  “I couldn’t remember,” said Vio, defensively. In truth, she’d never had much to drink at the st frat party. Danny had gotten two beers for the pair of them, and by the time Vio had finished hers, she was ready to go.

  Anna grinned and grabbed her hand and started pulling. Vio twisted to take Lucy’s, and they formed a little train, pushing through the crowd, across the trampled grass of the yard.

  There were a lot of people here. There were a lot of people here. Vio was keenly aware of the fact that, as they pushed through, her body was being pressed on all sides. All kinds of skin. And even though she was keeping her eyes on the back of Anna’s head, trying to follow her through, she was aware of the other eyes. The eyes of the people that were following her, the ones that were watching Anna and then her and then drifting behind, and the skin from those bodies always managed to press against her as she passed.

  There was a little bout of nerves every time someone touched her, as if they might suddenly feel the difference in her skin. As if, after she’d passed, they’d understand what she really was, as if they could feel it, as if the paper was peeling back just enough. She beat it back. Cam hadn’t noticed, and the eyes, well, they were following Lucy and Anna just as much as they followed her.

  Through the yard, towards the far end, and there was a stack of coolers sat behind a credenza type thing, which had been beat to shit by rain and grass and alcohol. And behind the credenza, which Vio took was supposed to be a bar, probably repurposed after being found on the street by the look of it, a guy in a backwards cap was grinning and passing out beers. The three of them sidled into the makeshift line, and the backwards cap guy, who smiled at all three of them, something Vio took a bit of comfort in, passed them a trio of beers.

  “Oh, can we get a couple for our friends?” asked Lucy. The guy nodded and passed them an extra two cans, and Lucy gave him a big smile.

  “Thanks!” She said. Then, she passed one to Vio, and turned to face the party. “Okay, now what?”

  “Do we need to find Margot and Cam?” she asked. Lucy gave her a look, and Vio held up the can. Anna snorted.

  “Adorable,” she said. Vi nudged her.

  “Stop saying that,” said Vio. Lucy giggled and hooked an arm into Vio’s.

  “They’re just so we don’t have to go back so often,” she said. “And so, if they run out, which they will, we’ll already be drunk enough.”

  “Oh,” said Vio.

  “Let’s find a game,” said Anna. “Pong?” Vio shrugged, and Lucy nodded and started pulling.

  They went back through the crowd, through the pressing skin and the soft grass and the indulgent eyes, back through towards the house, past boys in polo shirts and button downs and t-shirts, past girls wearing nearly the same thing as Vio, although she was pretty sure their tits were real, or if they were fake they were beneath the skin, and then up a pair of steps and into the house.

  And air conditioning. Fuck, it was good to be somewhere with air conditioning.

  The inside of the house was sparsely decorated, if you could call it decorated at all. The yard opened into what was clearly designed to be a fairly rge living room, but had been instead left almost entirely bare. There was a couch shoved into two opposing walls, a ping pong table at the center of the living room, and pair of fgs pressed to the wall, one American, the other Garnd State. No carpet or rug, and nowhere else to sit oter than the beat couch. The kitchen, which Vio could see only just through the living room, was worn gray, clearly once supposed to be white.

  Vio thought again, briefly, of the attempt made to recruit her to a fraternity, and was grateful that even the most naive version of her had the sense to turn this down. Well, okay, not her, but Seb. It hadn’t been this house, but it had been startlingly simir, and all the boys in that frat seemed, to a tee, exactly like the boys in this frat, and she could not imagine a less desirable living situation.

  Of course, she might have gotten really, really good at beer pong or something. Sure, she would’ve had to live here, pay dues, and associate exclusively with guys named ‘Connor’, but maybe she’d be really good at throwing tiny balls into tiny cups! An excellent trade off.

  “Beer pong,” said Lucy, matter of factly. “And I think I saw them pying beer die out on the side.” She frowned. “Or darts. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Beer pong’s fine,” said Anna. “No beer die.” Lucy giggled. Vio gave her a quizzical look.

  “In the fall, Anna’s teammate missed the table on all of his shots,” expined Lucy. Vio had no idea what beer die was, or why that was supposed to be significant, or how it was even pyed, and so she stared with more intensity at Lucy. Lucy coughed. “Well, okay, missing the table on all of your shots is really bad.”

  “It was 4a.m. and he was really drunk,” muttered Anna.

  “And if you miss the table every time, you have to, well,” Lucy giggled. “Well, he had to streak around the party.” Vio snorted and Lucy giggled harder. Anna shook her head.

  “I had been talking with him all night. So embarrassing.”

  “Well,” said Vio, imagining suffering the indignity of missing the table every time, then revealing herself to the entire party, and then being promptly stomped into the curb, “let’s not py that game.” Lucy waved a hand.

  “They don’t make girls strip,” she said. But she hooked her arm into Vio’s and pulled her towards the beer pong table.

  Vio, as it turned out, was not very good at beer pong. Maybe it was that she’d had at least a fifth of rum before she’d even arrived at the party, and now she was trying to sip on her beer for every made shot, since all of the cups were actually filled with water – Lucy had informed her that they never actually used beer at the parties; too wasteful, and no one wanted to be drinking from the shared cups – but she suspected that it was just her ck of athleticism. She’d never been, like, super bad at sports or anything. But the boys they were pying against, both of whom, from the looks of them, seemed like they must be involved in something athletic, were much much better.

  But she was starting to have a bit of fun. Just a bit. There was still the sneaking, looming feeling that someone was going to snatch the wig off her head, and she’d be revealed for a pervert and a fraud, but it was disappearing a little as the night wore on. No one had said anything. She hadn’t, as far as she could tell, received any looks that would indicate anything, that would signal that someone had spotted an oddity. And, yeah, Lucy was reminding her periodically to stand up straighter, but she’d seen a dozen girls slouched in the corners. Not every girl was as prim and proper and well put together as Lucy.

  They were all receiving attention, though. Vio had never put it together before, not in a way that was tangible, but the attention at these parties was zeroed in on the girls. In the fall, when she’d managed to get in as Seb, the night had been spent in the corner, mostly alone. Girls hadn’t paid much mind to him, and the boys paid even less. But tonight, every girl, even the ones who had retreated to the corner in the same way Seb had, seemed to be getting heaps of attention.

  And that included Vio. There had been a boy who had come and asked her name while she was, very clearly, having a conversation with Lucy, and there had been a trio who had clearly decided that, given the ck of looks between them, their best bet was to find a set of three girls to approach together. Lucy had turned them down gracefully, and Anna had turned them down much more forcefully when grace hadn’t worked.

  “Is it always this crazy?” asked Vio, quietly, after a tall boy with bck hair had slipped by Anna and murmured some kind of greeting, only to be beat away. Anna raised an eyebrow and grimaced.

  “Uh,” she said. “Sort of. Depends on the night, and the hour, but,” she nodded, “sort of.”

  “Wow,” said Vio. One of the boys tossed a ball into a cup, then whooped. Lucy took a sip of her beer.

  “It can be a little much,” admitted Lucy. “But, well, you get used to it.” Vio raised an eyebrow of her own, and Lucy shrugged. “That sounds sort of grim…”

  “It sounds really grim,” said Vio.

  “It’s a mixed bag,” she said. She tossed the ball back towards the other side of the table, and missed the table completely. “Ugh. Um, mixed bag. Sometimes, you end up talking to a guy and then the whole night’s great, or we kind of all manage to have a retively chill one. You know, no guys being absolute creeps and just having fun.” She shrugged. “And that’s most nights.” Well, as long as they were setting the bar high at absolute creeps.

  “And the other nights?” asked Vio.

  “We go home,” said Anna. Vio let out a heavy breath.

  “I’m so gd I came,” she said, and Anna ughed.

  “Most guys are pretty nice if you just tell them to fuck off,” she said. “You know, they’re hitting on a million girls tonight, so they’re not all that bothered if we just kind of close ranks and they have to go away.”

  “Right,” said Vio. Lucy squeezed her hand.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” she said. “It’s going to be fine.” The boys missed on both shots back. Vio made to rub and eye, and Lucy caught her hand and smiled. “Don’t do that.” Vio let out a breathy ugh.

  “Right,” she said. She was going to need to pick up a new kind of fidgeting, one that wouldn’t threaten the sanctity of her eye makeup. Maybe she could chew her nails.

  She was pretty sure Lucy would hate that more and manipute her into acrylics.

  Manipute was such a daring description of that potential interaction.

  Vio tossed one of the balls back and nded it in a cup. She grinned at the boys, one of whom smiled and took a heavy sip of beer, all while keeping perfect eye contact. Vio swallowed and felt her grin falter a little.

  “Careful,” murmured Lucy.

  “Yeah, just realized that,” said Vio, looking down to the table.

  “Maybe it’s time for the bathroom,” whispered Anna. She tapped Vio performatively on the shoulder, took her hand, and started pulling again. One of the boys on the other side of the table, the one who Vio hadn’t just made eye contact with, put up a hand as if to say ‘what gives’, but Anna was already leading Vio and, by extension of Vio’s other hand, Lucy, deeper into the house.

  Vio, briefly, looked back at the boys, who had turned to face each other with expressions of confusion and disappointment.

  Some fucking world.

  The bathroom was fine. It took them four minutes to wait, and when they had managed to crowd in, the three of them tucked into a tiny half bath, Vio and Anna had to press themselves up against the wall to fit. Lucy pulled down her pants.

  Vio spun to face the wall. Next to her, Anna grinned and gave her a look.

  “Darling,” she said. Vio stuck her tongue out, and Anna giggled.

  “Do you want me to watch you pee?” asked Vio, staring very pointedly at her. It felt inappropriate, even in her current state, even with, well, everything. Anna grinned.

  “You’re so dramatic,” she said.

  “Pervert,” said Vio. Anna elbowed her.

  “Okay, wait,” said Lucy. “Not to interrupt your very important conversation, but I think we need to talk about eye contact.” Vio shared a look with Anna, who shrugged.

  “No idea,” she said.

  “Not with me,” said Lucy. “I mean, like, don’t make eye contact with a guy and smile, Vio.” There was a pause. “Oh, god, would you just turn around?” Vio bit her lip, and Anna giggled. She turned but kept her eyes deliberately and appropriately on Lucy’s face. Lucy waggled a finger. “Don’t just look guys in the eye and smile, okay? I’m serious, if you do that, they’re going to think that you want them to come up and talk to you. It’s like, a massive invitation.” She put up a full hand. “And like, they will be trolling for eye contact. They will stand at the edge of the dance floor and just look at girls, hoping you’ll look them in the eye.” Vio ughed. Neither of the girls did. She straightened her face.

  “That’s crazy,” she said. Lucy nodded.

  “Just don’t go willy nilly with the eye contact.”

  “Where am I supposed to look?” asked Vio. God, like, there were men everywhere. Everywhere. And she was supposed to avoid accidental eye contact with all of them?

  “At us,” said Lucy, standing, and Vio looked to the ceiling.

  “At the ground,” said Anna.

  “At other girls, if you want,” said Lucy. “Or, if you happen to make eye contact with a guy, don’t smile.”

  “This is insane,” said Vio. Anna and Lucy swapped pces, with Lucy starting the little sink.

  “You get used to it,” said Lucy. Vio let out a heavy breath. The more they said it, the more Vio felt a growing sense of panic that no one should get used to this.

  “Just look like a huge bitch all night,” said Anna. “That’s what I try to do.”

  “There’s been guys coming up to you all night,” said Vio, looking at Anna, incredulous. Then, she realized that Anna was peeing, and looked back to the ceiling.

  “Well,” said Anna, “it’s not foolproof.”

  “Is there a scenario in which I could not end up accidentally flirting with half the men in South Carolina?”

  “Take the wig off,” offered Lucy, and Vio gred.

  “Brilliant,” she said.

  “Like I said, it’ll be fine. Just, you know, be careful how much attention you attract. Like, it’s normally fine or whatever, because you can just turn them away, but it might become a problem for, um, well, for you.” Lucy bit back her lips and giggled. “Sorry, like, you’re very pretty right now, and it just feels like guys will come up to you, and I know you like guys, but they’re going to have the wrong expectations right now.” Vio breathed out. No shit.

  Tonight was not the night to indulge anything. Tonight was the night to keep her head on straight and go home without creating a bigger mess than she’d entered with. Figuring boys? Figuring Vio and the rest of it? Future problems. Saturday problems. Friday was about getting away without making those more complicated.

  “I’ll be more careful,” she said. Anna, now standing from the toilet and gesturing for her to sit, nodded.

  “We’ll help head them off,” she said, turning on the sink. “It’s just easier to limit the numbers is all.” Vio arranged herself to pee, then stopped right before she pulled her pants down. The girls had all turned away in the dorm when she’d changed before. Lucy barely seemed to register anything.

  “If they’re too persistent, it’ll be a good excuse to leave,” she said. And the second she said it, Vio realized that, at this point, they should leave. The goal, convincing Cam that she wasn’t fictional, that she was a real girl who went to parties, had been achieved. She had entered the party, and now Cam was gone, wrapped around Margot somewhere on the dance floor, and there was no reason for her to stay. They could go whenever they wanted.

  “Why don’t we just go now?” she asked. Anna, now done washing her hands, turned and frowned.

  “We can’t,” she said. Vio crossed her arms.

  “Cam’s not going to know,” said Vio. Anna clicked her tongue.

  “Margot’s still here,” she said. “And we don’t leave friends at the party.”

  “She’s with Cam, though,” offered Vio.

  “Yeah, she’s with Cam,” said Lucy. “Listen, if we all liked her boyfriend, and we were all convinced he was a good guy and that they weren’t going to get into some big, stupid fight tonight or something-”

  “Which happens more than you think,” supplied Anna.

  “Then it might be different,” said Lucy. “But, like…”

  “Cam’s an asshole,” said Anna. “And leaving her at a party, alone with an asshole, even if that asshole happens to be her boyfriend…”

  “Right,” said Vio. She swallowed and nodded. “Right.”

  “It’ll be fine,” said Anna. “It’s just fine until it’s not.” She frowned. “Are you going to pee?” Vio, her head still wrapped around the idea that Cam, Margot’s boyfriend, was someone that they needed to be watching out for, someone that Margot needed to be nervous about, nodded and pulled down her pants without a second thought.

  “So, if a guy’s weird and creepy…”

  “We’ll go get Margot and we’ll all go,” said Lucy.

  “And Cam…”

  “Will deal,” said Anna.

  * * * * *

  They did not go back to beer pong. The risk of Vio accidentally making eye contact with the same boy as before, something Lucy said would necessitate an approach, was deterrent enough.

  Instead, they had gone towards the side of the house. Out onto the back patio, the same way they’d entered the house from the yard, and then around. The house itself was surrounded by a fence, which Vio imagined did nothing for sound but, at the very least, provided pusible deniability to anything illegal happening in the backyard. Things like underage drinking, drug usage. Things that would never, ever happen in the backyard of a frat party.

  The side was crunched tightly between the wall of the house and the fence, just ten feet wide. It was darker than the rest of the house, and it was quieter than the rest of the party. Rather than a table, there were two pairs of boys, each seated a few feet across from each other in pstic chairs. Between their legs, settled on the ground, were cans of beer.

  “Oh,” said Anna. “Not beer die.”

  “Worse,” said Lucy. “Beer darts.” Vio gave them both a look. How many times? How many times would they act like things ought to be common knowledge? Anna grinned.

  “Just watch,” she said. Lucy frowned.

  “I’m not pying,” she said. “Girls don’t py beer darts.” Anna snorted.

  “Hush,” she said. She grinned at Vio again. “Watch.”

  The game, as far as Vio could tell, was remarkably simple. As simple as it was stupid. The boys took turns tossing darts at the cans situated between their opponents’ legs, legs that they spread at varying degrees. Vio couldn’t imagine why, except for some kind of sick bravado, but some of the boys kept their feet tucked close to either side of the can. And the boys across from them, tossing the darts at speeds that elicited shudders in Lucy, whooped when the darts hit the cans.

  Then, the boys, freshly off of having a dart thrown directly between their feet, would drink from the can, now punctured.

  The whole game was just darts, except you were throwing at a can instead of a board, and if you missed the can, you hit someone’s foot rather than the wall.

  Stupid.

  So, so, so stupid.

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Vio. Lucy her hands up, as if to say ‘thank you’, and Anna ughed.

  “It’s fun,” she said. “And neither Margot or Lucy will py with me.”

  “It’s a wonder why,” said Lucy.

  “Why do they keep their legs together?” asked Vio. Anna stuck her tongue between her teeth and grinned.

  “Well,” she started, “If they hit the can, they have to drink to the level where the hole is, right?” Vio nodded. She’d understood that bit. “But, if they hit someone, be it foot or leg or whatever, and they draw blood?” She grinned. “Then the person who threw it has to finish their drink.” Vio blinked and stared at her.

  “That’s crazy,” she said. Anna rolled her eyes and waved a hand.

  “It’s fine,” she said. She took Vio’s hand. “It’s fun.” Vio ughed, and Anna smiled wider. “Listen, if you’re nervous about it, just keep your legs apart. And, honestly, the guys aren’t going to throw that hard. They’re all nervous to hurt you or whatever.” She looked back at the guys, each of them rocketing darts dangerously close to the legs of the boys seated just a few feet away.

  “And what if I hit someone?” she asked. Anna beamed.

  “That’s the fun,” said Anna. “You can hit a stranger with a dart and they’ll celebrate because you have to drink. It’s, like, the perfect game.” Lucy scoffed.

  “It’s so dumb,” she said. Anna squeezed Vio’s hand.

  “Py,” she said. Vio ughed, and Anna, clearly taking it as a confirmation of Vio’s acquisition to the merits of what had to be the stupidest game ever invented, dragged her towards the chairs, and called. “Next!”

  It didn’t take long. One of the boys was pegged in the foot with a dart, something that elicited a gasp out of Vio and Lucy, and a cp out of Anna, which meant that he had won. It also meant that he needed to go to the bathroom to wipe away the blood that was now, presumably, spilling out of his big toe. It left three chairs open; the two losers’ chairs, who had abandoned the game, and the chair of the fallen victor.

  Vio and Anna immediately beamed at Lucy, who shook her head.

  “No,” she said.

  “It’ll be fun,” said Anna.

  “I’ll throw so gently,” said Vio. “I promise.” Lucy raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not getting a hole in my leg because you guys want to py effing beer darts at a frat party.”

  “It’ll be a tiny hole,” said Anna.

  “I’m an excellent shot,” said Vio. She grabbed Lucy’s hand and started dragging her, all while Lucy pnted her feet as firmly as she could in the grass. Anna giggled and took one of the chairs, and the guy, who was wearing a button down and little, tiny khaki shorts, still seated across from her, grinned.

  “All three of you?” he asked. And Lucy shook her head vigorously.

  “No,” she said. “They’ll py.”

  “Come on,” said Vio, and she could feel the alcohol working. The game seemed stupid, and the fact that she was even here was completely moronic, completely and utterly moronic, but she was, in fact, having fun. “Py!” Lucy wriggled out of her grasp and jumped back in the grass, away from the pair of them, out of the potential arc of a dart. Vio pouted. Lucy crossed her arms.

  “I’m sure there’s plenty of other masochists,” said Lucy. Vio rolled her eyes and settled herself, femininely, in the chair next to Anna. Anna beamed at her.

  “Do you have spare cans?” she asked the button-downed boy. He nodded, reached behind his chair, and passed a pair across. Vio was trying not to look too closely at his face, fearing she’d make the same mistake that she had made at the st game, but he looked familiar. Broad features, a kind of crinkled brow, cropped hair. There were a lot of guys who looked like that. She trained her face on the ground, trying to remember.

  Probably in one of her csses or something. Now, as long as he didn’t recognize her, it didn’t matter too much.

  “Thanks,” said Anna. “Um, is that guy going to come back?”

  “Probably not,” said the boy. “Kind of a bad idea for us to have too many injuries.”

  And then it clicked.

  Football.

  He pyed football. And the boy who had just received the puncture wound, even a small one, was a football pyer, too. And Vio, suddenly, had a desperate, sinking feeling.

  A feeling almost immediately rewarded.

  Two currents ran through Vio simultaneously. The first was warm, and it was centered somewhere near her navel, and it was triggered by the sight of David, his hair mopped with sweat, his shirt tight against his chest, breathing as though he had just been dancing, emerging from the darkness around the edge of the house. Her mind ran with the dancing, imagining phantom hands creeping down her back again, his phantom hands.

  And then, the second, which outpaced the first immediately.

  Panic.

  And that was centered somewhere closer to her heart. David. David was here. David was here, and she looked like this, and god, fuck, she looked like this. The whole ‘lean in’ thing had been predicated on the idea that Vio wouldn’t run into anyone she knew. And now, David Oliver was settling into the chair across from her, and he had said some words, and Vio was trying to figure out if she needed to prepare for a swim in the river.

  David Oliver.

  David Oliver.

  Shit.

  He looked so All-American, his jeans tight and blue, and Vio imagined that he might have been tottling around a football in one hand when he arrived at the party. And why had he arrived at the party? He had said he had pns tonight, practice, Vio was pretty sure, but here he was, sitting across from her, smiling and saying something and looking very much like that.

  The current in her navel threatened lower, and Vio turned her head to look at Anna.

  Shit.

  Anna didn’t look quite as panicked as Vio felt, but she wasn’t blooming with confidence either. She grimaced, and then looked to David.

  “Hey,” said Anna. Her voice was steady. Easy. None of the mirth that it had before, but still casual enough that David wouldn’t immediately grasp that something was wrong. David smiled at her. Then, he smiled at Lucy. And then, he looked at Vio.

  She hadn’t been sure if he had really looked at her yet. There was the dark, and there was the boy sitting next to him, someone he, presumably, knew and needed to greet, and there was all the swirling of the party around them. Maybe he hadn’t paid her any mind. She could have been just any other girl.

  But he was looking at her now, his eyes peering through the shadows. There was a bit of curiosity on his face, a crinkled eyebrow, but Vi couldn’t tell if it was the revetion that the girl he was sitting across from was, in fact, Sebastian, or if it was that he had never seen her before and she had just been trading in friendship with the girls.

  In her time with David, she’d seen him interact with girls enough. Girls on the quad, girls in css, girls coming up while they were eating lunch. At times, he felt like a gigantic magnet, sucking everyone in the room towards him, men and women. And while David had never been anything close to a pyer, he had never been shy, either. Quiet confidence, or whatever.

  Vio couldn’t tell if this was that. She’d never been on the receiving end before. She’d only ever observed.

  “Hi,” said David, smiling at her, his stupid, adorable, Heisman-winning smile. Not Lucy, not Anna, her. And that brought back both currents, the feeling of panic and the feeling of warmth. God, if he kept looking at her like that, she wasn’t sure she could stay cool. His smile softened, and Vio wondered whether the panic or the excitement had shown on her face. “I’m David.”

  Okay.

  Okay, so he didn’t know. And that was great, that was wonderful, but now, all of a sudden, she had to introduce herself and not just introduce herself, but be Vio. For everyone else, everyone who hadn’t known Seb, it had been fine to just be A Girl. Any girl. She could be the girl version of Seb, the one who liked what he liked, who talked like he talked, minus the change in voice, and who had all the same qualities as him with tits stapled on.

  But this was different. Seb had to be Vio. Vio had to be separate, not just a cast off of Seb, not just an amalgamation of the things he was trying to rid himself of, but someone so distinct from Seb that the boy sitting across from him wouldn’t know that, underneath it all, Seb was there. She needed to be. She needed to be real and she needed to be everything that Seb was not, everything that the timid, gunshy boy wasn’t, the one trapped in the hole.

  Vio.

  She had thought she could imbue the name with life, and now…

  Now it had to be.

  She looked back to him, trying to find the confidence, trying to find the girl, trying to imagine what, exactly, she looked like. Sounded like. Acted like. Trying to figure out exactly, in the end, who she was. Vio. Vio. Vio.

  Who was Vio if Seb was not an option?

  “Hi,” she said, and Vio was surprised to hear the warmth. She sounded so calm. And then, with a start, she realized that her heart had, really, slowed a little. Not enough to pull her away from near panic attack, but enough to give her the confidence to add, “I’m Vio.” And David smiled at that, and the current, the one that had made her feel like a million bubbles had just been released inside her, returned.

  “If this were py’d upon stage,” whispered Lucy.

  “Is it a good idea for you to be pying?” asked Anna. She had fixed her face, made it pyful, and Vio tried to calm her mind and do the same.

  “It’s fine,” said David. Vio opened her eyes to him waving a hand through the air. Then, he smiled at her. “I’m sure you’re a great shot. And if you’re not, well, you can take it up with coach.” Vio smiled at him, and she dug again for Vio. For her. For words. Words. Words that would not come out of Seb’s mouth, ones that he would never say, even if he meant them, anything.

  Ah.

  Well.

  “I don’t like football anyway,” she said. If the first response had been confident, this one oozed. It surprised her. Almost flippant. Dismissive. David ughed, and Vio’s stomach turned.

  “I’ll keep my legs wide, then” he said. “For safety.” Vio smiled. She heard Anna shift beside her, and Lucy coughed, but she pushed.

  “Well,” said Vio, and her voice was still oozing, and she, for a moment, realized that she should stop, that it was too much, that it was way, way more than the silent, one night only girl should be. But she had settled on Vio. And, if she wasn’t tied to Seb, if she was Vio, then the words would drip from her mouth. They would drip from her mouth, and if it came to be that Mr. Star Quarterback was going to hang on those words, leaning forward in the shadows of the party, then so be it. Besides, Seb would never say something like as forward as, “Since you’re the quarterback, I take it that I don’t need to worry about being hit.” Vio pced the can between her feet.

  And she slid her legs as close to it as she could get, the edges of her shoes propping the can up in the grass.

  “Oh,” breathed Anna, and it was only loud enough for Vio to hear, but Vio kept her eyes on David. He smiled and looked down at his own beer, grinned, and shifted his own legs closer together. “Oh.”

  “Equal footing,” he offered, and Vio giggled.

  “Sure,” she said. David briefly looked to the other girls, to Anna, who was now twisting her fingers in her thumbs, and Lucy, who was still turned to the house, , and back to her, and Vio answered the question before he could deliver it. “We live in the same dorms.”

  Good. That was good. Get out in front, be confident in who she was, outward, real. Be convincing.

  David smiled and nodded, but didn’t say anything further, and Vio swallowed very, very hard. Easy. She needed to take it easy. Slow. Vio might have the ability to drip words from her mouth, and it might be calming her a little, but a not-so-insignificant part of her was still screaming. If nothing else, she needed to stay banced. Not too much panic, not too much Vio confidence. Anna, from her left, gave her a look that said that exact thing, warning, and Vio gave her a half smile.

  Things could not spin out of control.

  David and the other boy took the darts first, and, for the first time since he had arrived, Vio fully registered that she had signed up for a game that involved someone throwing darts at her. Not only that, but she had just pushed her legs as close together as she could, an effort to… what? To dispy confidence? To rile him up? In any case, her legs were now frighteningly close to the target her was aiming for, her feet on either side, and Vio swallowed and stared at him. David grinned.

  “I’m a good shot,” he said.

  “You better be,” she said. David bobbed his hand in the air, pressing it forward as if he was going to release, practicing, and then the dart wizzed through the air, and Vio held herself deadly still, lest she move into the way of it, and squeezed her eyes shut.

  No pain.

  She opened them, and peered down at the can, now featuring the long tail of a dart. She breathed out and grinned at David, relieved. He ughed.

  “Why are you smiling?” he asked, nodding towards the can. Right. Right, this sick game wasn’t only about avoiding bodily injury. It was, ostensibly, about drinking, too. She pulled the dart from the can, smiled at David, and put her lips to the fresh puncture and drank. When she’d taken a healthy enough sip, enough beer out of the can that it wouldn’t spill from the hole, she repced it between her legs.

  Next to David, the boy across from Anna lined up his shot. Anna, who had apparently retained some sembnce of thought, spread her feet so that she would not be immediately punctured by a miss. Which was fortunate, because the boy missed, the dart nding just outside the can, right where, if Anna had been Vio, stupider and hornier, a foot would have been.

  “Close,” said Anna, picking the dart out of the grass. She gnced over at Vio.

  “Let’s see that aim,” said David, teasingly.

  “See, I’m not an athlete,” said Vio. “I never cimed to be a good shot.”

  “That sounds like an excuse,” said David. He sat back in his chair, his feet as close to the can as they had been before, and ran a hand through his hair. Vio swallowed and concentrated. She was pretty sure he was doing that on purpose. She was pretty sure that David Oliver had just run a distracting hand through his distracting hair on purpose, and that was its own can of worms that she felt dangerously close to opening, one she knew she wasn’t supposed to touch, so she concentrated on the real can. The one between his legs.

  She wasn’t a good shot. Really, she could just flub it into the grass and it would be fine. Hitting David, even if it was just a flesh wound, which it would be, because she wasn’t going to throw that hard and David’s bones were covered by so much muscle, even around his ankles, that it seemed to border on impossible to actually hit anything important, would make her feel like shit. Some random guy? Sure, no problem. Throw Cam in there and, after tonight, she might be aiming for something. But she didn’t want to hit David.

  But she wasn’t keen on missing either, because he had been so cocky about his throw, and she had been so cocky by putting feet close to the can, and she didn’t want to blink.

  Besides, she was ‘leaning in’.

  So she turned the dart over in her fingers, stared at the can, and let out a heavy breath. Fuck his confidence. David Oliver didn’t know what confidence was. He didn’t have half the confidence of Vio.

  She could hit the can.

  She wound up, breathed out one more time, and threw.

  Bullseye.

  Okay, well, it wasn’t right in the center of the can or anything, but it had nicked the edge, and that had still punctured it, so Vio was definitely counting it.

  From the side, Lucy whooped. Anna cpped. Vio smiled at David and gestured for him to pick up the beer, to dislodge it from between his feet and drink. And David did, pulling the dart from the can and drinking, his eyes never leaving Vio.

  Vio smiled at him, watching him tilt his head back, doing her best not to fidget in her chair. Warm. Everything felt warm. David repced the can between his legs and gave her a little bow, his arm sweeping in front of him, and Vio giggled.

  She watched Anna throw her dart, doing her best to keep her eyes off David, her best to maintain a hint of composure. Anna’s throw nded in the grass just in front of the boy’s can, skipping briefly. She sighed, and Vio smiled at her. Anna, for her part, gave Vio a warning look.

  And Vio ignored it.

  At the car, on the way in, Lucy had told her to have fun. And she was trying to bance having fun with the pusibility of her womanhood, and it didn’t feel like a little flirting would hurt too much. Seb would have never flirted with David, and she was supposed to be differentiating herself, wasn’t she? And she didn’t want to let David, David and his smile, his broad shoulders and his stupid, winning smile, beat her. If nothing else tonight, she wanted the memory of David Oliver losing, and, yeah, she was pretty sure that meant that she had to be a little flirty with him, but so what? That wasn’t just a bad thing. It would be fine. Everything else so far had been. And David was looking at her like that, and she was pretty sure that, all things considered, she could make him miss.

  She just had to embrace being Vio a little.

  Instead of settling her legs on either side of the can, she looped one over the other, crossing them at the knee. One leg stayed to the right, and the other hovered out in front of the can, just barely. And she started swinging her leg, back and forth and back and forth.

  In her head, the action had been intrinsically sexy. Leg swinging back and forth, David staring at it, it drifting right in front of the can. Distractingly sexy. But the second she started, it became clear to her that it was not, in fact, sexy at all. She had forgotten that knees didn’t really bend in the right was to swing side to side, so her leg was sort of just drifting around in front of the can. God, the girls in movies made it look so easy to do something like this.

  But she was committed now.

  She adjusted herself slightly in her chair and rocked her body to supplement the swing of her leg. It had to be, undoubtedly, the least sexy thing on the pnet. It wasn’t full body motion, but it was somewhere in the vicinity, and she imagined that she looked something like an oversized rocking chair, her whole body moving back and forth.

  Except those, like knees, also only went forward and backwards.

  Whatever, then, a sideways rocking chair.

  But if it was unsexy, David made no indication. He smiled at her, as if the challenge of slipping it past her swinging leg was plenty intriguing enough on it’s own merits, and twirled the dart between his fingers. Lucy made a tongue click from the side, and Vi had no idea if that was because Vi had just, somehow, ruined her womanhood or if it was the looming threat of a dart to her ankle.

  “Hold on,” said the button down boy. “That’s got to be cheating.” Vio didn’t take her eyes off David.

  “It’s moving,” she said. “He just needs to time it.” David sucked on his teeth and grinned at her. There was a glimmer in his eye.

  “Just timing,” he repeated.

  “Just timing,” she said. David twisted the dart in his hands and grinned at her.

  There was no way he would throw at her. He’d plunk it into the grass next to her, make sure that she didn’t bleed, and she’d have a free throw back. Easy.

  And if he did throw, well…

  There was no way to lose.

  Unless, of course, David really was as good as everyone said, as he thought he was.

  Vio smiled at him, doing her best to imagine that this whole thing wasn’t, in fact, hirious to look at, her whole body rocking back and forth, and David steadied himself, watching her leg, watching it move back and forth, back and forth. His hand started on the same rhythm as her leg, forward and back, in sync with her, moving as she did.

  And in the split second before he threw, Vio had the sudden realization that David Oliver as about to throw a dart at her leg.

  And then, David let go of the dart.

  And he did not plunk it the grass.

  And his timing was not correct.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, jumping from his chair. Vio cmped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from making a very unfeminine noise. She stared down at her leg, which she was still, mindlessly, swinging.

  Big ole’ dart, sticking right through her jeans, a couple inches up he ankle.

  She gasped at the sight of it.

  Immediately, Lucy had jumped from the sideline to grab her. Vio stood, in part because she didn’t know what else to do. There… there was a dart in her leg? It had always been possible, and she supposed she should’ve known that, but she had never considered the fact that there would be, at any point, an actual dart sticking out of her ankle.

  She turned to look at Anna, who had not moved from her chair. Anna, in fact, was giggling.

  “You kind of deserved that one,” she said, still giggling. Vio imagined trying to kick her in the shin, then, suddenly, re-registered that she had a fucking dart in her shin, and immediately felt queasy.

  “Bathroom,” said Lucy, quickly. “Soap and water and bandaids and- Anna, stop ughing.” Anna was covering her mouth, poorly concealing her giggles.

  “Sorry,” said David, and Vio looked up at him and blinked. She ran back through her mind and remembered that David had thrown the dart. Which was a hirious thing to have forgotten, since it hadn’t even been ten seconds.

  “She pyed the game,” said Anna, sing song. “Really, David, if you weren’t so-”

  “Anna!” snapped Lucy, and Anna giggled again.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said, standing from her chair. She looked at the boy still seated. “Um, draw?” The boy snorted and waved her off, and Anna turned to join Lucy, who was trying to support Vio, even as…

  Well, the dart didn’t hurt that bad. Beyond the initial shock, it really didn’t hurt at all. She was a little worried about the age of the thing and the potential for contracting tetanus or whatever, but that was a Saturday problem. And Lucy was trying to support her weight, which made her giggle, because she was standing and she was standing just fine.

  And, now that she had settled herself, Vio remembered the payment that came from drawing blood. David was still standing, wearing a sort of apologetic expression on his face, one that hadn’t fully overtaken the flirtatious one he had been wearing seconds before. Vio bit back a grin.

  “You have to finish that,” she said, nodding at the beer between his feet. Lucy tugged on her arm.

  “Oh, god,” she said, and Vio took a step with her. David’s face broke from apologetic, and the glimmer in his eye returned.

  “I haven’t seen blood yet,” he said.

  “Oh, god,” repeated Lucy. “David, I promise there will be blood. Vio, can I please excise the fucking dart from your leg?” Vio kept watching David, smiling.

  “Drink,” she ordered. For a long second, David hesitated, his eyes tracing her, and Vio did her best to stay tall, even as a stinging pain started to settle in her ankle. And then, without breaking eye contact, David bent, picked up his can, put it to his lips, and finished. And Vio, with a final passing smile to him, let Lucy drag her away from the scene and back into the house, Anna giggling in tow behind them, whispering something that sounded distinctly like ‘way better than beer die’.

  * * * * *

  Vio was giggling too by the time Lucy had gotten her to the kitchen sink. The bathroom line had been too long, and no one had seemed concerned enough to let them through, so Vio was ft against the cabinets in the kitchen, fully sitting on the counter, her leg in the sink.

  How could she not ugh at this? How could she not ugh at this of all things, even as her leg was starting to go from a smarting pain to an aching one, even as Lucy pulling the dart elicited a yelp from her? It was just so weird. It was so fucking weird and Vio couldn’t have imagined a night like this in a million years, and she certainly couldn’t have imagined a night like this just two weeks ago, and it was hirious.

  “You really shouldn’t have done that,” said Lucy, shaking her head. She was running the water now, and Vio gasped at the cold. “You really, really should not have done that with him.” It was only half scolding. Hard to scold a girl who has a hole in her ankle, apparently. Anna grabbed Vio’s hand and grinned at her.

  “You really shouldn’t have,” she agreed. And then, after a beat. “But oh my god.” Vio giggled and squeezed her hand.

  “I know,” she said.

  “The legs?”

  “I know.”

  “The hair thing?”

  “I know.”

  “The eye contact?”

  “I know.” Vio couldn’t believe it had happened. She had forgotten herself completely, forgotten who she was underneath, what she was underneath, and she had just been Vio. Confident, flirty, forward Vio.

  And, dear god, the way that David had reacted to Vio gave her shivers. She was still reeling from the vision of him. The white t-shirt and the blue jeans and god he was fucking sexy. And the way he had turned to her, seen her, looked at her.

  And, yeah, he had thrown a dart in her leg, but honest to god it was worth it.

  “That boy wants you,” said Anna, giggling. Lucy, now wiping little bits of blood from Vio’s ankle, frowned up at the pair of them.

  “This was supposed to be low profile,” she said. “What this was not supposed to be was a chance for Vio to flirt and get fucking noticed by the one person we don’t want her getting noticed by!” Anna swatted the air.

  “Oh, but the attention was so delicious,” she said, and Vio giggled. Lucy scowled.

  “You’re both drunk,” she said. “And in the morning-”

  “Don’t talk about the morning,” said Anna, covering her ears, and Vio ughed harder. Anna grinned at her. “Can’t we just celebrate a win?” Lucy gred at the pair of them, and then stuck a bandaid onto Vio’s ankle.

  “It’s not a win,” said Lucy. “Vio can’t be flirting with him.”

  “I wasn’t flirting with him,” said Vio, innocently. Lucy’s gre became more severe, and Anna ughed.

  “Literally, shut up,” said Lucy, and Anna ughed harder.

  “Babe, you were, like, falling over yourself,” said Anna.

  “Vi, he’s not stupid, you’re-” Anna stuck out a hand, and Lucy fell silent. They were both looking back towards the door. Vio, her ankle still in the sink, swiveled.

  Well, it wasn’t a long walk from the side of the house to the kitchen.

  “I came to check for blood,” said David, standing in the doorway. He looked a little less cocky now, a little more bashful, but he was still all Bruce. Blue jeans and white t shirt and sweaty hair. Vio couldn’t hold the smile. David grinned back. “And, well, and to say sorry.”

  “Not necessary,” said Lucy, quickly. Anna bat her on the arm, looped her own arm into Lucy’s, and started pulling. Lucy, though, rooted herself to the spot. “No, she needs- Anna, she needs medical attention.”

  “She does not,” said Anna. “She doesn’t need medical attention.” Lucy gred at her, and Anna burst into giggles. Vio blushed, and, in the doorway, she could swear that David was blushing, too.

  “Stay,” said Vio gently to the pair of them. Even with all of it, the wooziness that was coming from either the loss of blood or the sight of David Oliver, Vio wasn’t stupid enough to be left alone with him. God, there wasn’t a world where she could even manage herself pying some dumb game with darts. If it was just him and her, her with her ankle in the sink, bleeding like a wounded little mb, David standing next to her, his hand slipping down her thigh, around her waist, his lips pressing down against- “Stay.”

  Lucy breathed what Vio could only interpret as the least subtle sigh of relief she’d ever heard. Anna, on the other hand, looked put out, and Vio made a mental note to remind her ter that this whole thing was, in fact, insane, and she could not be left alone in a room with David Oliver. Vio did not have the self control for that.

  And David Oliver, still posted in the doorway, still looking sort of bashful, stared at her with his big, pretty eyes, and ran a distracting hand through his distracting hair, and Vio didn’t even think the words before they came tumbling out of her mouth.

  “You too.”

  Trouble. Oh, trouble. Lucy let out a second, heavier breath, and Vio made a note to, in the same conversation that she scolded Anna in, apologize profusely to Lucy for being a complete, unmitigated disaster.

  And then kick herself in the shin.

  And then, David smiled at her, and Vio’s whole body felt a bit lighter. Massively lighter, actually. She felt like she could float right out of the sink and into his arms.

  “Right,” said Lucy, the voice of a girl who had no idea how to wrangle this situation but was well aware that she, in fact, might the only person who could. “Well, um, right. Maybe… David, do you want to find a pce for us to sit? And I… I can finish up with her.” David looked for second like he would resist being sent away, but he smiled and nodded.

  “There’s couches in the other room,” he offered. “She can rest her ankle.”

  “Great,” said Lucy, waving him off and deliberately crowding around her. Then, in a low voice, “He’s acting like you can’t walk.” Vio giggled as David disappeared over her shoulder. And Lucy gave her a very stern look.

  “I’m sorry,” said Vio.

  “God, he likes you,” said Anna. “Oh, he likes you.” Lucy closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Anna, can you find Margot? Maybe she’s still sober.” Anna giggled and, after squeezing Vi’s hand one more time and waggling her eyebrows, bounced out of the room. Lucy returned her stern gre to Vio.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Vio, only a little sorry.

  “Thin ice, missy,” said Lucy, waggling a finger. “He’s going to try to make a move on you.” Vio didn’t know how to emphasize how overjoyed she would be with that kind of outcome without being dragged into the street by Lucy immediately.

  “I’ll be good,” she promised, putting on her most prim voice. “No boys.” Lucy slumped her shoulders and grinned.

  “Babe,” she said, and Vio giggled.

  “He likes me,” she said.

  “Babe!” Lucy took a hold of her wrist. “You need to remember to be careful. He doesn’t know that, you know, you’re not only Vio.” Vio grinned. Because, fuck, she wasn’t even sure that was true.

  But the point stood, and Vio nodded.

  “I promise, I won’t sit next to him,” she said, and Lucy gave her a relieved look.

  “Okay,” she said. Lucy returned to her leg, wiping bits of blood away with a towel. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “You sound like my mother,” said Vio, giggling, and Lucy grinned at her.

  “Well, god, Vi, someone has to be.”

  * * * * *

  Vio kept her promise. She settled on the couch next to Lucy, who sat forcefully between the pair of them, the three of them facing a set of frat boys pying beer pong with rapturous fervor. But Vio had, in the end, managed to find a little way to get contact with David, and she was stretched out over the length of the couch, her ankle draped into David’s p.

  That wasn’t breaking the rules, was it? No, no, totally acceptable to have her foot in his p, and totally acceptable for her to be keeping it inappropriately high on his thigh.

  Vio was certain that Lucy had a scolding prepared in her head already for the Uber. She looked it, at least.

  David, for his part, looked completely at ease. In fact, he seemed tickled to be away from the rest of the party, even as people continued to come up to him for chats. Even more than Lucy and Anna, who had batted away suitors with manicured hands, David had to keep smiling and sending people on their way.

  “Do you not hate it?” asked Vio, after David had dapped up a third frat brother and summarily dismissed him. David gnced over at her. The whole time, he’d had a sort of gentle warmth that she hadn’t expected. Even now, even after everything, he was just… David. Even at this party, where everything felt overwhelming and atrociously so, David was still the same person. Not weird around her, and not so different than he had been around Seb.

  He was a little different, but it was the right kind of different. The good kind. The kind that involved him stealing little gnces at her, gnces she was all too happy to accept.

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t come to parties all that often,” he said. “So I’m due for a little bit of unwanted attention.” Vio frowned.

  “You went with them the other week,” she said. David gave her a little smile, and Lucy gred at her. Oh. Right, privileged information. She hadn’t been there. “Word travels,” she supplied. David turned his attention back to the beer pong table.

  “Well, it is easier now than in the fall,” he said. “And I have some bad influences for friends.” Vio nodded.

  “Cam,” she offered. David gave her a look.

  “Do you think I’m friends with Cam?” he asked. Vi frowned.

  “Well, you came over-” Lucy gave her another very, very severe look, and Vio swallowed. Too much alcohol. “You all went to a party together, didn’t you?” David was looking at her with increased bemusement, and Vio felt her face run hot. God. He probably thought she was some kind of stalker fan.

  Or, worse, Seb.

  But he would have said something by now, surely, if she’d been caught.

  Besides, he didn’t even know Seb had been in the room!

  Calm down Vio, calm down.

  “Cam…” David leaned back on the couch and frowned. “How do I describe Cam?”

  “Dick,” muttered Lucy. Vi giggled. David grinned.

  “Well,” he said, “something like that.” He shrugged. “We’re teammates, is all.” He paused, as if he was considering the next words more carefully. “I mostly came to see Seb that night.” Vi blinked. She… what? He had acted like he didn’t know. He had acted like, when he walked in the room, he had no idea that Margot was her friend, that any of them were her friends. That didn’t make sense.

  “But,” she started, and Lucy gave her the most damning, ‘please stop burying yourself’ look yet, and Vi revised the sentence. “Right. Right, well… Seb’s great.” David gave her another half bemused look, and then turned his attention back to the game of pong being pyed.

  “Agreed,” he said. Okay, she needed to not be talking about ‘Seb’. Bad idea. Very bad idea. The kind of thing that led to a fit of giggles. Recover.

  “We don’t like Cam either,” she said, matter of factly.

  “I’d gathered that,” said David.

  “He’s just not very nice,” she said. She felt incredibly stupid putting it like that, but, well, how else was she supposed to put it, other than ‘dick’. The words had sounded nice coming out of her mouth, though.

  “Is he bad to Margot?” asked David, interest piqued. Vi shared a look with Lucy. She wasn’t actually sure about that. Lucy shook her head.

  “He’s garden variety,” she said. Vi and David shared a look on that one. Lucy ughed. “He’s just very football star.”

  “Star’s a stretch,” said David. Lucy snorted and Vi giggled. It was so out of character for him to be catty about someone. She loved it.

  “Bitchy about your own teammates?” asked Vi. “That feels, like, inappropriate.”

  “Well, I’m already on the hook for stabbing a girl with a dart, so I figured now was the time to double down.” Vi shifted her leg, just a tiny bit, just to remind him she was there.

  As if he wasn’t staring right at her, his deep brown eyes digging into hers. As if he was forgetting. As if.

  “Anything else you want to get off your chest?” asked Vi. “Any other teammates that need sndering? Maybe a coach?” David screwed up his face and ran a finger through his hair.

  “Gosh, well, there’s just so many people I would love to talk shit about,” he said. “Coaches, teammates, trainers. There’s even this ballboy…”

  “Not a ballboy,” said Vio, in mock surprise. “Surely not the ballboys?” She put a hand to her heart, and was nearly startled to find her breast. Soldier on. “Is there no sacred profession on the football team?” David sighed.

  “Only quarterback,” he said. Vio giggled.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I’ve heard the quarterback does some very dick-ish things, too.”

  “Is that right?” asked David. Vio wiggled her ankle on his p.

  “He injured me,” she said.

  “I heard he’s profusely sorry,” said David. Vi smiled at him.

  “Well, he knows where to find me,” she said. Lucy gave her a look, but Vio ignored it. Sorta. Probably best not to egg him on.

  Probably.

  “Should I have a fruit basket delivered?” asked David. “I can have one of my ckeys drop it off.”

  “Lackeys?”

  “They’re a sort of underling,” said David.

  “I knew that,” giggled Vio. “It was more the idea that you have ckeys.” Lucy shifted beneath her. Vio could feel the stern gre against her skin.

  But David was still looking at her. Smiling at her, actually. He was doing a lot of that.

  “They’ll be more than happy to drop something off at your dorm,” said David. Vio giggled again. Lucy breathed out through her nose, clearly more exasperation than ughter.

  And yeah, okay, that was a stupid bit, and Vio knew that was a stupid bit, but he was pitching her stupid bits! David Oliver! And he sorta, kinda did that to Seb too, but he reacted so differently when Vi giggled, and it was all so…

  God, she was such a cliche.

  “Save the fruit,” she said. “It’ll go bad, and I don’t eat enough of it.” David shifted beneath her foot. His hands were really, really not all that far from…

  Vio had a sudden, btant realization.

  There was no way that David knew what Seb’s shoes looked like, was there? Same sneakers, the same ones she wore to css and on the quad and literally everywhere. And now they were resting on his p, and that wouldn’t be a problem, would it? Surely not. She couldn’t pick his out of a lineup. She couldn’t pick anyone’s out of a lineup, excepting, perhaps, Margot, who managed to have the most darling collection of Mary Janes-

  So not the point.

  Did they make Mary Janes in men’s nines?

  “Well, maybe I can make it up another way,” offered David. That jolted Vio back to the conversation. There was forward, and then there was forward, and that was the tter. Capital F Forward. The kind that, if the romance novels were to be believed, preceded excessive kissing and being touched in pces that would make Vio’s blood run hot.

  Except, looking at David, he seemed to border on oblivious to just how forward he was. He was looking with earnestness, and he had said it with earnestness, too, and maybe he had just meant a box of chocotes instead of fruit.

  Lucy, however, looking like she might chew her lip clean off her face, had not missed the undertone. She gred at Vi.

  Vio giggled.

  She was doing a lot of that right now.

  “I think I’d rather just hold the I.O.U,” she said. “I can save it for a rainy day!”

  “I’m not sure I like the idea of being in debt to you,” said David

  “Should’ve had better aim,” said Vio, sweetly. She bat her eyeshes for good measure. Lucy pinched the underside of her thigh. “Ow!” David gave the pair of them another long, bemused eyebrow raise, and Vi felt Lucy readying for another pinch.

  Flirting deterrence?

  She already had a hole in her leg. What was another pinch?

  As if she could read her thoughts, Lucy gave her a gentler, smaller pinch, and gred. Vi let out a heavy sigh.

  “David, do you have incredibly nosey friends?” Lucy narrowed her eyes at her, and then David.

  “Careful,” she muttered at him, and David ughed.

  “My friends don’t normally sit between me and…” he trailed off, and Vi grinned.

  “You and what, David?” Lucy’s fingers were itching for a pinch. Vi could feel it. David ran a hand through his hair and smiled.

  “Me and girls,” he said, and he nded emphasis on girls. Not just girls. Girls. Capital G. Vi bat her eyeshes again, and Lucy sighed.

  “The death of me,” she whispered, slipping it under her breath. She checked her phone, frowned, and settled it next to her. Vi grinned.

  “Somewhere to be?” she asked. Lucy gave her a look and shook her head.

  “I don’t know where Anna is,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have sent her off alone.” Vio frowned and stared out over the crowd. Anna had not returned, and there was still no sighting of Cam or Margot. Vi gnced to David, who turned his own attention to the crowd.

  “Against code?” asked Vio, softly. Lucy nodded.

  “A little,” she whispered. Vi’s fault. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in everything, and if she hadn’t needed so much care and concern, Lucy could have gone with.

  “Go find her,” murmured Vio. Lucy gave her massive side eye.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re in more trouble here than she is.” David, turning his head from the crowd, grinned at the pair of them.

  “Why would she be in trouble?” Lucy closed her eyes and grimaced.

  “Private conversation, David,” she said. Vi bit her lip and giggled. Lucy steadied herself, hands on p. “Anna’s fine. She’ll… she’ll find Margot and come right back.”

  But, after five minutes of sitting on the couch, five minutes of David and Vio talking across Lucy’s p, conversation that Vi found easy and calm, calmer than she had expected, especially given, well, everything, Anna still hadn’t returned. And as Lucy started to get antsier, Vio did too.

  It was easy to forget where she was. At the beginning of it all, it had been near impossible, but her mind had adjusted. And, sure, they weren’t on the dance floor, and David happened to be soaking up just about all of the attention that Vio could potentially receive, but she was remembering now. She was remembering the conversation in the bathroom, and she was remembering what it was like to look one of the guys in the eye, one of the guys who wasn’t David, and she was remembering just how careful they were supposed to be.

  Very. Very careful.

  And Anna was out in the party alone, and, well, Vio wouldn’t have even known to be freaked until she realized Lucy was. And that made her feel like a terrible, terrible friend.

  “Okay,” said David, and he shifted beneath her leg. “Let’s go find her.” Lucy gnced at him.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured. David shook his head.

  “It’s easy,” he said. Then, he smiled at them, and Vi felt her stomach turn again. She knew it wasn’t supposed to be a flirty smile, that it was just supposed to be reassuring, but, somehow, that still made her stomach feel like it had been rattled in a soda bottle.

  “We… we can find her,” said Lucy. David raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m six foot five,” he offered. Lucy blinked back at Vio, who gave her a little smile.

  “It’d help,” she said. Lucy gave her another look, one that was very much ‘stop finding ways to drag him along, please’, but also ‘six foot five is a ridiculous height to be’, and Vi made a mental note to ask her how she expressed so much over so little.

  “Alright,” said Lucy, pushing back Vio’s leg, breaking, for the first time in at least fifteen minutes, the skin to skin contact with David that Vi had been treasuring. “Alright, let’s go.”

  And it was only once Vio spun her body so that she could stand that she remembered why her ankle had been in David’s p.

  “Ooooh,” she said, hobbling back onto one leg. It wasn’t sharp pain. Dull pain. God, if David had given her tetanus, or if he had nicked an artery or something, she would never forgive him.

  Okay, not true, but there would be penance.

  “Okay,” said David, pcing a hand on her waist, snaking it around. “Alright.” Warmth pooled in her belly at his touch.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured, but she swung an arm over his shoulder for support. Lucy gave the pair of them a very disapproving look. Vi grimaced. She was trying! Really! She hadn’t, even for a second, asked for him to put his arm around her waist. That was something he did all on his own, thank you! On his own accord!

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said David. His hand really wasn’t doing very much on account of the difference in their height – David was simply going to have to lean too far down to actually give her support – but Vio couldn’t have less desire to compin about it. And, for all of Lucy’s protestations, she seemed fine to let the pair hobble through the party together.

  Lucy led the way, occasionally peering back to check on them, but mostly just trying to push through the crowd. She, all five foot three of her, was a battering ram, and David and Vi followed in her wake.

  “Do you think she’s alright?” asked Vio, really to neither of them in particur. There was a collecting basin of dread in her brain. It peeled all of the bad thoughts in the world, all the bad potentialities, and held them right over everything. If something was wrong with Anna, none of this mattered. None of this. Not David, not her in the wig, nothing. If somehow, her stupid, stupid need to dress as Vio, to be Vio, had put Anna in real, actual danger, Vio might never recover.

  “She’ll be okay,” said David. He was looking down at her, and Vio felt her stomach turn, and that made her feel worse, because she really should be focused right now. Her body rebelling, a constant theme. But David’s hand was gentle on her waist, and he was guiding her forward, and that made her insides knot.

  Out into the yard, where the crowd had, somehow, managed to grow in size since Vi had st seen it. Hundreds of people, many dancing to a much more sporting song, less electronic, more pop, and more surrounding the edges of the party. And, among them, there were at least forty girls that matched the kind of description you could give of Anna, all of them wearing the same, uniformed clothes as everyone else.

  Okay, well, there were slight variations; not all the girls were blondes, and some of them were wearing different shades of top, and a few of them were quite a bit taller than Anna. Vi suspected that they, too, were some shade of athlete.

  Being an athlete and a pretty girl had to get you some kind of award at a frat party.

  Lucy pushed through, past a pair of the tall women, and David mouthed a sort of apology as they passed, and the girls grinned at him. And Vi, despite her best efforts, felt her stomach twist further.

  “Oh,” said David, tilting his head. “Oh, I see her.” Lucy wheeled back to face him. David nodded forward. “She’s been adopted.”

  Lucy started pushing forward further, and Vi quickly came to understand what David had meant by ‘adopted’. Anna was leaning against the fence that ringed the yard, and there were no less than six girls around her, one of whom was very intentionally feeding her water. And one of those girls was Margot. No Cam in sight. Lucy breathed a heavy sigh and hurried up to her. Vi squeezed David’s shoulder.

  “Good eye,” she said. David grinned.

  “I’m very perceptive,” he said. Vio untangled herself from David so she could join Lucy, who had taken over the water bottle.

  “Okay,” Lucy was saying. Anna seemed well and truly out of it. Her eyes were fluttering, and she was swaying slowly. “Okay, too much to drink tonight, huh?” One of the girls, pretty with a heavily stained white top, something Vi assumed signified ‘rookie’, took Anna’s arm to stop her from swaying.

  “She was fine a minute ago,” she said, softly. “Well, not fine. Not fine, just, like, not like this.” Lucy seemed entirely unperturbed by the revetion. Vi gave her a look.

  “She’s a very steady drunk,” said Lucy. “Until she’s not. It’s like- whoa, easy,” Anna had wobbled, and she wobbled forward into Lucy’s arm. “Okay, Uber time.” Margot grinned at Vi, her eyes sliding up to David and back to her. Vi gave her a look.

  “What happened to you?” asked Margot. Vi remembered that she was half hopping on a single foot; she was being dramatic, but whatever.

  “The men at this party are horrible,” she said, and David ughed behind her. Margot gave her a second, more biting look, and Vio giggled. “I’ll expin ter.”

  “You sure will,” she said. Anna, her eyes gzed, looked to Lucy and then to David and then to Vi.

  “You two like each other,” she said, and the ck of slurring surprised Vi. Lucy gave her a wide eyed look, and Anna giggled. “They do! You know, I never really thought that, well-”

  “Okay!” said Lucy, very loudly, wheeling herself under Anna’s shoulder. The girls who had been helping Anna giggled, and Vi felt her face burn. “Okay, we’ll just go out to the curb to wait.”

  Lucy gestured for Margot to take Anna’s other shoulder, Margot slipped herself under Anna’s arm. And Vi started in their wake, following the two girls supporting the slumped one, out through the party, which cleared for them. Bodies and eyes and pressure, through it all, back towards the gate.

  And it was only when she’d taken twenty five steps, twenty five long ones, pushing through the crowd, alcohol swimming in her brain, that she realized she had just left David without a word.

  She turned to look for him, to say… well, to say goodbye.

  In her brain, she knew she shouldn’t say goodbye. Saying goodbye was the kind of thing that lead to a kiss, the kind of thing that begged for a phone number to be exchanged, and it really hadn’t been all that long ago that he’d stuck her with a dart. But she liked interacting with David as Vio. No, that wasn’t right.

  She loved interacting with David as Vio. And now, now that the night was coming to an end, almost over, almost time for Vio to go back in the box, back in the box that David could never, ever see again, she had a horrible, horrible bout of regret.

  She should have done something. Said goodbye. Said thank you.

  She should have kissed him.

  But David had disappeared into the crowd, and they were out past the gate, out onto the street, out into the warm South Carolina night, and the opportunity to make supremely stupid decisions, something Vio felt a certain expertise in at this point, was gone.

  “Okay, two minutes,” said Lucy. Anna lowered towards the curb, and Lucy tugged her arm. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m not spending ten minutes trying to get you into the car.” Anna made something between a grunt and a cough.

  “I’m not that drunk,” she said, and now the slurring had arrived. Lucy rolled her eyes and turned on Margot and Vi.

  “Are you guys staying the night?” she asked. Vi gnced down at herself, at the tits and the crop and, well, everything, and then raised an eyebrow at Lucy. What, was she supposed to go tuck into bed in the same room as Danny Evans? Just stroll in, wig on, and act like this wasn’t entirely the most ridiculous thing that had ever happened? Lucy grinned at her. “Yeah, okay that question was more for Margot.”

  “Well, it seems like there’s quite the debrief on the cards,” she said, gncing at Vi and grinning. Lucy let out a sigh.

  “Yes,” she said. “And a bit of scolding.” Margot raised an eyebrow. “Vi’s been flirting.”

  “That’s not true,” said Vio in the least convincing voice she could muster. Exact same voice she’d used to deny her crush on Seb.

  Of course, that one had actually been a lie, so the results were a little different. Margot giggled.

  “Well, I’d gathered that,” she said. “I was more thinking about the whole limp situation.” Anna put a bit more weight onto Lucy, who dipped to hold her.

  “Same story,” said Lucy, grimacing. “And- ah, fuck.” She was gring over Vio’s shoulder, back at the house. “Does he just follow you around?”

  Vio turned.

  David had just emerged from the gate, his eyes peering across the wn. When he caught sight of the four of them, he started over immediately. And Lucy, still beleaguered by the weight of Anna slumped on her shoulder, could not stop Vio from stepping back towards the house to talk to him.

  Stupid. Dumb. The exact kind of thing she could not be doing.

  God, but he was so pretty.

  Besides, she’d already made a mess of things, hadn’t she? They were already so deep down the rabbit hole, so far that she could not see the sunlight above her. What was another few steps down?

  “Hi,” she said, now about halfway up the wn. He was smiling over her shoulder. For the briefest of moments, Vi considered that he might not be there to see her.

  Then, he looked back to her, his eyes soft and gentle, and she didn’t care why he was on the wn.

  “Anna left her phone,” said David. He held out his hand, and Vi took a moment to appreciate that, really, phones weren’t supposed to look like that in hands. It looked tiny. She imagined his hands snaking around her waist again, imagined them falling down her back, falling further… “Vio.” Vi jumped.

  “Oh,” she said. He held out the phone again, and Vio took it. And lingered, for just a second, with her fingers on his. “Thanks.”

  “Sure,” said David.

  They were still touching. David hadn’t released the phone, and she hadn’t pulled her hand away, and now the tips of her fingers were resting right at the point where his palm turned to wrist.

  “I’m gd you came tonight,” said David. Vio barely heard the words. Inconsequential. She was looking at his lips. They weren’t all that far from hers, and his body wasn’t all that far from hers, and whatever words were coming out of his mouth didn’t matter in the slightest. There was all the alcohol and the sweat and the perfume that Lucy had poured on her before they left, and her brain was going a little light, but she could swear he was leaning towards her.

  She could swear he was here to kiss her. She could swear.

  “Me too,” she murmured.

  “I’m sorry about your leg,” he said. Vi giggled.

  “It’ll heal,” she said. He leaned. He definitely leaned. She leaned, too. She hemmed her body forward, towards him, just a tiny bit, a little bit. Just a tiny, tiny breach.

  She was too focused to hear whatever it was he said next. Too focused on him, too overwhelmed by the ever fuzzy feeling in her brain and between her legs, too drunk. He was saying something, and his lips were moving, and she was staring at his lips, but she didn’t hear a word.

  It was inches. Just inches. She tipped her chip up. All she had to do was…

  “Vi!” That she heard. That she heard. His lips weren’t moving. Vi closed her eyes and pretended not to hear Lucy. “Vi-oh-h!” One more second. One more second more. One more second more and she was certain they could have…

  David pulled away, his lips retreating to his higher height, and Vi did her best not to literally defte on the wn of Sigma Pi.

  “Your friends,” said David, his voice a little hoarse, nodding over her shoulder, his face still inches from hers. She tilted her chin back down and let out a heavy breath.

  “Well,” she started, with no end in mind. “I, um… I’ll see you.” I’ll see you?? Oh, god. David smiled at her, and her brain went a little fuzzy again, and he nodded.

  “Sure,” he said. He gnced over her shoulder and waved to the trio of girls Vi was certain was staring daggers at the pair of them. “I’ll, well…” He grinned. “I’ll see you.”

  “Right.” And Vio, acquiescing to the fact that she could not live on the wn of Sigma Pi, gave him one final look, one final once over, and turned and walked, as steady as she could, to the now waiting Uber, which featured one stern face, one giddy face, and one already consumed by sleep.