In Waves | ✔️

50 | pushed

When we stumble into the first unlocked room we find, the privacy of it instantly puts me at ease. The only source of light comes from a lamp on the bedside nightstand, and Matt is a moth to a flame, guiding us as he paws at my dress. He swiftly hoists me up and throws me on the bed, but my giggles are cut short when a crack sounds.

"You broke my wing!"

"Shit, my bad." He delicately slides the straps from my shoulders, shedding the feathery wings. "Maybe it's for the better. How much of an innocent angel are you really?"

He brushes his lips along the curve of my shoulder and I forget all about my costume, helping him get his clunky one off instead. The knight armor falls right on top of my wings and I know they caused even more damage, but he's shifting me up the bed, not giving me the chance to mourn them.

I travel over his fiery skin, every muscle I touch tensing under my palms. He's kissing me so deeply it's as if he's sucking the air out of me. I'm suffocating under his mouth, under his body moving over mine, his knee pushing apart my legs, his fingers lightly settled on my neck. I don't register how far he's going until his hips are pushing against mine and he's tugging his pants lower. 

I panic and heave him off, clamping my legs shut. "Matt what the hell! You know... you know I'm not ready!"

He's panting, blinking at me.

"Did you seriously think I'd sleep with you for the first time—my first time—at some random party? Are you kidding me?"

"I'm sorry, okay? I just got caught up. I told you it would happen."

"So it's my fault you can't control yourself."

"I didn't say it's your fault." He crawls over to me pressed against the headboard, holding my cheeks. "You're just... you're so fucking beautiful that it makes me stupid, you know? Like I'm on autopilot or something. I'm sorry, baby."

I'm so tense that my bones could be congealed in concrete. Matt gently presses his lips to mine, and he doesn't give up until my jaw relaxes under his fingers. I kiss him back tentatively, summing it up to the booze in his veins, heating him from the inside. Driving him over the edge. And then his fingers are weaving into my hair, and I feel him shifting gears, gradually pushing my head down toward his crotch.

"God, you're unbelievable!" I shove him away, swinging my legs off the bed.

"It's not like it's sex! What, are you just gonna leave me with blue balls?"

I snatch up my wings and head for the door. "You have a perfectly functional hand, don't you? Problem solved."

It's a miracle to find an empty bathroom at busy party like this, so I don't hesitate to slip inside to recompose myself. I absentmindedly wash my hands, feeling their unsteadiness under the water. I can't decide if I'm more annoyed or upset or shaken up.

Five more seconds of being under his spell and it would have been irreversible. No protection, no warning, no thought. And then to remedy it with an apology and an attempt for me to go down on him?

I rip a towel off the rack and wipe my hands dry. We had to have our first fight at some point, but the fact that it was about something he knows is so important to me, something he seemed to understand only for it to be thrown out the window in drunken impulse. It cuts right into my gut.

Seeing this inconsiderate side to Matt tonight is something I never thought I'd face with him, not even if he was wasted beyond comprehension. It's a side I never want to be around again.

Harsh pounding on the door snaps me out of thought.

"Occupied." I barely get the word out before the door swings open and Alex barges in.

Her raging sight is set on me, like she knew I was in here. Like she's finally found her prey. "You must be happy, Lia."

I skim over her Max Mayfield costume from Stranger Things. With the way she's glaring at me, I'm half expecting her to clobber me in the head with the skateboard she's holding.

"Happy about what?"

"About Nate dumping me. What else?"

The towel almost slips from my fingers. "He did?"

Her eyebrows pinch in the middle. "Don't act so shocked. I know you got him to do it. We were good, he was happy, and you're the only one he seems to listen to nowadays, and suddenly he's done."

All the emotion from what happened in that bedroom has been simmering in my pit, and Alex might as well have taken a flamethrower to it. I boil over.

"You're right, Alex, he looked so deliriously happy when you were biting his head off at the beach!" I fling the towel aside, my voice bouncing off the tiles. "Ever consider he ended it with you because you cheated on him? All I did was remind him of what you did. But sure, blame me for destroying whatever you had before you chose to fuck that college guy!"

Her eyes look like they're about to pop out of her skull. "You think I don't regret cheating on him? You think it was fun for me, hurting him? I regret it every single day, Lia! And I'm not making excuses, but it was different back then, all right? He was different."

"Less than a year ago," I scoff. "I'm sure it was so wildly different that cheating on him was totally valid."

"I'm not saying it was valid, but Nate..." Her eyes shut, and she's breathing in such a controlled way I think she's holding back tears. Seeing her soften is throwing me for a loop. "The Nate you know now isn't the same Nate I dated. He was in the beginning, but... just ask him about San Diego. Ask him why he transferred here, what happened back there."

"I know he lost his dad. I know he almost died from the shark attack."

Alex tiredly shakes her head, like she feels sorry for me. "You don't know anything."

She lifts the headphones hanging around her neck and drops them over her ears, turning on the spot. I watch the space she left until someone else knocks and insists their bladder is going to burst. I rush out of there, past the room where I left Matt, down the stairs where I left Nate. But he's not by the punch bowl, and I'm too determined on finding him to question why Rachel and Blake are bickering in a corner with Harris nowhere in sight.

I slide open the door to the backyard and spot Nate having a smoke, standing with seniors I don't know. His sloppy costume is less than a costume than it was before, with his bandana now acting as a necklace. I take him by the arm and draw him away from the group.

"Hey, Juliet." He smiles, tucking his lighter behind his ear. Lost in his hair forever. "Shouldn't you be on a balcony calling out for your sweet, sweet Romeo?"

"Why did you transfer here?"

"What?" His smile wavers for a second.

"You told me you transferred at the end of sophomore year, but you never told me why. Alex said something happened in San Diego. Is that true?"

The color drains out of him so fast his skin looks translucent.

"Nate?"

He holds my gaze with shining eyes before he blinks away, flicking his cigarette to the ground and grinding it out. "Is it cool if we leave? I want to show you something."

I glance around the yard, relieved I don't see Matt. But I wouldn't stay even if I did see him.

"Yeah. Let's go."

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