Love in Slow Motion

32. Reed

32 REED

5 years ago

I glance over the dressed-up heads of all the partygoers to make sure that Quinn is still right where I left her. She’s watching me, leaning up against the wall in her little skeleton costume.

She’s cute as shit.

I know she’s nervous about flirting with a guy at a party—as she should be—so when I grab a cup, I meet her eye and turn it over to shake it out. I promise I’m not slipping you anything , I want to say, but it’s my first instinct to make it a joke. I don’t even know why. I want her to trust me. I would never hurt this girl—or any girl—but I know she doesn’t know that. I show her my hands, knowing full well that she’s putting a lot of faith in me. She can’t see everything I’m doing from way over there. She has to trust I wouldn’t take advantage.

When she smiles, my stomach goes all bubbly. She has a beautiful smile, and it’s making me nervous.

My hands shake as I pour her a drink. I can’t remember the last time a girl made me nervous. As shitty as it sounds, I figured out pretty young that I have something girls want. I get that I look good by most people’s standards. “Classically handsome,” my mother always says. I’ve never had to fight to get a girl to kiss me or go on a date with me or sleep with me. College has pretty much offered me a smorgasbord.

But that’s definitely done something to my head, the knowledge that if one girl doesn’t want me, I can just go for another. And it’s never really bothered me. I’ve always liked the girls I’ve gone for, and I might have even been in love with a girl I dated in high school, the girl I lost my virginity to.

But it’s been a while since I worried so much about whether or not a girl liked me. Not just wanted me. I know tons of girls at this party who would let me take them back to my room, but it would just be for a night, and most of them wouldn’t care if I was a good guy or a bad guy, if I was funny or kind or any of that. Just that I look good and could make a girl come.

Which I do and I can.

“Hey, Reed.” I’m not sure when Mariana approached, her face painted like a butterfly. I smile at her because Mariana is nice and because she loaned me her Econ notes when I had to miss class because I had the flu.

“Hey, Mariana. Love the face paint.”

“Thanks. I was going to come as a boring, straight white guy, but then I heard you’d already planned your costume, and I didn’t want to step on any toes.”

I laugh, throwing my head back. Mariana has always been funny and fully not interested in my shit. I open my mouth to answer, but just then, someone else approaches on my other side.

“Reed, pour me a drink?”

“Cass, hey.” I bend down to hug Cassie, who I slept with once last year and who has since become a good friend. She’s dressed like a pirate, the costume hugging her curves in a way that tells me she’s not planning on leaving this party alone. “Doing okay?”

“Sure. Hey, do you know that guy who sits in front of me in Humanities?”

I screw off the top of a bottle of vodka, knowing that screwdrivers are Cassie’s thing. “I think his name is Mark?”

She leans against the counter and grins up at me. “Think you could put in a good word for me?”

I chuckle. “Oh, I see. You’ve moved on to greener pastures. What is he, like, six-three?”

“Six-four,” Mariana whispers from my other side.

They start talking about how good they’ve heard Mark is in bed, and I snatch up my two cups, ready to return to that pretty girl in the hall that’s turned my skin inside out.

“If you’ll excuse me, ladies,” I say to them and then duck out from between them. Mariana immediately moves closer to Cassie, and I turn to make my way through the shifting bodies of partygoers.

But when I catch sight of the hallway, it’s empty.

Panic bursts through my stomach. Where did she go? Where’s Quinn? Did she get tired of waiting for me and take off? Did one of her friends have some kind of emergency, and she had to leave to take care of it?

While I’m still standing there, in the center of a mass of writhing bodies, Quinn suddenly reappears. Only she’s not wearing her skeleton costume anymore. She’s in shorts and a tank top, so much of her skin showing that my brain stutters to a halt.

And then I process the rest of the scene. Chase. My brother. The one who refused to come to this party because he didn’t want to be hungover for an exam he has tomorrow. He’s talking to Quinn. And he’s…holding her skeleton outfit. He says something to her that makes her laugh, and then they walk away…in the direction of Chase’s room.

I watch them go, still holding Quinn’s drink in one hand and mine in the other, because what else am I supposed to do? The hallway empties, and I can’t seem to stop staring at the spot against the wall where we stood talking, where she made me laugh and forget how much being at this party has made me feel numb, how much I’ve been trying to keep my head above water these last few months, between trying to finish school and figure out how to do something with my life that will make me worthy of my last name.

For a few minutes, she made me feel good. She made me feel like I was worth more than my dick or my good grades or all the plans I have for a restaurant taped to my wall.

But I guess that’s over.