Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (48 page)

“It’s not that cold and you’re walking
there, right? Besides it’ll be warm enough in the frat house with everyone
packed in.” I made a face but once more gave in. Jess went into her own closet
and found a blouse that would fit me; it was a deep red, with a plunging
neckline that showed off my cleavage, made of a flimsy, soft material. “Wear a
jacket over it, but take the jacket off as soon as you get to the frat house,”
she suggested.

Jess then went to work on my hair, pulling
it back in a sexy loose bun with messy little distracting strands falling
around my face.

By the time I was done, my makeup in place
and a pair of low-heeled boots on my feet, I had to admit that I looked
incredibly hot—but that I didn’t look as if I’d spent an hour on getting ready.
I thought to myself that it probably wouldn’t make any difference at all—after
all, if Zack had already moved on to someone else, no matter how hot I looked,
he wouldn’t be interested. But it certainly helped to bolster my confidence as
I walked along the different pathways that led from the dorms across the campus
to frat row.

My toes were starting to hurt in the boots
by the time I got to the frat house; even a block away I could hear the roar of
music turned all the way up, and as I slipped my jacket off and draped it over
my arm, following Jess’ advice, I could make out the fact that there were a ton
of people scattered over the lawn, packed into the house—and probably still
more in the back yard. I shook my head; at least some of the people partying it
up had to have classes the next day—but they’d either be too hungover to make
it, or they’d be utterly useless when they did get into class. I rolled my eyes
at myself. Not everyone had my priorities, and not everyone was depending on
scholarships and their own hard work to pay their way. If they wanted a raging
hangover the next day, it was on them.

I approached the front door, moving
through a throng of people who were milling around, stumbling and talking too
loudly. It occurred to me that at the rate the party was raging, it would end
up getting dispersed in next to no time. But that wasn’t my problem. I went to
the front door and knocked on it—fully expecting to have to knock again. But
there was someone who was apparently waiting for new arrivals; one of the
pledges, wearing a toga that couldn’t possibly be warm enough for the weather
outside, opened the door with a boozy grin.

“Good evening, and welcome to the party!”

He handed me a red Solo cup from a
loaded-down table next to the door; I almost refused it—I wasn’t there to get
drunk—but I decided I’d be able to move around a lot more freely if I had a cup
in hand; I wouldn’t be as conspicuous.

“Maybe you can help me,” I said, trying a
polite smile on the freshman in front of me. “I’m looking for Zack—any idea
where he is?”

The guy shrugged, nearly losing the
shoulder on his bed sheet toga. “No clue, hot stuff,” he said, the grin still
on his face. “They have me manning the door—I don’t know where anyone is unless
they’re right here.”

“Thanks anyway.” I edged away from the
guy, taking a sip of the cup. It was punch; it wasn’t as good as the punch I’d
had the previous party, but I figured that the people at the party were so
intent on getting plastered that it wouldn’t much matter to them anyway. I
wandered through the public rooms of the frat house, looking for any sign of
Zack.

I grabbed one of the upperclassmen as he
was walking through the living room. “Hey,” I said, keeping my polite smile
plastered on my face. “I’m looking for Zack—is he around?”

“I don’t know; I saw him around earlier
but I haven’t seen him in a minute. I’ll talk to you, though.”

My smile grew in my nervousness. “That’s
okay—I just needed to talk to Zack about something. I think that girl over
there is trying to get your attention though.” The guy looked in the direction
I pointed out and saw a girl who was looking in our direction; he made a beeline
to her.

I sipped my drink, trying not to go too
fast. I went to the back yard and saw—to my amazement—a bunch of people
cavorting in and around the pool; it was in the fifties outside but they seemed
to be mostly comfortable. There was no sign of Zack, and I narrowly avoided
getting pulled into the pool by an aggressive partier. I went back inside and
into the kitchen. Someone tried to convince me to take another drink, but I
waved my mostly-empty cup, smiling brightly and saying I was just pacing myself
so I wouldn’t get sick.

I found another member of the frat
dispersed amongst the crowd; he was someone I thought I’d seen with Zack at the
dining hall at one point or another. “I’m looking for Zack,” I said; the guy
looked like he was just this side of plastered, staring down the front of my
shirt. I felt skeeved out, but I didn’t make a move to cover myself up—after
all, this was what Jess had had in mind with the outfit I was wearing. “Have
you seen him?”

The guy’s features screwed up into a
caricature of deep thinking, his brow furrowing and his lips twisting in a
grimace. “I know he was in the living room a while back—but I don’t know if
he’s there anymore. Zack kinda moves around a lot.”

I nodded and thanked the guy, pulling away
and heading towards the living room before he could think of who he was talking
to—or decide to waylay me.

I wandered through all of the public areas
of the frat house, even going upstairs to the den there to see if Zack was
hanging out with some of the more elite guests. I watched someone get thrown
into the pool for smoking inside the frat house, saw couples canoodling
together on couches and any horizontal surface that would hold their weight. I
remembered the fact that Zack and I had been making out right in public—just like
so many of the couples here—and blushed. I tried my best to find Zack on my
own, moving constantly until my feet started to ache. I started to despair of
ever finding him; the frat was simply too packed, and there were too many
places where Zack could be. It would be impossible to track him down if no one
knew where he was.

Part of me even started to wonder if Zack
was there at all. After all—those of his frat brothers who could remember
seeing him had said that it had been a while. Zack could have gotten the party
started, and then wandered off to another party at a sorority or another frat,
or he could have even gone off campus. I realized I really didn’t know very
much about his life, all things told; I had been shocked to find out that he
apparently went to the Library regularly, after all. The music, pounding
constantly in my ears, was starting to give me a headache—I couldn’t hear
myself think, and if I had to ask many more people where Zack was, I was going
to end up hoarse the next day from shouting. It was a stupid idea; I should
have just called or texted him and asked him to meet me somewhere. That way, he
could have told me outright if he never wanted to speak to me again.

I decided that I would ask one last
person—someone at the frat—if they knew where Zack was, and if I couldn’t get
an answer that made sense, I would call it a night and maybe go back to the
dorms and send him an email. It was a cowardly way out of the situation, but at
least it was something. I couldn’t deal with the drunk, lurching, loud mess of
the party for much longer. I looked around and found someone who I thought I
recognized from either the previous party or one of the times I had seen Zack
around; he was wearing a toga, indicating he was a member of the frat, and he
looked like an upperclassman—probably he was in the same year as Zack was.

“Hey! Excuse me!” I ducked and darted
around the people between me and the frat brother. “Hey!” The guy stopped and I
caught my breath, downing the last of the contents of my cup. “Hey, you know
Zack, right?”

The guy looked me up and down with an
undisguised leer on his face. “Yeah, I know him—he was in the same pledge group
as me. You looking for him?” I nodded. “He’s up in his room. Punked out on the
party early. Must be off his feed.”

 
I
laughed, the alcohol beginning to fuzz my brain slightly. “Where’s his room? I
just need to talk to him about something.”

The guy looked me up and down again.
“Yeah, you might be able to get him to talk. He’s been moping these last few
days. He’s on the third floor, last door on the right.”

I let the toga-clad brother give me a
quick, sweaty hug—holding back my instinctive cringe. He was off in the
direction of some other girls in the next instant, fortunately; I didn’t know
what I would actually do to distract him if I’d had to.

I climbed the stairs, dodging around
people who were heading down to the living room or to the second floor—or who
were simply stalled out, too drunk to know where they were going. The last
flight of stairs was much less crowded, and I raced up them, my heart pounding
in my chest at the thought of seeing Zack. What if he didn’t even want to see
me? I bit my lip, telling myself that surely he had enough feeling for me to at
least hear me out. He had to.

It struck me as strange that the music was
every bit as loud on the third floor as it was downstairs; I looked around as I
walked through the hall of bedrooms, and noticed that speakers were mounted at
the ends of the hallway—that made sense. I wondered if there were ever issues
with sick brothers trying to get sleep in their rooms while a party raged
downstairs; probably not, with a group like the one Zack belonged to. I walked
the length of the hall, smiling slightly to myself as I spotted a few doors
with neckties on them; as innocent as I was, I knew full well that particular
sign and its meaning. I hurried to the end of the hall and looked at Zack’s
door for a long moment. There was no necktie on his door knob; he wasn’t with
anyone.

For a long moment I was just standing there,
the music pounding around me, the sound of a couple hundred people partying
below. The one drink hadn’t been enough to get me drunk, but it had left my
brain fuzzy, and I didn’t quite know if I was ready. What if Zack didn’t want
to talk to me? I pressed my lips together. My hands felt like they were
weighted down with lead. I swallowed against the tightness I felt in my throat.
I just had to get through it, I told myself. If he didn’t want to hear me out,
I’d at least know that it was done with us permanently. I lifted my hand to
knock on the door; it fell to my side once more as I continued to stand there.
If he sent me away without hearing me out—if he didn’t answer or if he did and
then just told me not to bother, I’d have to be ready to walk through the frat
house without looking like I was going to cry. I took a deep breath and lifted
my hand again. I knocked on the door quick and hard, my knuckles stinging from
it—I wanted to make sure that Zack could hear me over the music.

“Yo! I’m not feeling it!” he called out
from inside. My heart fluttered in my chest and I knocked again. “I said I’m
not feeling it, bro!” I knocked a third time.

Instead of calling out again, after a
moment, the door opened abruptly, showing Zack standing there, changed out of
his toga—if he’d ever been in a toga in the first place. He was standing there
with an irritated look on his face, in a pair of worn jeans and a tee shirt.
The irritable look dissolved in a moment, as soon as he saw that it was me. I
blushed as Zack’s gaze traveled up and down along my whole body, taking me in
slowly, a mixture of surprise and consternation on his face. The red Solo cup
was still in my hand and I fidgeted with it, smiling nervously.

“Evie,” He said; I could barely hear him
over the music.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, my throat tight.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Zack’s eyes widened and he opened the door
wider. “Yeah—yeah, absolutely.”

I stepped into Zack’s room and my knees
went weak. It was cleaner than I would have expected; there was a pile of dirty
laundry next to the closet, but there was no trash hanging around, only a few
empty reusable water bottles. It smelled like him, and I closed my eyes for a
moment, breathing it in. I turned in time to see Zack closing the door and I wondered
if he had put a necktie on the knob—to signal that we needed privacy. I wasn’t
sure whether or not I wanted everyone to think that Zack was having sex.

“I…” I licked my lips, leaning against his
bed, unsure of how to actually start saying what I was there to tell him.

“It’s so good to see you. What did I do,
Evie?”

I shook my head. “You didn’t do anything,
it’s not your fault, it’s my fault.” Words were tumbling out of my lips in an
unsteady rush. “There’s…I’ve been an idiot. Just…okay. I’m sorry; I just don’t
really know how to explain it.”

“Evie, calm down,” Zack said, smiling
faintly. He moved closer to me and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Just say
what you came to say. I swear I’ll listen to you—I won’t interrupt.”

I swallowed again, wishing I hadn’t had
the drink that the brother at the door had handed to me.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and tried to
collect my thoughts. “So the other day, after…I guess after practice…there was
a guy hanging out at my dorm room door.” Zack raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t
say anything to interrupt me. “I recognized him; he was someone from your team.
Anyway, he told me he would consider it a personal favor if I would stop
hanging out with you, if I would just leave you alone. He didn’t really give me
any reasons. At first, I just sort of brushed it off. I told him if he didn’t
get the hell away from my room I’d call the RAs.” I smiled slightly.