My Sweetest Escape (My Favorite Mistake #2)(35)
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron

“Honey, I’m home,” I called as I shucked my shoes off and set my bag down in the entryway.

“How was your day, dear?” Dusty called from the living room, where he was hanging out with Mase.

“Are you moving in now?” I said, grabbing a can of soda from the fridge. “Do you want one?” I would have felt like a jerk not asking.

“Nope, I’m good,” he said right behind me.

“I swear to God, the next time you do that…” I couldn’t think of what I was going to do. “You know what? I won’t tell you what I’m going to do. The anticipation will just kill you, waiting for the moment. I would enjoy that.”

“Easy, Red.”

“Seriously, why are you here? Because I know you have a little bromance, but one half of that isn’t here right now, so it can’t be Hunter. And it can’t be because you love to cook. And it can’t be that you really, really love the house. So what is it?”

I leaned on the fridge. I knew I was asking a question I wasn’t going to like the answer to, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to know the truth, whether I liked it or not.

“Maybe it is something else that keeps me coming to this house. Maybe…maybe I’ve been waiting for the right moment to say it out loud.” He wouldn’t look at me, which meant that he might have been telling the truth. I was really tired of him always trying to change the subject, or making a joke out of things.

“I really come here because I’m crazy about…this coffeepot.” He moved around me and stood by the fancy coffeepot that Hunter had probably bought and that cost more than my entire textbook budget for a year.

“I mean, I really, really love it.” He leaned down and pretended to hug it and stroked it fondly.

“Are you shitting me?”

He stood up, his smile faltering for a second.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just…nothing.” He’d done that on purpose to screw with me, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he totally had. I walked past him back into the living room. Mase was busy with a textbook and a highlighter.

“What’s up, Jos?”

“Nothing.” I turned on the television and flipped around. Dusty made sure he entered the room and sat down in the recliner loud enough so that I’d hear him. Jerk.

I purposely settled on an annoying girlie reality show that he would probably never watch in a million years. I turned up the volume. Mase didn’t seem to mind. He was known for his deep focus when he was reading.

We sat in silence as the girls went out shopping and to clubs and fought and made up with their boyfriends. I waited for him to beg for me to change the channel, or get up and leave. Maybe this was the way to get rid of him. Drive him away. I should start playing Nickelback, or that really angry Russian girl-band music I’d randomly found on the internet. I should start talking about menstrual cramps and yeast infections and other girlie shit he wouldn’t want to hear about.

But then I would probably repulse the rest of the males in the house, and I didn’t really want to ruin their lives. Just Dusty’s.

What was it about him that made me so crazy?

He started softly making drum noises in the chair. Now he was messing with me. I turned the show up and he started making louder noises. I still wouldn’t look at him.

“Can we take the volume down a notch? I’m going deaf over here, and I’m a big fan of standing near speakers at clubs,” Mase said, grabbing the remote and turning the volume down. “Are you okay, Little Ne? You’re being kind of…not you.”

“I’m fine.”

I was saved from further explanation by the arrival of Darah and a few minutes later Taylor and Hunter and then Renee.

“So, Hannah’s coming over for dinner. I hope no one minds.”

Everyone chimed in with how they didn’t, and they’d be more than happy to have her whenever she wanted to come over. Yellowfield House was like a sponge, soaking up random people, and I was one of them. Pretty soon they’d have to add a fourth level, or turn the basement into a dorm. I could just picture it with bunk beds lining the walls.

Taylor and Hunter were on for dinner, and they were doing pizza, since everyone could choose what they wanted for toppings and we could make them individually. Hannah showed up just as we were flattening out our individual crusts. Of course Dusty was staying. I wanted to ask him if he was going to just move in, but I was kind of giving him the silent treatment for the thing about the coffeepot.

“Hey, girl. And everyone,” she said, walking through the front door without knocking.

Hannah got a warm welcome. I saw the same look in her eyes that I’d seen earlier when she’d told me about making me go to the party.

“Pull up a ball,” Hunter said after she’d washed her hands. He gave her a ball of dough and a plate to roll it out on. “You just flatten it out as much as you can, and then put it on the pan here and we’ve got sauce and toppings. I recommend using the toppings to make your name, so you remember which one is yours and there’s no confusion. Okay?”

“Got it, chief,” she said, giving him a salute and banging down the dough with a little too much force.

Everyone made their pizzas, and we somehow fit them all in the oven at once. Darah and Mase shooed us all out of the kitchen as they cleaned up, so we had music sex in the living room, with Dusty doing backup drums for Hunter. I kept waiting for Hannah to make her move, but she just sat back and kept yelling out ridiculous song suggestions that made everyone laugh.

It wasn’t until we were all stuffing our faces and Darah and Renee were recounting memories from one of the parties they’d gone to when they were freshmen.

“Speaking of parties,” Hannah said. “There’s this really cool one happening at the Kappa Sigma house and I got an invite and I need a wing woman.”

Her pronouncement was met with silence at first.

“You want to go to a Kappa Sig party?” Hunter said, skeptical.

“Well, I feel like my college experience won’t be complete without going to a frat party. It’s not that I want to go…it’s that I feel obligated to go. And I really shouldn’t go alone, so I need someone to escort me. Hey, Jos, what are you doing on Saturday night?” Was this her master plan? Because it wasn’t very masterful.

“Absolutely not,” Renee said, practically yelling.

“Well, how about this? How about you all come with us? Then we can all go and have a good time and you can supervise us and I can fulfill my dream. Win-win.”