Chapter 3: Above It All
The frat house smelled like stale beer, sweat, and something faintly electric—like the moment before a storm breaks. Jeanne stood on the balcony, the night air cool against her flushed skin, her fingers tracing the edge of the wrought-iron railing. Below, the party pulsed with the bass of a DJ’s track, the strobes casting everything in jagged, hypnotic light. She adjusted the straps of her dress, the fabric clinging just enough to make sure Dylan would notice—*if* he ever looked up.
She exhaled a laugh, shaking her head at the irony of it all. *Dylan.* Sweet, clueless Dylan, who thought he was the only man in her life.
Who thought he was the only man she’d ever let touch her like this.*
The balcony door creaked open behind her, and she turned, already knowing it was him—Jake’s easy smirk, his dark eyes sharp with amusement as he leaned against the frame, a bottle of whiskey in hand. He didn’t say anything, just took a slow sip, the liquid sliding down his throat with practiced ease. "You’re taking your time with the view," he said, voice low, teasing.
Jeanne smirked back, swirling her own drink—a neat gin and tonic, ice cubes clinking against the glass. "I’m waiting for the right moment," she replied, glancing down at the party below.
The strobes flickered across Dylan’s face, his blond hair catching the light like a halo—though right now, it was more like a mocking crown. Freddie had tied him up with some rope from the gym, his hands bound behind his back, his mouth gagged with a strip of fabric. The frat brothers were already laughing, hoisting him onto Freddie’s shoulders like a prized catch. Dylan’s face was a mix of bewilderment and outrage, but the worst part? He had no idea why.
Jake chuckled, shaking his head.
"You're playing with fire, Jeanne. You know that, right?" He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Freddie's not the brightest candle in the box. He might let something slip."
Jeanne rolled her eyes, taking a sip of her drink. "Freddie's all bark and no bite. He knows better than to mess with me." She glanced at him, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Besides, I thought you were here to help."
Jake grinned, holding up his hands in surrender. "Hey, I'm just saying. I've got your back, but you've got to give me something to work with." He nodded towards Dylan.
The rush of cold air on her flushed skin was electric, a stark counterpoint to the furnace heat pooling inside her. Jeanne braced her hands on the gritty railing, the chipped paint pressing into her palms, each breath a ragged cloud in the rooftop dark. Below, the music was a muffled, seismic throb. Below, the party swirled on, a distant galaxy of chaos.
Her eyes were locked on the bright rectangle of the stairwell door, a sliver of yellow light cutting across the tarpaper. Every second felt stretched thin, a taut wire of anticipation. She’d had to pull him out, now. There was no choice. Dylan was down there. Exposed. She’d seen the pale flash of his face as Freddie hoisted him up, a blur of confusion and growing panic amidst the neon and laughter. The spectacle was perfect. It was also, potentially, catastrophic.Timing was everything.
Jake moved behind her, his arm sliding around her waist, his lips finding the damp curve of her neck. “Relax. Freddie’s a showman. He’ll drag it out. We’ve got at least five minutes before they hit the keg.”
“He’s too good at it,” she breathed, turning her head, her voice low. “Last time he got someone that drunk, they ended up on the roof of the campus chapel singing the national anthem. In February.” He tasted like spearmint gum and beer, a familiar, illicit combination. Her fingers tightened on the railing.
“And look at you now. Queen of the rooftop,” Jake murmured, his hand slipping under the hem of her top, skating over the damp skin of her back. “You okay?”
The question was practical, not tender. It steadied her. “Yeah. I’m good. Better than good. Just…” She craned her neck, trying to see through the haze of her own satisfaction. The plan was working. Dylan was thoroughly, publicly distracted. The plan was also a fragile, teetering thing. One wrong look, one memory sparked in a drunken brother’s mind…
The stairwell door burst open, slamming against the cinderblock wall.
Freddie filled the doorway, a grin splitting his face, backlit by the hall light like some deranged angel. “Guys. You’re missing it. It’s fucking poetry.”
Jeanne stepped away from Jake, smoothing her top down. “Where is he?”
“Main floor, by the giant lava lamp. I got him propped up on the ‘throne.’” He used air quotes, his movements loose and jangly with adrenaline and Schlitz. “Told him it’s a Delta Iota tradition—the ‘King of the Keg Stand’ gets the best seat. He’s slurping a jungle juice through a straw, believes every word. Keeps asking if you’ve seen his girlfriend.” Freddie snorted. “I said you were in the line for the bathroom. He bought it.”
A knot of tension in Jeanne’s chest loosened, just a fraction. “Good. Keep him there. Keep him drinking.”
“Oh, I will. I’ve got Leo on him with a handle of the cheap tequila. The stuff that tastes like regret and gasoline.” Freddie’s eyes flicked to Jake, then back to her, a sly, knowing look passing between them. It was the look that had always annoyed her—the fraternal assumption that she was a shared conquest, a party favor. He took a step closer, his breath a warm, boozy cloud. “So, you two… all squared away up here? Getting reacquainted?”
The earlier memory of Freddie’s loud mouth in the kitchen, his hand on her arm, flashed back. She didn’t flinch. “We’re strategizing,” she said, her voice cool. “Which requires a semblance of privacy. Something you seem to have a hard time with.”
Freddie held up his hands, palms out, still grinning. “Hey, I learned my lesson. Shin still hurts from where you kicked me.” He rubbed his leg for effect. “I’m a discreet soldier now. For the cause.”
“The cause is me having a good time without my boyfriend finding out I used to have a good time with half his new ‘buddies,’” Jeanne said, her words sharp but her tone light, almost playful. It was the balance she’d mastered here. “So go be discreet downstairs. Make sure he’s having the night of his life. The kind he won’t remember.”
“On it.” Freddie gave a mock salute, turned, and vanished back into the thrumming stairwell, the door swinging shut with a heavy thud, leaving them in the relative quiet again.
The silence was different now. The immediate urgency had passed. They had a window. Jeanne leaned back against the railing, facing Jake. The distant strobe from below painted his face in sporadic flashes of blue and red.
“He’s an idiot,” Jake said simply.
“He’s useful,” she countered. “And he’s properly motivated. He thinks this is all for him. For the… payback.” She used Dylan’s word from earlier, when he’d been hesitant to come.
Jake moved closer, closing the space Freddie had occupied. “And what’s it for, for you?”
The question hung in the cold air. She looked past him, at the glow of the campus beyond the frat house roofs. It wasn’t a simple answer. It was the thrill of the secret, the power of the puppet strings, the raw, physical heat of being wanted in a place where she was known, truly known, in ways Dylan could never grasp. It was the danger of it all balanced on a knife’s edge.
“It’s for right now,” she said finally, meeting his gaze. Her hand reached out, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. “It’s for not being bored.”
He understood. He’d always understood that about her. It was why they’d worked, in those fleeting, charged moments last semester. He didn’t ask for declarations. He offered opportunity.
“The roof’s getting cold,” he said, his voice dropping. “My room’s locked. No one’s going up there. Not with the main event happening downstairs.”
She could hear the crescendo of the music below, a new bassline kicking in, the collective roar of the crowd. Freddie would be center stage. Dylan would be the prop. The perfect, ongoing distraction.
“Lead the way,” she said.
They didn’t go back through the main party. Jake knew the back routes, the servant’s passages of the old house. A narrow, dimly-lit hallway behind the kitchen, smelling of stale grease and mildew. A set of creaking, carpeted stairs tucked behind a door marked ‘Electrical.’ The sounds of the party became layered, muted—the thump of the bass in the walls, the shrieks and laughter filtering down air vents.
His room was on the third floor, in the quiet wing supposedly reserved for seniors. It was neater than she expected. A made bed, textbooks stacked on a desk, a string of LED lights casting a soft glow. It felt detached from the chaos below, a secret observatory.
Jake closed the door. The lock clicked, a definitive, small sound. The muffled party became a distant storm.
He didn’t rush. He watched her take it in, this piece of his world she’d never seen. She turned to face him, the mischievous glint back in her eye, sharpened by risk and proximity. “So. No distractions.”
“None.” He leaned against the door. “How long do you think we have?”
Jeanne calculated. The keg stand ritual. The forced shots. Dylan’s stubborn, but ultimately feeble, resistance to peer pressure. “An hour. Maybe ninety minutes if Freddie really commits to the bit and stages a wrestling match or something.”
“An hour,” Jake repeated, a slow smile spreading. “That’s a lot of strategizing to do.”
She crossed the room, the old floorboards soft under her feet. “Then we better not waste time talking.”
Downstairs, the music hit a fever pitch. A new chant rose, rhythmic and pounding, shaking the very floor joists beneath them: “Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!”
Jeanne didn’t hear it. Or she did, and it was just the perfect, brutal soundtrack. She reached Jake, her hands coming up to frame his face, and pulled him down into a kiss that was all conquest and collusion. It was nothing like the hesitant, polite kisses she exchanged with Dylan. This was a claiming.A remembering.
As they fell onto the bed, a distant, colossal roar of approval shook the house. The King of the Keg Stand had evidently done his duty. The distraction was complete, a beautiful, humiliating spectacle unfolding in the glowing heart of the party.
Up in the quiet, LED-lit dark, Jeanne’s world narrowed to the scent of Jake’s skin, the feeling of his hands mapping the familiar territory of her body, and the exquisite, ticking clock of the secret they were stealing. Every moan she stifled against his shoulder, every gasp that escaped into the quiet room, was a silent victory over the naive boy drowning in cheap tequila and borrowed glory three floors below.
For now, she was exactly where she wanted to be.