Chapter 1: The Proxy
The air in the Sigma Tau house was stale, a thick cocktail of spilled beer, wax from half-burned candles, and the ghost of last night’s sweat. Morning light, weak and gray, filtered through grimy windows, glinting off a minefield of empty bottles littering the sticky floor. In the corner, a single neon lamp buzzed, casting a sickly blue glow over the wrecked living room and the two bodies tangled on the stained corduroy couch.
Nikki moved on top of Harry, her long purple curls sticking to the damp skin of her neck and back. Her hips rocked in a slow, practiced rhythm, her eyes squeezed shut. She could feel every inch of him inside her, a familiar, breathtaking fullness. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulders, anchoring herself to the sensation, to the delicious friction, to anything that felt real.
Harry’s hands were on her waist, guiding her, his thumbs pressing bruises into her hips that she’d examine later with a quiet, possessive thrill. His breathing was a ragged counterpoint to the hum of the lamp.
“Fuck, Nikki,” he groaned, his head tipping back against the arm of the couch.
She opened her eyes then, looking down at him. His chestnut hair was dark with sweat, his green eyes hazy with pleasure. He was beautiful like this, stripped of his usual loud, frat-boy bravado. In these moments, he felt like hers. It was a lie, but it was a lie she wore like a second skin.
She leaned down, capturing his mouth with hers, swallowing his groan. The kiss was hungry, all tongue and teeth and shared breath. It tasted like cheap tequila and desperation. His hands slid from her waist to grip her ass, pulling her down harder onto him, deepening the angle. A sharp gasp tore from her throat.
“Yeah, just like that,” he muttered against her lips, his voice slurry. “God, you feel so good.”
She increased her pace, chasing her own release, using the building tension in her core to push back the whispers in her mind. The whispers that asked what this was, where it was going, why he never looked at her in the daylight the way he looked at her now in this dim, filthy room.
His grip tightened. His hips pushed up to meet her, driving into her with a force that made the couch squeak in protest. The coil inside her wound tighter, hotter. She was close. She could lose herself here. She always did.
Then, his hands came up to frame her face, a shockingly tender gesture amidst the grinding, sweaty friction. He opened his eyes, the green of them piercing even in the gloom. He looked at her, really looked at her, and for a heartbeat, she thought…
He smiled, that easy, charming grin that made her chest ache. He brushed a damp curl from her cheek. His voice was a low, intimate murmur, almost drowned by the sound of their bodies moving together.
“You know,” he breathed, his thumb tracing her bottom lip. “You’re so much like Sophia. The way you move. The sounds you make. It’s like… fuck, it’s like practicing with her.”
The world didn’t just shatter. It dissolved.
Every nerve ending, every pleasurable spark, flatlined into a void of ice. The coil inside her didn’t snap; it froze solid and dropped, a lead weight in her gut. Her rhythm stuttered, then stopped completely. She went utterly still, impaled on him, his words echoing in the sudden, ringing silence of her skull.
Practicing. With her. Sophia.
Her best friend. The girl he talked about constantly, the one whose smile he tracked across a crowded party, the one he’d asked Nikki a hundred questions about. What does she like? Is she seeing anyone? Do you think she’d ever go for a guy like me?
Nikki had answered every question. She’d been his strategist, his confidante. And all the while, she’d been his rehearsal. His stand-in. A warm, willing body he could use to work out the kinks before the main performance with the woman he truly wanted.
The physical feeling of him inside her curdled from intimacy to violation. Her skin crawled where he touched her. The tenderness in his gaze wasn’t for her; it was for a ghost, a fantasy he was projecting onto her features. She wasn’t Nikki. She was a Sophia-simulator.
Harry frowned, his arousal making him stupid, blind. He thrust up lazily, seeking to restart the rhythm she’d broken. “Hey, don’t stop. C’mon, baby. I’m almost there.”
The endearment, now, was a slap. Baby. A word for a convenient hole. Not a name. Never her name with any real weight behind it.
A raw, animal sound ripped from her throat—part sob, part choke. She shoved her hands against his chest and scrambled off him, the sudden separation a shocking, cold emptiness. She stumbled back, her legs buckling, and caught herself on the edge of a beer-pong table covered in dried, sticky rings.
“Whoa, shit, Nikki?” Harry blinked, propping himself up on his elbows. His dick, still hard and slick from her, stood against his stomach, a grotesque monument to her stupidity. “What the hell? I was right there.”
She couldn’t speak. Her breath came in short, sharp pants that burned her lungs. She glanced down, saw the evidence of their coupling glistening on her inner thighs, and felt a wave of nausea so violent she tasted bile. She grabbed her panties and jeans from the floor, her hands trembling so badly she could barely pull them on.
“Hey, talk to me.” He sat up, running a hand through his hair, annoyed now. Confused. “What’s your damage? Was it the Sophia thing?” He actually had the gall to chuckle, a soft, bewildered sound. “Jesus, it was a compliment. You two are best friends, you’re similar. It’s hot.”
Similar. The word was a rusty nail driven into her sternum.
She finally found her voice. It was thin, cracked, nothing like her own. “I need to go.”
“Now?” He laughed again, gesturing to his obvious, unsatisfied state. “You’re just gonna leave me like this? That’s cold, Martinez.”
Martinez. Last name. Frat-boy casual. Buddy.
She yanked her sweater over her head, not bothering with the bra she couldn’t find. The fabric smelled like him, like the room, like regret. She had to get out. The walls were pressing in, covered in invisible photographs of Sophia.
“I have a… a study group,” she lied, the words ash in her mouth.
“At seven-thirty on a Saturday morning?” He flopped back on the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes, his frustration evident. “Fine. Whatever. Your loss.”
Your loss. As if it were a game. As if her entire heart hadn’t just been filleted open and shown to be a useless, empty prop.
She didn’t look back. She fumbled for her bag, her keys, and wrenched open the front door. The cold morning air hit her like a physical blow, clean and sharp, scouring the stink of the house from her nostrils. She half-ran down the steps, her boots crunching on frost-tinged gravel.
She made it to her beat-up Civic, fumbled the key into the lock, and collapsed into the driver’s seat. The moment the door slammed shut, sealing her in a silent, metal tomb, the first sob broke.
It was a silent, wrenching thing, a convulsion that ripped through her center without sound. She pressed her forehead to the cold steering wheel, her body shaking, tears leaking hot and relentless down her cheeks. No screams, no wails. Just a silent, drowning eruption of a pain so complete it was almost peaceful. She had known. Some deep, hidden part of her had always known. But hearing it, said so casually between thrusts, as a compliment…
She sat there until the tears stopped, until her breathing evened into something shallow and ragged. The neon glow from the frat house window bled into the softening dawn. She could see the shadow of him moving past the window upstairs, probably heading for a shower, already forgetting her, his thoughts no doubt turning to how to finally ask out the real prize.
Nikki lifted her head. She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the rearview mirror: swollen eyes, smudged makeup, purple hair a wild cloud of defeat. She looked exactly like what she was. A practice girl. A warm-up act.
She turned the key. The engine coughed to life. She didn’t know where she was going, but she put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, leaving the sticky couch and his echoing words buried in the chaos of that blue-lit room. The ache in her body was already fading. The one in her chest, she knew, was just beginning.
The streets were too bright, too clean. She drove on autopilot, the familiar turns toward campus a blur. Her body felt alien—hollowed out and strangely heavy at the same time. There was a dull, persistent ache between her legs, a physical ghost of him, and she hated it. She wanted to scrub her skin off.
She pulled into the parking lot of The Grind, the indie coffee shop she and Sophia always went to. It was open. She walked in, the bell jingling a cheerful sound that felt like an insult.
And there she was. Sophia. Perfect, lovely Sophia, already seated at their usual corner table by the window, two steaming mugs waiting. Her blonde hair was a smooth, shiny sheet, her smile warm and immediate. She waved.
Nikki’s heart did a vicious, triple-beat stumble. Practicing with her.
“Hey, you!” Sophia chirped as Nikki slid into the chair. Her eyes, kind and alert, narrowed. “Whoa. Rough night? You look… you okay?”
“Yeah. Just tired.” Nikki’s voice was raspy. She wrapped her hands around the mug. The heat was scalding, a good pain. “Sigma Tau was… loud.”
Sophia rolled her eyes, a graceful motion. “Ugh, animals. I don’t know how you tolerate hanging out there. Was Harry there?”
The name was a shard of glass in Nikki’s windpipe. She took a gulping sip of coffee, burning her tongue. “Briefly.”
“He texted me this morning,” Sophia said, a faint pink tinting her cheeks. She glanced at her phone, smiling. “He asked if I wanted to go to that new artisanal pizza place next week. Like, a real date-date.”
Nikki’s vision tunneled. The sounds of the coffee shop—the hiss of steam, the clatter of cups—receded into a high-pitched whine. He’d been inside her, hours ago, and now he was texting her best friend about pizza. The casual brutality of it stole her breath.
“Nikki? Hello?” Sophia’s hand was on hers. “You’re white as a sheet. What’s going on?”
She had to say something. The truth was a writhing, screaming thing locked behind her teeth. He fucked me last night and said I was good practice for you. It would explode everything. Their friendship, the delicate ecosystem of their group. It would make her look pathetic. The secret, now, was a disease. It was festering in her chest, and she had to carry it alone.
“Nothing,” Nikki forced out, manufacturing a weak smile. “Just a shitty hangover. That’s amazing about the date, Soph. Really.” The words tasted like poison.
Her phone buzzed on the table. A notification lit up the screen.
Harry: Hey. You left in a mood. You good?
Then, a second later, another.
Harry: Last night was wild. You were so into it. We should do it again soon.
Nikki stared at the screen. A cold, clear fury began to cut through the numb haze. He was messaging her, about that, while simultaneously planning a date with Sophia. She was a convenience. A fuck. A secret.
Sophia, ever perceptive, tilted her head. “Who’s that?”
“No one.” Nikki flipped the phone over. “Spam.”
But the fury was clotting, hardening into something useful. It was the only thing propping her up. She looked across the table at Sophia’s concerned, open face—the face he truly wanted—and the last vestiges of her heart crumbled into dust. She was not similar. She was shadows to Sophia’s light, a rough draft to her final copy. She had been used.
And she had let it happen. For a semester, she had taken the crumbs of his attention, convincing herself it was something more, because the alternative—being nothing to him—was untenable.
Now, the alternative was here. She was nothing. Less than nothing. A rehearsal space.
“You know what,” Nikki said, standing abruptly. Her chair scraped the floor. “I forgot, I have to… I have to go to the library. Acid reflux. Bad coffee. Congrats on the date.”
She fled before Sophia could answer, the lukewarm praise and the texts from Harry burning a hole through her pocket and her soul.
The rest of the weekend was a blur of silence and static. She ignored Harry’s subsequent texts—a progression from bemused (“Seriously, what’s up?”) to annoyed (“This is childish, Nikki.”) to finally, late Sunday night, a simple: “Are we cool?”
She didn’t reply. The silence was the only power she had left. Saying anything would be a release, a gift to him. He didn’t deserve to know he’d hurt her. He didn’t deserve to know her at all.
Monday morning dawned with a brutal, fluorescent clarity. She had Political Science 202 at 10 a.m. With him. And with Sophia.
She considered skipping. But that felt too much like letting him win. So she dressed in armor: dark jeans, an old band t-shirt, a leather jacket. She piled her purple curls into a messy bun, sharpened her eyeliner like a weapon.
The lecture hall was a steep bowl of noise and chatter. She scanned the rows and saw him immediately. Harry was already there, sprawled in his usual seat near the back, laughing with some guys from the team. He looked golden, untouchable. He hadn’t seen her.
Sophia waved from the middle of the hall, pointing to an empty seat she’d saved. Nikki’s feet carried her forward, her heartbeat a dull drum in her ears. She slid into the seat, muttering a thanks.
“Feeling better?” Sophia whispered.
“Totally.”
Then she felt it. A shift in the air. A prickle on the back of her neck. She looked up.
Harry had stopped laughing. He was staring right at her. His easy grin was gone, replaced by a look of confused intensity. His green eyes tracked her, locked onto her profile as she turned to face the front. It was a different look. Not ownership, not casual familiarity. It was the look of someone seeing a door shut, a light go out. It was the look of someone suddenly realizing the practice dummy had walked off the field, and the game was now irrevocably different.
The professor began droning about geopolitical paradigms. Nikki opened her notebook, her hand steady as she wrote the date. She didn’t look back again.
But she could feel his gaze, a hot, persistent weight between her shoulder blades, for the entire fifty-minute class. It wasn’t desire. It wasn’t affection. It was the first, faint tremor of a loss he couldn’t even name yet.
And in the quiet of her own ribcage, where the new, cold ache lived, Nikki felt a single, solid stone of resolve form. He had used her up. He had taken everything she’d foolishly offered and thrown the husk aside.
Now, let him watch what happened next.
The weight of his stare was a brand. Nikki kept her eyes glued to the professor’s slides, her pen scratching meaningless circles in the margin. She felt every beat of the fifty-minute class in the tightness of her jaw, the rigid line of her shoulders. When the bell finally rang, it was a gunshot releasing her.
“So, pizza Thursday?” Sophia chirped, sliding her laptop into her bag. “You can help me pick an outfit. Something cute but not like… trying too hard, you know?”
Nikki’s guts twisted. “Yeah, sure.”
“Cool. I’m gonna go catch Harry, actually,” Sophia said, her eyes already scanning the streaming crowd exiting the lecture hall. “I want to nail down the time.”
Before Nikki could respond, Sophia was gone, weaving upstream like a salmon.
Nikki forced herself to move slowly. To zip her bag with deliberate care. By the time she reached the hallway, the tableau was set. Sophia stood on her toes, laughing at something Harry said. Harry’s attention, however, was fractured. His smile was automatic, his green eyes cutting over Sophia’s shoulder, finding Nikki the moment she emerged.
For a second, their gazes connected in the noisy fray. His smile faltered. She saw a question there, a flicker of something that wasn’t casual. Annoyance? Genuine confusion? It didn’t matter. She let her eyes slide over him as if he were a potted plant, turning toward the exit.
“Nikki! Hey, wait up!”
His voice. Close. He’d broken from Sophia, who stood looking momentarily bewildered. Nikki kept walking. He caught up in two long strides, his hand closing around her upper arm.
The contact was electric, a jolt of memory and misery. She wrenched her arm free, spinning to face him. “Don’t.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” he asked, voice low. His charm was stripped away, leaving raw, entitled irritation. “You ghost me all weekend, you glare holes in the back of my head in class. Did I do something?”
The absurdity was breathtaking. She let out a short, sharp laugh that held no humor. “Are you serious?”
“Obviously. Did I… say something wrong?” He had the gall to look genuinely puzzled.
A wave of cold fury washed through her, so intense it steadied her. She stepped closer, close enough to see the faint dusting of freckles across his nose, to smell his stupid, expensive cedar body wash. She kept her voice a venomous whisper. “You said nothing wrong, Harry. It was all perfect. Especially the part where you called me by my best friend’s name while you were fucking me. That was a real highlight.”
His face went slack. The annoyance evaporated, replaced by dawning, horrified comprehension. His mouth opened, then closed. “Nikki, I—”
“‘It’s like practicing with her.’ That’s what you said.” Her voice didn’t waver. It was flat, factual, a surgeon’s blade. “So congrats. Practice is over. You got your date. Now leave me the fuck alone.”
She turned. He didn’t try to stop her this time.
The party at the Delta house on Friday was a predictable, sweaty vortex. Nikki went because Sophia begged her, because staying in her dorm meant thinking, and thinking was a pit she couldn’t climb out of. She drank tequila from the bottle with a grim focus, letting the bass from the speakers thump against her hollow chest.
She saw him the moment she walked in. He was by the keg, holding court, but his energy was off. His laughter seemed forced. His eyes scanned the room. When they landed on her, they stuck.
Sophia, radiant in a slip dress, was glued to his side. The date had happened. It had been, by all accounts, “totally fun, super chill.” Nikki had smiled until her face ached.
Now, Nikki deliberately looked away. She found a guy from her Econ class, some lacrosse player named Dave with broad shoulders and a vacant smile. She flirted with a vicious, liquid courage, letting his hands settle on her hips as they danced in the pulsing dark. She could feel Harry watching. It was a small, bitter fuel.
Later, the tequila and the need to obliterate her own thoughts drove her upstairs. The hallway was dim, lined with people making out, spilled drinks soaking into the carpet. She was looking for the bathroom. A hand snagged hers, pulled her into a darkened bedroom.
The door clicked shut, muffling the noise. Harry stood there, back against the door, breathing heavily. He looked wrecked. His eyes were bloodshot, his shirt untucked.
“Get out of my way,” she slurred, the world tilting.
“No.” His voice was rough. “You’re letting that Neanderthal Dave feel you up on the dance floor? Really?”
“What the fuck do you care?” She stabbed a finger at his chest. “You got what you wanted. Go find Sophia. I’m sure she’s looking for her boyfriend.”
The word hit him like a slap. He flinched. “Stop.”
“Or what?”
He moved then. There was no charm, no smooth seduction. It was pure, frustrated need. He grabbed her, his mouth crashing down on hers. It was nothing like their previous kisses. This was a battle. She tasted tequila and anger. She bit his lip, hard. He groaned, pinning her against the wall, his body a solid, unforgiving line of heat.
“You hate me,” he muttered against her mouth, his hands fumbling with the button of her jeans. “Fine. Hate me.”
She should have kneed him in the groin. She should have screamed. But the tequila and the raw, gaping wound inside her met his fury with a matching combustibility. This was ruin. This was familiar. This was something she could feel besides the soul-crushing emptiness.
“Fuck you,” she breathed, but she was yanking at his belt, her fingers clumsy.
“Yeah,” he growled. He got her jeans down around her thighs, his own shoved low on his hips. There were no preliminaries, no soft touches. He hooked a hand under her knee, hiking her leg up around his waist. He was already hard, pressing against her. She was wet—a traitorous, physical response her heart couldn’t override.
He pushed inside her in one rough, unyielding stroke. The air left her lungs in a stunned gasp. The wall was cold against her back. He was everywhere, filling her, stretching her. It hurt in a bright, clean way that obliterated everything else.
“See?” he panted, his forehead pressed to hers. His eyes were wild, desperate. “This. This is what it is. This isn’t practice.”
He began to move, sharp, driving thrusts that shook her against the wall. The headboard of the unknown bed rattled with each impact. It was brutal. It was visceral. It was nothing like the lazy, stoned coupling on the Sigma Tau couch. This was a confrontation.
She clawed at his back, her nails digging through his shirt. Each slam of his hips was a punctuation mark to her chaos. She could smell their sweat, hear the wet, obscene sound of their bodies connecting. Pride was gone. Pretense was gone. There was just this dark, grinding collision.
“You feel that?” His voice was gutter-deep, ragged. “Tell me you feel it.”
She couldn’t speak. A deep, coiling tension was building, unrelated to joy, a purely mechanical release born of friction and fury. She turned her head, sinking her teeth into the muscle of his shoulder to silence a moan.
He cursed, his pace becoming frenzied, losing rhythm. “Fuck, Nikki… I’m not thinking about her. I’m not.”
It was the worst thing he could have said. Because it meant he had been. Before. And because she stupidly, pathetically believed that in this specific, filthy moment, it might be true.
Her climax ripped through her unexpectedly, a seismic shock that made her back arch sharply away from the wall. A raw, guttural cry was torn from her throat. It felt less like pleasure and more like exorcism.
He followed seconds later, his entire body shuddering, a strangled groan hot in her ear. He slumped against her, his weight pressing her into the wall, his breath heaving.
Slowly, the world rushed back in. The bass from below. The giggles in the hall. The sticky chill of the air on her sweat-slicked skin. The dull, throbbing ache between her legs.
He softened inside her. They were still joined, a mess of clothing and consequences. He didn’t pull away.
His voice, when it came, was shattered. “Nikki…”
That one word, broken and full of a confusion that mirrored her own, was more devastating than any compliment, any cruelty. She shoved against his chest.
This time, he let her go.
She pulled her clothes together with trembling hands, not looking at him. He stood there, jeans around his thighs, looking more lost than she’d ever seen him.
She opened the door. The hallway light was a brutal intrusion.
“It doesn’t change anything,” she said, not turning back. Her voice was scraped raw.
She walked away, down the stairs, through the crowd, and out into the startlingly cold night. Her body felt used. Her mind was a screaming static. But as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, she knew one thing with absolute, icy clarity.
He was watching her leave. And for the first time, he wasn't watching a stand-in. He was watching her disappear. And the terror in that realization, for both of them, hung in the air long after she was gone.