Chapter 1: Drunk and Curious
The bass was a physical thing. It traveled up through the soles of Pete’s feet, a low, relentless thump that vibrated in his molars and made the half-empty bottles of beer on the floor rattle in time. The hallway was a tunnel of chaos, strung with dollar-store fairy lights that flickered with a dying, epileptic rhythm. The air was soup—thick with the smell of sweat, cheap whiskey, and something underneath it all, metallic and damp, like the copper-tang of old pennies left in the rain.
He shouldn’t have had that fourth drink. Or the fifth. The order of things was fuzzy now, a smear of loud voices and sloshing liquid. He’d done it again, the thing he always did at parties: drank too fast to outrun the quiet, clawing anxiety that he was taking up space nobody had reserved for him. Now he was paying for it. The world had a thin, greasy film over it, and his stomach rolled with every pulse of the music.
Jane. He was looking for Jane.
She’d vanished about an hour ago, saying something about finding the bathroom. He’d nodded, smiled, taken another swallow from the warm plastic cup in his hand. Now he couldn’t remember what she was wearing. Was it the dark green top? The black one? His brain was a skipped record, stuck on the image of her laughing at something Mike had said earlier, her head thrown back, the elegant line of her throat exposed.Mike. The host’s friend.Personal trainer. Confident in a way that seemed effortless, not like the strained, desperate confidence Pete had to cultivate.
Pete shuffled down the hall, his bare feet sticking slightly to the worn hardwood. He’d taken his shoes off somewhere.That was a bad sign. A door to his left was closed, a strip of yellow light bleeding from underneath. He heard a low groan, followed by a wet, rhythmic sound. Slap-slap-slap. It cut through the muffled bass from the living room.It was animal. Primal. His own breath hitched.
He knew, with a cold, dropping certainty, that he should turn around. Go back to the party. Wait for Jane on the couch. But his feet were nailed to the floor. He leaned closer, his eye finding the hairline crack where the door didn’t quite meet the frame.
The room was a guest bedroom, all mismatched furniture and stacked storage boxes. And there, on the narrow bed with the floral quilt shoved down to the floor, was Jane.
Her auburn hair was fanned out against a pale pillow. Her eyes were closed, her face a mask of intense, shattered concentration. Her lips were parted, and a low, continuous moan vibrated from her chest. One hand was tangled in the dark, close-cropped hair of the man between her thighs.Mike.
Pete felt the world tilt, the greasy film over everything suddenly cracking. He should crash in. He should shout. He should do something. But his body was a statue, locked in place by a flood of ice in his veins.He watched. Mike’s shoulders worked. Jane’s back arched off the bed, a sharp, beautiful curve. Her free hand scrabbled at the sheets, fisting them.
“God, yes,” she gasped, the words ragged and clear even over the thumping music. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
It was a voice Pete hadn’t heard in months.Maybe years. It was raw, unguarded, hungry. It was nothing like the polite, accommodating sighs she offered him in their own bed, in the dark, on Saturday nights after they’d brushed their teeth.
A hot, shameful spike of arousal pierced through the shock. It was immediate and undeniable, a thick, pooling heat in his gut that made him feel sick.He was horrified. He was transfixed. Her pleasure, so vividly on display, was a magnet.
Mike lifted his head. “You taste incredible,” he murmured, his voice a rough hum. He didn’t wait for a reply, dipping his head back down. Jane cried out, her thighs tightening around his ears.
Pete’s hand, without his conscious instruction, moved to the front of his jeans. He was hard. The pressure was painful, a brutal counterpoint to the car crash happening in his head.This was his girlfriend. This was Mike. This was a betrayal.
And he was watching. Leaning into the doorframe, his forehead now pressed against the cool wood, his breath fogging a tiny circle on the surface. The wet sounds grew faster. Jane’s moans climbed higher, breaking into short, sharp cries.
“I’m gonna… Mike, I’m…”
“Let go,” Mike growled against her skin. “Come on. For me.”
It was the “for me” that did it. A possessive, commanding phrase that Pete would never dare utter. Jane shattered. Her whole body convulsed, a silent scream stretching her mouth before sound finally ripped out of her, raw and real and entirely for the man who had pulled it from her.
Pete stumbled back from the door, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The ice and the heat were at war inside him, a nauseating swirl. He took two lurching steps down the hall, then stopped. The image was burned onto his retinas: the sweat on her brow, the absolute surrender on her face.He turned around. He crept back to the door. He looked through the crack again.
They were kissing now, a deep, languid kiss. Mike was easing into her, and Jane’s eyes were open, locked on his, a look of fierce, focused intensity Pete had never seen.She whispered something. Mike smiled, that easy, confident smirk, and began to move.
Pete sank down, his back against the wall beside the door. The floorboards trembled with the music’s bass. He pulled his knees to his chest. Inside the room, the bedsprings began a slow, rhythmic creak. He could still hear them. He could still see them if he wanted to. He just had to turn his head.
He sat there in the dark, sticky hallway, the metallic smell in the air now reminding him of blood, or sex, or both. The chaos of the party was a distant echo. Here, there was only the sound of his girlfriend finding what she needed with someone else, and the terrifying, shameful weight of his own erection pressing against his zipper.
He didn’t move.He listened. And he decided, in that moment, to keep listening.