“By the way, what’s ace mean?”

“What’s Ace mean? What are you talking about?” My heart hammers against my chest as my breaths quicken and my stomach curls in on itself.

“Oh I swore I heard you say it a few times.” She giggles a loud giggle that makes her chest swell. “Maybe I heard you wrong. I was a little distracted.” She winks at me again as I will my heart to slow down. It’s not that I fear being caught; it’s that I can’t believe I said her name while sleeping with another woman.

I just slept with another woman. My mind begins sifting through images like I’m just now seeing Erin in my bed from last night. Her expressions were exaggerated and almost rehearsed. Her words sounded like something that came from a porn video. My stomach turns violently as I work to keep my knees from buckling.

“This was fun, Max. Call me.” She seems either oblivious or undeterred by my silence as I stiffly nod my head. I follow her as she brazenly descends the stairs, avoiding the fact that one of my roommates is in the living room, shooting her death glares.

When we reach the front door, Erin turns and kisses me, pressing her chest against mine before she breaks away and smiles at me a final time.

“See you soon, Max,” she purrs, and then turns and leaves.

Landon walks in the living room, holding a bowl of cereal and looks from Kendall to me and back.

“What did I miss?” he asks.

“He’s ruining everything!” Kendall screeches, throwing a new pillow she recently bought to replace the ones I’d gotten rid of. She stands without saying another word and stomps down the hall to hers and Jameson’s room then slams the door.

Landon’s eyes follow her and then turn back to me. “What in the hell did you throw away this time?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what’s she so pissed about?”

“Life,” I reply, turning to head back up the stairs.

Wes and I go to the Halloween party sans Erin. I can’t spend this day with her because although Ace is on the opposite side of the goddamn continent, I’ve been thinking about her for weeks and what she might be doing tonight for her birthday. Plus, I’m not ready to have my relationship with Erin be anything but purely sexual at this point, and she doesn’t seem to object. I refuse to label it as a convenient relationship because the term leaves an acidic taste in my mouth reminding me of her again.

The party is filled with girls in scandalous costumes and others that are elaborate. I have no clue who several of characters are, nor do I give a shit to know. We file our way past them in search of the bar, stopping a few times as people greet us.

Wes is wearing the same costume we’d all worn last year: tight jeans, a leather vest without a shirt underneath, a cowboy hat, and a rope slung over his shoulder with a pair of boots.

“Wes, you can’t recycle costumes two years in a row. You have to skip at least one year in between,” Abby says in greeting as she reaches over to wrap her arms around him.

Wes grins and lifts the rope. “I upgraded. I got a rope and some boots, so now I’m Indiana Jones.”

Jesse laughs as Abby rolls her eyes. “I don’t think Indiana Jones wore Wranglers, cowboy,” she says, failing to break his laughter. “What are you supposed to be?” Abby asks, eyeing my jeans and T-shirt.

“Awesome.” My mind races to thoughts of her, hearing her laughter as the word leaves my mouth. I feel the heat of her body next to mine as an image of us hanging out in her father’s den, watching TV last summer, before she fell asleep in my lap for the first time.

“You’re so lame.” Abby interrupts my recollection, and I shake my head and scan the room to find something to distract my mind.

The four of us catch up for a while and then part when Abby and Jesse head out to the dance floor with their hands tightly clasped around one another. Wes and I head in search of the bar.

I don’t know what time it is when I wake up, freezing my ass off because my bedroom window is open and I’m lying on top of my covers, still wearing my shoes. My head throbs and my stomach rolls as I work to sit up enough to kick off my tennis shoes and clumsily maneuver myself to get under the covers. The warmth of my bed feels good, but the leather of my belt bites my hip bone and I groan in protest. Reaching down with one hand, I fumble with it until I get it unbuckled and feel the pressure ease. I don’t bother fishing it out of my belt loops, right now I couldn’t give a shit.

The sun is too bright, making my head ache as though my brain’s physically chipping away at my skull. With a quiet groan I sit up and keep my eyes on the ground, waiting for my head to stop throbbing so I can shut out the light. My steps seem too loud, and my window too strong before I fall back in bed with another groan.

There’s a crunching of paper below me that barely registers. It hangs in my thoughts for a few too many seconds, adding a new pressure to my head. I roll to my back with a grunt and fish around blindly for the source. My hand fists around a piece of paper, crackling too loudly as I move it to where I can see it.

My eyes blink several times and then squint to see Landon’s handwriting:

I’m done watching you try and kill yourself. Call J next time.

I crumple the note in my fist and throw it against the wall, not bothering to watch where it lands as I roll over, wondering how often Erin frequents the gym before I search for more sleep.

Sometimes I wish I could have talked you into going to the gym. You refused. That was okay, it gave me time to spend with Wes, Landon, and Jameson. Still, I remember watching you on a few separate occasions while you were playing soccer and seeing the intense focus as you worked and how hot it was. But, you refused to go. Referring to it as … I have to get this one right … the epicenter of bacterial growth. You said you liked the people that went even less because you felt they used it as a place to find dates. I’d laughed when I first heard your theory, and then began realizing you were pretty spot on.

Landon, Jameson and I were returning from the gym. Jameson was doing a nearly perfect impersonation of Wes trying to hit on a girl that had us all cracking up.

Kendall was watching TV in the living room alone, causing me to question where you were. When Kendall wasn’t doing something with Jameson, she was nearly always with you. Even when you were studying, or reading, she’d sit beside you, watching crap that no one cared about.

“Where’s Ace?” I asked her as she turned to look at us.

“I think she’s reading. She’s been quiet all afternoon.” She looked slightly defeated, revealing she’d tried to coax you out. I remember thinking you had a test for anatomy that was coming up that had you a little nervous. I don’t know why, you knew that shit backwards and forwards.

I climbed the stairs and found you curled on my bed with a book propped up on you knees, a wad of tissues tightly bunched in your fist that you wiped your cheek with.

You spent a fair amount of your time buried behind the pages of different novels. Sometimes reading non-fiction that led you to share about projections and people we’d usually never heard of, and questions you wished to ask. Primarily, you stuck to fiction, explaining that you enjoyed the breaks into other realities. I loved when you got so wrapped up in a book that your awareness of the surrounding world seemed to be completely lost. It was one of my favorite times to sit back and just appreciate your beauty, something that if I tried to do while you weren’t fully distracted, made you blush and squirm.