wide and expressive hazel eyes. But before she could say anything, before I could even explain why I had offered myself up as her next bedroom rebound or any other word she preferred to use for the occasion, the door opened behind me. The moment shared between us was broken.
At least in that instance.
Miles came in, a brow raised, and simply shook his head before bringing another box into the fray. Others joined, and we went through the business of helping the girls unpack. I stayed for another hour, though Mackenzie hadn’t been alone with me. I would’ve thought it odd, but she was rarely alone with me. After all, she had been my roommate’s girlfriend, the one we had all assumed he would marry someday. And yet, that hadn’t happened. Paul Sanders had decided to ruin it all by having sex with another girl. Oh, you could call a blowjob by any number of other names, but having someone’s mouth around your dick while your girlfriend was downstairs cleaning up your party mess? I called that sex. Cheating.
Anything that could break someone’s heart like that was beyond a simple shaking of hands. It was sharing bodily fluids in ways I did not want to imagine. But sadly, I knew what Paul’s dick looked like now because he hadn’t bothered to finish tucking himself back into his boxers when Tanner and I walked in behind Mackenzie, trying to help—or at least attempting to see what we could do. Sanders had blustered, and Tanner had taken care of him. On the other hand, I had pushed the man from my mind the moment I saw him cheating.
If I had known what had been going on behind his closed door, I wouldn’t have let Mackenzie walk in there. Some people might think I was the spider on the web, making sure that everybody adhered to my wishes, but that was far from the case. I never wanted Mackenzie to be hurt. And if I’d had any inkling that Sanders had gone beyond mere flirting with other women, I would have told her. At first, I had thought Sanders was acting like a jerk, puffing himself up because he was the big man on campus. I hadn’t known it had gone beyond a casual smile or a joke shared between friends. If I had, I would have done something about it. Not for Sanders, but for Mackenzie. Because she was a good person and didn’t deserve what the wanker had done to her.
I hadn’t seen it and had been too late. But I had been the one to tell her to keep her chin up and pretend that it didn’t hurt.
Only I knew it had to hurt. Things that twisted you up deep inside always did. And Mackenzie seemed the sort to need things in perfect little piles or little boxes that sat on shelves, waiting to be unpacked for the next instance. And her entire shelf had tumbled from the wall.
Would I be her rebound? I didn’t know. Did she even want one? I honestly didn’t think so. But I would throw myself on the proverbial sword to make a girl I respected smile.
Maybe that was callous of me, at least in some people’s eyes, but I didn’t care. Mackenzie needed someone to talk to, that much was clear, and I wouldn’t mind lending an ear. At least until she found the new track she needed to be on. Then, she would walk away, and I would find my next chance to live life. As I had learned early on, life wasn’t worth living if you didn’t take those chances. Or maybe, life was simply far too short—or any other metaphor about life and living you could think of.
I knew I would see Mackenzie soon, and I wouldn’t let her forget the question she had asked and the offer I had made, if only to see her cheeks blush.
“Pacey, are you not paying attention?” my mother inquired. I blinked, pulling myself back into the moment.
“I’m sorry, I was lost in thought.”
“Clearly. School, I hope?” Mum asked.
I nodded, lying. “Pretty much. The semester’s about to begin, so I don’t have studies on my mind per se, but classes nonetheless.”
“You sure do like adding extra words when you don’t need them,” my mother said, rolling her eyes.
I smiled, knowing it was a joke between us. I liked to sound my most pompous in front of my dad, mostly because he was far more snobbish