Claire decides to go to the party to confront Blake

“Fuck it,” Clare said to herself, ignoring Kirsten’s call. Was she really going to pace around an empty jewelry store on a Friday night, wondering whether Blake was balls-deep in Ashleigh or Sarah? Even when there were customers, most of them were couples who spent their whole time staring at the cases, talking to each other in whispers and quietly ignoring her. Leaving her thinking about that picture.

In the picture, Blake was sitting in between Sarah and Ashleigh. His legs spread comfortably, his arms wrapped around the back of the couch, he looked like he owned the couch, like the party was his to command. That’s what Claire loved about Blake. That’s what she hated about him. His gym shirt was covered in sweat and motor oil, his jeans were dirty from crawling under the car, but his face– his face was all confidence. When he smiled, it looked like he was thinking about something else, far away. Claire just couldn’t decide which of those two skanks it was.

Wearing a sun dress and no shoes, Sarah captured a look of innocence that had frat boys lusting after her. Her wispy frame and her pale skin only added to the image of naive, untouched youth. She would just slip her long, straight blond hair behind her ear, look up with her bright blue eyes, and lick her lips– subtly– so you couldn’t tell if she was horny or just nervous. That was her trick, to separate the men from the boys. She wouldn’t make the first move, but would look him in the eyes and silently beg him to take her. To take charge.

She hadn’t always been that way. She had been with Jordan for five years, but after the camping trip, she ended it. “‘I don’t want to have to lead you by the hand any time I want us to do something. I don’t want to have to wait for you to finish your Call of Duty bromance so you can make sweet love to me. I want you to grab me and fuck me,’ she said,” Jordan told Ian and Ryan. “I’m like, ‘Where the fuck did this come from? You never wanted me to just grab you and fuck you,’ but she was done.” She wanted a man who could hone in on her desires and make them real, and that wasn’t Jordan.

That man could be Blake. And the way she was sitting– with her back against the arm of the couch and her knees crouched up against the side of his chest, letting her lime green dress slide down to give him a view– the way she was sitting screamed ‘Come fuck me.’ Claire wanted to gut her, to tear her perfect dress to shreds, to leave her bleeding all over Ian’s couch. Blake, though. Blake wasn’t even looking at Sarah. He was looking right at the camera, smiling his cool, subtle smirk, like he was in on a joke that no one else knew. Claire wasn’t worried about Sarah, or rather Claire was more worried about Ashleigh.

With long, black hair and naturally olive-colored skin, Ashleigh looked like an Italian contessa in an old, Gothic castle. Like Monica Bellucci. Even dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, there was something exotic and haughty about her. The way her gray eyes stared into a camera like they were searching for prey. The way she poured her chest over the edge of the bar when she was ordering a drink, making that halter top work as it strained to keep her from bursting out of her top. Sarah had figured out how to make innocence look sexy, but Ashleigh had captured a look of pure temptation. The way she stared at the camera, it was like she was challenging Claire. ‘You think this is your man? I’m going to show you.’

She wasn’t worried about Blake cheating on her– actually, that wasn’t true. Claire was convinced that Blake was cheating on her at college, or... maybe not convinced... maybe just suspicious.... That feeling she would get at the bar when everyone’s already hooked up for the night and you know everyone left is going home alone, or when she was at a club watching a guy put his moves on a girl on the dance floor, and everyone knows how that’s going to go just looking at the two of them: Claire would look at those people and think, how can he not be living it up like that? She would get suspicious then. How could he not show up at a frat party, see some whores licking body shots off each other, or accidentally graze some freshman’s tits reaching for a beer, or hear about some skank pulling a train in the game room, and not think, ‘I’m going to fucking have that’.

But she also trusted him. Claire couldn’t explain it, except that she knew he wasn’t pulling his cock out for a drunken hook-up. Knowing that didn’t stop her feeling that jealous rage burning deep in her chest every time she saw pictures of him at a party, but she trusted him. He trusted her.

And that was the problem, the trust he had for her. If Ashleigh wanted to fuck with him, all she had to do was open her mouth and–

Shit. Claire shook her head. She was already at Ian’s, and she had no fucking clue what to say to Blake. A part of her wanted to crawl to him on her hands and knees, set her head down in his lap, and tell him about the men she made out with at the bar, and how she went home and fucked herself so hard she could barely sit the next day. But a part of her also wanted to grab Sarah and Ashleigh by their straight, perfect hair and just crack their heads together until they bled, to punch and kick and scream at Blake for letting those sluts near him, for not calling her sooner, for letting her life fall apart while he partied. As she turned off the ignition and opened the door, Claire felt the humid, summer air hit her skin, but she couldn’t stop shivering. Angry and ashamed, she felt the tension that had been building in her for months reach critical mass, and she couldn’t tell if she was going to scream or cry. As she reached for the door, she thought–