Play With Me

well.”
    “Yeah,
whatever.” Pissed at something I hadn’t yet proof of, I shoved past him but
then stopped. “What does Tony owe you for putting me on the team?”
    For a moment, he
looked confused. Then he laughed out loud. “You don’t want to know.”
    My hands fisted
around the strap of my backpack. Hell, of course, I wanted to know.
    Turning to
leave, he glanced at me over his shoulder. His eyes sparked with a glint of
mischief. “See you at my house, Matthews.”
    Holy shit. Did he just invite me to his party?

 
     
     
    CHAPTER
    3
     
     
    THE SUNDAE WAS
yummy, but so was Tony as he licked vanilla ice-cream off his spoon. I couldn’t
take my eyes off his lips the entire hour we sat at Charlie’s. Unfortunately,
the boy was like a fortress. Bolted down. He refused to tell me what he had to
give Ryan for letting me play in the team. Well, he said he didn’t owe Hunter
anything, but I didn’t buy it.
    At eight thirty
that evening, Tony picked me up at my door and drove us to Ryan’s house in his
mother’s car. I had no idea what people wore to those parties, but since it was
still over ninety degrees in the evening—not unusual for North California in
August—I chose a dark gray tank top and black hot pants. Judging by the smirk I
earned from Tony, I supposed I had settled on the right clothes.
    As we entered
the lane with Hunter’s mansion, a long queue of cars told me just how big this
party was. Tony appeared unimpressed and maneuvered into a spot at the corner,
but I had a hard time closing my mouth. “How many guests is he expecting?”
    “Can’t say.
Usually, there are one hundred to hundred and fifty. If his parents are gone,
the number might as well get up to three hundred.”
    Heck, I didn’t
even know that many people if I counted all my friends, family, and their pets
together. We walked up the drive then climbed the marble steps to the door with
the bowed top. The music blasted through the wood so we figured we didn’t need
to ring. Tony jiggled the handle, and it opened easily.
    Jean Paul’s She
doesn’t mind was blaring from the many speakers as we entered. Bodies bumped
and ground against each other in salacious moves I only knew from films. Several
boys shouted a conversation over the noise and drank beer from bottles while
groping the butts of the girls with them. Some people kissed in the dim light.
    I clung to
Tony’s comforting biceps. “Oh my God, don’t leave me alone in this place.”
    He laughed, or
so I thought when his ribcage shook slightly, because I couldn’t really hear
him. But his arm pressed my hands tighter to his body as he pulled me into the mass
of people. Not all of them were kids. It seemed Hunter had a lot of older
friends, too, ranging from sixteen to about twenty-five.
    A small group of
girls from my History class gathered in the middle of the room. Simone Simpkins
grabbed my arm when we passed them. I had to lip-read to understand that she
wanted me to join them.
    “I’ll get you
something to drink,” Tony shouted in my ear.
    I nodded and
watched him walk away with a weird quiver in my stomach. What if he never found
his way back to me in this blasted place? The distance he put between us was
quickly filled with throngs of strangers. Shit, I shouldn’t have let him go.
    Turning back to my
friends, I tried to join in the conversation, but mostly I just stood there and
nodded, pretending to understand what they said. Simone handed me a bottle of Corona
when Tony hadn’t come back after ten minutes. Parched by the heat in the room,
anything cool was welcome. I wet my lips with the beer then licked it off.
Okay, this stuff wasn’t half bad. I took a real sip. A little acerbic, but
quite palatable. I had downed half of the bottle when my head started to feel dizzy.
    Across the room
I thought I’d spotted Tony. I waved goodbye at my friends and headed off toward
the back. The crowd thinned a little there, and I could actually move without
rubbing against other people’s sweat. But Tony was nowhere in sight.
    A high arch in
the wall connected this room to the kitchen. I headed there and found Ryan
standing in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the wall. The sleeves of
his black shirt were rolled up to his elbows, and the jeans he wore were ripped
at the hems. Black was a color I loathed on Tony. It made him look way too
demonic. With Ryan it was different. The top buttons undone, he looked
mysterious. Kind of sexy. Him looking like