NOTE: This work contains material not suitable for anyone under eighteen (18) or those of a delicate nature. This is a story and contains descriptive scenes of a graphic, sexual nature. This tale is a work of pure fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously—any resemblance to actual persons, whether living, deceased, real events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

I met Honey at a Halloween party in our sophomore year. She wore a mesh top with nothing underneath and two black Xs taped across her nipples. I stood in the corner for an hour with a cup of warm vodka and Sprite. When she pulled me onto the makeshift dance floor, she shouted, “You’re too pretty to be wall-flowering.”

The emasculating reference to my appearance stung, but I couldn’t find a way to argue.

We started dating halfway through the first semester when we were juniors.

Honey’s school lay 60 miles south. Built on rolling farmland and the backs of kids whose parents bought football tickets for the alumni box. Honey lived in a white clapboard house with eight other girls, all tied by the same Greek letters.

At the time, I thought sorority bitches dressed only in loose sweatshirts and bootcut jeans, but Honey disabused me of this early. She wore see-through crop tops in February, cutoff shorts in snow, and always managed to be unfazed, even as her thighs prickled with goosebumps. She drank anyone under, and I could not match her pace no matter how hard I tried.

I knew about her friends, their pre-law boyfriends and vape pens. But I underestimated how little I belonged. On my first visit to her house, Honey greeted me at the door with a red plastic cup and a clumsy side-hug.

The whole time I was there, she called me “baby” and “my dude” in the same breath, and everyone in the kitchen stopped their beer pong to check me up and down. I wore corduroys and a NASA T-shirt, and I was out of place, the substitute English teacher unaware it was jeans day.

We did shots of Fireball in the living room. Honey told her friends I was “experimenting” and laughed when I winced at the taste. No one chuckled with her, but no one looked away, either. By midnight, I had two hickeys on my neck and an unfamiliar urge to be seen. The impulse crept up on me, and settled in my chest and would not leave.

On Saturday, Honey woke me up at nine and demanded pancakes.

So, I cooked for her in the house kitchen, using pancake mix someone left open on top of the fridge. The smell made some girls drift downstairs in sweatpants and last night’s makeup. One, a girl named Tara, started a group FaceTime on the couch while Honey straddled my lap at the table.

The vid-call was with a football player at another school. I only caught his voice, loud and eager, asking if Tara wore underwear under her sweats.

She flipped her camera to her crotch and said, “Nope, free-balling,” and he moaned in mock agony. Honey glanced at me and shrugged, as if to say, Welcome to my world.

We spent the afternoon at a house party. The house belonged to the fraternity next to her sorority. The yard filled up by two-thirty pm. Kids holding Solo cups and smoking weed out of Sprite bottles.

This was our third date, and I was nowhere near comfortable with my position as boyfriend. Painfully aware, this might be jerked away in a heartbeat. This was why I’d do anything to keep her.

While I strained to match pace with Honey and her friends, by five my words slurred, and my legs were unsteady. She found this hilarious and kept feeding me more drinks. At some point, a guy named Jamar arrived. Honey mentioned him before, but only in passing—he was in her Intro to American Politics. The jock led campus tours; he hooked up with three girls from her floor in one week.

She never said more, and I did not ask.

Jamar stood out. He was tall, at least six feet, and wore a tight black T-shirt that accentuated his arms. His hair sat close to his scalp, edged sharp. He had a way of speaking in a bassy, rumble, quiet sentences that forced everyone to lean in. When he walked into the backyard, all conversation thinned. Honey squeezed my hand as he approached, her nails digging into my skin.

He did not so much as peek at me first. Eyeballing Honey, Jamar’s eyes bright and his mouth stretching in a grin.

“You made it,” he said. His voice rolled through the crowd.

Honey leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Wouldn’t miss it,” she said. I watched their bodies angle toward each other, so I gripped my cup and stayed silent.

Jamar finally noticed me and nodded. “Who’s this?”

“My man Charles,” Honey said. “Be nice.”

He offered his hand, and I shook it, surprised by the dry, calloused grip. “Welcome,” he said. “You in a frat?”

Shaking my head, I said, “No, I, uh, commute.”

He grinned, showing his teeth. “I like that. More time for the real shit.”

When he turned back to Honey, I became scenery. Calling her “girl” and “sugar buns,” he joked with her, and she giggled at everything he said. At first, I laughed along, but my chuckles came late and offbeat.

At that point, Jamar’s hand landed on Honey’s waist, he leaned in, and she did not move it. They talked for about twenty minutes about an upcoming formal. About mutual friends and a professor’s drinking problem.

Jamar told her to wear red to the party, that it’d look crazy on her.

“Only if you promise not to outshine me,” Honey said, but he promised nothing. All the while, his thumb made circles on her hip.

Honey eventually broke away and dragged me inside. She pressed me against the kitchen counter and whispered, “You okay?”

Shrugging, I said, “Do you want to hang with him?”

“Don’t be such a baby; he’s just that way. And if anything happens, it’s not what we have, it’s only sex.”

The words shook me to the core, I needed to protest—

And she cut me off with a kiss when I sought to explain my meaning, Frenching me, her hands pressing into my shoulders. She pulled back and said, “You know you’re hot, right?” I did not, but I nodded. “I know what you want,” she said, and I knew she meant it. In a single beat of my heart, my knees went weak.

We returned to the backyard, where Jamar held court with a group of girls and two guys from the football team. He spotted us and waved us over, gestured to a folding table set up for beer pong. “Come play,” he said, racking the cups.