“Sweetie ... you’re okay if I go alone, right?”

Tina and her younger brother were throwing a party in a large house just outside the city. My girlfriend Jenna had been invited. I hadn’t. I figured it wasn’t a coincidence.

“Just watch out for Aaron,” I muttered. “I’m sure that idiot will try to hit on you tonight. If he even tries to bother you...”

“Don’t worry, I know how to handle a horny eighteen-year-old,” she interrupted with a laugh.

She was dismissive, but the knot in my stomach wouldn’t budge. Aaron, Tina’s brother, was a real ‘all muscles, no brain’ asshole. But honestly, if he were just some random gym rat, I wouldn’t have cared. The problem was, he was constantly on the prowl. And he’d even hit on my Jenna.

One day, we were leaving the beach after a morning in the sun. Jenna looked killer in that tiny bikini. Then we ran into the dickhead and his usual group of idiots.

“Holy shit, look at those big boobs!” Aaron shouted. “I’d kill to get a piece of that!”

His crew burst out laughing. The asshole followed up with a blowjob gesture. Tired of his shit, I started toward him, ready to lay him out, but Jenna grabbed my arm. “He’s just an arrogant kid,” she whispered.

“A kid? I’ll teach him some manners!”

“Leave it, please. Do it for me.”

I sighed and gave in. I wanted to deck him, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t worth ruining Jenna’s friendship with Tina. I had to let it slide. Even if he had it coming, it wasn’t worth the fallout.

“Good,” she murmured, squeezing my arm. “Just let it go.”

After that, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy at the thought of Aaron being around Jenna. Still, my girlfriend had no intention of skipping the party: “Tina would be offended. She’s worked so hard on it.”

That evening, she looked stunning in a black dress that hugged all the right places, paired with heels that made her legs go on for days.

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were showing off for someone,” I joked.

“Quit it,” she replied, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Don’t wait up for me. You know how these parties go. They don’t end until dawn.”

“Oh yeah? Too bad. I was hoping you’d get bored and call me to come pick you up.”

“Sweetie, try to understand. I can’t just bail, it’d look bad. We’ll see each other tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

“How are you going to spend your evening?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know yet ... I’ll probably just hit up some friends.”

She flashed me one last smile before slipping out the door, her heels clicking down the hallway. I stood there for a moment, letting the apartment settle back into silence. When the front door finally clicked shut, I didn’t reach for my phone. Didn’t text anyone. The idea of small talk, of drinks and half-laughs while she was out there, suddenly felt like too much effort.

So I ditched the plan and ended up on the couch, scrolling for a movie I had no intention of actually watching. But it didn’t stick. After a while, the restlessness kicked in. I couldn’t focus on the screen. My mind kept drifting back to the party: the heat, the music, Aaron hovering around her. How was Jenna behaving? And was that asshole keeping his hands to himself?

I burned through half a pack of cigarettes, but I still couldn’t calm down. Time crawled, a couple of hours, maybe more. Finally, I decided to call. I didn’t care if I sounded jealous or paranoid anymore.

One ring. Two. Three. Nothing. I tried again, but the result was the same. By the third attempt, I was fighting the urge to hurl the phone against the wall.

Must be the music, I told myself. She just can’t hear it.

But the idea of spending the rest of the night trapped in my own head was unbearable. I couldn’t do another two hours of this. I made up my mind: I’d join her. Uninvited or not, in the middle of that chaos, nobody would notice me.

I drove to the house and parked a few meters from the open gate. The music was deafening. The front door stood wide open, lighting up the lawn where a few people were hanging out. In a dark corner, tucked away on a bench, I spotted a young couple lost in a heavy make-out session.

As expected, nobody paid me any mind. I stopped a girl I knew by sight. “Have you seen Jenna?”

“Jenna who?”

“My girlfriend.”

She looked down, suddenly flustered. “Um, no ... I mean, I saw her earlier, but I don’t know where she is now.”

Before I could press her on that odd reaction, she slipped away into the crowd. I kept moving, scanning the room until I found a guy busy swigging from a vodka bottle.

“The busty one?” he laughed.

“Yeah, she’s ... curvy,” I stammered. “Blonde, black dress.”

“Oh, the blondie? Yeah, I saw her.” He took another pull from the bottle. “Hard to miss in that dress, she’s a total smoke show.”

“I see,” I murmured, struggling to keep my voice steady. “Do you know where she is?”

He shook his head. “I wish. I was planning to hit on her, but I haven’t seen her since. Why? You know her?”

“Just a friend. I have a message for her,” I lied. After what I’d already heard, admitting I was her boyfriend felt like a mistake.

“She’s definitely getting laid tonight,” the guy observed, gulping down more vodka. “She seemed wild. Rubbing herself on everyone. A friend of mine grabbed her ass half an hour ago, and she didn’t exactly push him away.”