The Shameless Hour (The Ivy Years #4)

My mind was a continuous loop of anger and confusion. Where had I gone wrong?

My phone rang in my jacket pocket. I almost didn’t look. There was no way I could talk to Alison right now. But when I drew out the phone and answered, it was only the restaurant, wondering if I still needed my reservation. “I’m sorry,” I told the maître d’. “Our plans have changed.”

Had they ever.

The temperature dropped even further, and it became surprisingly bitter for a September evening. My hands were cold, I hadn’t eaten supper and it was probably time to go home. Walking the streets wasn’t answering any of my questions, anyway. I’d been a good guy, and a good boyfriend. My only sin was stupidity.

I stomped back to the Beaumont House gate, where I had to wind through a clot of students who were on their way out to some party or another. I would be alone tonight, having blown off all my soccer buddies to spend my birthday with Alison.

And for what?

Numb, I climbed another stone staircase toward my second-floor room. I unlocked our door, bracing myself to make some sort of explanation for tonight’s disaster. “We broke up,” was all I was willing to say about it.

Although the lights were burning, our common room was empty. My eyes swept around the room, taking in the signs. Both of Bickley’s crystal goblets sat on our coffee table, dregs of dark red wine in their bottoms. I turned to eye our bedroom door. It was shut.

There was no flag on the doorknob, but Bickley was expecting me to be gone tonight. So I would have to proceed with caution.

I stood very still, listening. The faint strains of slow music could be heard, probably from the bedroom I shared with Bickley. Yet the other bedroom door — leading to Mat’s tiny single — was also shut.

I shrugged off my jacket and dropped it on our posh leather sofa. While most common rooms were decorated in the style of Early American Squatter, ours was exquisite. It was all Bickley’s doing. He was the son of an honest-to-God British peer, and the family had some serious coin. The furniture he’d bought for our dorm room had cost several times the value of everything in the tiny Manhattan apartment I shared with my mother.

Alone in this opulence, I perched on the edge of the leather seat, unsure how to occupy my time. What does a guy do on the night he finds out his so-called girlfriend gave it up for some rich dude in a tent in Ecuador? Watch a little TV? Play a few video games?

Ritual suicide?

From our bedroom came the sound of moaning. Figures. It was just the soundtrack I needed tonight. Where was the universal remote, anyway? I needed that sucker, stat. I felt around between the couch cushions, but couldn’t find it.

Then, from Mat’s bedroom, I heard grunting.

No freaking way. Both my roommates were getting it on? Was the universe trying to tell me I would die a virgin?

Frantic now, I got down on my hands and knees, peering under the couch, desperate for the remote. Bickley had set up his complicated video system in a way which required the remote and a NASA-style checklist of instructions he’d taped to the wood paneling on the wall.

Unfortunately, the sexual soundtrack continued in stereo behind me. My frustration rose a hundredfold, until my hands were shaking with irritation at every fricking thing in the world.

My foot connected with the stupid gift bag I’d been dragging around all night, almost toppling it. I gave up. Grabbing the bag, I stood and stomped out into the stairwell, letting the door close behind me. Not that I had any idea where I should go. I was pretty tired of walking around in the cold. So I sat right down on the stone staircase, like the loser that I was.

All I had going for me was a bottle of overpriced wine. I lifted that puppy out of the bag. Owing to my lengthy walk, the champagne was cold. Or at least coldish. I probably should have just tossed the whole gift bag into the first trash can I’d found. But what a waste, right?

Welp. Time to get drunk on champagne. I trapped the bottle between my knees and tore the gold foil off the top.

A little gust of cool air traveled up the stairs. Someone had come in the entryway door below me. Slow footsteps began the upward trudge. Whoever it was would soon appear, probably wondering why I was sitting there twisting the wire thingy off a champagne bottle in the freaking stairwell.

See the World’s Biggest Loser right here, ladies and gentlemen! Step right up!

I tossed the wire into the bag and put my hand over the cork. It wouldn’t do to put my own eye out. This night was pretty tweaked already, but if I’d learned anything, it was that things could always get worse.

“Well hello there.”

I looked up to see my favorite neighbor approaching me on the stairs. “Hey, Bella.” It figured that the sexiest resident of Entryway F would be the one to witness my pathetic little scene in the stairwell. Dios. What’s one more humiliation?