After way too many shots, I tell Joe I'm about to head out. He tells me he was going to head out as well and walks me out into the parking lot.
"I'm going to just leave my car here and order an Uber, but thank you for talking with me and being my bartender. Tonight has helped me a lot." I thank him.
"Oh, I haven't drank anything. I came here in a Uber, too. I could drive your car back to Nicks place. That way it's there for you." He happily, says.
"Are you sure?" I question.
"Yeah, of course. I'd like to see you get back safe, too." He replies, as the gentleman he was.
"Um, yeah, sure. That would be nice." I toss him my keys from my purse.
We approach my car.
"Oh, a Prius." He says.
I was expecting for him to say something bad about it, but he actually doesn't.
"This is a nice car." He tells me, pressing the unlock button.
I smile getting into the passenger seat. He seemed to be a really nice guy, he didn't really meet the criteria of an Ohio State boy. I herd they had bad reputations, but he seemingly had none.
*
We arrive back at Nicks house, and I notice Joeys car parked outside. I thank Joe again for driving my car back. As I take my car keys from him and start to say goodbye, he stops me.
"Well, I'm actually going to come inside. I wanted to say hi to the guys."
"Oh." I nervously, reply. This probably wasn't going to look good on my part, but fuck it. I was single, right?
I walk through the front door with Joe at my back. I see that Nick had Kayla over still and Joey was sitting with some random girl I'd never seen before on the couch.
"Hey, I ran into Joe at the bar. He wanted to come in and say hi." I try to paint the narrative, before they could create a false one for themselves.
"What's up, dude." Joe slaps hands with Nick. "You feeling a bit better, today?" He chuckles.
"Yeah, for sure man." Nick responds, before looking at me with suspicion. "You guys just meet up or?"
"I told you, I ran into him there." I repeat, becoming a bit upset he was even questioning me.
"I was doing an event. She happened to walk in." Joe explains to Nick.
"Hm." Nick makes an obnoxious sound. "Well, we are just hanging out. I think we're going to get into the hot tub if you guys want to join us?" He asks.
"You guys?" I question him.
"You and Joe." He says.
I look at him like he was clinically insane. At this point I had no reason to think otherwise, but maybe he was just trying to play it cool in front of his new little friend.
"What?" Nick questions me obviously, seeing my reaction.
"I'm good. I think I'm just gonna go to bed." I reply, thumbing my hand towards the staircase.
"You don't want to get into the spa? It helps with hangovers you know." Joe tells me.
I watch as Joey stands up from the couch and removes his shirt over his head. "Oh, come on, Lil. Don't be a party pooper." He says, looking directly at me as if I were about to ruin the night somehow by not saying yes.
"Fine." I roll my eyes.
"Oh, Liliana. Do you possibly, have a bathing suit I can borrow? I'm sorry. I didn't bring one." Kayla, asks me.
Nick gives me a look.
I fumble around for a second, a bit uncomfortable. "Yeah, I think I got a couple." I reply, nicely. None of any of this was her fault and I didn't want to be rude to her.
We go to find the two bathing suits, which were embarrassingly, in a box on the bedroom floor.
She follows me upstairs and into the spare room. I grab the box from the floor and throw it onto the bed.
"Sorry, in the middle of moving." I explain, but I'm sure she already knew that.
I look at her, momentarily. I try not to knowledge how beautiful she actually was. We both had a similar body type, so I knew one of the two bathing suits would fit her. I lay them both out for her to pick from one.
I had the white silky, bikini set that Nick bought me and also one that was just plain red. She chose the red one, of course. Leaving me with the skimpy little white one to wear in front of everyone.
We all meet up in the backyard at the edge of the hot tub. Joey and his girl were already in and Nick and Kayla were just now sitting down beneath the steam. I stand with a towel wrapped tightly around me feeling for some reason a bit of anxiety. I really didn't know why, though. Two out of three of the men here has seen me naked, there wasn't much more to leave to the imagination on their parts.
Joe strips down to his boxers without any sort of shame and I try to keep my eyes directly out of his way. It was hard, but I managed to do so.
Once Joe gets in, I drop the towel. All three of the guys watch me get into the hot tub. Maybe most girls would like this sort of attention, but I tried to hurry as quick as I could to get underneath the bubbling water and hide myself.
It was quite for sometime and the only sound was coming from the jets that were sloshing the warm water around.
I try my hardest to avoid eye contact with anyone. This was extremely awkward for me.
I tilt my head up towards the clear night sky and stare up at the moon. Joe must of caught me doing this because he inches closer to me and stares up as well.
"It's a full moon. Joeys going to turn into a werewolf at midnight." He chuckles.
"Yeah, I am." Joey replies, pulling the girl at his side onto his lap.
She laughs, but it was annoyingly fake. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something about her screamed red flag, to me.
I survey everyone's face at some point and everyone seemed to just being enjoying the hot water and relaxing, there still continued to be awkward silence and I was trying to think of a way to escape back into the peace and privacy of my room.
Joey turns and lifts halfway out of the water for a bit. He lights a joint and starts to past it around the group. I avoid it when Nick tries pasting it to me.
"You don't smoke?" Joe asks me as he takes a hit off the joint.
"Sometimes." My eyes quickly dart to Joey then back to him. "I just don't want to get all paranoid." I tell him, the fact that I already was paranoid as it was without being stoned.
Joe goes to past the joint back to Joey, but sorta slips on the slick bottom of the hot tub, his large hand comes down and grasps my upper thigh to steady himself.
"Shit." He slicks back the side of his hair. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to grab you there." He genuinely, apologizes.
"That's okay." I reply, even though, I was feeling even more uncomfortable at this point.
"Hey, Liliana. You good?" Joey asks.
It was almost like he seen right through my eyes, deep down into my core at that very second and realized just how uncomfortable I was. He completely picked up on my mood shift.
"I'm fine." I quietly, lie.
"Are you sure?" Nick questions.
"I think I'm just getting a little tired." I say.
"Alright." Nick says, jumping up out of the the water. "Let me get you some fresh sheets and you can go to bed. Come on." He waves at me as he starts to get out of the hot tub.
"No, it's cool Nick. Stay, I'll get her some sheets. I want to go inside and get a glass of wine anyway." Joey replies. "Anyone want some wine?"
They all happily agree.
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