1.

Lori

I should have known from the beginning that Travis had been deceiving me for the past six months.

The signs were all right there, written in bold, painful letters across every single one of his half hearted promises. But I had been far too blinded by love and the desperate need for validation to see the truth.

My wake up call should have been the moment he suddenly grew cold feet right in the middle of my twentieth birthday party.

“Come on, Travis, babe... you promised me that we would finally tell everyone about us tonight,” I said, looking up at him with a pleading smile as I tried to drag him by his hands toward the makeshift stage set up in the living room.

Travis remained rooted in place. His posture turned stiff, and he quietly pulled his arm out of my grip. A tight, nervous laugh broke across his sharp jawline as he refused to meet my eyes.

“Don’t worry about it right now, Lori. Just go on up there without me,” he muttered smoothly, looking over my head at the crowded room. “Go cut your cake, and I’ll join you once everyone is done singing the happy birthday song for you. Then... yeah, then we can talk about telling people.”

He muttered that last sentence like it was an afterthought. Like the idea of publicly claiming me as his girlfriend was an insufferable chore rather than something he actually wanted.

I wanted to stand my ground and insist. I wanted to drag him up onto that platform by his collar until he finally gave in. Travis was the star wide receiver for the varsity football team, and having him publicly claim me as his girl felt like the validation I needed for our relationship to be secure.

Beyond the status, I genuinely loved him. I had spent six long months keeping our relationship tucked away in the shadows, waiting patiently for the moment he would finally deem me worthy of being shown off to the world. I wanted my cheerleading teammates and my snobbish college peers to see that I wasn't just another background girl and that Travis belonged to me, and I belonged to him.

Before I could press him any further, Jessica, one of my roommates, suddenly materialized through the sea of drinking college students and grabbed my wrist.

“Come on, Lor!” Jessica yelled over the blaring bass of the speakers, dragging me backward. “It’s almost midnight, and you need to get up there to sing happy birthday and cut your cake!”

I reluctantly allowed her to pull me toward the stage, turning my head over my shoulder to search Travis’s face one last time.

Standing beneath the warm glow of the party lights while a room full of more than thirty people began singing the birthday song, my trembling hands gripped the plastic knife above the frosted cake. But my eyes weren't on the flickering candles. They were entirely locked on Travis at the back of the room.

I watched in mounting horror as he slowly ducked his head, turned his back on the stage entirely, and struck up a casual conversation with one of his football teammates. They both burst into loud laughter over something on his phone, his attention completely pulled away from me on my special night.

I wanted to shout his name over the crowd. I wanted to stop the music and demand to know why he was ignoring me. But Ann, my other roommate, nudged my ribs tightly.

“Make a wish, Lor!” she encouraged warmly.

I shut my eyes tight, but I couldn't even think of a normal wish. All I could process was the crushing realization of how deeply heartbroken I would be if Travis backed out on his promise to make us official tonight.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LORI!” the entire crowd cheered loudly, assuming I had finished making my wish. I didn't even say a word in response.

I snapped my eyes open, my heart dropping into my stomach when Travis was nowhere to be found. I scrambled off the stage and hurried straight over to the corner where I had last seen him, frantically confronting his teammate.

“Where’s Travis?” I demanded over the noise.

The guy just shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, taking a sip from his plastic cup. “No idea, man. He walked off a minute ago.”

I turned around to search the rest of the packed living room, but Jessica caught up with me, wrapping a heavy arm around my shoulder.

“What is up with you tonight, Lor?” Jessica teased, completely oblivious to my panic. “You’re acting super weird! It’s officially past midnight, which means it’s time for your birthday shots! Come on, it will be a federal crime if you don’t do it!”

I let Jessica drag me toward the kitchen, where a long row of red plastic cups sat filled to the brim with amber liquor. She handed me one cup after another. I gulped them down in rapid succession, wincing as the harsh, cheap whiskey burned a blistering trail down my throat and settled heavy in my gut.

Three full cups in, the alcohol hit my bloodstream like a freight train. I was thoroughly drunk, and an explosive wave of raw anger toward Travis began bubbling up inside me. He had broken his word. He had spent weeks assuring me that my birthday would be the night he finally told the entire campus about us.

He had swore how much he loved me, how proud he was to be with me, and how ready he was to show me off. I had even planned to give him my virginity tonight in my bedroom after the party died down. A massive step I had been holding back on for six long months.

Suddenly feeling an urgent wave of nausea and pressure in my bladder, I broke away from the kitchen noise and headed down the dim hallway toward my room to use the adjoining bathroom.

I pushed my bedroom door open, stepping inside without bothering to flick the light switch on. The room was bathed in quiet shadows, lit only by the pale streetlights filtering through the blinds. As I crossed the floor, I caught a brief glimpse of dark shapes tangled on top of my bed, but I brushed it off, assuming the heavy alcohol was making me see double.

I slipped into the bathroom, handled my business, washed my hands with cold water, and tried to gather my composure.

A few minutes later, I opened the bathroom door and stepped back out into the dark bedroom. I was just about to reach for the doorknob to leave when an unmistakable female moan echoed through the quiet space, followed by the rhythmic creaking of my bed frame.

My stomach churned violently. I reached out and slammed my palm against the light switch, flooding the entire room with blinding fluorescent light.

The sight before me made my blood run stone cold, freezing me dead in my tracks.

There, sprawled out on top of my duvet, was Travis, completely naked, drenched in sweat, aggressively shoving his dick in and out of a breathless blonde girl beneath him.