Code Blue

Lexi vs. Red Solo Cups

Tongue poking between my lips, I furrowed my brow in concentration as I stared intently at my phone screen.

Sup, Max, it’s Evie.

I immediately cringed in disgust and backspaced. This text message was supposed to come off casual, but not as though I’d just spent the weekend hanging with the surfers at the beach.

Hello, Max. This is Evie from Leadership in Business club.

Nope. That sounded as though I was trying to sell him life insurance. Sighing, in frustration, I backspaced what was now my sixth attempt at starting a conversation with Max and looked up at the sound of the door opening, flashing a smile as Quinn entered.

“You seem distressed,” she lifted one eyebrow at me, stepping out of her athletic shoes beside her bed and pulling her hair from its ponytail.

“I’m a little on edge,” I admitted. “How was the game?”

Quinn had played volleyball all through high school, but opted out of playing for the university’s team in favor of focusing on her degree. Still, she missed the competitive atmosphere and the workout, so she had joined an intramural team for fun and played every Friday afternoon because she didn’t have classes.

“We won!” she smiled brightly, crossing her arms to pull her sweat dampened shirt over her head and leaving her in just her sports bra and shorts as she walked towards her closet to toss it in the laundry hamper. “You know, if you want to join the team, you’re more than welcome. Anyone’s allowed to play.”

I was pretty sure that was her way of telling me I needed to branch out more, which I supposed was fair, seeing as my days consisted of being as discreet as possible as I basically stalked Max from afar and then came back to my dorm room to sigh in frustration as I attempted to understand my homework.

“Thanks for the invite, but I’ll pass,” I smiled ruefully. “I’m horrible at sports.”

It was a requirement of the agency to be physically fit in order to be allowed to work in the field at all, but that didn’t mean that athletics came naturally to me.

“Well, the offer stands,” she laughed, closing her closet door once she’d tossed her t-shirt inside and taking a step towards me, her hands on her hips. “So how come you’re making faces at your phone?”

I should have known I wouldn’t get away with hiding my dilemma from her. Sighing, I glanced down at the empty text message thread. “I’m not exactly sure how to do this.”

Technically speaking, I didn’t actually need to ask Max for his address, because the agency could get me that information in a heartbeat. The trouble was that if I just showed up at his party without asking where he lived and what time I should be there; he’d probably be a little more than suspicious.

Nodding once, she took a seat on my bed beside me, holding out her hand to silently ask if she could see my phone and smiling widely when I dropped it in her palm. Her eyebrows immediately shot up at the sight of the blank white screen and the name printed on the top. “Max? As in Max Stafford? How’d you get his number?”

“What do you mean?” I blinked, surprised at her first question about the situation. “He gave it to me.”

She stared at me for about three seconds before she burst out laughing, shaking her head in wonder. “Amazing. There’s people that have been chasing after Max Stafford since the moment he stepped on campus three years ago and you’ve been here a week and you already have his number.”

“I didn’t realize it was such a big deal,” I furrowed my brow in confusion, thinking Max was the type of guy who probably gave his number to lots of people.

“It’s probably not,” she shrugged, her eyes still light with laughter. “I just think it’s incredible how fast you work. Good for you. So what now, you wanna start a conversation, but you don’t know how?”

“Not exactly,” I sighed, settling myself back further onto the bed. “Last night, after the meeting, he invited me to a party at his place, but I don’t know any of the details, so I have to text him to find out, because he doesn’t have my number either.”

Lifting her eyebrows upwards, she let out a low whistle. “Wow, he’s good. I don’t get it, though, just text him and ask for the details.”

That seemed like a simple enough solution, except that I had never been in this situation before. I’d kept my head down throughout high school and skipped college entirely, so the whole notion of texting to make plans was kinda new to me. Mostly, I just used my phone to play games during meetings where I was supposed to be paying attention and to look up things that I was probably supposed to know.

“Do you want me to do it?” Quinn offered, sensing my inner turmoil.

I nodded and she poked her tongue out between her lips as her fingers went to work, simply typing out, ‘hey, it’s Evie’.

“That’s it?” I lifted my eyebrows in surprise, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that sooner.

“You don’t want to say too much at once,” she explained, “Plus, if he doesn’t have your number, you got to give him a second to realize who you are. Look, he’s responding.”

I leaned in close, my eyes glued to my phone screen as I watched the gray dots form into words inside a bubble.

I was wondering when you were gonna text. You coming to my party tonight?

Well, that was direct. And kinda perfect, because it kept me from having to bring up the party on my own. Now that the difficult part was out of the way, I reached out to grab my phone from Quinn’s grasp, but she had already typed out and sent a response before I could.

That depends on how badly you want me there.

My eyes widened in horror as I snatched the phone away from her, my words coming out in a hushed gasp. “Oh my god, Quinn, what did you do?”

“It’s called flirting,” she shrugged nonchalantly, pushing herself off my bed. “Max sends it your way every time you talk to him, it’s about time you return the favor.”

That logic was all well and good, but what was I supposed to do if he texted something equally flirty back? At least since we weren’t having this conversation in person, I didn’t have to worry about blushing and stammering out my response, but that didn’t mean I’d have any idea how to respond in the first place.

My phone buzzed in my hand to indicate he had replied and I squeezed my eyes shut to collect myself before glancing down to read the message.

I can show you better than I can tell you.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t breathing. Gulping, I lifted my gaze to meet Quinn’s and found her smirking, indicating she didn’t need to ask what he had said because it was surely something that left me flustered. Exhaling the breath I had been holding in, I whispered to her softly. “Will you come to this party with me?”

“I’d be honored,” she laughed, heading back to her closet to grab her shower caddy and towel before walking purposefully towards the door. “Watching you and Max interact is bound to be entertaining.”

Flashing me one last smile, she pulled open the door to head for the community showers and I turned my attention back to my phone screen, my heart already racing in anticipation of the night ahead as I typed out my response.

When and where?

We stepped through the front door of the townhouse Max shared with one other person at nine thirty, half an hour after he told me the party was starting because I didn’t want to make it seem like I was too excited to see him. Despite my lack of knowledge of house parties, it was pretty much what I expected: pounding music and red solo cups and drunken dancing galore.

“So what now?” I asked Quinn, who seemed to be completely comfortable in this environment.

Her eyes scanned the townhouse before nodding towards a hallway to the right. “Kitchen. Drinks are always the best place to start.”

I stayed close at her heel as I followed her to the kitchen and we elbowed our way up to the island, where stacks of red cups were piled on top of the granite counter, alongside bottles of various types of alcohol and mixers.

“What are you feeling?” Quinn semi shouted into my ear as she grabbed two cups off the stack and handed me one.

Technically, I was on the job, and completing the task of gathering more intel on Max would be extremely difficult if I was wasted. Still, I needed to maintain my cover and look like I was there to enjoy myself, so I at least needed to give off the illusion that I was partying like everyone else. So I only pretended to add vodka to the juice and soda mixture Quinn had poured into my cup and smiled gratefully at her when we tapped our cups together and took our first sips.

“Having fun?”

If I had been drinking, I could have blamed the alcohol for the fact that I suddenly felt warmth shooting through my veins, but I was entirely sober, so when I turned from the counter, I had to reluctantly admit to myself that the buzzing I felt to my bones was entirely induced by Max’s presence.

As usual, his eyes were twinkling when our gazes met, one hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans and the other wrapped around the base of a beer bottle that he brought to his lips, not breaking eye contact as he took a swig and lowered it to his side once more.

“Hello, Max,” I breathed out, doing my best not to squeeze my cup too tight. “Quite the party.”

He hummed in response, holding my gaze for just a moment longer before turning his attention to Quinn, his expression shifting from smug to joyous. “Hey, Quinn. Don’t you look lovely this evening?”

“Thanks,” she smiled widely, though I could tell she was doing her best to fight back a blush. “And thanks for hosting this, I know a lot of people really needed to blow off steam. One week of class was a lot to handle.”

I snorted and covered it up by taking a sip of my drink, noting that Max chuckled as well as he scanned his gaze over the other people in the kitchen.

“I do what I can,” he shrugged, taking another sip of his beer.

A slow smile stretched Quinn’s lips and she cleared her throat before nodding vaguely towards another room and directing her next statement at Max. “Hey, I’m gonna go mingle. You take care of Evie, okay?”

He didn’t even question why she was excusing herself from the situation, most likely because he was well aware that I wanted to be alone with him, so he kinked his lips into a smirk and nodded, his gaze floating back to meet mine. “I think I can handle that.”

Quinn winked and then disappeared from the kitchen, and although getting time alone with Max had been the plan all along, I couldn’t help but feel a little out of my element.

“Can I get the tour?” I asked, figuring that was a good place to start. Chances were he wasn’t going to lead me into his secret lair or anything, but at least knowing the layout of the house would give me more of an idea of where I could start to look for information.

“Of course,” he nodded, gesturing around the room. “This is the kitchen.”

“Thanks,” I laughed, rolling my eyes.

Grinning, widely, he tilted his head towards the kitchen door. “Follow me, gorgeous.”

Doing my best to fight back a blush, I silently did as instructed, staying close to him as he pointed out the common area and the downstairs bathroom and the laundry room.

“And upstairs?” I asked, pointing towards the staircase, which was blocked off by a large leather couch pushed against the bottom step. “Is that where your room is?”

At this point, I was pretty sure that the entire idea of just being friends with Max wasn’t going to work, seeing as we couldn’t seem to have a conversation without flirtation, so I might as well attempt seduction. The trouble was that I wasn’t exactly chock full of allure, so me asking where his bedroom was came out sounding less like attempt at getting him into bed and more like I was a prospective buyer evaluating the house for defects.

Still, he didn’t seem to pick up on the fact that I lacked a certain knowledge of sexy talk and smirked as he took a step towards me, dipping his head as he neared. For a split second I thought he was going to plant his lips on mine, but he veered to the left to whisper in my ear instead. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll get there. But it would be extremely rude of me to leave my own party.”

I probably should have expected that was the conclusion he’d come to from my question, but I found myself a little relieved that he hadn’t jumped at the idea of us going somewhere more private. As much as I did need to case out his room and see if he kept any incriminating evidence in his little man cave, I had a hard enough time having conversations with Max in public, so I would need much more mental preparation before we end up in a one on one situation.

“Of course,” I managed to breathe out as he stretched his lips into a wide grin and took a step backwards, mentally slapping myself for having absolutely no follow through. Now that he had completely ruled out the idea of us being alone together, I had absolutely no reason to be in his room. It seemed I would have to settle for sneaking upstairs once he undoubtedly got distracted by playing the good host and hope I didn’t get caught.

Widening his smile even further, he set down his beer bottle on a nearby side table and held out a hand towards me, lifting one eyebrow upwards. “Dance with me?”

I blinked in confusion, wondering how he could just brush aside the fact that we’d been talking about going to his room just a few seconds earlier so quickly, but decided that if he was willing to forget the embarrassment of the situation, then so was I. Chugging what was left of my juice and soda drink, I set my cup down on the table beside his beer bottle and slipped my palm against his, deciding that my objectives for the mission could wait for one song.

It turned out that Max was a pretty great dancer.

Though, maybe I should have expected that. After all, he was confident in all other aspects of his life, so surely being able to move his hips and keep his arms around me loosely wasn’t that difficult.

The only person who seemed to be having any reservations about the situation was me. I enjoyed dancing, but being in such close proximity to Max was distracting me from my ultimate goal and at the moment, I wasn’t entirely sure I remembered why I had come to the party in the first place.

His hands were on my waist.  My back was pressed against his chest. If I turned my head just a little to the left, I’d be staring at his lips. I was glad the music was loud and the bass pumping through the entire house because it meant he couldn’t hear the rapid pace of my heartbeats.

This entire situation was definitely a problem. Because all I could think about was how Max smelled like a combination of vanilla coffee and fresh pine and how the feeling of his hands pressed against my waist and the warmth of his body was ridiculously delicious instead of thinking about the fact that I was supposed to be gathering intelligence.

It was the sight of Quinn grinning knowingly at me from the side of the room as she sipped on her rum and coke that snapped me out of my Max induced daze. I felt ashamed that allowed myself to succumb to his charms in the first place. It would be one thing if I was just going along with it for the sake of using seduction as an investigative technique, but thus far, my interactions with Max had all proved that I wasn’t capable of being around him and thinking completely rationally.

But seeing Quinn nodding in approval reminded me that grinding against Max hadn’t been my mission. So when the song ended, I turned to face him, lifting my chin to whisper in his ear and pressing my flattened palm against his chest as I spoke. “I’m gonna go freshen up a little. Don’t go anywhere.”

His smiled softly as he brushed his lips against my ear and whispered softly in response. “I wouldn’t dream of it, gorgeous.”

Deciding I needed to remove myself from the situation before I ended up doing something I regretted, like finding out how his lips tasted, I flashed him a smile and took a step backwards, immediately feeling my heart rate begin to slow when I was no longer in his direct presence. I lifted my hand in a wave as turned towards the side hallway which led to the downstairs bathroom.

Just in case he was watching, I actually did enter the bathroom, pressing my back against the closed door and counting to fifty very slowly as I combed my fingers through my hair and adjusted the spaghetti straps on my coral mini dress. After what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, I slowly opened the door and peeked into the hallway to see if Max was still in my line of vision and was relieved to see that he was now otherwise occupied with talking to one of the party guests.

Seeing Max’s distraction as the perfect opportunity to slip away, I tiptoed towards the staircase, stepping onto the cushions of the couch pushed up against the bottom step to block it off and quickly leaping over, glancing back to ensure no one had noticed my disappearance before sprinting the rest of the way up the stairs.

Once I’d reached the landing, my next challenge was figuring out which room was Max’s. If I went logical, it would make the most sense for his room to be farthest down the hall so he was the least disturbed and the most easily defended if someone came up the stairs.

So I quietly made my way to the last room on the right, slipping inside the room and scanning the contents once I had entered. It looked very much like the room of a twenty something year old male. Jeans and t-shirts were scattered about on the floor, a pile of snapbacks hung from the bed post, the walls were plastered with band posters and an acoustic guitar sat on a stand in the corner. A photo on top of the dresser of Max with two girls who looked like his sisters confirmed I was in the correct place, but now I just had to figure out what it was that I was looking for.

My first course of action was to plop down on my stomach and scan under the bed, only to end up disgusted with the amount of dusty notebooks crammed under there. Next was the closet, which held suits and button ups and more pairs of sneakers than any human being needed before I moved on to the dresser. The top drawer was filled with boxers and condoms, which made me feel intrusive, despite the fact that this was part of my job. Shaking my head, I continued my search for something useful, only to find the rest of his drawers filled with crumpled clothes.

My cursory search of his room had resulted in nothing suspicious or incriminating, which meant one of two things. He was either extremely good at hiding things or he had nothing to hide. Either way, I still needed to find out more, which meant getting to know him better. The first step to doing that would probably be to go back downstairs and pick up where we left off.

After ensuring that his room was left exactly the same level of messy that I’d found it, I closed his door as I stepped back into the hallway, only to have my heart stop when I noticed a figure walking up the stairs. When I realized it was Max, I stopped breathing entirely, knowing that him finding me sneaking out of his room would just bring up a lot of questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer. So I took advantage of the fact that he seemed to be occupied by his phone and slipped into the next closest room, hoping to buy myself some time.

“Hello.”

“s**t,” I cursed, my heart racing as I turned to see the other person in the room I hadn’t realized was occupied. He had long legs and thick black curls and deep grey eyes and I recognized him as one of the guys who always seemed to be around Max. So of course it made sense that he lived in this house. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know there was anyone in here, I was just…”

“Hiding?” he asked, one side of his mouth lifting into a crooked smile as he set his laptop to the side and swung his legs to the floor, standing up straight on the other side of his bed and sticking his fingers into the pockets of his jeans.

That didn’t seem like a very probable excuse to be on the second floor, but it was better than the truth, so I went with it, nodding as I caught my breath. “Yeah, there’s this guy down there that I’m trying to get away from.”

I knew he could tell I was lying, but I was grateful that he decided not to call me out on it, instead pressing his lips together and trying not laugh.

“It’s Trevor, right?” I steered the conversation in a new direction, recalling a couple times when the professor had called on him in class. “We’re in the same Econ class.”

His eyebrows shot up and he tilted his head to the side as he gave me a strange look. “Yeah…we are.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest and staring at him pointedly.

Laughing lightly, he shrugged, the half-smile returning to his lips. “Nothing, I’m just surprised you know my name, considering you spend most of your time in class trying not to stare at Max.”

My jaw dropped half out of horror and half out of embarrassment, but I wasn’t given the chance to respond because the door opened and I turned to see the new visitor, only to find myself even more horrified to see Max standing in the doorway, his lips parted as though he were going to say something, but he stopped short when he noticed my presence.

“Evie?” Max lifted one eyebrow upwards. “I was wondering where you went. What are you doing up here?”

“I was just…visiting Trevor,” I explained lamely, hoping he bought that Trevor and I were good friends.

Luckily, Trevor didn’t seem to be out to throw me under the bus, so he flashed me a smile as he nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Evie was just telling me that I need to come join the party.”

“Oh,” Max furrowed his brow in confusion, one hand still on the doorknob. “I didn’t realize you guys knew each other.”

That was a fair enough statement, seeing as this was the first time I’d ever interacted with Trevor. Still, Trevor continued to play along, grinning widely and nodding. “Oh yeah, Evie and I are tight. I’ll be right down, bro.”

The second statement indicated that Trevor wanted Max to leave us alone, which was interesting one, because it didn’t follow the usual leader/follower dynamic and two, because I had absolutely no idea why he wanted me to stay behind. But I figured I owed him for not ratting me out to Max, so I shot Max a tight lipped smile as he nodded slowly, lifting his free hand in a small wave as he stepped back into the hallway.

I let out a sigh of relief once the door was shut, returning my gaze to Trevor’s. “Thanks.”

“No worries,” he shrugged, laughing easily. “You’re not the first girl who has tried to snoop through Max’s stuff. For the record, though, there are easier ways to learn more about him. Talking is always a good place to start.”

I blinked as I processed those words, deciding that defending myself against snooping really wasn’t worth it and reminding myself to be subtler the next time I had to do something sneaky. Shaking my head, I shot him a glare as I reached for the doorknob. “I’ll keep that in mind. Even if I was interested in Max, don’t you think that the fact that he probably now thinks I came up here to do something steamy with you probably shot that horse in the mouth?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged, stepping around the bed to follow me into the hallway. “Or maybe it’ll make him jealous.”

That was an interesting thought, and I parted my lips to comment on it as we made our way down the stairs, but found myself speechless when after we hopped over the couple aggressively making out on the couch pushed up against the stairs, we stepped into the living area to see Max on the dance floor, his lips pressed to another girl’s neck.

“Or not,” Trevor whispered, scrunching his nose sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I managed to breathe out, scolding myself for feeling let down. Feeling betrayed meant that I had developed feelings for Max in the first place, something which I should have known better than to do. My entire purpose of coming to this party had been to see if I could find some inside information on Max, but all I’d discovered was that he didn’t seem to have any secrets and that anything I felt towards him was entirely one sided. “I’m kind of tired, so I think I’m gonna head out. It was nice to meet you, Trevor.”

Nodding, he pulled a hand from his pocket to wave as I stepped towards the kitchen in search of Quinn, hoping I could convince her to leave and thinking that this party had been a disappointment in every category.