In the Wake of Wanting Read Online Free

brother-in-law buys the bourbon for me. Even my delinquency is mild and rule-abiding: I’ve promised Jon that he will be my only purchaser of alcohol, so he can monitor how much I’m consuming, and I’m not allowed to drive when I drink. I’m smart enough to know better, though. I don’t need rules for that .
    I head downstairs to the basement first, saying hello to a multitude of friends and brothers along the way. By the time I make it to the bar, my fraternity big brother already has my drink waiting for me.
    “There’s my boy,” he says to me with a smile.
    “Thanks, Stanley.” We shake hands across the bar as I take a sip. I cringe. “You went easy on the Coke, huh?”
    “It’s a party, Trey!”
    My eyes water as I nod my head. “It is now.” After taking a few more gulps, I’m acclimated to the taste. “It’s good.”
    “Let me top you off there.” I hand him my cup as he fills it back up, and then leaves his place behind the bar. “How’d your extra-long-distance date go with Zaina?” he asks over the din of the crowd.
    “Pretty disastrous,” I respond. “I set my stove on fire, and then she got rather heated with me, as well.”
    “I was at the park when the alarms were going off at your building. That was you?”
    “Your resident arsonist, in the flesh.”
    “Everything okay at your pad?”
    “It’ll be fine. Hopefully the smoke smell will be gone by the time I get home tonight.”
    “And with your girl?”
    I shrug my shoulders. “About as suffocating.”
    “You’ve got to get out of that.”
    “No,” I say. “I just need some time away.”
    He looks at me funny. “Did you hear what you just said? You need some time away from the girl you’ve spent most of the last year and a half apart from. You had three weeks with her over the break?”
    “Two,” I correct him. “She went back a week ago, remember?”
    “That’s bad, Trey.”
    “It is kind of bad, isn’t it?” He nods. “It was nice having her here, though. That’s what matters.”
    “Or it was nice having a girl around at all,” he corrects me. I look into my cup. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have that all the time, though? Year-round?”
    “It was just so great in high school. We were different. I just keep thinking we’ll find that again.”
    “Hate to tell you this, kid, but you’re not that guy anymore. And she’s not that girl. And you can’t go back there. It’ll never be what it was. Already you’ve seen too much and lived too much. This is life. Most people don’t marry their high school… whatevers .”
    I finally look up and around the room in front of me.
    “Let’s introduce you to some nice girls tonight. No expectations… I know you’re a man of honor.”
    “I talk to girls at these parties every time, Stan. That’s not the problem.”
    “You never have an open mind about the possibilities, though.”
    “I won’t do that while I’m with her. That’s what the honor’s about.” I look him in the eyes to make sure he understands where I’m coming from.
    “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s okay,” I tell him as I pat him on the back. “Can I grab a beer for Asher?”
    “Sure,” he says, leading me to the keg. While I pour a cup of frothy beer for my best friend, Stan fills up mine one more time.
    “I went easy on the bourbon this time.”
    “Thanks,” I tell him. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
    When I find Asher, he’s settled in between two girls on a couch, one arm around each of them. I know one of them from my Wealth and Poverty in the U.S. class, which I took last semester. “It’s the richest boy in the country,” she says, already slurring her words. “You’re not here to sit with us, are you, Jackson Holland, the second ?”
    “The third ,” I correct her as I set my friend’s beer on the coffee table in front of him. “Hence the name Trey . How are you, Paulina?”
    “Drunk.”
    “I can tell.”
    “Why’d you pick that class to take