The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 455: 455 | Perfect Timing

Felicity Hardy stood in my doorway holding a cardboard box against her chest and a bag of drinks hanging from her right wrist, and she had prepared the vibe with the thoroughness of a military operation conducted by someone whose tactical objectives existed on a fundamentally different plane than anything Halloran’s curriculum covered.

She wore booty shorts. Not the regulation Halloran athletic shorts that stopped at mid-thigh and communicated institutional compliance. Booty shorts. The kind of garment that started at the hip and ended approximately four inches later, leaving an amount of thigh and curve exposed that the word "shorts" could only describe in the most generous legal interpretation.

They were pale pink, thin enough that the fabric clung to every contour of her body without apology or ambiguity. The waistband sat low enough on her hips that the strip of tanned stomach between it and the hem of her top created a gap that made my eyes cross involuntarily, drawn to the shadow of her hip bones and the smooth plane of skin that connected them.

Her top was white, cropped, and tight enough to function as a second skin rather than a garment, cutting off just below her ribcage and pressing against the full, unmistakable curve of her chest with a specificity that left nothing to inference and everything to attention.

The neckline scooped low enough to frame her collarbones and the beginning of cleavage that the Ecchi Logic trait helpfully illuminated in the room’s ambient light, golden from the evening sun streaming through east-facing windows.

Her blonde hair fell in loose waves past her shoulders, still slightly damp from a shower that had occurred within the last fifteen minutes based on the way individual strands caught the light with residual moisture.

Freckles dusted across her nose and the tops of her cheeks, visible without makeup in a way that made her look younger and softer than the put-together version she presented to the world.

Her blue eyes caught mine from across the room with the particular brightness of someone who had planned this entrance down to the second and was now observing the results with the focused satisfaction of a scientist confirming a hypothesis.

"Time to have fun, bestie!"

The box in her arms contained what appeared to be a stack of party games, their corners visible above the cardboard rim. I identified at least two card game boxes and something with a spinner. The bag on her wrist held four bottles of what my enhanced vision identified as flavored soda and one bottle that was definitely not soda and that she had smuggled from a source I chose not to investigate.

She crossed the threshold into my apartment with the easy confidence of someone who considered my personal space an extension of her own, her platform sneakers adding three inches to her height and her hips moving with a natural sway that the shorts turned into something closer to a demonstration than a walk. The box landed on my bed with a soft thump, the drinks clinked as she set the bag on the nightstand beside my parents’ photograph, and she turned to survey the space with both hands on her hips and her head tilted at an angle that said she was already redesigning the furniture arrangement in her mind.

"Okay so I brought Uno, Cards Against Humanity, this thing called Wavelength that Koda told me about, and drinks because hydration matters." She began pulling items from the box and arranging them on the bed with the organizational speed of someone who had rehearsed this layout. "The rules are simple. We play games, we drink things, we do not discuss Petra Lang, and we do not discuss the Crucible, and we do not think about anything that happened before this exact moment because tonight is about having fun and you, Lukas Belmont, have forgotten what fun feels like and I am here to remind you."

She pointed at me. The gesture caused her top to ride up by half an inch, exposing additional stomach that the evening light turned golden.

"Sit on the bed. Pick a game. I’m setting up the drinks."

I did not move from the reading chair. "You brought alcohol to a student dormitory."

"I brought sparkling beverages with varying degrees of enthusiasm." She held up the suspicious bottle. "This one is enthusiastic. The others are responsible. We’re adults making adult choices in a controlled environment with excellent ventilation and a door that locks."

"Felicity."

"Lukas."

"You’re wearing booty shorts."

"These are lounge shorts." Her expression did not change by a single degree. "They’re specifically designed for lounging. I am here to lounge. With my best friend. Who happens to have very comfortable bedding that his mother picked out."

I opened my mouth to respond with something that would have been either strategically wise or genuinely funny, I hadn’t decided which, when three sharp knocks landed on my door with the specific force and rhythm of someone who did not knock casually, who treated knocking as a declaration of intent rather than a request for entry.

Felicity, who stood closest to the door, turned and opened it before I could say a word.

Camille Ortega filled the doorframe.

She wore black compression leggings that stopped at the ankle and a fitted grey tank top that left her arms bare from shoulder to wrist, her skin catching the hallway’s fluorescent light with the warm brown tone of someone who trained in California sun. Her two-tone hair fell loose around her face, blonde on top fading to warm brown at the roots, and her dark eyes moved from Felicity’s face to Felicity’s outfit to the party games spread across my bed to the bottle in Felicity’s hand to me sitting in the reading chair with an expression that communicated I had not planned any of this and was not handling it well.

Camille’s jaw tightened. Her brown eyes found mine across the room with the weight of someone who had come here for a reason she had not fully articulated to herself and was now confronting evidence that the evening she had been building toward in her head had already been claimed by someone wearing pink shorts and holding sparkling beverages.

The silence lasted three seconds.

Felicity broke it first, because Felicity always broke silences, because silence was a texture she found physically uncomfortable and would fill with her own presence before it had time to become anything worse.

"Ortega! Perfect timing, we were just setting up game night." Felicity’s smile was genuine and warm and contained approximately fourteen layers of social calculation compressed into a single expression.

"Come in, there’s drinks."

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