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- Quinn -
“So you do read?”
I looked up from my book to find Maddy standing in the doorway, looking tense and pale, as if she’d eaten something that didn’t agree with her. “So you’re not a knocker,” I said, since we were stating the obvious. “What’s up?”
She raised her phone in the air. “What the heck is this?”
I waited for her to notice the screen had gone black, but when her glare intensified, I realized she was still waiting for an answer. “I can’t see that from here.”
“Tinder,” she said. “You just matched with me. You want to explain that?”
I set my book down on the bed so I wouldn’t lose my page. “It’s an app people use that helps them find people to date and hook up with.”
She folded her arms.
“When you come across someone you want to see more of, you swipe right, and if you both do it, you get a match.”
“I know how the app works, Quinn.”
It was so hard not to smile. After all, when I’d swiped right on her, I never expected in a million years that she’d reciprocate. Sure, I might’ve hoped deep down that I hadn’t imagined her looking at my crotch at James’s going away party, that I hadn’t imagined the lingering look of fascination she set upon my lips ten minutes before her Smirnoff Ice overdose as a college freshman. That her discomfort around me wasn’t purely based on the disgust she felt over the rumors she’d heard.
And yes, I knew it was wrong to not swipe her away immediately. But if she was going to be my roommate, I had a right—a need—to know whether she was even the slightest bit attracted to me. “So what’s the problem?” I wanted to hear her say it in her own voice, her own words. I wanted her to say she was crazy about me, that she had been since we met, that now that her brother was out of the picture, she wanted to investigate those feelings.
“Why did you swipe right?”
I guess she wanted to hear it, too, but I wasn’t the gushing type. The fact that I swiped right should’ve been enough. I wasn’t going to write her a goddamn sonnet.
“Because I did it on accident,” she said. “I got spooked and my thumb—when I jumped—it was a mistake.”
It was a pathetic story, but I kept my face expressionless to hide how amused I was that she would try to backpedal when her “accident” was proof enough that she’d hesitated. Which told me all I needed to know. She wasn’t unattainable or too far out of reach. She was attracted to me. Which meant I could have her if I wanted her. I could make her mine.
But it was too soon for all that. It was wrong to even humor such disloyal thoughts when James probably hadn’t even been to the Tate or the West End yet. So for the time being, I was happy to fuck with her the only way I could.
I looked her up and down, my eyes drifting over her thick sweatshirt and down the black leggings that hugged her thighs. They left so little to the imagination I could easily see myself pushing her legs apart, could practically feel them hooked around my waist as I rocked over her, listening to the sound of my name on her lips.
I knew she’d never been with a guy like me. Her skittish behavior made it obvious that she felt sexually intimidated in my presence. Not that it mattered. In the end, it would be irrelevant. Every cell in her body would need me so bad she’d have no choice but to surrender, no choice but to let me dominate her like only I could.
And that was how I wanted it. Because anything less didn’t interest me. Didn’t inspire me. Anything less wouldn’t be worth jeopardizing the relationship I had with my best friend.
“Shame,” I said, finally. “I would’ve laid my best line on you.”
She scoffed.
“Sure you don’t want to hear it?”
She squinted at me, her lips twitching as if her words were a jumbled traffic jam on the tip of her tongue. “What’s your best line then?” she blurted, letting her curiosity get the best of her, a bad habit I happened to love in a woman.
I lifted my phone, opened the app to where I’d already typed out the message, and hit send. Then I dropped it on the bed and lifted my eyes back to hers, enjoying the tension in the air.
“If you already had it typed out, why didn’t you send it?”
“Didn’t want to seem too eager,” I said, my lips pulling to one side.
She rolled her eyes, stiffening when her phone buzzed in her hand.
I was relieved she hadn’t noticed that the art prints on the walls belonged to her brother, and I straightened up against the pillows behind me when she dropped her attention to her phone.
