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He turned to look at me again, a smile playing on his lips like he knew I wasn’t going to appreciate hearing what he had to say next. “Just us, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart? I held my towel tighter around me. I suddenly felt very, very naked. “Just us? And there wasn’t anyone else you wanted to work with?”
His eyes flashed with anger. “I thought it would be convenient to work together seeing as we practically live in the same building. As you can see, I’ve already come in handy for you. You’re welcome.”
He pivoted and marched off down the hall, shoving through the stairwell doors.
“Good job,” Melissa said when I entered our room again. “Insult the Resident Hottie.”
I winced and closed the door behind me to change. “You heard all that huh.”
“Yeah, he asked to be your partner. What an asshole.”
“He’s just...” I let my sentence run off. He was just what? Flirtatious? Cute? Considerate?
Maybe I was the asshole.
“I don’t like what happened between him and Vanessa,” I muttered as I opened my wardrobe. “I don’t trust guys like that.”
“He’s a guy. That’s what guys do.”
“Not the kind of guys I want to be with.” I pulled out my comfiest sweatpants and tossed them on the bed. Then I searched for a shirt.
Melissa snorted. “He doesn’t want you, Alexis. He just wants to be your partner for an assignment. Don’t read so much into everything.” She lifted her drama textbook again, effectively ending the conversation.
***
The next day I felt well enough to go to classes again. When I got back to my room, the entire hallway stuck of weed. I knocked on Lena’s door and there was a scuffling sound inside before she opened it a crack, grinned widely when she saw me.
“Leeeeex, it’s you! I’m so glad.”
She opened the door and let me in. She was wearing a long skirt and tank top, and a blue bandana tied her hair back. The window was wide open and smoke was still slipping out through it. On every wall was a poster or print screens of Bob Marley. Catpower played from the laptop on her desk.
“I was wondering if you want to grab a snack from the caf or something.”
“Oh yeah, I’m super hungry.” She rubbed her stomach. “I’ll just get my stuff together.”
Almost ten minutes later, she’d found her purse and keys and we were walking to the cafeteria chatting about classes. Grabbing food took even longer. She waited both in the hot food and cold food lines and then grabbed a bag of chips. Basically she wanted everything she saw. We carried our trays outside to eat in the late afternoon sun.
“So what are you taking?” I asked, biting into my bagel and cream cheese.
“Mostly art courses. I still have to pick up a science course. I know, it’s almost been a week.” She grinned sheepishly. “I’m thinking Nature Studies. All I really care about is my fiction writing courses. I want to be a novelist.”
“Wow. I thought about being a novelist once. What genre?”
“Fantasy and women’s fiction. I’ve been working on a novel about a High School dropout that ends up in a girl gang. Have you ever heard of girl gangs?”
I shook my head.
“See? They’re pretty underrepresented.” She took a bite of her sandwich and then put it down. “What about you? I can’t figure you out... You seem artsy but also very down-to-earth and almost logical.”
I laughed. “That’s probably my parents’ influence. I wrote and drew comics growing up, and they think good writers make good lawyers.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I’d love to write song lyrics,” I admitted. “Or design album covers. I want to work in the music industry. I’m taking A History of Music and a poetry course.”
“Oh, I know someone in that course!” Lena exclaimed. Her brow furrowed as she struggled to remember. “Ian, our RC.”
“Right.” I nodded, my mouth a thin line.
“You’ve met him right?”
“Oh yeah.”
She frowned. “Don’t you like him? I think he’s a cool guy. He’s really good at guitar too. I watched him play in the lounge the other night.”
I took a sip of my chocolate milk. “Is he in a band?”
“No, he says he doesn’t want to be. I can’t remember why.”
“He doesn’t like fame and notoriety.” I rolled my eyes.
She looked surprised. “So you do know him.”
Yeah. I could feel the heat rising into my cheeks. Dammit. The last thing I wanted was to have feelings for Ian Crawford, but it seemed like no matter what I did or where I went, he came into the picture.
“You like him.” Her large grin was back. I looked down, trying to hide my smile, but she ducked her head too. “You totally do!”
“What? He’s hot. Too bad he’s so pushy and a manwhore.”
“Right, the blowjob thing.” She picked her sandwich again and took a bite, speaking with a full mouth. “I don’t see why everyone cares so much. It’s a fucking blowjob. Who hasn’t given one?”
“Totally.” I sipped my milk and looked away.
***
I couldn’t concentrate. It was only the first of classes and I already had an assignment due. My poetry prof had given us weekly writing assignments to be handed in every Friday. Usually I could just sit down and write, but today I was staring at my blank laptop screen and hating every second of it.
It’s the pressure, I thought. That, and the sound of Melissa chewing her pencil. Who even uses pencils these days?
I shoved my chair back and rummaged through my drawers for running clothes. Nothing cleared my mind like a good run, and I’d been meaning to return to the forest since the animal game. Running outside was my cure-all for most things: boredom, insomnia, creative blocks...
Outside our residence, a running path circled campus and ran along the edge of the forest. I took it past the forest, and then continued to run through the neighborhood houses. I was filled with nervous energy, driven by the beat of the music I was listening to. I was alone. I was free.
I was so lost in my thoughts and checking the area around me, I didn’t realize I’d been running for close to an hour. The sun was beginning to set by the time I reached campus again.
Slowing to a walk, I cut between the buildings, the pathways lit by old-fashioned streetlamps, and through the dark wet-green grass of the Quad. A few students were emerging from the brick library and others sat smoking on the edge of the fountain. The leaves on the trees looked emerald green under the soft lights.
I lay on my back in the Quad and pulled my knee to my chest, stretching my hamstring. The sky was shards of broken glass stars, thousands of them, not a cloud to be seen. I switched legs and then stretched my arms out to the sides, took a moment to just breathe and take it all in. How lucky was I to finally be here?
A face framed by wavy black hair appeared above me. “Are you always on your back? It’s giving me the wrong impression.”
“Haha.” I sat up. “I just finished a run and was stretching.”
Ian frowned, his green eyes bright in the low light of the field. “You shouldn’t be running around campus alone at night. It isn’t safe.”
“Why, a bad guy might get me?” I said and then regretted it. I sounded childish. And he was my RC.
“Well yeah.”
“It wasn’t dark when I left. I guess I lost track of time.”
“I’ll walk you home.” He put out his hand to help me up, and I took it.
“What were you doing?” I asked as we started toward our block. “RC rounds of some sort?”
He chuckled. “No, I was out for dinner with some friends and saw some people I know at the fountain. Stopped to say hi when I saw you lying there.”
I bit my lip. I must have looked mega weird. “I’m not used to living with anyone. Our room is super small. I wanted to be alone for a while.”
“I understand that.” He hesitated. “Would you like to come hang out in my room? I have some movies or video games, if you’re interested. Wii games that I know girls like to play.”
I rolled my eyes. First of all, it wasn’t cool to peg me as just another girl, or to peg any girl for that matter. I knew girls that played Halo with guys for days at a time. And second of all, how obvious was that invitation to spend time alone with him in his room?
“Wow, you’re smooth,” I said and started walking faster.
He caught up to me. “What’s your problem, Lex? When you found out we were in the same class I could tell you weren’t pleased, and then yesterday you blatantly didn’t want to be my partner. Did I do something to piss you off?”
“Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
His eyes narrowed. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I stopped and sighed. We were just outside the block now and the last thing I wanted was for someone to come out of a building and see us arguing. But the words just poured out.
“I heard about you and Vanessa. In fact, I talked to her about it. You got her to give you a blowjob and let your friends watch and when you got busted, she looked like a slut and you came off all cool. I don’t like guys like that.” I was surprised at the one venom in my own voice.
“Whoa,” he said, putting up his hands. “That’s a lot. First off, I never let those guys watch. Truth be told, it was a great experience and I was enjoying it way too much to notice anything else happening around me. Yeah we shouldn’t have done it there, and I feel bad about that—but we’d both had a few beers and made a dumb mistake. As for her looking like a slut, I haven’t heard anything like that and we’re still friends. I went for coffee with her yesterday, in fact, and she didn’t say anything about it.”
