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“For what?”
His sneer turns into a groan. “Oh, lord,” he says, “you are such a kid. See, you didn’t even get my meaning.” Oh. Well, now I get it. Is it possible to die of embarrassment? Because if yes, I’ll take two please. Two deaths by embarrassment.
“I am not!” I practically scream, which only proves his point. I need to calm down. I need to do this—I won’t back down. “Look,” I say, trying to speak in a lower, more serious voice. “Can I come inside?”
I point to the door.
“Do I even care?” he says, but he swings it open and walks in, expecting me to follow. He leads me up the stairs into his dorm.
I expected his room to be a mess or completely bare, but it’s neither. It’s not too tidy, but it’s clean, with posters and books strewn about. A dumbbell or two. Empty cans. A T-shirt folded on the bed, socks on the floor. There’s a leather jacket thrown across the chair next to what I think is his bed. Heat rises to my cheeks as I see it and I stumble.
Marco in that leather jacket would look like pure sin.
Stop it.
Marco, meanwhile, has picked up a packet of cigarettes from a desk drawer, and is leaning out the window, lighting one.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” I tell him, not because it’s against regulations—well, that too—but because I have been to one too many anti-smoking events, and have been subjected to one too many real-life pair of lungs that belonged to one-time smokers. Let’s just say it’s not pretty.
“I don’t,” he replies, inhaling deeply. “This is a special occasion.”
His cheeks hollow out, and then, when he parts his lips from the cigarette and lets out the smoke, his mouth looks plump and red.You really really shouldn’t smoke, I think.If I am to survive this.He leans out of the window, so that the smoke won’t cloud the room.
“It will kill you,” I tell him.
He ducks his head and laughs hysterically, that high-pitched sound boys make when they are only with their guy friends, and they can’t control the laughter.
Weird, but ok.
“Why?” he asks, when he’s sobered up.
The question is so soft as it comes out of his lips, not even a whisper. Lower than that. I’m not even sure I heard it right, but he looks so tense and frozen as he waits for an answer, and I don’t dare ask him what he means.
“Why me?” he whispers again when I don’t answer.
“Because,” I start saying, and then I stop because I have no idea how to continue. “If I’m honest here…”
“Please be.” There is such intensity in his voice.
“If I’m honest, I thought that you were the only person on campus who wouldn’t care. Who wouldn’t alert my guards or talk to me about things I have already thought about, like my safety and the stupidity of my plan.”
Silence for a bit.
“I don’t even know your plan, my queen,” he says.
“Don’t call me that,” I reply on reflex. “And exactly. I thought you wouldn’t care what I wanted to do, or why, or who with. And most people would, so that makes you perfect.”
“You think I’m a bad person, is what you’re saying.”
“No,” horrified, I start to protest, but he’s laughing again. Ass. Well, he’s right, of course. I don’t think he is someone who is particularly bothered by caring for other people.
“It’s ok,” he says. “You’re not wrong. Fine, I’ll take you.”
“You… You didn’t say what you want in return.”
“I have my reasons for agreeing,” he says, shrugging, and turns around to throw the butt of his cigarette in the trash. “Leave it alone and just be grateful.”
Be grateful? Who does he think he—
