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I need you.
That’s nice.
Okay. Fine, asshole. I’d go for broke.I’m desperate for your touch,I typed.You take me places no one ever has. I hear your voice all the time. Constantly. Every minute. I don’t even know what you’re doing to me…I deleted that sentence, then retyped it.I need you to fuck my brains out,I finished.Please.
I hit send before I could change my mind.
Come over.
Shoving my chair back, I stripped off the silky blouse and jeans I’d worn to dinner and pawed through my underwear drawer until I found a red satin bra and panties. Then I tugged on the cheerleading skirt that Patrick would want to see. Still too small. Still super short. I left the back zipper open, with the bow on the back of the panties peeking out, and wrestled with the top. Also tight, but it went on.
Rustling through my closet, I pulled the hot pink Sydney-suggested raincoat off its hanger. It was just long enough to cover my cheerleading skirt and give the impression that I was about to flash all of campus. The vinyl crinkled when I laced up my white sneakers.
I buttoned the raincoat, tied my hair into two pigtails for effect, and stomped out of my apartment. Patrick wanted a cheerleader? Fine. He’d get the grumpiest cheerleader in school.
Campus was a blur as I sprinted. In the wind, couples huddled together romantically. People were kissing in the quad, nuzzling noses by the engineering building, handling balloons and stuffed animals and candy like they were touched with magic. No one noticed me in my raincoat and pigtails, because they were all cocooned in their own little worlds of love.
The back of Kappa Sig was empty. Chase and Rufus were gone, maybe in honor of the holiday.
I crashed into Patrick’s room, pushing the door open so hard it banged against the wall.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He jumped up from his desk and caught my arm. I’d never seen Patrick move so fast. For all his size, he was swift. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I growled. “Let’s start.”
His lips twitched. “What’s with the raincoat?”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You mean, you’re trying not to laugh.” I turned away.
“Christina…” His free hand closed over my other arm, more gently. “Look at me.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Slowly, I opened them and turned to face him. “I’m not laughing now.” His voice was quiet.
“Okay. Thanks for that. Sydney convinced me to get this raincoat, by the way.”
“Why am I not surprised?” He twisted one of my pigtails around his finger. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Why did he have to be nice right now? Or at least, the Patrick version of nice? It would be easier if he just threw me on the bed and we stopped talking.
“I’m really mad,” I muttered.
“At…?” He raised his eyebrows.
“My parents.” I closed my eyes again, tried to breathe, felt the uncontrollable anger filling me up. “Goddammit, I came to your place to try to get away from it…from them…they think they can run my life, and when I argue, they always win. It’s always about my sister, and how much better she is than me, and how I’ve failed them by not being her. I don’t even know who’s right. I do owe them a lot, but it’s my own life, and I need to draw the line somewhere, but it’s so hard…Patrick? What are you doing?”
“Unbuttoning this raincoat,” he said calmly. “Getting it off you.”
My arms fell to my sides as he undid one button after another — oversized, sparkly pink buttons. When the bottom one was undone, he slid the raincoat off my shoulders and tossed it onto his desk chair with a crinkle of plastic.
“You wore what I told you to.” He traced the outline of the letter on my top. I sucked in a breath. “Good girl.”
“Patrick…”
“You like hearing that, don’t you?” His palm brushed my breast through the thick fabric and moved to cup my cheek. “You don’t feel like a good girl right now.”
“Look,” I began as he leaned in closer. He stopped a breath away from a kiss. “You made me admit what was going on with my family. I came here expecting not to talk about it, and you stirred it up. Do you care at all?”
