I looked at him, trying to seem serious and mysterious, but I couldn’t do anything about this stupid smile on my face.
“You did!” Silas said, then immediately grabbed his aching head. “Shush. Hurts. But it was worth it. Also, I’m disgusted by myself. Basically, it’s a regular Sunday morning.”
“You do this a lot,” I said.
He shrugged. “We’re young, we’re hot, and none of us has the slightest idea of what we’re doing. Not the best time to go around falling in love.” He inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “But it is the best time for a nap.”
It was just after seven, and I couldn’t go back to sleep if I wanted to. His words played over in my head, oddly profound. Maybe those guys’ dicks really did have some prophetic abilities.
None of us knew anything. How were we supposed to fall in love and make it work? There wasn’t a way. Not that I knew of, at least. “I think I’ll explore a bit, get familiar with the place.”
“You do that,” Silas said, peeling off the tattered tank top to reveal the whole three square inches it had successfully coveredlast night, then relocated himself from the chair to the bed by toppling into it.
By the time I’d brushed my teeth and washed my face, Silas was snoring in the bed. The morning was gray and the sky overcast, promising the first September rain and the official start of the cozy days. Gray sweatpants were back in fashion, and Damon would look like a million dollars when he strutted around. And I would probably just be within the field of vision to catch the way his hips swung. It wasn’t a bad prospect.
But, speaking of bad prospects, I had a lunch with Nick in my diary, and I still needed to find my way around campus. I went out in search of coffee and croissants, finding them both in a bakery that shared an alley with a bar called Thirsty Thinker. The huge neoclassical library was there, too, forming the student center that was complete with a couple of fast-food joints, a gym, and the student council offices.
I ate my croissant and drank a sugary coffee with milk and caramel, catching myself a few times mid-sigh. It felt like being a lonesome maiden in a Renaissance painting, one of the dreamy ones.
The first order of business was to put a dot on what had happened last night. It was a hot mistake I was bound to repeat for as long as Damon was around. And I didn’t much regret it. I never had.
So long as I could walk away after, I could come back to it without a shred of fear that things would get complicated. Damon was a fun mistake to make and make again. But Damon didn’t date people. He didn’t stay in touch. Fun was now, not tomorrow and never, ever yesterday. He was, without the need for empirical evidence, like a cat. If you caught his interest, you were in for a ride, but as soon as you were out of the frame, he forgot about you.
That suited me just fine. I had stuff to do here. The last thing I needed was a distraction from putting the best lab in the tristate area to good use. I’d worked hard last year and earned my place at Northwood. I’d earned the scholarship by fighting every day, tooth and nail, to be at the top of my class.
Had I done that in my senior year at high school instead of writing lovesick poems on the margins of my books, I might have earned this scholarship sooner. One kiss had taken a year of my life.
Fooling around with Damon in the grass under an apple tree was a consolation prize and a goodbye gift.
I finished my coffee and walked around a bit, enjoying the breeze that wiped away the last lingering traces of summer from the air. Fall was just around the corner, and with it came the promise of new beginnings.
People usually thought spring did that. For me, a new academic year was the start of everything. Fall was when energy returned, when ambition soared, and when I was finally in my element.
The idea of a sexy summer and beach parties had always excited me in theory, but it had only once come close to being real. Then he’d gone away, and so had I, and there hadn’t been much to say after that.
So why couldn’t I get him out of my head now? Why couldn’t I just be happy that we had fallen back into it so easily last night? He could have had Silas if he’d wanted to. Frankly, with that ridiculous reality TV crap under his belt, he could have them all. But he’d picked me.
I walked around the science buildings that would be my home for the next three years, sat on a bench reading an anthropology textbook about the Neanderthals—I couldn’t pick one lane. My interests were everywhere—and I checked the time on a million occasions, counting how long I had left beforehaving to sit across from Nick and pretend I hadn’t had my cock in Damon’s mouth for half an hour last night.
My brother was not a bad person. He was a controlling person, yes. A meddling person, too. But he didn’t do these things out of malice. Sure, he and Damon had a history of breaking each other’s bones in the most literal sense and of spreading nasty rumors about one another, but what two small-town rivals didn’t do the same? It was all nice and fine except that it had been two years since they’d left high school, and Nick was still bringing Damon up in conversations.
I did dread the lunch. He’d been floating Damon’s name yesterday, and I had cut him off. The rest would come, I’d bet a year of blowjobs on it.
And when I found myself sitting face-to-face with Nick, I could sense that my worries were justified. Sure, we could do two minutes of normal conversation, but what would follow?
“Settled in alright?” he asked, running a hand through his light brown hair, slicking it back.
“I unpacked,” I said, glancing at the menu.
“Met your roommate?” Nick asked.
I nodded. “He’s, uh, fun. Chaos incarnate.”
“Yeah?” Nick quirked one side of his mouth into a half smile.
“Not sure he’s here for the academic advancements, to be honest, but he’s a good guy,” I said.
“That’s good,” Nick agreed.