College Girl (19 page)

To me, my brother had been a god.
He still was one in my mind. Lofty, removed, revered—an adult before I
had even hit puberty. And after the accident, I had found myself wondering on
several occasions why my parents had even bothered with me. Ten years after
Reece.
Six after Becca.
The only thing I could come up
with was that I had been the mistake.

I had been with him the day he
died. He had been home for the summer, busting his ass for my father. That day,
he had offered to let me drive the truck—something our father never would
have allowed. The only catch had been that I’d had to ride along with him while
he ran errands. It had been hotter than hell that year, the asphalt shimmering
in the heat, and eventually I had nodded off while he was driving. The next
thing I remembered was EMTs pulling me through the windshield. I had no memory
of seeing my brother in those moments. Or if I ever had, maybe I had blocked it
out.

Later, after I got out of the
hospital, they said that falling asleep had saved my life. But there had been
something about being unconscious at the moment my brother died. Now, more than
sixteen years later, that day still had a dreamlike quality to it. Like I was
going to wake up at any moment, and Reece would be the same as he had been that
day. Forever twenty-two.

The fact that he had died while I
was sleeping also left me with an unshakable sense of guilt, a sense of
certainty that if I had been awake, things would have been different.

There was a picture of Reece
hanging in the main building of the winery. If Alex had seen it the night of
the event, she might have assumed it was
me
in the
picture. And sometimes that was the way it felt: that I was a carbon copy of
Reece, kept on hand in the event of a disaster. The day we had come to the
cemetery to bury him, I had sworn to myself that I would never love another
person again. Stupid? Yeah. But something about that promise had stuck, and
like a superstition taking on a life of its own, it had followed me into
adulthood.

Of course I loved Becca and my
parents, but in a very different way than I had before Reece died. Gretchen had
been perfect for me. She’d had no emotional requirements, only material ones.
Presents had thrilled her. Emotions hadn’t. Parties were her
domain
;
one-on-one conversations only bored her. Fuck. Maybe that was what had drawn me
to Alex despite my better judgment. Alex had been real. And maybe that was what
scared the shit out of me. I wanted her, but I didn’t deserve her.

Then I realized: fuck it. Neither
did any of the other damaged assholes
who
would be
trying to screw her for the rest of her college career.

Alex

I took a step back. His breath
reeked like the cheap beer he was drinking, and I was seriously beginning to
regret taking up Rachel on her offer to hang out at her dorm. Still, I hadn’t
seen her in forever, and it had seemed like a good idea to get out since I
didn’t have much else to do. Julie had gone home for the weekend, which was
easy for her, since she only lived about an hour away. Plus, she had a car at
school. For me to get home for the weekend, it would have required a pile of
cash for a flight.

So instead I was hanging out with
Rachel. Or more accurately, I was hanging out with some guy from the suite down
the hall from hers. Unlike my dorm, Rachel’s was set up more like a large
apartment complex with suites of rooms that shared common areas and bathrooms.

“Drink, fuckers!” Rachel’s
roommate Lauren shouted.

There were about fifteen people
crammed into the common area, all of them playing some kind of drinking game.
As the guy who had been glued to me all night leaned in closer, I looked around
for Rachel. She was—literally—rolling around on the carpet across
the room sucking on a Jell-O shot, her lips stained bright red.

“Hey, you wanna go back to my
room?”

I looked at the drunken guy in
front of me. He was gangly and blond, but not blond like Ryan. This guy had
floppy, white-blond hair that made him look like a little kid. And he was
annoying the living fuck out of me. I smiled through gritted teeth and shook my
head. Then I went over to tell Rachel I was leaving. I had planned to spend the
night on her floor, but this was too much for me to handle.

“I’m gonna take off, okay?”

I wasn’t even sure why I was
bothering to tell her.

“
Nooo
! Alex, it’s early. Lauren, tell Alex it’s early,” she slurred.

Lauren wasn’t paying attention.
Besides, I didn’t think Rachel’s suitemate liked me very much. Or maybe I was
being overly sensitive as the only remotely sober person in the room. I patted
Rachel on the head, remembering the days in high school when she had been more
uptight than me.

Ah, the good old days
, I laughed silently. Rachel shouted my name
as I made my way back to her room. Turning, I flinched as cold liquid drenched
my chest. In front of me, my old high school buddy was teetering on her feet
and laughing hilariously, holding an empty cup in her hand. And that was when I
remembered why I didn’t come over to Rachel’s dorm very often: she was fucking
nuts when she drank.

“Thanks, Rach. That’s really
nice.”

I looked down. The entire front of
my formerly white shirt was pink. Going into Rachel’s room, I grabbed my
backpack and thought about strangling her on the way out.

“You want me to walk you
somewhere?”

I looked at my obnoxious new
friend and shook my head. Then I ducked out the door and headed for the stairs.
It was a fifteen-minute walk back to Mercer, which I wasn’t looking forward to
doing in a wet shirt. When I started shivering, I gave in, walked back to
Rachel’s suite, and locked myself in the bathroom, which already smelled of
Jaeger and vomit. Pulling off my wet shirt, I swapped it for the dry T-shirt
that I had planned to sleep in. Rachel’s was the only dorm off campus, so I had
to cross Lincoln and walk back on the street. When a car pulled up at the
light, I looked over in time to see a guy’s hairy ass sticking out of the
passenger-side window. Nice. The light changed, and I ran across the street. By
the time I got back to Mercer, I was miserable, cold, and tired. My dorm was
slightly quieter than Rachel’s had been, but when I got to the third floor, I
nearly screamed. There was a fucking a sock on the door again.

“Fucking Brit!”

I reviewed my options about ten
million times. Option A, I could burst in on Brit and whatever she had in
there. B, I could go to the RA’s room and rat out Brit, but our RA Tiffany was
never in her room, anyway. Or C, I could sleep on the couch in the lounge
again. My last option was to do what I had been telling myself not to do all
week—which was text Ryan. Of course, he had already fucking caught me
standing outside of his house in the middle of the night like a freak last
week.

I gritted my teeth at the memory.
At first when he had come back out of the house with Finn, I had thought that
maybe he hadn’t seen me. Then, my stupid ass had nearly gotten hit by a car, and
he had texted me about two seconds after that.

Going into the lounge, I gave in
and sent the text, not sure whether I would hear from him or not. Curling up on
the lumpy couch with my backpack as a pillow, I tried not to be too hopeful. I
closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew, I heard Ryan’s voice. It took a few
seconds to realize that I wasn’t dreaming.

“Please, by all means, continue.
I’ve been having a really shitty week and would love any opportunity to kick
the shit out of the three of you.”

Sitting up, I stared at three
asshats from the second floor. One of them was holding a can of shaving cream.
Then I saw Ryan standing behind them. Glancing down, I saw shaving cream all
over me.
Shit
! They backed up as Ryan
walked between them, and I watched as they ran for the stairwell. Ryan offered
me his hand and picked up my backpack.

“Sorry it took me so long to get
over here,” he muttered. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

He pulled me down the hall.

“You have a change of clothes in
here?”

He pointed to my bag, and I nodded.
When we got to the bathroom, Ryan gestured toward the door.

“I’ll be right here.”

I nodded again and pushed open the
door. Hurrying into one of the shower stalls, I stripped down and turned on the
water. As I rinsed the shaving cream out of my hair, I thought about the
picture from the university’s brochure of the two roommates sitting on their
beds across from one another and laughing. The caption had read:
Dorm Life
. Well, not mine. I started
crying, and then I couldn’t stop.

Why the fuck had I run away from
the person I was fucking in love with? The person who had just shown up in the
middle of the night after my bitch of a roommate had locked me out again? Letting
the water run across my face, I let out a sob. Oh, yeah. Right. He didn’t feel
the same way.

Getting out, I dried off as best I
could with my travel towel before dressing quickly in the outfit I had packed
for tomorrow morning. Then I tied my hair back and went to the sink to brush my
teeth. My eyes were all puffy and red, but there was nothing I could do about
it now. When I opened the bathroom door, Ryan was leaning against the opposite
wall looking like a perfect combination of a sun god and a knight in shining
armor.

“Thanks for waiting.”

He nodded and started walking down
the hall.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Really. I
wouldn’t have texted you if it hadn’t been a really bad night.”

“And that’s supposed to make me
feel better?” he asked darkly.

I didn’t say anything, instead
choosing to follow him quietly as we walked downstairs. He opened the door and
held it for me. I walked toward his motorcycle, annoyed with myself for being
so thrilled to see him again. Ryan got on the bike and offered his hand, and I
couldn’t help thinking of the first time as I climbed on behind him. I felt a
wave of relief as I wrapped my hands around his waist. Fuck, I had missed him.
The feel of him.
The smell of him.
The way he looked at me, even when he was irritated.

Maybe I could sleep with him, I
thought desperately.
Because, in the end, would it really
matter that he didn’t love me back?
Sometimes it
felt
like he did. … When he looked at me. When he touched me. Maybe
I could just pretend.

Of course, deep down I would know
the truth, but still. Maybe it was good enough. I swallowed. Damn. I sounded
like a fucking pill addict on
L.A.
Medical
.

Just one more hit, please
.
Then
I’ll be good
.

Was that what Ryan was? A drug? A
substance I couldn’t give up?

A few minutes later, we pulled up
in front of his house, and he helped me off the bike. As we walked up the
stairs, a wave of guilt hit me. Why in the holy fuck had I texted him? It
wasn’t fair to beg for his help after what I did. But seeing him now? It was
more than I expected to have again, which made me euphoric—and
conflicted.

When he opened the front door,
Finn practically crashed into my knees. Kneeling down, I squeezed the damn dog
since I couldn’t do the same to Ryan. By the time I finally looked up at my
savior, the blue of his eyes was dark and dangerous.

“Can I take him around the block?”
I asked meekly.

“Do you know what time it is?”

I looked down.

“Never mind.”

Ryan sighed and walked toward the
back of the house, returning a moment later with Finn’s leash. His dog started
to bounce up and down like he was on springs, and I felt pretty much the same
way.

“Just around the block,” he
warned.

I nodded solemnly, and Ryan took
off his jacket and handed it to me.

“What about you?”

He shook his head as we stepped
outside. It felt like I was having an out-of-body experience.
A really good one.
Like I had sworn off chocolate for life
and then found one last bar. I kept telling myself that if I could just have
this one more night with him, then I’d be fine for the rest of time. It was a
lie, but it was what I was telling myself to survive.

I glanced over at Ryan as we
walked. He didn’t look quite as happy as I was feeling. Finn, though, looked
ecstatic, but wasn’t that the way dogs looked all the time—like the walk
they were on was the best fucking thing in the world? I patted him on a head.

“My dog likes you better than he
likes me,” Ryan muttered.

“Oh, please,” I smiled, secretly
pleased.

We walked in silence for several
minutes before Ryan looked over at me.

“Are you going to tell me about
your really bad night?”

“You mean other than getting
locked out of my fucking room again and waking up with shaving cream all over
me?” I asked with a strangled laugh.

He nodded.

“Did I tell you about my friend
Rachel?”

“You mentioned her that first
night at Shorenberger.”

“Well, we went to high school together,
and we were really good friends. Then we got up here, moved into different
dorms, and Rachel found out she liked to party … a lot.
Like
tonight.
I was supposed to stay over there, but I couldn’t take it
anymore. Plus, some creepy guy from the suite next door was following me around
half the night. And Julie went home for the weekend, so when Brit locked me out
for the millionth fucking
time,
my only option was the
couch in the lounge. So, please, tell me things get easier after this.”

“Better than the dorms?”

I nodded.

“Absolutely not. Living in the
dorms was the pinnacle of my college experience.”

I smirked at him.

“Yeah. It probably was.
Girls falling at your feet, twenty-four-hour party, everyone
worshipping your awesomeness.”

“Ah, the good old days.”

I laughed, feeling a hundred
million times happier than I had earlier in the night. When we got back to
Ryan’s house, I walked in and was instantly overwhelmed by memories of the
first time I had been here. It wasn’t that long ago, but it felt like forever.
Like I had known Ryan half my life.

Walking into his living room, I
stopped and looked around. There was music playing—and there were
two
glasses of wine on the table. Holy …
shit. Ryan walked in behind me, and I felt some of my happiness from a second
ago collapse in on itself as I turned and looked at where he was leaning
against the wall. I cringed.

“Oh, no. Shit. You were on a date.
Oh my god. I’m so sorry. This is so bad.”

I didn’t know which was
worse—sleeping on the couch in the lounge and getting smothered in
shaving cream, or coming back here and witnessing the remnants of Ryan’s date
night.

“It wasn’t a date. It was my
polite attempt at a brush-off,” Ryan said mildly.

“Oh.”

I swallowed and tried to smile,
but it wasn’t working. Then, on impulse, I walked over to him and went up on my
toes, brushing the side of his face with my palm, reveling in the feeling of
his stubble. I rested my hands on his shoulders and reached until I could to
kiss the side of his neck. His skin was hot, and suddenly his breathing became
harsh. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Ryan, I want you … to make love
to me,” I whispered so quietly I wasn’t sure if he heard me.

The way I saw it, I could wait
around forever for a guy to come along who felt the same way as I did.
But what if
this
was it?
What if this was as close as I was going to get? Wasn’t it better to love
someone than to wait around for someone who
might
love me back? It made sense, sort of. The only thing I could be sure of was my
own feelings. Or maybe I was just rationalizing it to myself. Suddenly Ryan
snatched my hands off his shoulders, startling me out of my fantasy that he
would just pick me up, carry me back to his room, and show me what to do.

“Are you actually
trying
to make me insane?” he snapped,
stepping away from me.

“What? No.” I tried to keep the
tears from collecting in the corners of my eyes. “I just don’t want it to be
someone else. I want it to be … you.”

He was staring at me in a way that
scared me. I shook my head.

“God, never mind. I shouldn’t have
said anything. It was completely stupid. Forget it.”