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“I was walking home from DeltaPi’s party and saw you.” He shrugged as he sat on the bed next tome. “And I wanted to make sure you weren’t, ya know, getting busyin here before I knocked.” He flashed me a goofy smile while humordanced in his hazel eyes.
I couldn’t help the laugh thatbubbled up. “So you listened for sex sounds?” I laughed as I leanedback against my pillow. “You fucking pervert.” I lightly kicked himin the belly.
Ben shrugged again as he grabbedmy ankle and placed my foot on his lap. He gripped my sock-coveredfoot and started to massage the arch. “What can I say, I’ll takewhat I can get.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me and I rolled myeyes.
I met Ben when he transferred tomy college halfway through freshman year. He was probably one ofthe nicest guys I’d ever met even if he was indeed a strange one.My roommate, Anna, always teased me that Ben and I would eventuallyget married with the way he was stuck up my ass. I always brushedher off, Ben was like the brother I never had.
I mean, sure, he wasn’t too hardon the eyes. He was lean with an athletic build and quite a bittaller than me. He had a steady stream of thick black tattoos thatcrawled up his right arm but not his left. He had a strange one onthe side of his neck that he refused to talk about when I pointedit out. I always thought it was odd, really. Wasn’t the wholepurpose of getting a tattoo so you could proudly show them off topeople? But when I’d asked him about the sad little wilted flowerhe’d promptly clammed up and I hadn’t asked again.
His classic good looks wereenhanced by shaggy inky black hair and hazel eyes. He had just onedimple that showed on his left cheek whenever he smiled at me. Hereally didn’t seem to fit in with other guys on campus. He wasdifferent in so many ways. When other boys his age would be outpartying almost every night, Ben preferred to stay in, most of thetime with me. He got good grades and always seemed to be at the topof any class he was in. He almost seemed smarter than most of theteachers half the time, like he was much wiser than his twenty-oneyears.
I wasn’t so blind as to not seethat he was very handsome, downright hot by some standards. He wasdefinitely a catch any girl would be lucky to have. He just didn’tdo anything for me.
He had asked me out last year andwhen I politely rejected him, I thought I wouldn’t ever see himagain. To my surprise, though, he showed up the next day at thelibrary and sat next to me like nothing ever happened. We neverspoke about it after that, both of us preferring to act like theoccurrence didn’t exist.
It didn’t shock me that he showedup here tonight. He always had a way of showing up when I leastexpected him. He had even found a way of showing up at all of mydates, not that I had that many. I never really minded. The boysthat had asked me out in the past were always after one thing andone thing only. When they figured out they weren’t going to begetting that from me, they quickly moved on. It used to bother mewhen they would stop coming around and not return my texts, buteventually I moved on with the notion that they weren’t worth mytime anyway.
It was always odd how it seemed tohappen out of the blue, though. I never went on more than two dateswith the same guy and then they would just stop communicatingaltogether. One guy in particular stuck out in my mind—Dillian. I thought we’d had a really good timetogether the weekend before but the way he’d acted the last timeI’d seen him said otherwise.
I’d been walking with Ben to classand having a quiet conversation when I spotted him. I rememberedwaving at him and watching with confusion as he stumbled to a stop.He nearly dropped the books in his hands as his face visibly paledand he eyed me warily. I thought it strange at the time when helooked at me with what appeared to be fear in his eyes. I likedDillian but not enough to fret over him. So when Ben had acted justas confused as me but shrugged it off as possible stress, I didtoo. It made sense in a way, we were in college after all, andthere was no shortage of mental exhaustion that came with beingthere.
I had never felt that attached toany man before so it’s not like it hurt too much when they ghostedme. Well, not until …him.If Ben had found a way to inserthimself between Ian and me, I would certainly have had a problemwith that.
Ben stared down at his handsworking my foot before glancing at me quickly. “So, who was the oldguy?” he asked before darting his eyes back down.
I opened my mouth to give him someform of the truth when Anna came crashing into the room. I sat upon my elbows as I smiled at my clearly inebriated roommate. Igiggled as she clumsily fumbled with her key card before kickingthe door shut.
“Good night, huh?” I asked arounda laugh.
She turned to look at me andscowled when she saw Ben sitting with me. She hissed at him,actuallyhissedlike a cat, before staggering toward herbed. “The best night,” she said to me before inclining her headtoward Ben. “Stalker boy,” she said by way of greeting.
Ben’s lips flattened in disdain.“Hades,” he murmured, his way of poking fun at her hair colorchoice. Electric-blue this month.
“All right, you two,” I said as Ipulled my foot away from Ben and sat up. He clenched his jaw inanger as he and Anna stared at one another. It was a well-knownfact that these two hated each other. They only slightly toleratedeach other because of me. For some reason I couldn’t understand,Anna thought Ben was a total creep. When I asked her why she toldme, “It was just a feeling.” Ben sensed the hostility and reactedaccordingly.
“Ben, you better go. Girl time,” Isaid as Anna broke her glare and flopped onto her bed. He looked atme with anger still flaming in his eyes before smothering it with asmile.
“All right, Lindsey Bug. I’ll seeyou tomorrow?” he cooed that godawful nickname, and I tried not tocringe. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him I hatedthe name, so I just endured it.
I nodded and ushered him to thedoor. After gently closing it on his smiling face I turned towardmy now-sleeping roommate. I sighed as I covered her up and turnedoff the light.
As I snuggled down under myblanket, I couldn’t help but think about the handsome doctor thatmade me feel like a woman for the first time in my life.
Chapter Three
“Come on, Lyns. We need tocelebrate! You only turn twenty-one once, you know.” Anna’s whiningwas becoming incessant at this point. She had become relentlessthis last week, pulling out all the stops to get me to let herthrow me a big party.
“We already celebrated. We don’tneed to make a huge deal out of this,” I whispered back. Not thatshe cared but we were in the middle of the campus library afterall. My birthday had come and gone a few days after my run-in withDr. Hotpants. I didn’t see what the big deal was. So what if Icould now legally buy and drink alcohol, it’s not like that hadbeen my life’s mission up till this point.
In truth, I had never been much ofa partier. Even in high school when all my peers were out gettingslobbering drunk in a cornfield, I was home. I would much ratherstay in with a good book than get stupid in the back of a pickupwith some boy who would forget me by dawn. I told myself it hadnothing to do with the fact that I had rarely even been asked to goto those parties.
I flushed at my memories of highschool. It was sad that I tried to justify my refusal to doanything with my fellow classmates, as if it had always been mydecision. I shook my head to rid thoughts of the past as I lookedat Anna.
“What more do you want? We alreadywent to that bar the other night,” I said.
I was pretty sure Anna could seethe inside of her brain with how hard she rolled her eyes at me.“Ugh,” she moaned loudly. I shushed her as I noticed othersstarting to glance our way. “Don’t shush me, that wasn’t a bar,”she whined.
I shrugged and looked back down atmy textbook. “They served alcohol, what’s the difference?”
