He laughed, and something made me wonder how last night would have gone if I’d told him my secret instead of Kelsey. Somehow I doubt things would have turned out the same.
“I gotta run. Poli-Sci.” He made a face, and I concurred, glad I’d gotten that out of the way last year. “Let’s do something tonight, k?”
“Sure.” This time I did smile, because Cade was great for distractions, and that was most definitely what I needed right then.
He pecked me on the cheek, and then went on his way.
I turned toward Garrick to find him watching me, his eyes dark and narrowed. Dom was long gone. He must have gone out the doors on the other side. We stood there awkwardly for several seconds. His hands were shoved in his pockets, and mine were fidgeting with the bag slung across my shoulders.
Finally, he cleared his throat.
“How’s your leg?”
I swallowed, and looked down at my legs. I’d worn a skirt today to keep it uncovered. I tilted my leg so he could see the bandage. “Good. I re-bandaged it this morning. It’s blistered, but as far as I can tell, or well according to the Internet, that’s normal.”
I looked back, but his eyes were still on my legs.
I stiffened. God, this was so awkward.
He cleared his throat again.
“So… you’re in college.”
“So… you’re not.”
He stayed still for another second, then turned to the side abruptly, pacing several feet away from me, and then back. His fingers pushed through his hair in frustration, and all I could think about was my own fingers in his hair, and how incredibly soft it had been.
“I thought—“ He started. “Well, I wasn’t doing much thinking at all. But, you don’t look like you’re in college. I said I went to school here, and that I’d just moved back, and you said ‘Me too’ so I just assumed you had done the same.”
I kept having this irrational need to blink. I wasn’t crying or anything, but I just couldn’t stop. I said, “I lived in Texas when I was really young. I meant that I moved back here for school.”
He nodded once, and then kept nodding. So, he was nodding and I was blinking and neither of us was saying what really needed to be said.
And since I couldn’t stand silence, I was the first to break.
“I won’t tell anyone.” His eyebrows raised, but I couldn’t tell if it was surprise or judgment or just a facial tick. “I mean not that there’s anything… not that we… I mean we didn’t actually… um, make the beast with two backs and all that.”
OH. MY. GOD.
KILLMENOWKILLMENOWKILLMENOWKILLMENOOOOOOW.
The beast with two backs? Seriously?
I’m 22-years-old, and rather than just spitting out the word sex, I used a Shakespeare reference! A really embarrassing Shakespeare reference.
And he was smiling! And his smile did funny things to my insides that had me thinking about last night, which was totally not something I needed to be thinking about right now. No beasts. No backs. No last night.
I looked away, trying to keep it together. I took a deep breath, and said as calmly as I could. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
He took a moment to answer, and I wondered if he was waiting for me to look at him. If he was, he’d be waiting for a while.
“You’re right. We’re both adults. We can just forget it happened.”
There was no way I could forget it happened. But I could pretend.
I could act.
“Right,” I nodded.
I turned to leave, but his voice stopped me.
“How’s your cat?”
“What cat? Oh! MY CAT. The cat… that is mine. Oh, she’s... ” I had said it was a she, right? “She’s fine. All meowing and purring and other cat things.”
God, why did the door have to be so far away?
I kept walking away, calling back my last few words over my shoulders.
“I’ve got to get to class. I’ll see you Wednesday I guess, okay, bye!”
I speed-walked out the door, down the hallway into the art wing, past the ceramics classroom, and into the handicap bathroom that no one ever used. Then I sunk down to my knees (on a BATHROOM FLOOR. Clearly, I was distraught because… GROSS).
I focused on not hyperventilating. Only I could have an affair with a teacher on accident. I knew one thing for sure. There was no way in hell I was going to my next class.
Chapter Nine
“I swear there was so much awkward in the air, it felt practically solid.”
My face was pressed against the table in the student lounge while Kelsey tried to ply me with french fries and other wonderful carbohydrates.
She patted at my back half-heartedly. There was nothing even remotely mothering about Kelsey, but at least she was trying. “You’re exaggerating, Bliss. The only thing I felt in the air was sexual tension. I mean, he didn’t look at you often, but when he did… Hello! Swoon!”
“There is no way I can survive a semester in that class.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re an actor. Actors sleep with each other all the time, and then move on. Hell—don’t you remember Freshman year when you didn’t want to make out with Dom in that scene, and Eric sent you in the other room and told you to kiss until you guys were comfortable with each other?”
“Why would you bring up what is, as of today, the second most mortifying moment of my life?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you got over it.”
“I will never get over having Dom’s tongue down my throat. I can still taste the douchiness.”
“You will be fine, Bliss. It’s five months. And you only have to see him for 3 hours a week. It will be over before you know it. Then you can jump his bones one more time before you travel the world with me.”
“There are so many crazy things in that statement that I don’t even know where to begin.”
“You will begin by eating, or we’ll be late for Directing.”
Grumbling, I shoved a few fries in my mouth to appease her.
She rummaged around in her purse for her phone, but her hands closed around something else. “Oh, I forgot. I have advil… you want some?”
I swallowed and said, “Why would I want that?”
She quirked her head to the side, “Aren’t you sore after… you know… getting your freak on?”
Stupid Bliss. So freaking stupid.
“Oh! Oh, right. No, no I’m fine. I took a bunch this morning. I’m good, thanks.”
“That a girl.”
I moved through the rest of the day on autopilot, ready to get home and crawl into the cocoon of forgetting that is sleep. I didn’t even bother taking off my clothes before I fell into bed.
My phone woke me a few hours later. It was Cade.
“Hey babe—you ready to hangout?”
I peered blearily at the clock PM. It was only 7 o’ clock.
I yawned. “Yeah… sure. What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I was thinking—“
“No drinking,” I cut him off. “I cannot handle any drinking.”
He laughed. “No hair of the dog for you? Fine… Lindsay’s playing tonight at Grind. How does coffee sound?”
I yawned again. Lindsay was a fellow theatre major. A night listening to her music would be simple and mellow. Exactly what I needed. “Coffee sounds perfect.”
When I walked outside 20 minutes later, my head swung from side to side, paranoid that I’d run into Garrick. When I was certain no one was around, I jogged into the parking lot and climbed in to Cade’s beat up old Honda.
He greeted me with a smile. I resisted the urge to glance back in the direction of Garrick’s apartment.
“I forgot to mention earlier that you looked great today. I mean, minus that lovely hung-over quality. You never wear skirts to class.”
I wanted to say, ‘Just drive already!’ But that would have sounded crazy even for me. So I answered, “Oh, I burned my leg, and I’m not supposed to wear tight clothing over it.”
“Seriously?” He asked. “What happened?”
I couldn’t exactly tell him the real reason. Because then he’d want to know whose motorcycle it had been and why I had been with them and yadda, yadda.
“Oh, I burned it with my straightener.”
“You burned your leg with your straightener? How long is your leg hair?”
You’d think after all the lying I’d done in the past twenty-four hours that I would be getting slightly better at it. You would be wrong.
“Ha-Ha. So funny!” I grimaced. “I knocked it off the counter, you punk, and it hit my leg.”
I fiddled with the air-conditioning vent even though it barely worked in his piece of junk car.
“Just don’t drop your coffee on yourself. Or better yet… get iced coffee.”
I said, “Aye, aye captain."
Grind was a cute little house on the edge of campus that had been turned into a coffee house a few years ago. Inside you ordered coffee, and outside there was a veranda where they hosted live music on most nights. The inside was packed. I sent Cade outside to find seats, and told him I’d get the drinks. I got an iced café mocha for me and a smoothie for Cade. He doesn’t even like coffee, but he comes here for me.
I stood in line for 10 or 15 minutes, so by the time I headed outside, I had no idea where Cade was. I strolled past the tables, nodding at people I knew, avoiding eye contact with those I didn’t. I caught Lindsay’s eye up on stage as she was setting up, and she grinned.
Finally I spotted Cade standing by a table up near the front. It was an awesome spot considering how packed this place was.
I came up behind him, and nudged my elbow into his back.
“Jesus, Cade, I thought I’d never find you out here. Couldn’t you have at least texted?”
Cade glanced over his shoulder at me, then wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and took the smoothie from my left hand.
“Sorry, babe, I was talking and got distracted. Look who it is!”
He pulled me forward, and there was Garrick.
This time, I wasn’t lucky enough to have already put down my coffee. So when I saw Garrick, it slipped out of my hand, and splashed all over my feet.
Cade, with his super fast reflexes, narrowly dodged getting it all over his Toms.
“Holy crap, Bliss. I was joking about the iced coffee, but I’m glad you listened. I swear you didn’t used to be this clumsy.”
I still couldn’t speak. My feet were cold and sticky. And my face felt way too hot.
“Here,” Cade said. “Sit down, Mr. Taylor said we could share his table.”
“It’s Garrick, Cade.” I’m sure he’d told Cade that half a dozen times already.
Cade ignored him and turned to me. “ I’ll run inside and get you some napkins. You want another drink?”
“No, no. I’m good, Cade. You stay. I’ll go clean up.”
“Forget it. You like Lindsay’s music much more than I do. All ‘be the change’ and ‘girl power’ stuff. I don’t want you to miss it. Sit.” This time, his hands pushed down on my shoulders until my butt hit the seat. Then he was off, and I was left alone with Garrick again.