23
Shanna was back in our dorm room at 2:20 the next afternoon, giving me more Go f*ck yourself and die looks. I watched my phone nervously until it was 2:26, then said, “Bye,” and left. I fake-opened the stairwell and let the door close, and then crept back and started my stake-out. My room was the last one on the hall, right by the stairwell. It was also thirty feet away from the intersection with another hall, which is where I set up camp. I wasn’t sure what direction Derek would show up from, so I wanted to cover all the bases.
Unfortunately, he came out of the stairwell and saw me just as I saw him – and before I could put a finger to my lips.
“Well, aren’t you rarin’ to go,” he said happily – and loudly – two feet away from my dorm room door.
SHIT.
“Shhh,” I whispered, and hustled over to him.
He frowned at me. “What’s wrong?” he whispered back.
“Nothing, let’s just – ”
My door swung open, and there stood Shanna in all her righteously outraged glory.
I swear, if her rain-of-death looks hadn’t made me wilt, her next words surely would have.
“Ohhhh,” she sneered, “the cock-blocker and the man-whore, together again. Just like old times.”
My stomach felt like it was going to turn inside-out. “Shanna, it’s not like that – ”
“Riiight, it’s not like that at all, otherwise why would you be out here sneaking around and whispering and running away?!”
Derek had been watching the whole scene with amused surprise. But at this point, he got a resolute look on his face and stepped towards my roommate.
“Shanna, I got something I gotta say to you.”
There was a second’s worth of uncertainty on Shanna’s part, and then the acid was back in her voice. She crossed her arms judgmentally. “What.”
“I’m in love with your roommate.”
Shanna’s eyes bugged out of her skull.
I know I felt like somebody had sucker-punched me, that was for sure. All the air rushed out of my lungs, and my knees buckled.
Derek had his back to me and couldn’t see my expression. I think that was by design.
“I didn’t plan it, and I don’t really know if she likes me,” he continued in utmost sincerity, “but I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her.”
Shanna looked at me, her expression caught somewhere between You BITCH and Oh my god this is freaking me out, what the f*ck is going on?!
He kept going. “I’m sorry if I was a dick to you. No – not ‘if ’ – I was a dick to you. And I’m sorry. But I don’t want there to be any hard feelings between you and her. You don’t have anything to be jealous of, anyway – we haven’t kissed, she totally doesn’t trust me, and basically all we’re doing is going on a bunch of Disney dates where nothing’s gonna happen. So – you wanna come along?”
I about yelled WHAT?! when he said the last part about inviting her. I managed to keep my mouth shut… though I think my expression gave me away.
Shanna was totally and completely flabbergasted. “I… I, uh…”
Derek pressed right on ahead.
“Look, my best friend is the bassist. It’s just going to be me, him, and Kaitlyn. He’s a really good guy, he’s pretty good-looking – not as good as me, but, hey, who is?” he added, cocky as hell. I could hear him grinning as he said it. “He’s taller than me, and he’s kind of shy, and you two might hit it off. I don’t know – and you won’t, either, unless you try. So do you wanna come or not?”
Shanna looked over at me. All the anger was gone; she was just completely bewildered at this point.
Derek looked back at me for the first time since he’d started. Funnily enough, he was totally nonchalant – not like a regular dude who had just bared his heart and soul in front of a girl on their second date.
“You don’t care, right?” he asked me. “I mean, we’re not going to do anything, so – the more, the merrier, right?”
Despite all my previous promises to myself that nothing would happen, now that I had absolute assurance that nothing would happen… I was kind of pissed.
Plus, I saw the irony in it. I had cock-blocked Shanna… and now Shanna was going to be cock-blocking me. At Derek’s invitation, no less.
Karma’s a bitch.
“…I guess,” I muttered.
“Cool.” He grinned at me, then turned back to Shanna. “So, you comin’?”
All of Shanna’s usual confidence was gone, completely blasted to bits by Derek’s full-on niceness assault.
“…yeah… okay…”
Derek held up a finger. “But if you come, you’ve got to promise me one thing.”
She narrowed her eyes distrustfully. “What?”
“You’ve gotta forgive Kaitlyn, because she had nothing to do with it. She’s totally not in love with me, but I’m in love with her, and you can’t control that, right?”
Jesus, there he went again.
And there went my heart, slamming against the inside of my ribs.
“…I guess…” she agreed reluctantly.
“So are you going to forgive her?”
Memories of our feud came rushing back, and she gave me a mini-glare. “Yes.”
“No, I mean it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“Tell her.”
Shanna stared at him like Are you for real? Then she turned to me and said with overblown theatricality, “I forgive you.”
My face felt scorching hot. GOD this was humiliating.
“You don’t have to forgive me for anything – I’m the one who was a bitch. I’m sorry.”
Derek turned and pointed at me like, HEY, no speaking out of turn. “Don’t be sorry – it was all me. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Then he turned back to Shanna. “Okay, cool, go get your stuff.”
Shanna turned around, then hesitated. “Can I change first?”
“Just make it quick.” He tapped his watch-less wrist. “We’re running late.”
“Okay, okay, just give me a couple of minutes,” she huffed, and shut the door.
When he turned back to me, he was completely calm and blasé. I, meanwhile, had my arms wrapped around me tightly again. I couldn’t have verbalized it at the time, but it was probably to protect myself against the psychological onslaught of what he’d said.
About… being in love with me.
“Hope you don’t mind I invited her like that – I just don’t want to see you two fi– ”
“Why’d you say that?” I interrupted.
He frowned slightly. “What, about inviting her?”
“No. About… being…”
“In love with you?”
“…yes.”
“Because it’s true.” He said it like ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘what goes up must go down’ – like it was a purely factual statement. More than that, he said it in a totally, completely unashamed and unreserved way. He wasn’t embarrassed at all. “I’m totally in love with you. Don’t say anything back, because I know you don’t feel that way. But I do.”
My heart was going a million miles an hour, and I felt like I might swoon.
“If this is some kind of a trick – ” I started.
He smiled. “It’s not.”
I paused and just drank in those emerald green eyes.
“You don’t even know me,” I finally protested – albeit feebly.
“That’s what these dates are for, right? So I can get to know you, and you can get to know me.”
“You can’t love somebody if you don’t know them.”
“Wrong. Well, maybe you can’t LOVE somebody if you don’t know them, but you can definitely fall in love. You know how I know?”
“…how?” I asked in a tiny mouse voice.
He stared and me and said confidently but quietly, “Because I’ve already fallen in love with you.”
Ohhhhhh sweet baby Jesus.
Maybe he really was a gentleman, because he didn’t make a move to kiss me, or touch me, or anything. And I’m pretty sure at that moment he could have whisked me into my dorm room and had his way with me.
The sexual tension was thick, and my emotions were raging like a swollen river –
And then Shanna came out in tight jeans and a low-cut halter top that showed off her boobs.
“I’m ready!” she announced happily.
As soon as she appeared, she could tell something was up. It was probably like walking into an invisible wall.
“Uh… is everything okay?” she asked.
“Definitely,” Derek smiled. “Let’s go.”
He gestured to me, and I walked past him towards the stairwell. As I went, he put his hand on the small of my back – just the lightest of touches, and then it was gone.
My knees buckled and I about lost my mind… but somehow I made it down the stairs to the parking lot.