47
I barely slept that night. I was frantic that I would never see him again – and I chastised myself endlessly for even caring.
But Derek was good as his word. He came by the next day at four o’clock sharp.
When he showed up, he was his old self, laughing and teasing and grinning. Shanna was there, and she told him all about how she’d covered for me. Derek joked with her about it, though he never mentioned shocking the living daylights out of me with the whole coming over to have Shanna ‘rock his world’ incident.
I was thankful for that, at least.
Derek and I went and played pool at the student center. The entire time we kept up an easy banter back and forth. He had an incredible way of putting me at ease; it was like the previous night had never happened.
But of course, it had. And we both knew it.
I wanted to say, Aren’t we going to talk about last night?
But I was afraid to talk about it.
And I was even more afraid to hear him say, What’s there to talk about?
So I just let sleeping dogs lie.
He flirted with me a little, but not nearly as much as he could have. There were no double entendres about how I handled the cue stick or the billiard balls. And even though he instructed me on how to shoot better, he didn’t take the opportunity to get behind me and press his body against mine, to fold his arms over mine, the way you see in the movies. He kept a respectful distance the entire time.
I kind of wished he hadn’t.