52
My eyes snapped open, and panic and guilt blasted through me.
What the F*ck are you doing, Kaitlyn?!
I pushed Derek off me with a jolt of adrenaline so powerful it took us both by surprise. He toppled backwards onto his ass, a look of shock on his face. I scrambled upright and snatched up a bunch of crinkled notes, then stared at them with an intensity people usually reserve for notices of foreclosure and bad medical reports.
Except I don’t think most people in that situation have faces red as a tomato and hot as a coal.
The door swung open and Shanna entered, groaning as she dumped her backpack on the floor. “OH MY GOD, my paper’s finally done and emailed and I want a drink so BAD – ”
She stopped in her tracks, her mouth open, as she actually looked into the room for the first time. What she saw was Derek on my bed, sprawled out on his ass and propping himself up with his hands, and me completely ignoring him as I stared intently at a fistful of paper. Oh, and my face probably looked sunburned.
“…uhhhhh…” Shanna said, her face still frozen in shock.
My eyes flickered up, then darted back to my clenched handful of notes. “We’re just studying,” I said loudly, my voice verging on hysteria.
The appropriate line in Shakespeare is The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Shanna was still too shocked to make fun of the situation.
That came later, after she’d recovered her wits.
But for now, she was entirely helpful and solicitous.
“…okaaaay…” She pointed back towards the hallway. “I could go get a drink at a bar and come back in, like, an hour – or two – ”
“Why?!” I asked, my voice getting even louder and more frenetic. “We’re just studying!”
The guilt pounding inside me was overwhelming.
For the first time since Derek had kissed me, I was thinking of Kevin… and my mother… and my father… and what a shitty, horrible, f*cked-up girlfriend and human being I was.
“I should probably go,” Derek said.
I looked over at him. He seemed slightly amused and absolutely calm. Like we really had been studying, but now he was bored and it was getting late.
Not at all like your average guy who was about to score and then got stomped on the one-yard-line.
In the back of my mind, I imagined how Kevin would have acted in the same situation.
‘Pissed-off,’ ‘irritable,’ and ‘self-conscious’ were the top contenders.
When I looked at Derek, though, he gave me a smile and a wink as he slid off the bed. “Study hard, okay?”
Unfortunately, when he stood up, his erection was pretty damn obvious. It was kind of cocked (pun intended) off-center from the zipper, and strained against the front of his jeans.
Although I’d certainly felt it pressing against me, this was the first time I’d actually seen it. Or at least its outline.
It wasn’t porno humongous or anything, but it was… a pretty big bulge.
Shanna saw it immediately. Her gaze dropped below his waist briefly, and then she did a double-take – she tried to look back up at his face, but her gaze dropped back down again like she was drawn by a magnet and she just fixated on his crotch with a glassy, dreamy look in her eyes. She unconsciously shifted her weight onto one leg so that one hip was higher than the other, then crossed her left arm across her stomach and propped up her right elbow. The fingertips of her right hand found their way to her mouth, and she just kind of rested them on her lower lip as she continued to stare at Derek’s jeans, mesmerized.
It was a look that basically said, Ohhhhhh BABY, break me off a piece of THAT.
I couldn’t blame her – but it did piss me off.
“Shanna!” I snapped.
She jolted awake like somebody had zapped her with electrical wires. Her hands flew to her sides and she looked at me in panic, then her eyes pinballed back and forth between me and Derek.
Derek was grinning like the Cheshire cat.
I was scowling like the Red Queen. Which was appropriate, considering how badly I was still blushing.
“I really gotta go get that drink,” Shanna said, and half-turned –
“No, it’s cool, I’ve got to get to work,” Derek said.
I almost blurted out, No you don’t! but then I forgot that, hey, we’d… uh… been ‘studying,’ too.
“See you, Shanna,” he said as he walked across the room.
“…yeah…” she said dreamily. As he passed by, she turned to watch – first the front of his jeans, then the backside.
“SHANNA!” I yelled.
She turned around to look at me, guilty as a little kid who snuck downstairs before everybody else on Christmas morning. “I can totally go to a bar – all night if you want – ”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Kaitlyn,” Derek said, and I saw that he had – um, ‘straightened things out’ so that ‘things’ were hidden better in his jeans.
Then he winked at me.
“I enjoyed studying with you,” he grinned, and then he was gone.