But it wasn’t.
It was Justin. A flash of intense emotions went through me. I was excited that he’d actually come looking for me again. But then immediately I was annoyed that he’d never even bothered getting my phone number so he could call me. He’d just shown up again like it was nothing.
“Oh, hello.” He gave me a knowing smile. “How’re you doing?” He looked over my shoulder into my room, like he was expecting to see something incriminating.
“Fine,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
He looked taken aback by the question. “Just checking on you. I heard you had an exciting night last night.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “You don’t get to come here and ask me about my night.” I must have sounded harsher than I thought, because he looked slightly taken aback.
He gazed at me for a long moment, and then his face softened. “Fair enough.”
“So what do you want? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“You’re wearing your hair in braids,” he said, ignoring my question.
“Yeah.” While I’d been brainstorming my essay, I’d pulled my hair back and absentmindedly braided it. “I was studying.”
“I like it.” He reached out and tweaked one of the braids. “You look like Pippi Longstocking.”
“You know who Pippi Longstocking is?”
“Of course.” He took a step forward and peered into the room until he saw Rachel. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Justin, but you can call me JB.”
Rachel just glared.
“Wow,” Justin said. “Tough crowd.”
I stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind me. “Listen, you can’t just keep showing up here like this.”
“Why not? Because of that dick R.A.? Fuck him.”
For the first time, I noticed that the stitches over his eye had come loose. The wound was red and raw. “Jesus,” I said. “What happened to your cut?”
“Nothing.” He waved his hand like it was nothing. “Just a little sparring practice.”
“I thought you weren’t allowed to spar with that cut.”
He shrugged, then leaned back against the wall behind him. “So what are we doing tonight?”
“I’m studying.”
“Cool. I’ll read a book or something, keep you company.” He went to move by me and into my room, but I stepped in front of him.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I need to work.”
“I’ll be quiet and good.”
“You’re not even supposed to be here!”
“I know.” He rolled his eyes. “Hence the reason I asked you to go somewhere with me.”
I hesitated, my body thrumming with excitement. His mere presence was making me dizzy. The thing was, I wanted to go with him. I wanted to be around him. He was a temptation, like a piece of chocolate cake you weren’t supposed to eat or an extra hour of sleep when you were supposed to be up early. You knew it wasn’t good for you, but you had a hard time saying no.
“You can’t just keep showing up here like this,” I said. “If you want to see me, you need to call me on the phone like a normal person.”
He nodded, like he could accept this. He pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“What’s your number?”
I told him.
A second later, he put the phone to his ear.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling you.”
From inside the room, I could hear the sound of my cell ringing. I had the ringtone programmed to Toxic by Britney Spears, and I blushed.
“Kind of humiliating, don’t you think, Pippi?” he asked.
“Kind of fitting,” I said.
“Touche.” He cocked his head. “Doesn’t seem like anyone’s answering.”
“I meant that you should call me before you show up. Not that you should –”
“Shh!” He put his fingers to his lips. “Please, Pippi, I’m in the middle of a very important phone call.”
I sighed and then turned around and walked into my room. I picked up the call right before it was about to go to voicemail. “Hello?”
“Oh, hi, is Lindsay there please?”
“This is her.”
“Hi, Lindsay, this is Justin. I was wondering if you’d like to hang out tonight?”
“I can’t,” I said firmly. “I have to study.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Maybe next time.”
“Yeah, maybe another time.”
“Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
He hung up.
I stood there for a moment, looking down at my phone in disbelief. Had he really just hung up? I wanted to go and open the door, to see if he was still out in the hallway, but I could practically feel the disapproval radiating off of Rachel.
But finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I opened the door.
“Hi,” he said. The side of his mouth pulled up into a sexy grin. “You ready to go?”
***
This time, we didn’t go to any fancy restaurant, and there was no pretense.
“I’m hungry,” he said once we were off campus and on the streets of Boston.
“You want to eat?”
I shook my head. “No way. I’m not falling for that again.”
“Falling for what again?”
“You taking me to some place to get food and then us not talking about anything.”
“We talked!”
“Yeah, about nothing.”