36
“I missed you,” Kevin said softly as he moved in and kissed my cheek.
Despite all the unpleasantness of the last few minutes, his body against mine felt good… like home. His lips were safe and familiar.
When he put his arms around me, I melted against him and laid my head on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was a total jerk. I’m really, really sorry.”
“…okay,” I whispered back.
We stayed like that for a long time, me nuzzling against his body, his arms wrapped around my shoulders.
He finally kissed my neck and pulled back, a big smile on his face. “I really am so glad to see you.”
I smiled back at him… though I couldn’t return his level of enthusiasm. “Me too.”
He frowned slightly. “Where were you? I was waiting for, like, two hours.”
My stomach froze. “Uh… we were eating at a friend’s of Shanna’s house.”
Technically, it wasn’t a lie.
Although calling Ryan ‘a friend of Shanna’s’ was stretching it.
Kevin’s brows knit and his eyes clouded over.
“I don’t like her,” he whispered, glaring at the shut door.
“You don’t have to, she’s not your roommate.”
“I don’t like you hanging out with her.”
That was kind of funny. Other than sleeping in the same room, Shanna and I had just ‘hung out’ more in the last four hours than we had in the previous four weeks.
But his tone of voice rubbed me the wrong way.
“Well, you don’t get to choose my friends,” I said in a clipped voice.
He gave me an unhappy look, then frowned again. “What were you talking about in the stairwell?”
Again, ice water plunged through my insides. “What?”
“What were you talking about before you came in? You said I was a great person – but it sounded like she was trying to get you to do something you didn’t want to do.”
My brain ticked through the possibilities, trying to find some way not to lie.
It failed.
“She wanted to set me up on a blind date because we broke up,” I said, my heart racing.
His expression got even darker. “Oh?” he asked, accusation in his voice.
GOD, here we go again.
“She’s just trying to look out for me – ”
“Did you want to go out on a date with… whoever it was?”
Yes.
Actually, I kind of already did.
Twice.
“NO. You heard me – you even said she was trying to talk me into something I didn’t want to do!”
“Yeah,” he relented, though I could still see the mistrust in his eyes.
I desperately wanted to get away from this topic, so I put my arms around his neck. “Did you really drive fifteen hours to come up here just so we can fight about the same crap?”
He looked into my eyes, and it was touch-and-go for just a second. I could see him searching for something, some clue, some telltale sign –
But then he visibly relaxed, and he broke out into a goofy grin. “No.”
“So let’s not fight, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed, his smile still lingering on his face.
It disappeared completely when Shanna stepped out into the hall – although I noticed that his mouth dropped open slightly, too, as he gawked at her.
Specifically at ‘the girls.’
Shanna had changed into a push-up bra and a spaghetti-strap top, painted-on jeans, and ‘f*ck me’ pumps. She was wearing ‘f*ck me’ red lipstick, too.
Come to think of it, just about everything about Shanna screamed ‘f*ck me.’
“Welllll, you two seem to have patched things up,” she said, not quite approvingly.
“Thanks for… you know,” I said, gesturing at her outfit.
“Aaaaah, you’re welcome. You deserve at least one Kaitlyn night. And you – ”
She clicked her fingers in front of Kevin’s nose.
“ – eyes up here,” she barked, pointing to her face. “You’ve got a girlfriend, so f*cking act like it.”
Kevin blushed furiously. He looked at me guiltily, expecting me to throw the kind of fit he would been having if our places were reversed and he’d caught me staring at a guy.
I could have gone postal on him… but, truthfully, I didn’t feel anything but a tiny pinprick of jealousy.
It wasn’t even one tenth as intense as when Shanna had joked about sleeping with Derek.
…which was kind of unsettling.
I suppose I could have lashed out and ripped into Kevin as payback for all the times he had done it to me – but that would have been manipulative and shitty. So I just let it go.
Besides, to paraphrase Derek: when Shanna put ‘the girls’ out there on display, it’s not like you could ignore them.
“Have fun,” I told her.
“Ohhh, I will,” she said, and added impishly, “I thought I might go by the 40 Watt – ”
“NO,” I said, surprising even myself with how quickly and insistently I’d said it.
She pulled back a little and grinned, like Aha, see? We both know the score.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she giggled. “Ho’s before bro’s! Ovaries before bro-varies! See ya!”
And with that, she burst through the doors and into the stairwell.
Which meant that Kevin and I were all alone.
37
I won’t go into the rest of the evening in detail. We talked a lot. It was pleasant.
The only bad moment I had was when he asked, “Why isn’t she supposed to go to the 40 Watt?”
Panic.
“Because… because the guys she picks up there are always dirt poor and want to crash here instead of their place.”
Again, not technically a lie.
If you took the first night she met Derek as your only example.
Kevin got an alarmed look on his face. “Oh, good. I’m glad you told her no, then.”
Relief flooded over me, even as cold currents of guilt pulled at me like undertow.
I fixed him some instant mac and cheese. He’d been planning to eat with me, which made me feel even more guilty, even though I reminded myself that he’d never told me he was coming in the first place.
Eventually we began to make out.
Which led to sex.
I’m not going to lie: I did it because it was expected of me. And I did it because I felt guilty. And I did it because to not do it would have provoked a terrible fight, and made him angry and suspicious and impossible to be around.
It was nice, though. I enjoyed it. Like when he kissed me earlier, having sex with him felt familiar and safe. It was… pleasant.
I didn’t mind that he only lasted a couple of minutes, though.
We lay in bed talking for a good half hour – about Syracuse, about the next year, about our future together. Then we started kissing again. This time he went down on me without being prompted. I told you he was very considerate.
Normally I like oral a lot, but I wasn’t feeling it tonight. I could tell he was getting frustrated by my lack of response. I had two options: I could either fake an orgasm – which I was horrible at, and which would raise red flags – or I could actually try to have one. I know it’s really, really bad of me, but I’d fantasized before about other men when I was having a hard time getting off. Channing Tatum. Ryan Gosling.
This time… I thought of Derek.
I thought of him between my legs. I thought of me gripping his hair as he kissed me, licked me, pleased me with his tongue. I thought of feeling his strong hands caressing me, watching his broad back and the muscles rippling under his tattoos…
I came pretty quickly.
Afterwards Kevin entered me, finished, and drifted off to sleep. I lay there next to him, tears staining my pillow, hating myself for what a horrible person I had become.
38
The next day passed uneventfully. We slept late, had sex, got up, and had breakfast at the dining hall. We came back to the room, showered, walked downtown, and poked around in the shops. We had lunch at the Grill, an Athens institution (kind of like a hipster greasy spoon diner with the option of getting tofu in everything).
I intentionally steered Kevin away from the gyro place. When we passed by it, I got a queasy feeling in my stomach.
Other than that, it was a very pleasant afternoon. We decided to eat dinner at the dining hall, watch a movie in my room, and have an early evening in.
Well, Kevin wanted an early evening in – which was code for more sex.
Maybe it was stupidity, or maybe it was a subconscious desire to get caught… but I completely forgot that Derek was coming by at 5 o’clock.
Until I heard the knock on the door.
I froze. My entire body was petrified.
Kevin looked at me from where he was sprawled out on the bed. “Aren’t you going to get that?”
“…yeah,” I said, and walked over, stiff as a robot.
I flung open the door.
There he was, gorgeous as ever. He was wearing his customary jeans, a tight black t-shirt over his muscular torso, and a perplexed look on his face. He must have heard the male voice through the door, and was apparently still processing the information.
“Derek! Hi!” I said in an artificially chirpy voice, my face warped into an exaggerated smile. “Shanna’s not here right now!”
I was just waiting for him to say, I didn’t come to see Shanna.
Or to bust me some other way, intentionally or not.
But he didn’t.
Maybe he saw the terror in my eyes. Or maybe he’d been in situations like this before, player that he was.
Whatever the case, he didn’t miss a beat, and he didn’t betray me at all.
“Oh, that sucks,” he said nonchalantly. “Well, just tell her I stopped by, will you?”
I don’t know if it was my overall weirdness, or Derek’s sexy voice, or his own inherently jealous nature, but Kevin slipped off the bed and came padding over. “Who’s this?”
I could see it on Kevin’s face, and hear it in his tone: he was threatened. And slightly belligerent.
“Kevin, this is Derek,” I said with formal politeness. “Derek, Kevin. Derek’s one of Shanna’s… uh, friends.”
‘Friends’ seemed suitably vague. It could mean anything from actual, platonic friend to casual hookup.
I knew which way Kevin would take it.
Derek didn’t react at all. He reached over and offered his hand to Kevin. “You must be Kaitlyn’s boyfriend.”
“Uh… yeah,” Kevin said, glancing at me in distrust as he shook Derek’s hand. “How’d you know?”
“I just assumed. I heard her talk about her boyfriend before, but she never goes out with any guys. You’re from Syracuse, right?”
She never goes out with any guys was a nice touch, as was the detail about Syracuse. I felt Kevin relax beside me.
Then he turned into a dick.
“Yeah. You and Shanna date?” he asked, a peculiarly gleeful tone in his voice, and I knew he was about to try to stab my roommate in the back.
Derek looked amused. “Well, there was that one night I came home with her.”
“Oh.” Kevin’s plan deflated in front of his eyes… and then he looked at Derek’s body with rising panic, and I knew exactly what he was thinking:
THIS guy was naked just a few feet away from my GIRLFRIEND?!
“But you didn’t stay,” I added hastily.
Derek smiled playfully, and I thought for a second he was going to say to hell with it and push the plunger on the dynamite.
But he played it cool.
“Nope.” He turned to Kevin and said in a man-to-man voice, “Chick passed out on me, drunk off her ass. What’re you gonna do, right?”
“Yeah,” Kevin agreed with a laugh.
As if he’d ever been in that situation before.
“Well, anyway, tell her I came by,” Derek said, then waved to Kevin. “Nice meeting you, man.”
Kevin did his best to give Derek a cool nod. “Yeah, you, too.”
And then Derek walked into the stairwell without even a single look behind.
Something inside me felt like it was dying. I wondered miserably if I would ever see him again…
…and then wondered if I was a horrible person for feeling like that as I stood next to my boyfriend.
Kevin snorted in derision.
I looked over at him. “What?”
“That’s the kind of guy Shanna likes?”
I looked at him with a twinge of guilt. “Yeah?”
Kevin shook his head in an oh-so-superior way. “Figures. Your roommate has terrible taste in men.”
I narrowed my eyes angrily as he walked back to the bed.
If you only knew.
Then I spent the rest of the night feeling awful that I’d thought it.