Four Years Ago
It was the spring of my Freshman year in college, two weeks away from finals. I was in my dorm room at the University of Georgia, reading up for a test the next morning in my English Lit class, trying to ignore the phone call from three days earlier that was still playing in an endless loop in my head.
“Are you seeing anybody?”
“No, Kevin, I’m not. You know I’m not.”
“You’re not attracted to anybody, are you? If you are, I wish you’d just come out and tell me right now and be honest about it.”
“God, how many times do I have to say it?”
“Don’t curse at me, Kaitlyn.”
“I wasn’t – fine. Sorry.”
“Well – are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Attracted to anybody else?”
“NO! GOD, how many times do I have to – ”
“I told you, don’t curse – ”
“I wasn’t f*cking cursing, Kevin! NOW I’m f*cking cursing!”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“You don’t even hear me when I DO talk to you!”
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t talk for awhile, then.”
“…Kevin…”
“Maybe we should take a break.”
“Kevin, come on – there’s only two weeks left, and then we’ll both be back home – ”
“I don’t know who you are sometimes. You’re becoming more and more like your roommate – ”
“I’M NOT SHANNA, Kevin! I’m with YOU! I’m in love with YOU!”
“You don’t act like it sometimes.”
“Jesus CHRIST, I might as well go ahead and cheat on you since you PUNISH me like I have anyway!”
Silence.
“…I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Kevin… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean it, it’s just you make me so MAD when you – ”
“Go ahead. Sleep with whoever you want.”
“KEVIN – ”
Click.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the first time we’d had that conversation, almost word for word. In fact, we were approaching double digits.
Kevin was my high school boyfriend in Savannah, Georgia. We’d been dating since 10th grade. He was so nervous when he asked me out the first time that he almost gave up halfway through. But he finally got all the way through it, and I said ‘yes.’ I liked him from the beginning; I grew to love him. He was a shy, sweet guy, very intelligent. We shared the same dreams of being world-class journalists someday. That’s how we met, working on the school newspaper.
We dated five months before he finally kissed me. I lost my virginity to him in 11th grade, more than a year after we started dating. Sex was good with him. I never wanted to tear his clothes off in a half-insane state of passion… but he was attentive and considerate.
But he was also incredibly insecure.
He was that way from the start, but it got worse as time went on. I was a late bloomer – like, a late bloomer. I didn’t get my period until I was 14, and I remained skinny and gangly until I was 16. But all of a sudden in 11th grade, BAM, I kind of came into my own. Curves everywhere. My skin cleared up and I finally got a fashion sense. Boys started noticing me seemingly overnight. I got a lot of attention where I hadn’t before – like, ‘captain of the football team’ attention. I think one of the reasons Kevin finally got the nerve to ask me to have sex was because he was afraid he was going to lose me to somebody more aggressive. He thought that if we ‘sealed the deal,’ I’d stay with him.
It was never about that for me. He was my first love, and I would have stayed with him no matter what. I definitely wouldn’t have cheated on him, ever. When I was twelve, my mom cheated on my dad with a business colleague of hers. Even though my parents ended up staying together, it destroyed my father. My brothers and I got front-row seats to the carnage. I hated my mom for a long time because of it. I eventually forgave her for what she did to my father and our family, but I swore to myself that I would never, ever put anybody through that.
But things got worse when I went to college. I stayed in-state at UGA, while Kevin went to Syracuse University. Syracuse was both of our first choices, but only he got in. I planned to try to transfer for my Sophomore year, but in the meantime, he was in New York, and I was stuck in Athens, Georgia.
The distance made him extremely paranoid. It was partly my fault; early on, I told him about some of the raunchier, alcohol-fueled shenanigans of my roommate, a crazy chick named Shanna Williams from California. About how she went to clubs and parties every night, and usually slept with a new guy every week. About how I would wake up at 2AM hearing the creaking springs in Shanna’s bed, and her whispering drunkenly, “Shhhh, you’ll wake up my roommate.” About the weirdness the morning after, when I had some naked stranger in my room.
“It was sooo awkward – and I didn’t even sleep with him!” I laughed when I told Kevin.
Hoo boy. Wrooooong thing to say.
After the second time, I learned to keep my mouth shut about Shanna’s sexcapades.
It wasn’t like he never saw me. We called or Skyped all the time. We saw each other every four or five weeks. Either he would drive the 15-hour trip down, or occasionally I would go up to stay with him, or we’d rendezvous in the middle at some crappy little hotel in the middle when he couldn’t stand being away from me any longer. Or, if truth be told, when I couldn’t stand the whininess anymore.
And then the break-ups started.
All of them were initiated by him.
I was distraught over the first one. Wrecked. I cried for two days straight. It lasted a week, and then he called and begged me to take him back, said that he couldn’t live without me. I was elated.
Four weeks later we broke up again, then got back together over Christmas break. I wasn’t so elated this time.
Especially when it happened again in February.
Why didn’t I break up with him completely?
Because I was young and stupid.
Because I loved him. Or, if it wasn’t really love, because I still cared for him. A lot.
Because I’d lost my virginity to him.
Because he was the only boy I’d ever been with.
Because in March my application to transfer to Syracuse was accepted. I figured if I’d made it that far, I could hold out for another couple of months.
But every month and a half, another damn breakup. And when we weren’t broken up, it was the endless, whining, insecure phone calls…
It got so bad that every time his ringtone played – ‘Goin’ To The Chapel,’ by the way; he put it on there, NOT me – my whole body would tighten up, and I would think about not answering it.
But I always did.
It’ll get better, I told myself. When we’re together at Syracuse, it’ll be so much better.
There were only two weeks left, and then we would spend all of college together.
During World War II, soldiers had to go off to war and leave their girlfriends and wives behind for years, I reasoned. This is just a test of our love, that’s all.
On the other hand, those girlfriends and wives never had to deal with freaked-out phone calls and Skype sessions obsessing over whether they were cheating or not.
Truth was, I envied my roommate Shanna. She didn’t have a clingy boyfriend. Hell, she didn’t have a boyfriend at all. She slept with whomever she wanted, and she didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought.
Well, actually, she learned to give a damn what I thought. After the fourth late-night hookup, I pitched a fit. So we worked out a compromise: no more overnight stays. One night a week she could bring somebody over, and I would go crash in a sofa chair in the community study room till they were through. But the rest of the time, she had to go to his place or screw him in the bushes or an alley or something. No exceptions.
She kept to her end of the deal. In fact, as I was sitting there trying to concentrate on my boring-ass homework, I realized that she hadn’t brought anybody home in a couple of weeks.
Speak of the Devil, and she shall appear.
6
I heard the key fumble and scrape noisily across the lock. It was the sound I called ‘the Drunk Doorbell’ – a sure sign that Shanna was blasted.
It was usually accompanied by ‘the Drunk Disclaimer.’
“Shhhh,” she giggled out in the hallway. “We gotta be quiet cuz I got a roommate…”
Ah, there it was.
“I’m awake,” I called out. “You don’t have to be quiet.”
The lock clicked and the door crashed open, and Shanna stumbled into the room. “Oh, thas’ good…”
I turned around from my desk to look at her. She was cute – not gorgeous, but she had a great smile and knew how to work a push-up bra. And she was very outgoing. I’d had a lot of practice in fending off guys – most of them a*sholes, some of them charming – but I never, ever flirted with anybody. Shanna didn’t just flirt, she manhandled.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No.”
“It’s okay, right?” she asked, her eyes defocused, her body weaving slightly. “I haven’t had a Shanna Night in… awhile… right?”
That’s what we called the ‘one night a week’ arrangements: Shanna Nights.
“No,” I sighed.
“Good,” she giggled, then whispered in a loud voice that the guy would have heard if he were standing at the opposite end of a football field: “Cuz he’s really HOT.”
She looked over her shoulder and giggled at somebody standing outside in the hallway, just beyond my field of vision.
“Come on in an’ meet my roommate!”
Great. I was wearing a t-shirt and sweats, no bra, no makeup. Just how I wanted to look when I met some drunk douchebag.
Actually, I guess it didn’t matter what I looked like when I met a drunk douchebag, since I didn’t give a damn about what he thought.
I checked my cell phone. 11PM.
Huh – early night for her.
“I can go in the study lounge. How about an hour?” I asked.
Judging by how drunk she was, I figured she’d pass out in half that time – but I might as well err on the side of caution.
“I usually make it last longer… but that should be enough,” a deep, male voice suddenly spoke up.
The voice was the first thing that got me: sexy. Masculine. Golden brown with a tinge of smokiness around the edges.
Something inside my stomach fluttered, which was not a reaction I normally had to men’s voices.
Actually, it was not a reaction I ever had to men’s voices.
I looked up and saw the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life.
He was tall, about six feet. He had black hair, gorgeous and rumpled and falling just short of his eyebrows. He had a strong jaw, a slight dimple in his chin, and cheekbones to die for. Flawless olive skin and a day or two’s worth of unshaven scruffiness. He had a grey t-shirt with ‘Led Zeppelin’ on the front in faded black letters, like it had been washed a thousand times and given up the fight to stay legible. The shirt was tight over his broad chest, his powerful shoulders, and his bulging biceps. He looked like the kind of guy who had built up muscles by good genes and manual labor rather than sweating it out in a gym.
He had tattoos as well, which I don’t normally like – but they added to the bad boy image in a way that was irresistible. He wore a leather band around one wrist and a couple of rings on his fingers – rings that looked like he’d bought them from a street vendor who made her own stuff. One was pounded silver, with hammer marks all over the metal. Another was a really cool twining pattern of copper strands. Neither was on his left ring finger.
The rings made me look at his hands… and his hands made me think of a master artist carving them from a block of rare wood. They were large and masculine, and looked very… capable. Of anything and everything. Especially naughty things.
His tattered jeans were baggy enough below the knees to be cool, and tight enough over his thighs to make my mouth water. He had on clunky black work boots, scuffed and worn on the toes. A metal wallet chain hung from his battered leather belt and disappeared into his pocket.
The clothes didn’t really do it for me, other than the fact that they showed off his beautiful body to perfection. The rest of him really did it for me… especially his eyes. They were the single most arresting thing about him. Beautiful green, a few shades lighter than emeralds. I had never seen anybody with eyes that gorgeous. I wondered if he had contacts, then decided Probably not. The rest of him suggested ‘not much money,’ so I didn’t see him spending hundreds of dollars on something like colored contacts.
His eyelids stayed partly shut all the time, giving him a perpetual kind of sleepy, sexy, seductive look. Coupled with his dark, brooding eyebrows, he seemed to be thinking, Come over here and kiss me – and the slightly upturned corner of his full, sensual lips made him look amused that I hadn’t given in yet.
As we stared at each other, I felt something pass between us – like an invisible current that flowed through the air. A spark that jumped from him to me and back again. Unseen, unspoken, but definitely real. A connection.
I also felt something else I’d never experienced before with a stranger.
Desire.
Heat building in my cheeks – and elsewhere.
There were probably only about four seconds of silence… but it felt like an eternity as we stared at each other.
I felt it. I’m pretty damn sure he felt it, too.
And then he took it a step further.
“Derek Kane,” he said, stepping forward and offering me that large, masculine hand.
“Kaitlyn Reynolds,” I said, and put my hand in his. His skin was warm, his fingers strong and slightly calloused.
Whatever electricity had been buzzing in the air between us almost exploded when we touched.
He was gentle as he held my hand – but firm. Firm and powerful and strong.
I briefly imagined what his arms around me might feel like, and then guiltily pushed that out of my mind as quickly as I could.
He held onto my hand for a couple of seconds longer than he should have. Only when it was obvious that he was hanging on too long did he finally let go.
There was definitely some serious chemistry going on between us.
Shanna felt it, because she looked back and forth between us like a spectator at Wimbledon.
“Uhhhh, Kaitlyn…?” she whined with a worried look on her face.
“Sorry,” I said, snapping out of my daze and turning around to get my literature book. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
Derek leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. His very powerful, very muscular arms. “No… we shouldn’t run you off.”
Shanna looked over at him, incredulous. “That wasn’t what you were saying before we walked in here.”
“Oh?” I asked, amused. “What were you saying before you walked in here, exactly?”
Shanna giggled. “That if you didn’t leave, we’d have to f*ck right here in front of you.”
POW.
The words went right to my gut – a one/two punch.
One, I immediately thought, Player. A slight wave of disappointment and disgust rose up inside me.
Two, I imagined seeing him naked, standing just a few feet away from my bed… and my disgust quickly disappeared, to be replaced by more… pleasant feelings.
Kevin’s plaintive voice suddenly drifted out of my subconscious:
You’re not attracted to anybody, are you?
I winced.
Now I really had to get out of the room.
“Not necessary,” I said, in as deadpan a voice as I could muster. “I’ll leave.”
Interestingly enough, Derek didn’t smirk or chortle out a ‘bro laugh’ or any other reaction I would have expected. Instead, he threw Shanna an icy look before returning his gaze to me. “I was just joking around. We’re not going to run you out of your room.”
Shanna’s mouth dropped open like a gaffed fish.
I sat there, unsure what to do.
I knew I shouldn’t stay; I would totally be cock-blocking Shanna.
Plus, I was already having trouble fighting off bad, bad thoughts. Thoughts that would have given my long-distance boyfriend a heart attack.
But something inside me really wanted to stay around this sexy, mysterious stranger, if just for a few minutes longer.
However, I could already feel annoyance radiating from Shanna.
So could Derek.
He handled it like a pro.
“We can’t make her leave,” he said, turning to Shanna. “It’s, like, close to finals, isn’t it? What if she fails her exams because of us? You don’t want that on your conscience.”
He said it with the perfect mix of mocking (Awwww, poor little nerdling) and concern (We really can’t do that to her. Not cool).
“She’s not gonna fail her exams,” Shanna snapped.
Derek shrugged, not a care in the world. “We’ll have plenty of time. Don’t piss off your roommate.”
When he said ‘We’ll have plenty of time,’ Shanna both brightened and relaxed the slightest bit.
But she still muttered, “She’s not gonna fail her exams” petulantly under her breath.
He’d said something revealing: It’s, like, close to finals, right? Which meant he either wasn’t a student, or he was a frat boy awakening from a twelve-week bender.
And he didn’t look like a frat boy.
“You don’t go here?” I asked him.
“Nope.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m in a band.”
Of course you are.
Athens was famous for having been the birthplace of the B-52’s (who later fled to New York) and of R.E.M. (who stayed). Every half-assed musician who couldn’t afford a bus ticket to Los Angeles or NYC wanted to make their name completing the hat trick.
Despite his physical gorgeousness, my attraction started to wane. “Oh. That’s nice.”
Derek grinned wryly, and my heart skipped a beat.
Damn he had a sexy smile.
“I know, I know. Throw a stick in Athens, you’ll hit three musicians, right? Ten if it’s a Saturday night.”
Okay… so at least he’s a self-aware, self-deprecating, HUMBLE half-assed musician.
I tried to play it off. “I’m not really a music person, that’s all.”
“And what kind of a person are you, then?”
“UNH,” Shanna groaned. “Why are you asking about HER?”
“I thought I’d get to know your friend. Aren’t you guys good friends?”
Shanna bounded over to me and threw her arms around my neck. “The best,” she giggled, then whispered way too loudly, “Which is why you’re gonna leave, right? Shanna night, remember?”
I turned my head and looked at her only two inches away from my face. She smelled like a brewery – and a cheap one, at that. “You are so drunk.”
“Shitfaced.” The bad stage whisper started up again: “Pleeeaasssse? He’s soooo hot!”
He was, but it was dumb to announce it like that. The guy’s ego was probably already massive; now it had to be Godzilla-sized.
I looked over at Derek. I thought he would have been grinning himself silly seeing Shanna throw herself at him – but no.
He was staring at me. Not in a creepy way, but in a curious What are you going to do? kind of way.
I pictured him lying on Shanna’s bed, naked, with only a tiny bit of lamplight falling across his muscular, naked body…
I shivered.
Then I got a hold of myself.
I patted Shanna’s arm. “I’ll go.”
“Yaaaay!” Shanna squee-ed, releasing her beer-soaked hold on my neck.
“No,” Derek insisted, in a voice that would brook no dissent. “We’re not interrupting your studying. Studying’s important.”
Now it was embarrassingly obvious.
Derek wasn’t interested in sleeping with Shanna anymore.
He was interested in me.
Which alternately thrilled me and terrified me.
Maybe it terrified me because it thrilled me.
7