I WAS NEVER MEANT to lead a solitary life. That much was obvious.
But there I was, bumping around my room again. After my impulsive run, I’d bought some coffee and headed back to my room, where I proceeded to brood over everything I’d done wrong.
Or I tried to. Brooding didn’t come naturally to me, and I’d swear it made my dorm room feel even smaller.
Just when I was feeling truly desperate, someone knocked on the door.
Rafe.
I sat up fast, running my fingers through my hair. Vanity didn’t come naturally to me, either, but Rafe looked delicious 24/7, and I’d humiliated myself in front of him twice already today. Also, the boy should be made to remember what he was missing.
“Just a sec!” I called out.
Looking down, I took a quick inventory. The jeans were fine, of course. But I was wearing a baggy Bruins shirt, so I whipped that over my head and tossed it on the desk chair. A pink oxford shirt I’d abandoned at some point hung on my closet door’s hook. I grabbed it, shoving my arms into the sleeves, and buttoning it up most of the way.
Perfect.
The knock came again, and my heart did an unfamiliar shimmy. I braced myself and went to the door.
It opened to reveal Graham, of all people.
“Oh,” I said, probably failing to hide my disappointment. “Hi.”
He cocked his head to the side and began to smile. I saw his gaze come to a halt on my unusually generous cleavage. “Maybe I’m not who you were expecting?”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” I argued, holding the door open for him. And that was strictly true. I hadn’t heard from Rafe since leaving him a voicemail, which he seemed to have ignored.
“Good. Because I’ve come to escort you to Capri’s.”
My stomach twisted at the idea of stepping into my favorite pizza and beer joint in the world. I practically used to live at Capri’s. That’s where the hockey team went about four nights a week to blow off steam.
But I did not. Not anymore.
“I can’t make it tonight,” I lied. “Sorry.”
Graham’s face fell. “Bella, please? Just because you don’t work for the team anymore doesn’t mean they don’t miss you. And I miss you. If I can walk in there, so can you.”
I sat down on the bed to give myself a little distance from Graham’s blue-eyed stare. It was pretty impressive that Graham often went out drinking with the hockey team. For months he and Rikker had kept their relationship a secret, and coming out of the closet had been really hard on him. He’d quit the team after his concussion, but he hadn’t quit his circle of friends. There were some curious stares last spring as everyone figured out how things were between Graham and their star right wing. But Graham pushed through all that, and kept most of his friendships on the team.
He was obviously a whole lot braver than I was.
Without another word, he came over and sat down beside me, putting an arm around my back.
Damn him. I wanted to lean against his shoulder and tell him everything in my heart, the way I used to. I still missed Graham. It wasn’t about lust anymore. I’d had enough time to realize that the sex part of our relationship hadn’t been the best part. But I still felt an ache when he was nearby. I missed his company, and I missed the idea that we were two peas in a pod. Both slightly jaded, but probably redeemable.
Fast forward one year, and Graham was having the happiest year of his life. Me? Total disaster.
“Come on, Bells.” He gave me a little squeeze. “You’re hiding in your room, because you’re embarrassed about something that you didn’t even do wrong.”
I groaned. “You’re right. It wasn’t something I did wrong. It was someone.” And then that someone let the whole world know just how stupid I really was. “I’m not ready.”
“You look ready to me,” he quipped. “Come out with me.”
For the hundredth time today, my throat was hot. There had been so many nights last winter when all I wanted was for Graham to show up at my door and say, “You’re important to me.” Now he’d done that. But not in the way that I’d once hoped for.
“You know,” I said, clearing my throat. “You used to hide too, okay? So it’s not like you can really give me a hard time about this.”
I expected him to get irritated that I’d poke his old wound. But he didn’t. Instead, I received an even tighter hug. “Aw, Bella. I know that. And it sucked. I wasted so much time worrying about what other people thought. Years, okay? But you’re smarter than that.”
“I used to be,” I mumbled.
Graham cleared his throat. “Well, I had Rikker to show me how it’s done. Who’s going to do that for you?”
Well, ouch. Because I had no clue. “I need a little more time, Graham. Right now, I’m still everyone’s gossip nugget.”
“You aren’t,” he argued. “And the new manager is a pain in the ass. I heard he ordered shin guard tape instead of hockey tape.”
“What?” I yelped. “Who could mix that up?”
Graham chuckled. “See? The team misses you. Come and show your face.”
“Another time,” I said firmly. I stood, putting myself out of the orbit of Graham’s hugs. Because those were potent.
Sensing defeat, Graham stood too. “All right. If you change your mind, you know where to find me. And aren’t you going to eat dinner?”
“Of course I am. I was waiting for my neighbor,” I lied, pointing in the direction of Lianne’s room.
“Promise?” Graham’s icy blue eyes regarded me seriously.
I held up a hand, like an oath-taker on the witness stand. “Promise.”
He stepped in to kiss me on the cheek. Then he headed for the door. “Good night, Bells.”
“G’night Graham.” I used to say that when we were both naked in his bed.
Then he was gone, and I was — wait for it — alone in my room again. And since he’d mentioned dinner, now I was hungry. I went into the bathroom and tapped on Lianne’s door.
“Yeah?”
I opened it, finding Lianne seated in front of her massive computer cockpit. “Feel like ordering a pizza?”
She blinked at me for a moment, probably because it was not a usual thing for me to make a friendly overture. “Does it have to be pizza?” she asked finally. “That’s too carby for me.”
I sat down on her bed. “What, then? Salads?”
She swiveled around to face me. “Thai? The Orchid Garden has some things I can eat.”
“Okay. Let me get my wallet.” I stood up.
She waved me off. “You get the next one. I already have my credit card in their system.”
I sat down again. “You do?”
“Yup.” She turned to her keyboard, and I saw her pull up the restaurant’s website. “It’s funny. My manager made me live at Beaumont instead of on Fresh Court where I might actually meet First Years. He said it was a security risk. But now every deliveryman in the greater Harkness area knows exactly where I live.”
I laughed, even though that was too sad to be funny. “You don’t like the dining hall food?”
Lianne only shrugged, which made me wonder whether she ever went in there. She was waiting for my order.
“I’ll have the chicken pad Thai, extra peanuts.”
Lianne typed furiously for a moment, fingers flying over the keyboard. “All set. They say it will be twenty-five minutes. But they’re usually slower than they say.” She turned around to face me.
“So,” I said. I wasn’t used to making conversation with Lianne. “Did I interrupt anything important? Now that I know you’re a computer genius, I just assume you’re over here hacking into the Federal Reserve Bank or something.”
“Right,” Lianne scoffed, kicking her tiny feet up onto the bed beside me. “I only break into government networks on the weekend. Just now I was ordering my favorite lip gloss.” She grabbed something off the desk and thrust it out for my inspection. “Have you tried this? It’s tinted in a warm berry color, and I love the packaging.”
“Can’t say that I have. Sorry.” Over the years, I’d heard people whisper about the fact that I never had female friends. People have told me to my face that I can’t stand competition from other girls. Not true. The real reason I lacked female friends was that I don’t speak lip gloss.
“What’s up with you, anyway?” she asked. “You look kind of… strung out.”
“Well…” Was I going to share with Lianne? What a weird idea. “It hasn’t been the best day. I sort of threw myself at Rafe, and he turned me down.”
Her famously expressive eyes widened. “Really? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m not a subtle girl. No eyelashes were batted. I stuck my tongue down his throat. He definitely noticed.”
She tapped the fingers of each hand together thoughtfully. “Sorry, but that does not compute. I was starting to think that the two of you were just inevitable.”
That made me grin. “If anyone can ruin a sure thing, it’s me.”
She frowned. “Speaking of ruining things, I looked at Brodacious again today. They haven’t changed the password. If you want me to take down the photo, it’s still easy to do that.”
“That’s cool. But I had a different idea, actually.” Doing laps in my room this morning, I’d had a bit of a brainstorm. Lianne was probably the wrong person to share it with. Then again, who else would want to hear about this plan? Not Rafe, because apparently we weren’t speaking. Not Graham, because he’d tell me it was too crazy. And there were several reasons why I couldn’t ask my hockey friends for help.
I clapped my hands. “Okay. Let me bounce something off you. It’s really a non-technical solution. But, say, ten days from now I might have a new picture to post up there. Do you think you could make that happen?”
Lianne frowned. “Posting a picture on Brodacious is a snap. But they could just delete it. Even if I changed the password to Bite-My-Feminist-Ass, they could just call up their web host and take the whole site down. Within minutes, probably.”
“I’ve thought of that,” I admitted. “But if I play my cards right, the whole school will have the same picture on their phones, even if it doesn’t stay up on the website.”
She blinked at me. “What exactly is this low-tech idea of yours?”
“I’m going to try to humiliate Beta Rho using nothing but a couple of reams of colored paper. It will either be the best use of ten dollars ever or a complete failure.”
Lianne sat back in her chair. “I’m listening.”
I continued to outline my big idea, while Lianne’s eyes got bigger and bigger. When I stopped speaking, she just stared at me silently.
“Well?” I finally prompted her. “What do you think?” I braced myself to hear that she thought I was insane. And I probably was.
“That is GENIUS!” she shrieked. “Where do we start?”
After our Thai food showed up, we continued to scheme.
“You know,” Lianne said, pausing to chew a bite of chicken, “your odds of success are greater if we can find you a little more manpower.”
“That is true.” I offered her the pad Thai. “Want some noodles?”
She shook her head. “I can’t eat carbs. If I gain an ounce, my manager nags me.”
I lowered the carton to my lap. “Seriously? Can’t you just tell him to fuck off?”
“It’s complicated.” She got up to throw her empty carton in the trash. “Now, where are we going to find some extra sets of hands? I’m sure there are a lot more girls who want to get even with Beta Rho.”
“Sure…” This was something I’d thought about, too. “But if they all show up at the football game together, that will look really suspicious. Even drunk frat boys can recognize their former hook-ups. And if I bring in outsiders, that would be a big red flag.”
Lianne tapped a pencil on her knee. “Who would a bunch of drunk frat boys listen to?”
I laughed, because there was one obvious answer. “The Rockettes or the Laker Girls. The Swedish Bikini Team?”
Across from me, Lianne gasped. “That’s it!” She spun her chair to face her computers, grabbed the keyboard and commenced typing.
“What are you doing?”
“I know a casting agent in New York. We need models. Not the famous, catwalk kind. But the ones they call when there’s an automotive convention. The girls who get paid thirty bucks an hour to drape themselves over next year’s Porsche Carrera.”
“That’s going to blow my ten-dollar budget,” I pointed out.
“Honey, I’m from Hollywood,” she said, grabbing her phone. “Blowing the budget is what we do.”
Huh. “How much do you think this will cost?”
Lianne spoke into her phone, leaving a message. “Harvey, it’s Lianne. I have a little job that needs doing. Let’s say six or eight models, for three hours next Saturday. Call me.” She hung up. “I don’t mind paying for it.”
“No, I can,” I said quickly. Money was one problem I did not have.
Lianne waved a hand as if this detail was beneath our concern. “Now we need to generate a diagram of the bleachers. Tomorrow we can go over to the stadium and count the number of rows. But estimating the density is still kind of tricky. Even with a spreadsheet.”
Jesus Christ. I’d underestimated this girl again. “I’ll ask my friend Graham for a photograph of the stands during a game. The newspaper must have that in a file somewhere. We can count the heads in the picture.”
“That’s a great idea.”
This brainstorm was interrupted by the sound of a distant knock on my door.
Lianne and I both silenced our planning immediately. “To be continued?” I whispered.
Is that Rafe? she mouthed.
“Probably.”
“I’m going to need you to report back,” she whispered.
Saluting her, I slipped into my room, closing the bathroom door. The knock came again. “Bella?” Rafe called. “I have your book.”
I opened the door. “Did you think I wasn’t going to answer unless I got Essays on the Feminist Perspective back?”
He came into the room warily, handing me the book. For several seconds we just stared at each other. We both decided to speak at once.
“I’m sorry,” we said in unison.
“Aw,” Lianne said from behind the door.
“I have to talk to you,” Rafe said. He slipped past me and went to sit on the bed. “Sit down,” he said, patting the spot next to him. His dark eyes flicked up, locking on mine. Then they darted away again.
“Can I go first?” I asked.
He shook his head and smiled. “Nope. There’s something I need to say.”
“But my thing came first,” I argued.
“It doesn’t matter, Bella! I’m trying to…”
I cut him off, by virtue of hollering. “I’m trying to apologize for stealing your virginity!”
There was a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the bathroom door.
“Lianne!” I hollered. “Take your skinny butt over to that fancy stereo and find yourself some tunes.”
There was a grumble and the sound of feet moving away from the door.
Rafe’s shoulders sagged. “Freaking Bickley.”
“I know,” I sympathized. “But I had no idea—”
He held a hand up to silence me. “Just stop, okay? I don’t want to talk about this.”
“But we have to, because—”
“No,” he said forcefully. “We really don’t. That’s ridiculous.”
“No it isn’t,” I said, dropping my voice. “I was so hard on you…”
He held up that hand again.
“Fine!” I yelped. “But I feel like an ass. You’ve been really good to me. Always really good to me. Since that first day you carried a box up to my room, okay? I just wanted to say thank you. I haven’t been… my best self this year.”
Those brown eyes softened. “You had reasons.”
I let out a breath. “I had a few here and there. But you’re just about the only good thing that’s happened to me this year. And I want you to know I appreciate it.”
That may have caught him off guard. I saw him swallow roughly. “Thank you.”
“That night in September…”
He made an impatient noise. “Don’t go there.”
“Hey! I’m not going to embarrass you. I promise. But you… I couldn’t tell, Rafe. I would have never guessed.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Uh… thanks?”
“You’ve been really patient with me when I had a shitty time, and I wasn’t so patient with you. I wish I had been.”
“It’s okay, Bella. I’m done with this topic.”
Ugh. Well, I tried. “Okay then. What was your thing?”
“My thing,” he repeated.
“Yeah. I cede the floor to the gentleman from Washington Heights.” I sat beside him.
Rafe put a hand on the small of my back, and the heat seeping through my T-shirt felt divine. “Okay,” he said, rubbing small circles on my back. “When I said today that I don’t do casual, I wasn’t kidding.”
“Yep. I believe you now.”
He groaned. “Right. So. What I didn’t say, but wanted to, is that I think we should be together. For real.” He looked me right in the eye with a gaze so warm that I got a little lump in my throat.
“For real,” I echoed stupidly. “You mean…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence, because I was afraid of what he meant. Rafe wanted to be my… boyfriend? I’d never had one of those.
He curled his arm around my back to give me a squeeze, and dropped mouth to my ear. “You make me crazy in a good way, Bella. We’d be great together.”
They were lovely words, but I was already panicking. The fact that Rafe wanted me to be his girlfriend was tricky to process. No sane man would want a relationship with me. I choked on my reply, just wondering what to say.
“Belleza, you don’t look as excited about this idea as I am.”
“But…” I was still at a loss. “Why does it have to be some kind of pact? We’re already friends. Who have a hell of a lot of chemistry. I don’t do relationships.”
“Why?” he challenged.
“Because that’s when it all goes to hell! Everybody gets big expectations the the other person can’t live up to. Then they get sick of each other and break up.”
He tipped his handsome face toward the ceiling. “That’s obscenely pessimistic, even for you. Some of your friends are very happy together. You told me so yourself.”
“For now,” I pointed out. “And maybe you haven’t done the math yet, but in May I’m graduating. Who knows where I’d be next year? Probably at a graduate school somewhere.”
The dusty stack of graduate school brochures laughed at me from the back corner of my desk.
Rafe eased away from my body and leaned forward, chin in hand. “You have a long list of objections. I could keep arguing with you. Except I don’t think you want me to.”
“We don’t have to argue at all. That’s my point. We could just have sex and skip all the philosophizing. My way is easier.”
“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not. Because suppose you and I fool around right now…”
“Let’s call it what it is,” I suggested. “I could have you naked about sixty seconds from now. At which point we would have hot, sweaty sex.” How could he not think that was a good idea? I was feeling hot just saying the words.
“Fine,” he said. “Hot, mind-bending sex. I have a very active imagination, Bella. It would take us a week just to get through my most recent ideas.” He glanced up at me then with heat in his eyes, and my fun zone gave a shimmy. “But next week, if I pass you on the stairs with one of your hockey player friends, that will kill me.”
“You’d be jealous?”
His dark eyes bored into mine. “Ridiculously jealous.”
“That’s so… possessive.”
He threw his hands in the air. “Call it whatever you want, I guess. But I care about you. A lot. If we have sex, it’s not just… exercise. If that’s what possessive means, I guess I’m it.” He stood.
“Hang on.” Rafe was half-way to the door, so I hurried to finish my thought. “So let’s say we don’t have sex right now. And two weeks from now I do pass you on the stairs and I’m with a guy. You’re saying it’s better that way?”
He turned around, wearing a look on his face like I’d just kicked his puppy. “That will suck, too. But it will suck just a little bit less.”
Seriously? “Not from my perspective. Because we would have missed out on the mind-bending sex part. You’re just not comfortable with my sex life. You’re shaming me.’
“No!” he protested immediately. The anger in his eyes startled me. “I think you’re amazing, and I’ve said so every chance I get. Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said your way was wrong. It’s just wrong for me.” Then, as I watched, all the fight went out of him. His shoulders dropped, and he leaned his head against the door. “Let’s, uh, take the night off from Urban Studies,” he said.
My heart lurched. When Rafe put his hand on the doorknob, I had an irrational urge to stop him. “Rafe?”
He turned back, his expression guarded. “Yeah?”
“Maybe you didn’t mean it to happen, but I’m a lucky girl to have been your first.”
For a split second, his eyes closed with something like grief. But when they flew open again, he was all business. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
A moment later I was alone. Again! I threw myself down on the bed, trying to figure out what had just happened. Rafe wanted a relationship? I tried to picture it, but that was hard for me because I’d never had a boyfriend. There’d been Fucker Tanning, whom I’d thought of as my boyfriend. But that was just a myth he’d built for his stupid teenage fling. Then there was Graham, whom I hadn’t been dating, but in my heart I’d felt there was a future there.
Yeah. A perfect record for disaster.
Even if I told Rafe yes, it would be a temporary arrangement. In May we’d both be sad. And for what?
RAFE! my traitorous body screamed. Whenever he got near me, I felt him like a gravitational pull. Even in my lowest moments, I’d leaned into Rafe. That day in the deli — when he’d moved to block me from the view of those frat boys in the corner — the solid wall of his chest was something that I wanted to lay my head upon. And watching him teach me to merengue would make any girl dampen her panties.
He was the whole package. Sexy. Fun. Sexy. Kind. Loving. Sexy.
Did I mention sexy?
I groaned aloud. If he weren’t hung up about dating, we could be undressing each other right now. And so much more. The brief but combustible makeout session we’d had on his sofa only proved that our chemistry was a real. I definitely wanted more of that.
But Rafe wanted a commitment, followed by a break up at graduation.
And he thought I was the impulsive one?
I flopped over to bury my face in the pillow. If you wanted to be really philosophical about it, life was a temporary arrangement. So why get hung-up on relationships at all?
An angry knock sounded on the bathroom door.
“What?”
Lianne walked in. “Did I just hear Rafe leave?”
“Yep.”
“God, why?”
“He wants us to be a couple.”
Lianne clapped her hands. “Really? He’s delicious.”
“He is,” I agreed. “But I don’t think I can date him. I don’t do relationships. And I’m not sure I want to break my rule.”
Her forehead furrowed. “What does your heart say?”
“My heart is a traitorous bitch and a horrible judge of character.”
Lianne closed her eyes, then knocked her forehead three times into the bathroom door. “I swear to God, Bella.”
“What?”
She pinned me with a stare. “Here’s what we know about Rafe.” She ticked off the points on her tiny fingers. “He’s hot, he’s polite, he carried you up a flight of stairs, then stood guard over you like a video game dragon until you were back on your feet. He looks at you like you’re his own personal angel, and he does all of this without ever taking a shred of credit. If you weren’t attracted to him, that would be fine. But you are! So your heart had better get with the program.”
For a second I just blinked at her. It was easily the longest speech I’d ever heard Lianne make. “You make a few good points,” I said eventually.
She had the strangest look in her eye. It was a little wild and a little fierce. “Good guys like that are as rare as vampires on a sunny day, Bella. I’m not kidding.”
“I know,” I said quietly. It was true. And I was attracted to Rafe. So much. But it was hard for me to go there. The second I decided I loved someone, they always let me down.
She came all the way into the room and sat on the bed. “You sound afraid to be with him. And that’s not like you.”
“Yeah? If you’re so brave, what are you doing up here in Lonelyville with me?”
Lianne gave me the side eye. “I didn’t say I was brave. I’m a total chicken. But you’re with guys all the time…”
I snorted. Lianne still thought I was the biggest slut in the world.
She held up a hand. “Okay, that came out wrong. I just mean that you’re not intimidated. You know what to say to a guy. And Rafe’s the best one! So how is that tricky?”
“Because…” Lianne was not going to understand. “In order to be with him, it’s like I have to reform. I have to be the girl that everyone always told me to be.”
“Do you think Rafe is trying to reform you?” Lianne asked.
“No,” I said immediately. In my gut I knew it was true. He wanted what he wanted, and he wasn’t afraid to say so. “But the rest of the world would like to.”
Her young brow furrowed. “I get that. But it just comes down to the question of who matters more? If you want to be with Rafe, nobody else’s opinion should count.”
“Lianne, if this acting thing doesn’t work out, you should consider litigation.”
We sat there quietly together for a moment. “We’re still going to prank the football game, right?” Lianne asked eventually.
“Absofuckinglutely.”
