You missed an awesome party after you left so early! Call me!
There was no way I was going to talk to her right now. I was on edge, confused, and moody, which she would notice right away and start with the barrage of questions I didn’t want to answer. Presley was the most dangerous of my entire social group because I swear the woman was able to contact twenty-six people in about four minutes if there was something she considered gossip-worthy. When Cole and I had split up, I had sent her a text message on my way out of his apartment. He lived about an hour away, and by the time I arrived at the place I shared with Presley, there were about seventy people at our apartment, dancing and toasting my newfound freedom.
Okay, so Presley hadn’t been fond of Cole, and with good reason. But still, my mom called while I was pulling into the driveway to make sure I was all right, as if she even remembered that I had been dating someone. I told one person, and in under an hour, everyone I had ever known knew I was single again, including my absentee mother halfway across the world. It was annoying, to say the least. My
preference would be to keep this information from Presley altogether, at least until I could talk to my dad…
Yeah, right. And say what?
Growling audibly at myself, I went to the kitchen, dropped and broke the water glass in the sink, nearly burst into tears trying to clean it up, and then stomped off to take a shower. As the hot water poured over me, and my mind drifted back to earlier that morning, I started thinking about Ethan. I thought about his head resting back on my shoulder as I read to him and about the French toast he made for breakfast—twice. His complete forthrightness and honesty was so out of the ordinary, I couldn’t help but admire how easily it seemed to come from him. He was sweet, adorable, intelligent, and absolutely the most incredibly gorgeous individual I had ever seen in my life.
I stepped out of the shower and started to towel off. When I glanced in the mirror, I noticed I was smiling. I felt a lot more relaxed, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the shower itself. Just thinking about how we had spent our time together had calmed me down. Even though I had been naked in the shower, always a prime place for a little self-pleasure, I hadn’t even thought about sex with him. My teeth dug into my bottom lip, and I felt a new wave of panic come over me.
It wasn’t about the sex.
Oh shit! What had I gotten myself into?
Before the panic could set in, my phone alarm went off, signaling it was time to head to class. I dressed quickly, grabbed my backpack, and headed out the door.
Twenty minutes later, I rushed into the room just before class started. Presley raised an eyebrow at me as I dropped down next to her. Presley’s heart wasn’t in our economics class, but it fit in with one of her PhD requirements, and it was the only class we’d had together since undergrad.
“Are we going out tonight?” Presley asked. She tapped her pencil on the desktop repeatedly as Professor Lamon walked up and down the aisles, handing out stapled packets of papers.
“I’m not sure,” I said, hoping to dodge the question altogether. She’d been pestering me about my weekend constantly—where had I been, why hadn’t I joined them at the club, etcetera. I really didn’t want to get into it with Presley. For starters, she just wasn’t going to understand, and as soon as she heard a guy’s name, she was going to want every little detail. How was I supposed to explain I spent the entire weekend with a brain-damaged, teenaged guy I had just met? Yeah, that would go over well. Besides, she would want to meet him, interrogate him to find his weaknesses, and then start exploiting them.
“Well, I know Isaac’s tending bar. Zoey and probably a few of her usual crowd are planning on being there. Maybe she’ll bring those guys she met Saturday. You blew us off all weekend. I would think you’d at least come by for one drink.”
“I went out with you last night,” I said, reminding her.
“For like, ten minutes. Then you bailed and missed all the fun, so it didn’t count. What’s everyone going to think if you suddenly stop hanging when you’re expected to be there?”
“Maybe,” I said, noncommittally.
I ignored Presley as I took notes during the lecture. At the end of the class period, Professor Lamon dropped one of the study plans for the economics final on my desk, and I started gathering up my books.
“I’d like to get started on the study guide,” I told Presley, “so I probably won’t go out. This final is going to be a bitch. It is a Monday, not a Friday, you know.”
“Who cares?” Presley rolled her eyes at me. She tossed her things in her bag and wrapped it around her shoulder. We filed through the classroom door and down the hall. “You could skip the final and still graduate at this point. You have your job, so why waste time studying?”
“Because if I don’t ace the final, I don’t end up with an A,” I said. “I rather like my GPA right where it is, thank you.”
“One drink, Ashlyn!” Presley knocked shoulders with me as we headed out the door and down the steps to the courtyard. “You have time for…”
I didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. At the bottom of the stairs—balanced on his bicycle and smoking a cigarette in all his beautiful, teenage glory—was Ethan. Our eyes met, and he graced me with that smile.
“Hey,” he said—or maybe he just mouthed it. I couldn’t hear him over Presley’s chatter. I glanced over at her, but she was looking off in the other direction and apparently hadn’t noticed him. I was only three steps from the bottom, and I’d have to either stop or walk right past him. I had no idea what to do. I wasn’t expecting him to show up here—on campus! I wasn’t prepared. What was I going to tell Presley? She was definitely going to grill me, regardless. Good lord, there was no telling what she might say to him right in front of me! Would she notice how young he was, or would she not even get past the piercings and tattoos? I couldn’t even think about the cigarette and the fact that he was on a bicycle. Shit, Presley would have a fucking field day if she found out I had spent the weekend with him. I was going to be torn apart if I even acknowledged that I knew him. I wondered what he would do if I just walked right past him and pretended I didn’t see him. Of course, we had already made eye contact, so there was no way I could do that, not without hurting his feelings.
I hesitated a moment, having absolutely no idea what I should do and then ended up stopping at the bottom of the stairs, caught in my own indecision. Ethan twisted sideways and dropped off the bicycle seat before reaching out and hugging me against his chest. I hadn’t even considered that he might do something like that. I stiffened and glanced quickly over at Presley, who appeared to be trying to catch flies with her wide-open mouth. Ethan immediately let go, his smile disappearing.
“I was going to call, but I figured you would be in class,” he said. “I would have sent you a text, but my friends are all at work now, and I didn’t have anyone who could help me write it.”
Oh shit! I couldn’t believe he said that. I wasn’t ready to deal with this. I just wasn’t.
“That’s okay,” I said. I looked over at Presley and her bug-eyes, staring first at Ethan, then at me and then back at Ethan again. I really hoped she was not so much on her game that she caught the meaning of his last comment.
“Ashlyn?” Presley bumped into my arm again. “Are you going to introduce me to your ‘friend’?”
“Of course,” I said quickly. I could feel my face getting hotter. “Presley, this is Ethan. Ethan, this is my friend, Presley. She’s in my economics class. Presley, I’m going to head on over to the library now and get started on the study guide. If I have time and I’m not too tired, I’ll try to catch up with you guys at the club later.”