Crimson Snow

by Ina Carter

  One morning I overheard part of Liam and Kevin’s conversation, which gave me pause.

  “…Yeah, bro, they reconsidered their decision and reinstated my scholarship. My coach is over the moon… I don’t know… Maybe he pulled some strings…”

  I felt a pinch of guilt because I never told Kevin or Liam about the deal I made with my father. I knew both were not going to be happy. Now that I was aware of how much was at stake regarding Kevin’s future, striking a pact with my dad was even more justified. At least Robert left me alone. For now.

  When Kevin hung up the phone with Liam, another worry settled over my heart.

  “Hey, is that true? They gave you back your scholarship and everything?” I asked, unable to hide the shakiness in my voice.

  I was facing the sink, washing the bowl from my breakfast cereal, but I felt Kevin’s presence behind me. He wrapped his arm around my waist and leaned his head on my shoulder. The affection between us had become a new normal, something that I craved in fact.

  “Are you worried I have no reason to stay here, Lauren?” He laughed softly in my ear. The man was starting to read my cues like a pro and knew what went through my head. A girl needed to keep her insecurities to herself sometimes.

  I turned around to face him, and our eyes met. “Why would you stay here, Kev? I am happy that they gave you back your scholarship, but it doesn’t make sense. You wake up at 5 a.m., so you can drive to practice. It would be way more convenient for you to live on campus, especially when your season kicks in.” I confronted him. His smile faded, and he looked at me, his jade eyes turning into flames.

  “You didn’t buy that bullshit that I was out of options and had to move out of the dorms, did you? I saw your father hit you, Lauren. I couldn’t let you live here alone when he came back. And I was sure that he’d be back – assholes always need to have the last word…”

  The stupid Kevin was going to make me cry. He moved here to protect me, something no one but him had ever done for me. He was still fighting my battles, even when he was mad at me.

  “Liam and I both agreed that it was not safe for you to go back to the sorority or to live here alone,” he admitted.

  “So, are you telling me it wasn’t Liam’s idea to ask me to housesit for him while he was in Florida? Was that also bullshit, that he had some break-ins last year?” I pressed him further.

  Kevin’s lips quirked, which was an answer enough. “Hey, in my defense, at the time, I was not completely in my right mind and was torn between the need to kill anyone who hurt you or be mad at you.”

  “So, it was a test? To see if I would rather go back to the sorority or choose to take Liam up on his offer.” I concluded, and by the look in his eyes, I was right.

  “As I said – I am sorry I doubted you, Lauren, but I am also glad that now you are safe here. Liam, by the way, was all on board with the idea from the beginning. He doesn’t mind that we are both in his house, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he asks us to stay even after he’s back. He hates living alone and has been asking me to move in with him for the last few years, so he could have company.”

  “So, you’ll stay?” I asked, hopeful.

  “I am not going anywhere, and I like your company, too. The last month has been the most peaceful I’ve felt for… forever come to think of it.” He reverberated my own thoughts, and something inside me fluttered, a warmth spread from somewhere deep down my chest to the tips of my toes. He was still holding me, so I leaned my head to his chest and listened to his fast heartbeat. We stayed silent for a while, just sharing the moment of closeness. I heard his laughter before it reached his lips, vibrating in his chest next to my ear.

  “Now that I am back to playing college baseball at least I won’t have to do some underwear modeling or something to earn money to pay for college,” he murmured.

  “Seriously? That was your plan?” I hoped he was kidding,

  “No, I am just joking, Lauren. I wouldn’t take my clothes off for whatever insane amount of money. Some things are better kept for private viewing only.” He chuckled.

  I was still closely pressed to that hard body and suddenly fully aware of it. An image of Kevin in nothing but his underwear flashed in my head, and it was far from innocent. That warmth in my chest turned into an inferno and ignited something inside me that was out of my control. It startled me and scared me to death at the same time, so I pulled abruptly from Kevin and tried to quickly shake off whatever this was, before he noticed. I couldn’t have those feelings for him, especially not now that we were getting so close as friends.

  I turned around and grabbed a cup, filling it with water from the sink since my mouth felt suddenly dry and my throat constricted.

  “So, you don’t want to be idolized by millions of women, ha?” I tried to make a joke, but it fell flat.

  I couldn’t see Kevin’s face, but I felt his hot breath next to my ear.

  “Not really. As I said, private viewings only, and by exclusive invitation,” he whispered.

  He was not helping, saying stuff like that. I took another big sip of my glass and tried to calm down. I felt him pulling away, and then his laughter.

  “You know, Liam didn’t lie to you about the break-in at his house last year. More like he skipped part of the story…” Kevin changed the subject, which was good, so I took a deep breath, pushed down the uncalled-for desire, and turned to him. He was still a foot from me, but his eyes sparkled with humor, nothing else, thank God.

  “Liam did a Calvin Cline ad a year ago and came home to find some girl naked in his bed. She made herself comfortable, took a shower in his bathroom, used his stuff, total stalker shit. He had to call police and file for a restraining order. So, thanks, but no! I am not dealing with any of that crap!” he declared resolutely. Well, that was a normal reaction and something that made me angry on his behalf, which was way better than relating to the stalker.

  “I gotta go to the library,” I blurted out, thinking that putting some distance between us was not a bad idea at the moment.

  “Oh, good. Me too. I have to return a few books and find something else to read.” Kevin sounded nonchalant. Considering it was Saturday, and in the last month, we had spent the weekends glued to each other’s hip, it would have been suspicious if I suddenly told him I would rather go by myself, so I nodded in agreement. The library was after all our old hanging spot, so maybe it was good to remind myself how much Kevin mattered to me as a friend.

  He went upstairs to change and get his books, so I collected my thoughts and tried to rationalize what had happened. I wasn’t dumb to ignore that Kevin was smoking hot, just surprised that he affected me in that way. We’d been holding hands, cuddling on the couch watching TV, but until now, it was comforting in a platonic way, like a blanket you needed to feel cozy. Not this electric surge that hit me and made me want to check the brand of his underwear.

  Maybe it wasn’t unusual to have those lapses in judgment and react in a sexual way to your friends once in a while. Once, when we were sixteen and were hanging on the beach, Max tried to kiss me, but we were both a little drunk, and the next day he apologized, saying that alcohol loosens your inhibitions and makes you do stupid things. Not that I had anything to drink this morning, but still, I had to hope the moment was fleeting and wouldn’t happen again.

  Kevin came downstairs, freshly shaven, looking at me with a big smile on his face. My eyes fixed on his lips for a moment too long, and I turned away, afraid the affliction was not fully contained.

  “Ready?” He put his hand to my back when I walked to the door, which was innocent enough, but I felt his heat through the fabric of my shirt, and a shiver ran down my spine. This was getting annoying.

  We got in his car, but there was silence between us. Kevin broke it, and his voice sounded light, completely at peace. “You know I always loved libraries…” He said matter of fact. I exhaled the breath I was holding because this was something we had always shared, and it was good to bring the conv
ersation back to normal friend stuff.

  “Me too, Kev. I could stay for days in a library if I had the option. It’s so quiet, especially when you find an empty room where no one can disturb you, and get lost in a book…” I said wistfully.

  “Really, Lauren? In the library? I know some people totally do it, but you?” He smirked.

  Jesus! I was about to kill him. I reached over the dash and slapped his chest, not finding this funny.

  “Shut up, Kevin. I don’t masturbate in libraries. Books are not a fetish for me.” I fumed. He was leading my mind in the exact direction I was trying to avoid. I was totally overacting because, in the last few weeks, I discovered that Kevin had a dirty mouth, and said provoking things all the time. Just a few weeks ago, I wasn’t reading anything into them, it was simply a friendly banter between us.

  He was totally enjoying watching me this flustered, and his grin widened. “I personally like to watch… People in the library, I mean.” He kept going with the innuendo, “You can tell a lot about a person by their reading choices.”

  “Really, like what? Avoid every girl who reads Jane Austen and drools over the book since she is obviously a clinger?” I hit back because this was a game two could play.

  “Why not? If the girl likes Darcy, it means she might be into the silent type, so it works for me,” he countered me.

  “You are not always the silent type, Kevin. And honesty, I am not a big fan of Austen. The way she sees love is too trivial. Human relationships are a bit more complicated than suddenly have a change of heart and fall for a man you hated a few pages ago. Elizabeth Bennet is a total gold digger if you ask me. Bookcase, in fact.” I was totally projecting my feelings into Austen, who I didn’t hate that much. I think she captured the history of her time perfectly and was a social critic of the English higher class, but I was trying to prove a point to Kevin.

  Kevin started laughing, giving me a side glance. “You want to hear my theory behind people’s reading choices and sexuality?” he asked.

  “Okay, go ahead. Enlighten me.” I waved a hand, wondering what other buttons he might push.

  “So, here is my theory - if a girl reads nonfiction – she is totally grounded in reality and curious about the world, but still not my type because she might lack imagination in bed. Whimsy is like a big checkbox on my list. If she is into a murder mystery, possibly means she has a boring life and is looking for a thrill, which can be a fun wish to fulfill. I still won’t risk it though. There is always the possibility she might be plotting an actual murder and is reading the book as a reference.” He paused because I couldn’t help it and started laughing. His speculations about people’s choices in literature were actually hilarious and typical Kevin.

  “Keep going. I need to hear about horrors?” I urged him.

  “Oh, that girl I might like a lot. If she is not afraid of monsters, I won’t scare her when she sees my…” He grinned, not finishing his sentence, totally leaving it to interpretation. And considering where my mind went, a sound between a growl and a moan escaped my lips.

  “You are either bragging about your dick or overcompensating, so either way, it explains why you won’t do underwear ads.” I did go there, and this time he squirmed, his hand tightening on the steering wheel.

  “Keep on going, Kevin. Why did you stop?” I kept pushing him; this was not innocent whatsoever, but totally entertaining.

  “You want to hear what I think of a girl who reads romance novels? If she reads those books in a public library, she is totally into smut in private, and I am all in,” he blurted.

  “What happened to being a relationship guy?” I teased him.

  “I didn’t say I was a good boy, Lauren. Those are not mutually exclusive things,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, and there you go, movie Mr. Darcy. I hope your quirky Bridget Jones is waiting for you in the library.” I nodded towards the building in front of which we had just parked.

  “I’ll make sure to be on the lookout,” he joked. “How about you, Lauren? What books are you picking up today?” He turned the table on me.

  “Oh, you know me, Kevin. Whatever falls off the shelf. I am totally indiscriminate towards books because there is something valuable in each one. As I was telling you earlier – people are more complicated than being put in a box, and you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. In your case, literally.” I said in a bit more serious tone because the question of what books I liked after the sexual innuendo was dangerous territory.

  “If we leave the jokes aside, I can tell you one thing I do notice about a person. The book in their hands doesn’t matter, Lauren. It matters if they smile, or cry, or feel anything while reading it. People show their true emotions when they are engrossed in a story. Books reveal a lot about who we are inside, especially when we think we are not being observed.”

  He was saying this to me since I noticed he’d been watching me when I read a book. His admission tugged a string in my heart that sang a familiar melody. Kevin saw under the surface, cared for my emotions, and wanted to know who I was deep down.

  Whatever confusion I had about my feelings for him disappeared at that moment. I needed this – needed my friend, and I couldn’t let some stupid hormonal reaction jeopardize our bond. Getting friendship mixed with lust never ended well, and the trust we established in the last month was too fragile to be broken by some stupid misstep I made.

  I took his hand when we exited the car, and it felt like before – comforting, uncomplicated, just my Kevin. He looked down at me and smiled like he understood something had shifted back to normal.

  The library was surprisingly crowded on a Saturday, and most people looked like college students hunched over textbooks, writing down notes, not simply leisurely reading. Kevin and I dropped our books in the return box and browsed the shelves, taking random books, reading the back cover, and putting them back.

  “Can’t make up your mind of what you are in a mood for, hm?” I whispered quietly when he put yet another book back on the shelf.

  “No, not really.” He admitted. “You know being here with you makes me think of us back in Texas. The library wasn’t about the books, was it?”

  Kevin seemed nostalgic, his voice constrained a bit, his fingers fluttering next to mine like the memory was emotionally charged. I looked at his face, but he wasn’t sad, his smile was soft and his eyes at ease. He seemed happy.

  “It was somewhat about the books, but… The library was the home we didn’t have,” I answered.

  Suddenly, Kevin sat on the floor and leaned his back against the bookcase behind him, pulling on my hand to join him. I was about to sit next to him, but he grabbed my waist and positioned me between his legs, so I was fully in his embrace. When we were kids, this is how we sat in our corner of the library, so I understood his nostalgia, but today things were strange. I was physically aware of the fact that his chest was solid as a rock when I leaned on it, that his hand was twice the size of mine, and that his breath in the crook of my neck felt hot on my skin. It was not a surge of lust like earlier, but conscious mindfulness of how we fit together.

  “You sing a lot of the Beatles songs, don’t you?” Kevin asked, and I knew why.

  “Actually, I hadn’t sung any Beatles songs until a month ago. You reminded me. It’s strange that I still remember every single lyric.” I said, lost in the memory myself.

  We grew up in Texas, and the music we heard on the radio was all country. We heard it blaring from speakers in the stores, in the diner, or even from people’s cars. One day we were sitting in the library, just like this, when Kevin told me he hated country songs. He said all of them were about cheating, drinking, lost love, or something, and there were no songs about something happy. He grabbed my hand and took me to the corner where the librarian had a shelf with old vinyl records and some ancient record player with two sets of headphones.

  He started rummaging through the records and scanning the titles of the songs written on the back. His face l
it up, and his lips stretched in the widest smile I’d ever seen from him when he found something he was looking for. He put on the black disc and started fidgeting with the record player until he figured out how it worked and where to place the needle. I didn’t even look at the picture on the cover, or the name of the band he had found. But he put one set of headphones on my head, and we both listened to “Here comes the Sun.” Since that day, Kevin greeted me singing that song since he always called me his sunshine. We got a little lost in the records, probably listening millions of times to every Beatles album the library had. No wonder I remembered all the words and melodies. They were embedded in my brain like they had become a part of my childhood.

  “You want to guess what’s my walk-out song?” Kevin whispered in my ear. I did remember that when we were watching baseball, he said most players play a song when they walk on to the field.

  “You kidding me?” I quirked, not having to guess at all.

  “Yup, people think I chose it because of my sunny personality.” He chuckled.

  “Probably with a good reason. I watched your game tapes, remember? You seem happy when you are out there on the baseball field, Kev.” I shared my observation.

  “What makes you happy, Lauren? You never shared your dream with me,” Kevin asked.

  “Music. I want to do that for the rest of my life if I can.” I answered honestly, and I realized that it was the first time I had told anyone. I hinted to my parents, sang to my friends, but no one ever asked me what I dreamed of becoming.

  “You want to be a singer, hm? I can see why. You have an amazing voice.” Kevin sounded genuine, not just giving me empty compliments.

  “I don’t know about being a singer. More like a songwriter. I was planning to audition in the spring and transfer to a music composition major next year. My father pressured me into this stupid communications major, and I have zero desire to be a journalist or anything close.”

  “Songwriter? Your lyrics suck, Lauren.” Kevin was totally teasing me because there was laughter in his statement.