by Sarina Bowen
“A thing?”
“Work with me, here.”
“Okay. Yeah. Come and get me for the thing. In three minutes.” That should be plenty of time. Because what was there to say?
I marched myself outside, stopping in front of Alison.
“How have you been?” she asked.
“Peachy.” Let’s get to the point, here.
“Look, I owe you an apology.”
“You think?”
Alison gave me a bit of an eye roll. “Can you just let me do this? I wasn’t honest with you.”
“I got that.”
She threw her arms out to the sides. “Just give me a second, okay? This isn’t easy for me to tell you.” The crystalline blue eyes that I’d always loved filled.
That pretty much crushed my asshole ’tude, because I never could stand to see a girl cry. “Okay,” I said softly. “I’m listening.”
“Rafe, I’m…” She swallowed. “I’m asexual.”
I replayed those words in my mind and came up blank. “You’re… what?”
“Asexual. I can’t… I don’t experience sexual desire. Ever. Not for anyone.”
That was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. And I’d already spent a couple of months choking on the message that she didn’t want me like that. Why make a weird excuse? “Then why did you sleep with Mr. Rolex? And don’t try to tell me you didn’t. Something happened with him.”
She took a deep breath in through her perfect nose. “I slept with him because I wanted to know if I could do it. It was an experiment. If I could live through it with him, then I thought I could handle sex with you.”
At that moment, you could have pushed me over with a feather. “Dios. I always hoped you could tolerate sex with me. Do you even hear yourself?”
Her face got red. “I know, okay? It’s taken me a bunch of counseling sessions to even admit that it was a stupid idea. But I loved you, and I just wanted what so many other people have. A normal relationship.”
Again, the fact that she was getting upset checked my anger. “But I just don’t understand. Not at all. Because everybody wants someone.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “Not necessarily. Not me. I’d been wondering about myself for years, honestly. My boarding school roommates were always talking about how so and so has lickable abs. I’ve never wanted to lick anyone in my life.”
I managed to crack a smile, even as I realized that she wasn’t joking. “Maybe you like girls?”
She shook her head. “If I did, that would be easier. I’d never even heard the term ‘asexual’ until a year ago. I started Googling right away, but reading about it only depressed me. Because I suspected that was me. And then we started dating, and I tried. I really did.”
“So…” I cleared my throat. “It’s not just you. This is a… thing.”
Alison gave me a tiny eye roll. “Yes, it’s a thing. There are support groups and the whole nine yards.”
It was at that moment when Bella decided to stage her rescue. She came wandering over to me with a comical smile. “I need to steal you.” She put her hands on my chest and rubbed my pecs. “There’s a half an hour until class, and I’m feeling so tense. I was hoping you could help me relax.”
I kept a straight face, but just barely. “Just give me a minute, Bells. I need one more minute here.”
Bella made a sad, pouty face that was entirely out of character. “I’ll be waiting, lover.” She sauntered off, hips swaying. I admired the view, because it was important to stay in character.
When I looked at Alison again, her eyes were hard. “Wait. You asked her to rescue you from this conversation? Is it really that hard to talk to me?”
That’s when I lost it a little. “Cristo. Is it really so hard to believe that someone would ever want to have sex with me?” Too bad I didn’t keep my voice down. A couple of freshman girls walking past us looked up quickly.
“Of course not,” Alison whispered. Her face went soft. “My counselor was right.”
“What about?”
“That sex was tied up with most people’s self-esteem. And that I almost certainly hurt your feelings because I didn’t want you that way. I’m sorry I’ve been so dense.”
“It’s…” Argh. “Can we just move on?”
“I was hoping that we could be friends.”
“Isn’t that all we ever were?”
Alison let out a shaky sigh. “I loved you, Rafe, and then I did something really stupid because I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. And I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” I whispered. Was I supposed to tell her now that all was forgiven? I just couldn’t make myself say the words. Although I didn’t like the idea that my pride had been wounded at least as badly as my feelings. “Thank you for telling me,” I added, hoping that it would be enough.
Alison gave me a watery smile. “You’d better go. Your friend is waiting for you. Actually, she’s looking like she’d like to kill me. You probably told her I was a monster.”
Yeah, I probably did. “See you around, Alison.” Trying to be generous, I leaned forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. Then I spun around and caught up with Bella, who was waiting by the door. She did, in fact, look ornery. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for that to take so long.”
“Let me guess. She’s sorry, and she wants you back.”
“Eh,” I said. “She’s sorry, at least.”
“Would you take her back if she asked?”
“No,” I said quickly. “We weren’t… a good fit.” I was still trying to understand what Alison had told me. If she was right about not wanting sex with anyone, that meant most relationships were off the table. She’d told me once that she wanted kids, too. So that wouldn’t be easy.
It was pretty damned depressing, really.
“I have an idea,” Bella said. “About Beta Rho.”
“What?” That got my attention. “What kind of idea?”
“I read in The Harkness that they’re having a centennial celebration next month. ‘One Hundred Years of Beta Rho.’”
“Ugh. Just what we all need — a hundred years of assholes.”
“I know. But I figure that a bunch of their alumni will be in town for it. They’re having a big tailgate party for the last football game.”
“Are they now?” I sure hoped Bella wasn’t planning to go. I didn’t want her anywhere near a couple hundred drunk frat boys.
“The article said that they bought out a big block of tickets to the game.”
“So?”
“So, my wheels are turning.”
I opened our entryway door. “Bella, I can’t think of a single good thing that could come of you mingling at the Beta Rho centennial.”
“I don’t want to be good, Rafe. I want to be bad. Very bad.”
Dios. “I don’t even want to know,” I said, and we began walking again.
Yes you do, a little voice nagged. You absolutely want to know.
Twenty-Three
Bella
It was Saturday, and I’d been to all my classes this week. Maybe it’s not much of an achievement, but every time I stepped outside the Beaumont gates, I still felt eyes on me. That freaking picture was still up on Brodacious, although Lianne had informed me that a set of photos of the new pledges dressed in drag had replaced me at the top of the page.
So that was something. You had to hand it to an organization which attempted to embarrass its own members almost as badly as the women they were finished with. They were equal-opportunity assholes.
At any rate I wasn’t going to flunk out of school. But my social life was over. My hockey friends had twenty hours of practice a week and a full game schedule on the weekends. Not that they’d forgotten about me. The week I’d staged my vanishing act, my phone lit up with texts from Pepe, Graham, Rikker and Trevi. They invited me to Capri’s. They sent me funny videos.
They tried.
But all I sent back were excuses. And when they didn’t give up, I started ignoring
them altogether. They were busy, anyway, and I wanted them focused on hockey, like they should be. Last year, the hockey team was my whole world. Lately, my world was confined to entryway B.
And I had a dangerous case of cabin fever.
Grabbing the book that I was supposed to be reading, I stuck my feet in my Chuck T’s and headed down two flights of stairs. I knocked on Rafe’s common room door.
“Yeah!” The sound of his voice sent a happy little shiver up my back.
I opened the door to find him sprawled out on a generous leather sofa. “Hi,” I said, feeling shy all of a sudden.
He sat up. “Hi. You okay?”
“Sure.” I came in and shut the door. “Except there’s a small spider on the ceiling over my bed, and it’s staring at me.”
He smiled, and I felt a little flutter down below. Damn that smile. “You want me to kill it?”
“What?” I asked, swaying under the effects of his sexy mouth.
“The spider? Should I kill it?”
Focus, Bella. “No. But could I, uh, read down here for a little while? I just need a change of scenery.”
Something warm flickered through those big brown eyes. “Sure. Come on over.” He bent his knees to make room for me.
I sat down, noticing that all the furniture was fancy. “Nice place you got here.”
“It’s Lord Bickley’s.”
“Ah.” The seat was so wide that when I stretched my legs out there was still plenty of room for Rafe’s.
He did the same, then picked up his French book again.
I turned my attention to my own reading. But after ten minutes or so, I got in trouble for tickling the arch of Rafe’s foot, which lay within arm’s reach.
“Not fair,” he said, jerking his foot way. “I have enough trouble with irregular French verbs without your help.”
“Sorry.” Even though his ticklish foot was still right there, I didn’t want to make a nuisance of myself. Rafe had become my best friend during what was otherwise the worst semester of my life. He was more important to me than I was capable of expressing.
At my end of the sofa, I struggled to read another essay for Women’s Studies. College coursework was all about theories, and after four years I was a little sick of them. On the other hand, my real life this year had been about as pleasant as walking repeatedly into various stone walls. So maybe the theories were the way to go.
Rafe’s suitemate Mat emerged from his room. “There’s a game tomorrow,” he said. “I was thinking of giving you the spread plus one…”
“No thanks,” Rafe said quickly.
I poked him in the thigh. “You didn’t even hear what game he’s talking about.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rafe said from behind his book.
Mat snickered. “Fine. Later, guys,” he said, grabbing a knapsack off the floor. “I’m going to lock myself into a study carrel until my physics homework starts to make sense.”
Rafe gave his roommate a salute as he left the room. And the two of us on the sofa went back to our reading. At least Rafe did. My book wasn’t nearly as interesting as the warm weight of Rafe’s leg against mine. Instead of plowing through the next feminist theory, I indulged in a private fantasy. In my dirty little mind, I crawled onto Rafe’s body and tossed his book on the floor. Then I put my hand in the center of those fine abs, rubbing him gently, feeling all that muscle beneath my palm.
When he began to squirm, I’d slide that naughty hand down… down…
This lovely picture was interrupted by Rafe’s roommate Bickley stomping through the room again, looking for his “trainers.” “Ah,” he said, grabbing his shoes out of the corner and sitting on the coffee table to put them on. “I think I need to run some sprints. Care to join me?”
“Negative,” Rafe said. “Too much homework.”
Bickley snorted. “Bella, see what you can do to lighten this one up. He thinks he’s here to be a scholar.”
At the other end of the couch, Rafe made a grumpy noise.
His roommate did not notice, of course. Bickley wasn’t the sort of guy who understood how the words falling from his mouth affected other people. “Looks like you two kids have the place to yourself for a bit. Try not to behave yourselves.” He gave me a salacious wink.
Rafe dropped his book on his chest and looked at me. “Bella, it’s impossible to imagine why you gave up men.”
“Gave up on us?” Bickley grasped his chest in mock horror. “That sounds like a poor plan. Maybe she meant to climb up men.”
Rafe glared at Bickley. “Oh fuck off now.”
“Fine, fine. Ta ta for now.” When he left, the door closed with a bang.
“I’m sorry he’s such an ass,” Rafe said. The smile he flashed me was so beautiful I felt another shimmy in my stomach. The boy could melt granite with that smile.
“He didn’t mean anything by it. Bickley is a nervous talker.”
“What?”
“Some of that verbal diarrhea is because he doesn’t know what to say. Listen to your neighborhood psych major.”
Rafe made an irritated noise. “Is there a cure? Please say yes.”
“Duct tape?” I suggested.
“Great idea.”
We went back to our books for a moment, but I was still distracted by the warmth of his body against mine. Tucked into a sofa with Rafe was a really good place to be. It wasn’t enough for me, though. There were things besides reading that I’d rather do with him on this fine piece of furniture. I took a second to admire the way his Manchester United T-shirt hugged his chest, and the smooth skin on his hands as he turned the page.
“Rafe,” I whispered.
“Hmm?” He did not look up from the page.
“How come we’re not friends with benefits?”
Well, that got his attention. His eyes flew up to meet mine, and I saw a flicker of something hot pass through them before he schooled his features into a thoughtful frown. “What?”
“You know.” I gave his knee a nudge. “Studying is easier after you work off a little tension.”
He watched me for a long moment. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not. But it doesn’t really matter. Friends with benefits is not my style. I don’t do casual.”
Seriously? “Sure you do. I’m a witness. I can place you at the scene of the crime.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “You’re forgetting what happened afterward. You told me yourself that I was a jackass.”
Fuck me, I did. “That was just because the timing was so bad. We could do better.”
He let out a breath. “Nope. I don’t think I can.”
Holy crap. I was losing my touch. I’d just been rejected, which rarely happened. And here’s the real kicker — I actually felt bad about it. Really bad. All the way to awful, even.
“Shit,” I whispered as an unfamiliar heat rose up in my eyes. I felt tears forming. Actual tears. I raised my book in front of my face, creating a rather dubious curtain of shame. If I had any luck at all left in the universe, maybe Rafe wouldn’t notice.
“Bella?” he whispered.
Yep. No luck left. Not even a speck.
“Cristo, Bella. It’s not you.”
I would never again believe those words. From anyone. Thank you, Whittaker. And thank you, medical diagnosis. I threw the book down, pressing my fingers into the corners of my eyes.
Rafe sighed, throwing his book on the floor, too. Which I’d fantasized about not a half hour ago. But in my fantasy he’d done it so we could have sex, and not because I’d become a weepy girl.
“Come here,” he said, reaching forward, closing his big hands around my legs just above the knee. With a good tug, I slid across the leather until I was closer to him. Then he took my hands and pulled. “Over here,” he coaxed.
Bending my knees, I ended up in his lap. He wrapped both arms around me, and I tucked my chin onto his shoulder, so he wouldn’t see me looking teary.
Rafe held me tightly, making it even harde
r not to cry. Because the feel of those strong arms around me was exquisite. He smelled like clean man and laundry detergent. So I burrowed even further into him, with no plans to ever leave.
Welp. Sorry, Rafe. I’m never coming out of here. I was going to live out my life right here, hiding in Rafe’s neck. He would have to have me surgically removed. Not only was I comforted, but I was enjoying the delicious scrape of his Saturday whiskers against my cheek.
“Didn’t mean to offend you,” he said, running a hand down the back of my head. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
Ugh. “You don’t have to lie to me. I know it’s icky, all right? I already know.”
His hand came to a stop on my back. “What’s icky?”
“Me,” I gasped. “I get it. It’s gross… that I had…” I couldn’t even say it out loud. To Rafe, who already knew! I was never getting my mojo back. Never ever.
“That’s what you think?” he whispered. “Really?”
I pulled my head back and looked into those chocolate eyes. The intensity I found there made my heart stutter. “Isn’t it?”
“No, baby. You could never be gross.” He frowned. “You really don’t believe me, do you?”
Slowly, I shook my head.
He sighed, his shoulders sagging. Then he muttered, “Dios, forgive me for what I am about to do.”
I didn’t see it coming until Rafe cupped his hand under my jaw. He brushed my cheekbone with his thumb, and I swear to God I developed an extra set of nerve endings right then and there. He leaned in and brushed his mouth over the corner of mine, sweeping up my cheek and over my ear.
“You,” he whispered, pausing to touch his tongue to my earlobe, “will always be the sexiest girl I have ever known.”
It was the classiest, swooniest thing anyone had ever said to me. And my poor, long-ignored body lit up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. While I quivered, Rafe left gentle kisses up the side of my neck. I had to tip my head back to give him better access, and I found myself squeezing my legs together against the electric current suddenly sizzling through my fun zone.
Later I would realize he almost certainly meant to stop there. The hot sigh that Rafe gave off next sounded like a capitulation. “Belleza,” he growled. “Give me that mouth.”
