by Jolie Day
“A year.”
“A year, and you still don’t realize that people don’t actually take this university seriously? That’s pretty funny.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not interested in slacking off. I have an astronomy test to study for.”
“Oh, astronomy,” Asher cooed. “Well it will be at night. There will be lots of stars out. We’ll probably be having a bonfire in the backyard when it gets darker. You can do all the stargazing you want.”
“Where exactly is this going to be?” I wondered.
“At my family’s vacation home,” he replied.
Heather had mentioned how his parents were loaded, but I didn’t know if it was true. Even though his attitude surely always said he was just a spoiled rich kid.
Asher smirked again. He straightened in his seat and then stood up, offering his hand to me to help me do the same. I took it hesitantly, and he pulled me to my feet.
“I need to get going to my next class, but why don’t you give me your cell number so I can text you the address?”
“I don’t carry my phone on me at school. I leave it back in my dorm,” I replied, clutching the book to my chest.
Asher gave me a look that almost spoke as if he were offended by my words. “You don’t have your phone on you.” He paused, deliberating. After a moment he nodded his head. “Okay, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just pick you up from the dorms. What’s your room number?”
I raised an eyebrow and leaned away from him a little on impulse. “You aren’t supposed to come into the girls’ dorms, Asher.”
His look suddenly turned sly and mischievous. “I know. Don’t worry about the room number, then. I’ll just meet you outside the dorms around six. Sound good to you? You don’t have any night classes, do you?”
“Only on Wednesdays, so you’re lucky it’s not Wednesday. Six sounds fine.” I still wasn’t sure why I was agreeing to this. It seemed completely irrational...going to a party where I wouldn’t know a single person.
As if Asher read my mind, he spoke up again. “Oh, and I guess go ahead and invite your friend Heather. I know you girls like to have some support and hang out together at parties, at least in what I’ve witnessed in the past.”
Asher headed for downstairs, but I stayed behind. There were still a couple books I wanted to look for. He paused at the stairs and turned back to me. “So I’ll catch you tonight at six, Cassidy. Sorry, but I’ve got to run.”
“Really, Asher? I didn’t take you as the type who actually cared whether you missed a class or not,” I replied.
He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t care about Stein’s class, but if I don’t hurry I’ll be late for gym.”
“Ah...Of course. An example of men’s priorities at its finest,” I mocked.
He scoffed and shook his head in a playful way before turning and heading back toward the exit of the library.
He’d never been after anything in the library, like I thought. He’d just wanted to talk to me. It was bizarre, but my thoughts tumbled over each other with every second. Could that be some inclination that he likes me? We’ve only just met though. What would prompt him to approach me out of the seventy other people in Stein’s class and ask me to go to his party tonight? Unless...Unless someone had pressured Asher to approach me in the first place. But who?
I knew I wouldn’t know for sure unless I confronted Asher about it directly. The most I could do for now was wait until the party tonight. Almost too distracted to relax, I left the lounge area of the upstairs to search for the other two books.
*****
“He what?” Heather exclaimed that evening when I was back in the dorm room. She sat on the small couch with a game controller in her hands, but she’d paused her game when I mentioned to her that Asher had invited me to go to a party with him.
“Jealous!” she admitted before sighing in an exasperated manner. “Why is it that my crush decides to find interest in you instead of me?”
I stared at her defensively. “What are you trying to say, Heather?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, nothing. I’m just envious of you is all.”
“You shouldn’t be. Asher invited you as well. I didn’t even ask him.”
“What?” she cried out again. Then Heather leapt from the seat with an excited whoop, and her game controller bounced off her lap and clattered across the floor. The pause button was removed, and the joystick guided her video game character right off a cliff. Heather seemed too overjoyed to care about any of it, though.
“He invited me? Oh my God!”
I rolled my eyes. Ugh, that girl is as annoying as all hell. No offense. Asher’s words trickled through my thoughts as I watched Heather do some sort of victory jig in the middle of the living room. Well, maybe she could be kind of annoying if someone’s not used to her personality, I mused.
“I’ve got to find something to wear!” she squealed, and I watched her race to the closet of the shared bedroom to don on a new outfit.
I sighed and decided to stick to what I was wearing. There was no sense in changing, as it wasn’t like I was trying to impress a crush like Heather wanted to. I sat down on the couch and picked up her controller, saving her game and turning it off for her.
“When are we leaving again?” Heather called from the bedroom.
“Asher is supposed to pick us up around six,” I answered.
“Shoot! That’s in forty-five minutes! That’s not enough time!”
“That’s plenty of time, Heather.” I honestly didn’t understand why she went to such great lengths to get ready. In forty-five minutes I could shower, dress, eat, and probably finish two chapters in a book before leaving somewhere. Heather usually spent fifteen minutes on picking the right clothes and twenty-five on her makeup. I heard her jump into the shower, though, so I figured that was why she was stressing about time. Her showers lasted much longer than my own as well.
Fifteen minutes later there was an abrupt knock on the door. Since Heather was still in the shower, I walked over and opened it. Asher hung over the doorframe with a large grin on his face.
“You’re early,” I commented as he stepped in. “And you do realize you can easily get in trouble for being here.” For some reason I wasn’t at all surprised that he had ignored the dorm rules and had sauntered his way into the girl’s wing anyway.
“So I am,” he replied to my first comment. “And I’m good at sneaking out of places. I’ll leave just as easily as I arrived. Once you girls are ready, of course.”
“Something tells me this isn’t the first time that you’ve done something like this,” I uttered.
Asher only chuckled and stepped in to look around the place. I watched him stuff his hands into his jeans. The faint roar of the shower water turned off, signifying that Heather was finished washing.
“You can’t stick around in here,” I stated. “Heather’s going to get out of the bathroom here in a minute, and she doesn’t know you’re here, meaning she might walk out in just a towel.”
Asher shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me.”
“It’s not about what bothers you,” I snapped. “It’ll bother her. Now go.” I gripped him by the shoulders and turned him around, pushing him back toward the door. “Wait outside the dorms. We’ll be down in ten minutes.”
Asher dug his heels into the carpet to stop me, but I only pushed harder at him. “Move!” I demanded as I shoved against his shoulder blades. Asher only laughed at me as I fought to get him going. At the last moment he took a step sideways, and my hands slipped from his back. With all of the force that I’d had against his body, I accidentally projected myself forward and stumbled when I had nothing to brace against anymore. My foot caught Asher’s leg, and I grabbed onto his shirt collar in a frantic scramble to save myself from falling. In the effort to keep my feet under me, I caught Asher off guard. He stumbled forward and dropped over top of me on the floor, his arms bracing himself from crushing the wind out of my chest.
At this proximity,
Asher smelled of spiced body wash and had a particular, comforting warmth. Hot tingles swept up my body from my legs, and for the longest second I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to push him off of me, but a wild and crazy voice inside my head told me to stay put...right where I was.
“What is this?”
Asher scrambled off of me a fraction of a second later, and I sat up to see Heather standing at the front of the hallway two steps from the living room in her towel, dripping wet and staring at the both of us in shock.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Asher spoke up first, waving his hands out in front of him like in a stopping motion, as if to stop the gears turning in Heather’s head. “She was trying to push me out.”
“And I tripped on his leg and brought him down with me to the floor,” I added.
Asher gave a nervous laugh. “We weren’t doing anything. That would be...” he glanced at me, “...weird.”
Yeah...weird between us. Sure. Everything was already weird between us. And the uncertain look in his glassy eyes told me that he felt just as conflicted with how he felt as I did. It was almost a comfort, but at the same time it wasn’t at all. I wasn’t sure what I felt, and I wished that Asher did so that he could help me make up my mind. Unfortunately Asher seemed just as wavering in thought as I was.
“Uh-huh...” Heather replied. Her eyes turned cold and skeptical. “And that’s why you two are so quick to jump at me with excuses. What were you two really doing at the library?”
“Don’t be like this, Heather,” I urged, standing up from the floor. “I honestly tripped over Asher’s leg and brought us both to the floor.”
Heather looked furious and betrayed despite my words. Her fingers clutched at her folded arms tightly, her knuckles white from tension. “Well this explains why you never want to talk to me, Asher. Cassidy, had I known you two were dating I wouldn’t have expressed how much I liked him. Thanks for screwing everything up. Thanks for lying.”
“...What?” I was honestly bewildered. I watched Heather wheel and walk back to the room. “Heather! None of that is true! What are you even talking about?”
I couldn’t see her, but I heard the bedroom door shut a second after I’d called out to her. I looked to Asher for help, but he looked equally as perplexed. He shrugged dramatically to indicate he had no idea what had just happened.
“Is she always this quick to jump to conclusions?” he wondered.
“I’d have to say yes,” was my reply as I continued to look at the entrance to the hallway. “I’m afraid I have no idea how to fix this.” When Asher didn’t say anything I walked down the hall and knocked on the bedroom door.
“Heather, you’ve got everything wrong. “I only just met Asher today.”
“And it was real heartless of you to get together with him after I told you that I was crushing on him, Cassidy.”
“But I didn’t--!” I paused and held my breath, not wishing to raise my voice. “Listen, believe whatever you want to believe. There’s nothing going on between us, but if that’s what you want to think, then I can’t change your mind. I’m going to the party. Are you still coming?”
“...No.”
I sighed and turned from the door, walking back out to the living room and picking up my wallet from the arm of the couch where I’d left it some time before. Asher watched me expectantly.
“She’s not coming with us,” I explained. “We’d better just go.”
Asher nodded and opened the door for me, letting me step out with him. “Well, her loss.”
“I feel terrible,” I breathed as we walked toward a set of stairs leading down to the exit of the girls’ wing.
“Why?” Asher wondered. “You didn’t do anything. I fell on you. It was an accident. If she’s making it out to be some big scandal, that’s her problem, and she’ll have to deal with that on her own. Eventually I’d have to tell her I wasn’t interested anyway.”
I didn’t feel much better.
We made it down to the exit and stepped out into the fading light of the evening. Asher walked me to a sleek blue car stationed in the neighboring parking lot and let me climb in. Once situated, he drove out from the dorms lot and onto the road leading away from the university.
“How long have you known Heather?” Asher asked.
“Well, a year and a half or so. I call her my best friend just because that’s what she calls me. Really I’ve only known her since my last full-time job. I was a hostess, and she was my partner. We talked and got to know each other that way. She’s always kind of been this way, but I’ve shrugged off most of it until now. It’s really disheartening that she can’t trust me.”
“A year and a half still isn’t long enough to get to know someone,” said Asher. “I mean I realize we just met, but sometimes there are people out there that you just have an immediate connection to, like you can practically read their thoughts. And there are others who will never reach that state. Like you and I...I feel chemistry there. Maybe not romantic or something...” He paused briefly from the awkward statement but continued. “What I’m saying is that we click. At least I hope you feel that way.”
“I feel something that relates to that, yes,” I agreed. “Kind of like I can read you already, except we barely know each other.”
“Exactly.” Asher turned a corner. “But with you and Heather, it seems to me that you two have never really operated on the same wavelength. You’re both still just too different to really get each other. And in my personal opinion, that doesn’t make the two of you best friends. Friends maybe, but not the best of them.”
“You’ve got a good point,” I admitted. “I guess I was just excited to have someone to talk to for a while. I’ve kind of been a loner.”
“Well, tonight you don’t have to be, and you won’t have to feel that way anymore,” Asher promised. “We’ll have some fun, you and I. Let’s just forget this silly day and go spend an evening being crazy and carefree. Sound good?”
“I’ve never really been a ‘crazy and carefree’ type, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try it out,” I replied.
Asher grinned at me and then pulled into the driveway of a shady and humble little home in the neighborhood beside the university.
“Come on, let’s introduce you to some new people.”
*****
Asher opened the front door and allowed me to enter first. A strong amount of chatter and laugher reverberated through the house, muffled slightly by the shut door, but it became much louder as the entrance opened. Standing in the foyer with two beers in his hands was a guy a few years older than us.. He smiled when he saw us.
“There you are! You’re late, to your own party Asher. Get in here!”
Asher stepped in with me by his side. “Hello to you too, Craig. Craig, I want you to meet my friend, Cassidy. Cassidy, this is Craig, my older brother.”
I leaned in and shook Craig’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Craig returned a gentle smile. “And you, sweetheart.”
As much as I hated pet names, it wasn’t an uncomfortable one coming from Craig.
After I was introduced to several other men and women in the living room watching a football game, unsure if I would remember anyone’s name, Asher walked me into the kitchen to get away from the noise.
“Heather will be missing out,” he commented, looking back into the living room.
“As you said, her loss,” I replied. “If she wants to be mad about nothing, then I’ll just let her be mad.”
“Good way to go about it,” said Asher. He leaned behind him and picked up a can of unopened soda, offering it to me.
I shook my head, politely declining it.
“It’ll be a long night. You sure?”
“I’m sure,” I replied. “I don’t trust drinking anything at parties.”
“It’s an unopened can of soda,” Asher declared, raising the can to show me. “How the heck is anyone going to spike this?”
I opened my mouth to ar
gue, but then closed it.
“See?” he teased, and he pressed the soda to my chest in order for me to take it. “Just drink the dang thing. It won’t hurt you. You’re so suspicious.”
I pushed it back at him, and he barely caught it. “I told you I don’t want any.” I wore a smile on my face, though. Despite my obstinate behavior, Asher’s lighthearted presence had already caused me to feel better about everything.
“Take the damn soda!” Asher laughed, pushing it back toward me.
I couldn’t find words, laughing too much as I moved it back to him. This time Asher gripped it and hooked his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to his chest. “Do I have to make you drink it by hand?” he chuckled.
I silenced my laughter from our closeness. Asher smiled impishly at me, but it had subtle hints of another type of playfulness that wasn’t related to his teasing. It looked slightly sultry, like he was tempted to kiss me.
“Asher! Get in here! We’re going to play a game you might like!” Craig’s voice called from the living room.
I broke away from Asher as we were both shaken from the moment. He set the soda on the counter and walked with me to the living room, where several people sat in a circle cross-legged. The coffee table that had originally been on the center rug had been moved next to a hallway back behind the large couch. The football game was still playing on the TV for those on the couch still watching, but the round of faces from the floor seemed ready to do something much different. A few of them held drinks in their hands. I hoped it wasn’t a drinking game. I wasn’t a fan of alcohol.
“What’s this?” Asher wondered as he dropped down into a cross-legged sit beside Craig. I sat on the other side of him, feeling a bit shy and out of place.
“A round of Truth or Dare,” Craig replied.
“Aren’t we a little old to be playing Truth or Dare?” Asher chuckled.
“Nonsense, Zane, you’re never too old to play these kinds of games,” someone spoke up from across the circle.
Ugh...great, I thought. I had very bitter memories of playing this game at an old elementary school friend’s birthday party. It had obviously been a long time ago, and things were now different, but it didn’t stop the residual dread. What if I’m told to do something really nasty? We’re adults though. Maybe everyone’s grown up out of elementary teasing.
