He Looked Back

by Hollandaise, Melissa

  I burst out laughing, Dylan putting his hand over his mouth, shaking with laughter.

  “I’m such an asshole,” Dylan laughs.

  “He deserved it, though,” I say. “I mean, his name is Jeremy.”

  We continue to laugh. “We’re going to hell for this,” Dylan laughs, shaking his head.

  “No, just you,” I say, raising an eyebrow and smirking.

  “Oh, Katie. It’s either both of us or neither of us.”

  I drain my drink, and so does Dylan.

  We continue to give Jeremy shit.

  “Jeremy!” I shout to him, then turn around abruptly. Dylan puts his head in his hands, shaking with laughter.

  “What?”

  I turn and look up at Jeremy, who is beyond pissed, at this point.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You called me.”

  “Who?”

  “You did.”

  “I didn’t call anybody. My phone died.”

  Jeremy looks like he’s going to burst into flames.

  “I’m sorry,” Dylan says, unable to contain his laughter. “Look, here’s twenty bucks, kid, go buy yourself a girlfriend or something.” I laugh as Jeremy takes the twenty dollar bill and tucks it into his pocket, muttering under his breath as he walks away.

  “Alright, let’s get out of here before he comes back with a machete,” Dylan says, pulling on his coat.

  “Yeah, like that kid could carry a machete,” I snort, and Dylan laughs again, helping me into my coat.

  We walk to the door, and I’m about to step out when Dylan grabs my arm.

  “Bye, Jeremy!” He shouts back towards the bar.

  Just as Jeremy turns around, Dylan pushes open the door, and we stumble out into the cold, hysterically laughing.

  “I’ve never laughed so hard in my life,” I say as we cross the street to where our cars are parked.

  “Neither have I,” Dylan agrees.

  We stop at my car, and I fumble for my car keys.

  “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Dylan asks me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say. “I’m not a lightweight.”

  Dylan half smiles. “Good to know.”

  I smile at him.

  Dylan scratches the back of his neck. “Well, the Office comes on tonight.”I smirk. “Does it.”

  He meets my gaze and laughs again.

  “I’ll race you back to my place,” I say.

  He smirks. “You’re on, Katherine.”

  “Starting...now!”

  “That’s not fair, your car’s right here!”

  “If I win, I’m raiding your Snickers stash!” I slide into my car, turning the key in the ignition.

  “Fuck!”

  I laugh as Dylan runs to his car, almost slipping on the icy road.

  I’m pretty sure I break every speed limit from the Willamette River back to our apartments.

  I shut my car door just as Dylan pulls into the lot. I giggle as I run into the building, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Unfortunately, Dylan’s legs are much longer than mine.

  As I run out of the stairwell at our floor, he grabs my wrist, pulling himself ahead of me.

  I fumble for my keys, giggling the whole time.

  Dylan’s about to push past me to get to the apartment when a door opens down the hall, and a short Asian man steps out.

  Our other neighbor, Mr. Wu, is a computer programmer at PSU, and he’s quite old, as well. He lives a door down from Dylan, across the hall from me. He is also quite irritable.

  “Keep it down out here!” He snaps.

  “Sorry, Mr. Wu,” Dylan says, sounding like a reprimanded child.

  “Kids,” Mr. Wu grumbles as he goes back into his apartment, slamming the door.

  I look at Dylan and burst into laughter.

  We laugh again, and then remember our race, both fumbling for keys all over again.

  “Aha!” I shout, twisting my key in the lock and bursting into the apartment. “I win!”“Damn it!” Dylan curses, shutting the door behind him.

  “You lose, and I win. Oh, sweet victory!” I throw my keys onto the counter, falling back onto the couch.

  Dylan rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

  I smirk. “Don’t be a sore loser, Dylan. I’ll let you race me to my room.”And we’re off again, this time Dylan beating me, falling onto my bed. I fall next to him, both of us laughing like lunatics.

  “Who’s winning now? That’s right! Dylan Wilson, everyone!” He spreads his arms out over the bed, a smirk painted on his face.

  “Whatever, that was a pity race.” I roll my eyes.

  “I still won.”

  “You’re still an idiot. And you messed up my bed.” I narrow my eyes at the wrinkled comforter.

  “Shit, now that’s a problem.”

  I roll my eyes at him and slip off my shoes, reaching for the remote and switching on the TV. Dylan turns the lamp on my nightstand on, getting up to turn off the overhead. He joins me back on the bed, stepping out of his shoes.

  “You left your pajamas here from last time, if you want to change,” I say to him.

  “I did?”

  “Yeah, you dumb fuck.”

  He laughs at me and gets the clothes out of the drawer of my dresser I tell him they’re in. While he changes, I put on my own pajamas, yawning and sliding back into bed.

  Dylan comes back into the room, putting his other clothes on my dresser. I feel the bed dip down as he gets in beside me.

  “I’ve seen this one,” we say at the same time as the Office plays on the screen. We look at each other and laugh.

  We watch four episodes before deciding it’s time for sleep—well, I decided. Dylan claimed he could stay up all night and watch reruns, but I told him I wasn’t up for it.

  So Dylan leans over and switches the light off, the room filling with darkness.

  “Dylan?” I ask.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why did you call me, today? Out of everyone you could have called, why me?”He’s silent. For a minute I think he may have fallen asleep, and I look over at him.

  “Because I knew you’d listen,” he finally says. “Even if we weren’t exactly speaking, I knew you’d still listen.”I contemplate this.

  “Do you think Leah will call you back?”

  He sighs. “Most likely.”

  I swallow. “Don’t you want closure, though? I mean, maybe you should talk to her.”“I don’t want to talk to her, she’s a shitty sister and a shitty person.”“Don’t you think that’s how Courtney felt about me before Jason told her the truth? What if Leah has a reason, but you’re just not listening to her?”Dylan sighs. “I don’t want to talk about this, Katie.”

  I turn on my side to face him. “You can’t keep running from your past, Dylan.”“I know,” he says. “But right now, I don’t want to talk about it.”“Okay.” I nod.

  “Come here.” He pulls me toward him, wrapping his arms around me.

  Maybe he has a tough past, and maybe I do too. But I know, no matter how many times he tells me he doesn’t believe in love, he’ll always be capable of it, even if he tries to fight it.

  Chapter Fifty Nine

  Leah doesn’t call Dylan back.

  Well, not for a few days, at least.

  I can tell he’s still recovering from hearing from her, by the way he sometimes wearily checks his phone. I always feel a pang in my chest when he does so, knowing deep down he wants to talk to her, but he’s too hurt by what she did.

  Kind of like me and Courtney.

  Break ended too quickly, and it’s back to work. Most days Dylan and I go out for lunch, and sometimes Sarah and Oliver come along. We’re always careful to look out for James and Alec back at Crane, though. We wouldn’t want another run-in with them.

  With each passing day, I find myself falling more and more in love with Dylan. It’s the small things that I’ve come to notice—the way he chews on his lip while driving, or clicks his pen errat
ically when he’s procrastinating at work. I’m confused a good bit, wondering why on Earth I’m feeling this way, but I’ve come to just accept it.

  It turns out Dylan and I are banned from the bar we went to—Jeremy claimed we were “disrupting the peace”, which, we probably were, but that didn’t stop Dylan from requesting his twenty dollars back.

  Jeremy didn’t give it back, though.

  Not that we expected him to, after Dylan told him his nose was too big for his face.

  The weather is brutally cold, with snow falling every once in a while. I like the way Dylan’s hair looks with little white snowflakes falling into it.

  I told him so, one day when we were walking back from the Panera down the street of Crane after lunch.

  “Do you now?” He asks, smirking once I had told him.

  “Yes, yes I do.” I smirk back.

  “Well, then it will have to snow more often.”

  Dylan gives me a spare key to his apartment on Tuesday, telling me not to touch his stash of Snickers, or he’ll find me and kill me. I tell him I wouldn’t put it past him, and he laughs.

  On Wednesday, Dylan “accidentally” spills a bit of coffee on my desk.

  “What the hell?” I snap up at him.

  “Sorry,” he says, sliding into his desk, with a smirk on his face that tells me he’s clearly not sorry.

  “Clean it up,” I order, moving my papers out of the way to assess the spill.

  “Want to make me?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Gladly.” I stand and walk over to his desk, picking up his rubber band ball and hiding it behind my back, stepping away.

  “No, no,” he says, shooting up from his seat.

  “Clean it up.”

  “Give it back.”

  “Not until you clean it up.”

  Dylan stares at me, annoyance flickering in his expression, before sighing. “Fine,” he grumbles, stepping past me to the break room to get napkins.

  I sit back in my desk, smirking.

  I watch with upmost satisfaction as Dylan wipes the coffee off my desk.

  “There, happy?” He spits.

  “Yep,” I say, leaning forward on my desk. “Very.”

  “Give me the damn ball.”

  “You’re going to have to find it.”

  “Find it? You can’t be serious.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  Dylan huffs and turns on his heel, beginning to ask everyone if they have seen his precious rubber band ball.

  “You still have it, don’t you?” Oliver asks me.

  I laugh, nodding and holding it up.

  Oliver shakes his head and chuckles.

  Half an hour later, Dylan slides into his desk in defeat.

  “Looking for this?”

  I hold up the ball, and his green eyes widen.

  “You little shit,” he says.

  I giggle.

  “Give it.”

  “What’s the magic word?”

  “Please.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “What, then?”

  “It was lotion.”

  “Fine. Lotion.”

  “You don’t sound convinced that the word is magic.”

  Dylan puts on the most fake smile I’ve ever seen. “Lotion!” He shouts, and everyone turns to stare at him.

  “Nothing to see here,” he snaps and Oliver and I laugh at him.

  “Give me the fucking ball,” Dylan practically growls.

  I throw it to him, still laughing.

  On Friday, Leah calls Dylan back.

  We were sitting in his apartment, watching the Office when his phone rings. He hastily picks it up, his face paling.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  He doesn’t move. He stares at the ringing phone, the song playing over and over.

  He finally slides it open and puts it to his ear.

  “Hello?” He asks slowly.

  I hear a voice on the other end of the line. His breathing is uneven, and his brow is furrowed. He looks like he’s almost in physical pain.

  I decide right then, when I’m watching him react to the words she’s saying, that I need to tell him that I’m in love with him.

  I don’t know what came over me, but he deserves to know. He deserves to know that someone is capable of loving him, and that person is me.

  “Dylan,” I whisper.

  He puts a hand up, still listening to the person on the other line.

  “Dylan, it’s important,” I say again.

  “Katie, I’m on the phone.”

  I swallow, adrenaline building in my bloodstream. “Dylan, just listen for a minute.”He stands up, turning his back to me, facing the window.

  “Leah, how did you get this number?” I hear him ask.

  A pause. “Well, don’t call it again. I thought I made it clear I never wanted to hear from you.”My heart pounds fast.

  “I don’t care, Leah! You could have easily told me, but you didn’t, and I can’t forgive you for that.”He clenches his jaw. “Goodbye, Leah.”

  He hangs up, still staring out the window. His back muscles are tense, his breathing fast.

  “Dylan,” I say.

  “What,” he says in a monotone, not turning around.

  “I love you,” I whisper so quietly I think he may not have heard, but when the phone slips from his hand, I know he has.

  The phone crashes to the floor, a loud cracking sound echoing through the apartment. He turns around half way, his brow furrowed.

  “What?” He asks in disbelief.

  I look at my lap. I can’t believe I just said that out loud.

  “I think you heard me just fine,” I say quietly, not meeting his gaze.

  “You love me?” He’s facing me completely now, eyes wide.