Wrecked

by Priscilla West

  “In my alone time?” He cocked a brow and looked at me with curiosity.

  I glanced at his sculpted chest because I couldn’t help myself. “Yeah, like when no one’s around, just in private.” I was thinking about how I liked to mope and draw in my alone time and was hoping to find common ground between us. He probably didn’t sit on icy bridges in his alone time but maybe he did something relatable so I could convince him I wasn’t just some depressed girl trying to kill herself.

  A glint in his eye, his grin widened. “What do I like to do in my alone time?” he repeated, suggestively. “Oh, just the usual stuff guys do when they’re by themselves. You know, normal stuff.”

  Oh no. Was I flirting with him? I’d unintentionally said something that could’ve been interpreted as a reference to his masturbation routine. God, how awkward. This was not my lucky day. I glanced at his towel and noticed a towering bulge that hadn’t been there before. My face flushed. Shit, did I do that?

  I tightened my legs together in my seat and giggled nervously. “Cool. Um . . . you can go take your shower now, you know. I don’t want to be the reason you catch a cold.”

  His brows narrowed. “You gonna be okay here?”

  I took a sip of my tea and forced a slight smile. “I’m not going to off myself if that’s what you’re asking. Really, I’m okay.”

  “I’m asking about your comfort.” His expression became serious and a quick glance at his crotch revealed the bulge had disappeared as mysteriously as it came. “We both just had a near-death experience. It’s normal to be shaken up. Hell, even I’m still a bit affected. It might help if we kept each other company, that’s all.”

  His words sent a shiver down my spine, as if he had caressed me with his hands. He was too concerned about me, too caring. I pictured everything that could happen. The whirlwind romance, the heartbreak that would come afterwards. Guys as hot and flirty as him were always dangerous, and in my current state, getting my heart broken would shatter me. What I needed was a normal and boring return to campus, and Tattoos and Muscles was clearly going to be none of those things.

  I put on a more convincing smile. “I’m more than comfortable. Thanks for saving me. Thanks for everything.”

  His expression relaxed and he nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  “Go take your shower, we’ll have plenty of time to chat afterwards,” I lied. “Can I watch TV?”

  “Sure, the remote is on the coffee table.” He nodded slowly to himself, before seeming to make up his mind. Finally he got up and headed to the bathroom.

  He got up and it took an extraordinary amount of effort on my part not to check out his butt as he strolled to the bathroom. I was sure it was divine anyway. After being so close to him, I felt like I needed another shower—a cold one.

  Shaking my head from a stupor, I realized I definitely needed to get out of here.

  After hearing him close the door, I turned on the TV, straining my ears to listen to what he was doing in the bathroom. The TV was on ESPN. I flipped a few channels until I reached one of those juicy daytime talk shows, waiting to hear him turn on the shower. As soon I heard the showerhead running, I stood up and placed the mug on his coffee table.

  Then I went over to the kitchen counter and gathered my wet clothes. I tried to be silent, but when I slipped my feet into my wet boots, they squelched loudly on the carpet. Fortunately, the woman on TV screaming at her boyfriend about how he cheated on her with her own mother was loud enough to drown out the noise.

  I was about to rush out the door when I realized that I’d be stealing his clothes. Frantically thinking of some quick way to repay him, I spotted his kitchen trash can and decided to take his trash out as a way of thanking him. It wasn’t a fair payback—he’d saved my life after all—but at least it was better than nothing. To appease my guilty conscience, I ended up taking his recyclables as well.

  “I couldn’t help myself. Your mom’s a MILF,” the TV blared.

  It was the last thing I heard before I opened the front door and stepped outside.

  I planned on looking for the dumpster around his apartment but when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard his door open. Panicking that he’d catch me, I slung the garbage bags over my shoulder and sprinted in the direction of my dorm. Running across campus in an oversized shirt and jeans, wet, dirty clothes in hand, and two black trash bags jangling over my shoulder, I probably looked like a deranged homeless person. A homeless person who saw imaginary cats.

  After a fifteen minute dash that had my heart pumping, I arrived back at my dorm. Large, golden letters across the entrance read “Floyd Hall”. I threw the garbage bags into the dumpster and took the four flights of stairs up to my floor. I opened the door to my suite and promptly went into my room.

  Reaching into the pocket of my still dripping jacket, I pulled out Dad’s letter. The ink was starting to run a little and the room was turning blurry.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I should have been more careful. I gently placed the letter on the window ledge next to the radiator. Hopefully it would dry off and still be mostly intact.

  I rummaged in my closet for a while before changing into my pajamas. Tears started falling down my face as I curled up in my bed. Why was I crying now when I couldn’t before? I grabbed my pillow and held it against me. I thought I couldn’t feel anything anymore, but I was wrong. I knew it was stupid, but I had felt a lot of strong conflicting emotions from just being around Tattoos and Muscles—or Tim or whatever his actual name was.

  Worst thing though, it was probably the most normal thing I had felt in a long time.

  Chapter Three

  SLOBBERING DOG

  Plagued by dreams and daydreams of Tim and his naked torso, I was still recovering from the entire episode several days later as I was sitting in class. It was an 8:30 AM session of Psychology 102. I hated morning classes, especially classes in a lecture hall with a hundred-plus students. We were in the very back row. The only reason I had signed up for the course was to be in the same class as my suitemate Daniela.

  We had met freshman year before everything happened. She was the only person who had consistently stayed in touch with me after I took time off. Now that I was back, she was my main connection to the school and my best friend.

  She also had more than a passing interest in psychology, unlike me. I thought it would be a good class to take to get some social science credits, but the only thing I was taking this semester that I was passionate about was my drawing class. This class was an exercise in staying awake.

  Totally sleep-deprived after staying up too late again watching Grey’s Anatomy, I started doodling. It was something I did a lot. My therapist back in Indiana—Dr. Alice Schwartz—had recommended that I find a creative outlet to express myself, and for once that was advice I had no problem taking. I loved to draw. Zoned out, I dragged my pen across the top of my page, waving it up and down to make a little river.

  It was still hard to believe the whole episode with the lake had happened. The look on the guy’s face after he saved me was burned into my memory. He had asked me if I had tried to kill myself. Even though he didn’t know my family history, the question stung. After everything I’d been through, I still would never take the cowardly way out. There were people who cared about me.

  Thinking about putting myself in that much danger turned my stomach into a pit. I looked to my left and watched Daniela soaking in the lecture. What if I hadn’t been saved out there? She’d be devastated. Thank god T&M had come and saved me.

  He was causing his own problems, though. I’d spent most of my time since that fateful morning thinking about his strong hands and reserved personality. When I first saw him, I thought he was just your average incredibly hot college student, but the more I thought about him, the more curious I became. Who was this guy who had tattoos and muscles like a gang member but kept his apartment as clean as a soldier’s?

  It would still be best if I didn’t run into him again, though
. I’d come back to school just trying to get through the semester with as even a keel as possible. The last thing I needed was a bad boy who thought he had something up on me trying to get into my pants. Especially if I started letting him. My emotional state was fragile enough as it was.

  Returning my attention to the important work of doodling on my page of what should have been notes, I began to sketch a big warhammer modeled after a tattoo I had seen on Tim’s arm just before he went into the shower. It reminded me of the hammer Thor used in The Avengers. Even if I didn’t want to see Tim again, it was a cool tattoo. Not something I would get myself, but cool nonetheless.

  “I’ll just pick a name from this list,” I heard the professor say from the front of the class. I perked up. “Ms. Burnham, please.”

  I looked around, horrified. What was the question he’d asked? I had been totally zoned out. Squinting, I saw that the Powerpoint slide had something to do with a guy named Ivan Pavlov.

  “The question is: what is Pavlov most famous for, Ms. Burnham.” He was balding with gray hair at the sides and silver wire-framed glasses, and he sounded foreign. German, maybe. What he didn’t sound was amused.

  I looked to my left at Daniela. Her eyes flicked down to my notes, apparently saw I hadn’t been even kind of paying attention, then turned to the front of the class. “The Dog Slobber Principle,” she called.

  Several people in the class laughed. The professor tried to keep a straight face for a moment, but he smiled too. “I was looking for ‘conditioned reflex,’ but dog salivation was an important part of the experiment Pavlov used to discover it. Thank you, Ms. Burnham.”

  I smiled at Daniela. That was the second time I’d been saved in the space of a few days. I really needed to start paying closer attention in class. It was my first semester back, and getting off to a bad start wouldn’t help me in my goal of making it through the whole semester.

  The rest of class went by without incident. I did my best to actually take some notes, leaving my sketch of Thor’s hammer unfinished, but I would need to copy Daniela’s for all the stuff I missed. Having a class with my best friend was already beginning to pay off.

  After class had ended and everyone was packing up, Daniela poked me in the ribs. “Hey, are you okay?” she asked. “You look like you have something on your mind.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. Just have to get back into the swing of school is all.” I finished packing up and slung my bag over my shoulder. “Thanks for saving me on that question. How did you know the answer?”

  She laughed. “For one, I was paying attention. Two, Pavlov comes up in a lot of books about psychology. He’s kind of one of the founders, I guess.”

  “So that was a pretty easy question?”

  “If you were paying attention, I guess. It doesn’t really matter. I doubt Professor Muller is going to remember what Ms. Burnham looks like.”

  “That’s true. It’s a big class.”

  “Yeah. Want to hit up Starbucks and get some coffee? I need to kill an hour before geology.”

  I didn’t have anything until the afternoon, but I didn’t feel like going back to the dorm to sit and do nothing, so I agreed. We walked the ten minutes to the Starbucks in the student union. Daniela got a mocha and I got a venti black coffee. Caffeine was the only way I was really going to operate in the morning for the foreseeable future.

  The Starbucks was crowded, but we found a small table with two chairs by a window and took our seat. Daniela took a sip from her steaming drink and eyed me carefully.

  “So what was that badass hammer you were drawing when Muller called on you?” she asked.

  My face grew hot. I hadn’t told her—or anyone else—about the incident with the lake. It was too embarrassing, and I was afraid that people would think I had fallen in on purpose no matter what I told them. A lot of people, Daniela included, knew about my family tragedies. My mom’s murder had been major news. After such a sensational story, my dad’s suicide made a juicy follow-up. The coverage of the whole thing made me sick, as did thinking about people’s opinions on it.

  I could just imagine their thought process: maybe I had inherited the temperament to go through with killing myself. If my dad could do it, why couldn’t I? I clenched my jaw. If anything, the way my dad had passed made me certain I would never do the same. I knew how it affected the people left behind.

  “Whoa, hey, I was just asking. There’s no need to get mad,” Daniela said.

  I blinked and snapped back into reality. “Sorry, what? I’m not mad.”

  “You have a nasty scowl on your face for a girl who’s not mad.”

  I smiled. “Sorry, it wasn’t you. The hammer’s something I saw on a tattoo recently, that’s all.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Are you thinking about getting a tattoo?”

  “No, I just thought it looked cool.”

  “Where did you see it?”

  “On this guy a few days ago.”

  She squinted. “Where? What did he look like?”

  My chest tightened. Did she somehow know the guy who had rescued me from the lake. “Why? Have you seen it before too?”

  “It sounds familiar. Where did you see him?”

  “He was out jogging,” I said. That was true, at least.

  “It’s January. He was out jogging and you saw his tattoo? Was it on his leg? His face?”

  Shit. I was a terrible liar. “No, I was sitting inside and he came in. Here, actually. He rolled his sleeves up and that’s when I saw it.”

  She stared at me for a second and said nothing. Did she realize I was lying? My guess was she probably did. Daniela was very perceptive; it was part of the reason she liked psychology so much. She’d taken several other more advanced psychology classes that only required Psych 101 and was just now circling back to take Psych 102.

  She shrugged. “Fair enough. Was he hot?”

  “I guess. I don’t know, I feel like me and guys is still kind of weird. Like I’m just trying to get myself right, you know? I don’t need to complicate that by trying to keep someone else happy too.”

  “That makes sense.” She hummed in contemplation. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure this hammer guy is ringing a bell but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  Hoping to change the subject, I asked, “Speaking of getting myself right, can I copy your notes for class? I have like nothing from the first half.”

  She laughed. “I saw. Yeah, that’s no problem.”

  “Who is this Pavlov guy, anyway? You said he was important.”

  “He is. Basically, he did studies on how everyone has reflexes to certain things. The first was a study on how people reacted to overwhelming stress or pain. Everyone shuts down eventually. They go in shock, become numb and stop doing things. The difference between people is when they shut down and how long it takes them to get out of it.”

  “Sounds depressing.” And disturbingly familiar.

  “Yeah, kind of. Basically, more sensitive people shut down sooner and have a harder time getting out of it. Anyway, he did that, but he also did this thing with dogs where he would give them food at the same time as he rang a bell. He measured how much they slobbered every time. Eventually, he would ring the bell without any food present, and the dogs would slobber the same amount.”

  “And that’s called conditioning?”

  She nodded. “Exactly. See, this class will be no big deal for you!”

  I scrunched my nose. “I still want to copy your notes.”

  “Of course. By the way, what time is it?”

  I looked at my phone. “Ten-forty.”

  “Ah, I need to get to class. Listen, I know you don’t want to get too involved with any guys, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, right? If I can find us dates, do you want to come out Friday?”

  “I don’t know, Daniela, I might just stay in.”

  “Come on, it’s first week of classes. There will be free drinks and a little flirting. Worst case, we ditch them a
nd go back to the dorm to watch bad TV with a little buzz on. At least we won’t feel lame for not going out.”

  It had been a long time since I’d been out for a fun night. Living with my aunt and uncle hadn’t really allowed that. Going out with Daniela would probably be a good time, and she was right: worst case, we could come back home. If I stayed in on the first Friday night of the semester, I would probably feel lame because everyone else was out drinking.

  “Okay, if you can find us dates that aren’t total creeps, I’ll go.”

  She smiled. “Good! I’ll let you know. Anyway, I’ve got to run. I’ll see you later.”

  After she left, I stared into space for a few minutes. Maybe going out would be fun, maybe not, but it would definitely help get me back into the swing of normal college life. I still didn’t feel like going back to the dorm. It was too quiet. Instead, I took out my notebook and continued working on my hammer sketch, filling in more details than even the tattoo had.

  It was beginning to look pretty good.

  Chapter Four

  BEARDED SQUIRREL

  Classes on Thursday and Friday were a breeze. Since it was the first week of school, there wasn’t much homework or studying to do. Still, I found myself glad that Friday arrived. It had been a difficult experience returning to school. I found myself questioning people’s stares—and there were plenty of them. Did they know who I was? Did they see the trial on TV? It made me uncomfortable to think that they were silently judging me, pitying me, or thinking I must have a lot of issues after what I’d gone through. I just wanted to feel normal again, and having people stare at me didn’t help.

  “That’s such a cute outfit,” Daniela said as I stepped out of my room into the suite. She was seated on the couch waiting for me to finish getting ready for the double-date she had set up for us. She had met a pair of guys—Cody and Justin—in her Sociology 101 class earlier in the week. So Daniela set up a double-date at a bar off campus called the Bearded Squirrel.