Remington's Tower

by Katharine Sadler

  “Well, that’s alright then,” he said. It cracked my heart just a bit that he didn’t sound the least bit suspicious. “How do you like your dorm room? What’s your roommate like?”

  Two people stumbled out the apartment door, laughing and talking so loud I figured at least one of them must be hard of hearing. “Oh, there’s Byron. I gotta go Uncle Leon, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Okay, sweetheart. I love you.”

  My eyes burned suddenly and I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. “I love you, too.”

  I hurried back into the party, but everything inside had changed. Bell sat on a couch, chatting with a blonde, lanky guy and laughing as though he was the funniest person she’d ever met. Frankie was still dancing, but she had a guy wrapped around her, his hands on her butt, his face in her neck. She didn’t look happy, she looked panicked. I had no way of knowing what had happened, but I knew Frankie didn’t want to be dancing with that guy, and I wasn’t going to allow her to be miserable when I’d convinced her to be there.

  I walked over and tapped the guy on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?” I asked, letting my voice go all sugary and sweet.

  They guy groping my new roommate looked at me and laughed. “I think she’d rather be with me. Wouldn’t you, baby?” Mr. Gropey Hands asked the last to Frankie, and the poor dear, bless her heart, just didn’t want to be rude. She shrugged and gave him a sweet smile, but when she looked at me, I could see she was dying for my help.

  “Seriously?” I asked, letting anger tinge my words. “You said you loved me, yet here you are feeling up some douche bag?”

  “Hey!” the guy said, letting go of Frankie and turning to face me. He looked angry and he was most definitely drunk, and I wondered if I’d miscalculated. Growing up with four older cousins, I’d learned a few things about dealing with men, but my cousins would never hurt me. I wasn’t so sure the same was true for that guy.

  I barreled past him and got in Frankie’s face. She paled and took a step back, so I winked at her and gave her a quick smile, before I wrapped myself around her. “The only person you should be dancing with is me,” I said, loud enough for the angry guy I’d just cock blocked to hear. “Just play along,” I whispered in Frankie’s ear. She giggled, wrapped her arms around my neck, and started swaying with me to the music.

  Mr. Gropey Hands appeared in my line of sight. “Any chance you go both ways?” he asked. “Maybe you girls would both like to come back to my place?”

  “Well, I certainly would, sugar,” I said, putting on a southern drawl to rival Bell’s. “But I only like vaginas.”

  “Maybe I could change your mind,” he said, with what I suspect he intended to be a leer, but looked more like he was having a stroke.

  “Yeah,” I said. “No. You couldn’t.”

  A vein started throbbing in his forehead. “Look, I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but I—”

  “Why don’t you get me and my girlfriend a drink and we’ll talk about it,” I said, trying to bring him down from what appeared to be a steroidal rage.

  As soon as he left, I broke away from Frankie and dragged her off the dance floor. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” I said.

  I hurried us over to the couch, where Bell was still talking to the hot guy. I grabbed her shoulder and started pulling her up from the couch. I wasn’t afraid to fight a guy, but…okay, I wasn’t afraid to fight my cousins, but Mr. Gropey Hands was much bigger than me and running away seemed the better option.

  Bell pulled against me and gave me an annoyed look. “What?” she asked, her southern drawl making her sound like a delicate flower, even when she was obviously annoyed.

  “I just pissed off a really, really big guy who was groping Frankie,” I said. “We should go.”

  “Just tell him to back off,” Bell said.

  “Um.” I stifled the urge to be sarcastic. “I sort of did, but he’s a bit scary.”

  “Who is he?” Bell’s beau asked. “I can talk to him for you.”

  I pointed to Mr. Gropey hands, who was heading toward the dance floor, balancing two red cups and two jello shots. I really hated playing the damsel in distress at my first college party, and I didn’t want Bell’s new friend to get hurt. “It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll just leave.”

  “No way,” the guy said, although he did pale a bit when I pointed out Mr. Gropey Hands. I mean he wasn’t the hulk, he was more Chris Hemsworth than Lou Ferrigno, but he was big enough to be a problem for Bell’s somewhat lanky friend. “No one leaves one of my parties because some dude is being a dick.” He gestured to someone across the room and started heading to cut off Frankie’s nemesis, who had just spotted us.

  Bell, Frankie, and I sat on the couch and watched as Bell’s new friend met up with a well-muscled guy, who was about the size of Chris Evans on the famous-guys-who-play-superheroes scale I was building in my head, and started talking to Mr. Gropey Hands. Mr. Gropey Hands threw the drinks he was carrying into the faces of Bell’s friend and his back-up, and then punched Bell’s friend in the face and kicked the other guy in the balls while they were blinded by alcohol. That shit just pissed me off. Fighting dirty was for pansies and family members.

  Mr. Gropey Hands grabbed Bell’s friend by his hair and yanked him back to hit him again, and I saw red. Before I even realized what I was doing, I was off the couch and kicking Mr. Gropey Hands hard in the shin. He dropped Bell’s friend and, while he was howling like a wimp about his shin, I boxed his ears. I wasn’t MMA trained or anything, but I knew how to cause pain and disorientation. By that time, Bell’s friend and his back-up had recovered and they moved in on Mr. Gropey Hands. The back-up guy pulled back to punch Mr. Gropey Hands and, accidently, elbowed me in the nose. I heard a pop and saw stars, right before my entire face exploded in pain.

  I did my best to move out of firing range and not fall over in agony. Bell grabbed my elbow and led me to the couch, and Frankie appeared a moment later with towels and ice. “I can’t believe you did that,” Frankie said, her words at a normal pace. She wrapped her baggy of ice cubes in a towel and pushed it gently against my nose. “How does it feel?”

  “It really hurts,” I said. “I think it might be broken.”

  “Maybe,” Frankie said. “I broke my nose cheerleading last year, and I bled everywhere.” She pulled the ice off and looked at me. “We won’t know for sure until the swelling goes down, but it doesn’t look broken to me.”

  “Oh, shit,” somebody said. “What happened to your friend?”

  “Your friend hit her with his elbow,” Bell told someone. I couldn’t see much, because Frankie had put the ice back on my nose.

  “Hey, Worthy,” Bell’s friend said. “Get your ass over here and apologize to the girl.”

  I tried to push the ice off my nose, but Frankie wasn’t letting me. “You need to keep it on, for ten more minutes,” she said.

  “What happened?” asked a deep male voice I assumed belonged to Worthy.

  “Dude, you elbowed her in the nose,” Bell’s friend said. “You are such a fucking bruiser.”

  “Is she okay?” Worthy asked.

  “I don’t think it’s broken,” Frankie said. “But we won’t know for sure until the swelling goes down.” Frankie seemed to be in her element with the first aid job, and she was actually speaking to a stranger at a normal pace.

  “Tell her I’m sorry, and—”

  “My ears weren’t injured,” I said. “I’m fine. I know you didn’t hit me on purpose.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, anyway…” he said.

  “Remy,” Bell said. “Her name is Remy.”

  “Remy, I’m sorry. Can I give you a ride home? Or to a hospital? Whatever you want.”

  “Have you been drinking?” Bell asked.

  “No, I hadn’t started, yet. I don’t want Remy trying to walk back to the dorms in her condition.”

  Moments later, I was in a backseat, with Frankie still holding the ice on my nose. “
Surely the ten minutes is up, Frankie,” I said. I heard the car start to turn over and stutter a couple of times before the motor hummed to life.

  “You’ve got thirty more seconds,” Frankie said, entirely serious.

  By the time she’d agreed to remove the ice, we were already in motion and all I could see from my seat directly behind the driver was the back of Worthy’s head.

  Worthy pulled up to the dorms less than five minutes later, my nose had stopped bleeding and Frankie was pretty sure I didn’t need to sit in an emergency room for the next four hours. I was in no mood to argue with her opinion, but I was definitely hitting her up for a handful of aspirin when we got back to our room.

  Worthy got out of the car and hurried to open my door and help me out. I looked up and saw an angel, the streetlight directly behind his head made a halo around his face. I couldn’t make out many of his features, but the lights of the passing cars provided enough light for me to see that he had a firm jaw and eyes that looked amber and otherworldly in the weird light. He touched my elbow and guided me to the steps leading up and into the building. “Again, I’m sorry,” he said. “Can I have your phone? I’ll give you my number in case your nose is broken and you have any medical expenses.”

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and gave it to him. He typed in his number and handed it back.

  “Thanks Worthy,” Bell said. “We can take it from here.”

  “Okay,” he said, not moving and not letting go of me. “Let me know if she needs anything.”

  “Sure,” Bell said. Worthy let me go and stepped back, and she and Frankie helped me up the stairs.

  “I can walk, you know,” I said, even though I felt dizzy and my eyes must have been getting puffy, because everything was a bit blurry.

  “Really?” Bell said. “You accepted Worthy’s help without argument, why can’t you accept ours?”

  “What the hell happened?” Byron roared. I could just make out his hazy shape in front of our suite door. I remembered the last text I’d sent him and figured he was freaking out. College was really going to be fun, I could already tell.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My first party in college, my first party ever, got me elbowed in the face, and I started classes and a job at the campus cafeteria with two black eyes and a swollen nose. At least, I wasn’t invisible. Everyone noticed me and everyone wanted to know what my story was. Well, almost everyone, a few people shied away from me like I must be scary, which was awesome. I’ve never been scary before. I’ve never been anything before, except the cousin and the niece.

  I saw Worthy in my third, and final, class of my second day of college, Intro to Biology. The class was held in a lecture hall and was already about half-filled with students. The doors to the lecture hall opened at the back and the top of the room and stairs led down past theater-style seating to the main floor. I saw him, seated near the front, and looking back at me as I walked down the stairs. He didn’t seem to register me as someone he knew, and I suspected he was looking for someone else. He wasn’t what anyone would call gorgeous, but like the way he looked. He had a sharp jaw and perfect, shiny brown curls that flopped over into his eyes. It was his eyes that drew me, a rich brown that I was certain took on a weird amber hue in the right light.

  I saw him and I wanted him. It was that simple. I wanted to hear the deep rumble of his voice again, and I wanted to see what he looked like when he smiled. And when I wanted something, I wasn’t so good about being patient and waiting. I was the girl who ate dessert first and snuck around trying to catch a peek at Christmas presents before the big day. I marched down the steps and smiled at Worthy like I was the one he’d been waiting for. He, however, somehow managed to resist my smile. Before I could say hello, he frowned and shook his head. Silently warning me not to bother.

  I stopped for just a moment, but then I reminded myself that rejection was part of life and I wasn’t going to hide from any part of life. I continued down the stairs and climbed over Worthy’s legs to plop down right next to him.

  “That seat’s taken,” he said, his eyes still trained on the stairs.

  “By your girlfriend?”

  He looked at me then, startled by my ordinary question. “No. For a friend. You need to sit somewhere else.”

  Wow. So my body wanted an asshole. It would have been unlikely that the first guy I found myself attracted to would be a gem, but the disappointment still stung. “No problem,” I said. “I just wanted to thank you again for getting me home safe last night.” I stood and he grabbed my hand, his touch warm.

  He looked up at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not usually so rude, it’s just that…you’re Byron’s little sister, right? He came home swearing about his little sister getting beaten up last night and the name he used was Remington.”

  “Cousin,” I said, my heart sinking. Even away at college, I wasn’t truly free.

  “What?”

  “He’s my cousin, he just calls me his sister. So, I guess he told you to stay away from me?” I was going to kick Byron in the gonads when I saw him and then I was going to kick Worthy for being cowed by my cousin. “And you’re just pusillanimous enough to listen to him.” I jerked my hand away from his.

  “I’m what?”

  I rolled my eyes. “A wimp, a wuss, a chicken shit, a spineless invertebrate. Take your pick. You’re shooing me away like a gnat because my cousin told you to stay away from me and you’re too pusillanimous to ignore him.”

  His face reddened. “What? No. He’s my friend and I respect—”

  “I see your lips moving,” I said. “But all I’m hearing is, ‘I’m a chicken shit.’”

  “That’s not fair.” His brow creased and his mouth turned down in anger. No one liked to be called a wimp, but wimps especially hated to be called out.

  I stepped over his legs and into the aisle, scanning the rows for the toughest, baddest dude in that lecture hall. Someone who wouldn’t be afraid to stand up to my cousin, who would think I was worth it. Ah, there he was, two rows behind Worthy, dark hair, a medium build, and normal clothes, but ice-cold eyes and a bar through his cheek. There was a guy who wasn’t afraid of pain.

  I climbed the steps to him, crawled over several sets of legs and sat down next to him. “Hi, I’m Remy.”

  The guy gave me a lazy once-over, a smile tickling his mouth. “I’m the guy you’re using to piss Worthy off,” he said, pointing down to Worthy, who was glaring at both of us. “But you can just call me Harrison.”

  I smiled and felt lighter than I had all day. “I think I’m going to like you, Harrison.”

  “And I’m pretty sure you’re insane,” he said with a wicked grin. “What the hell happened to your face, anyway?”

  “Well, you see, Harrison, I was goat herding in the Swiss Alps and one of the goats got real pissed off when I insisted on playing Steely Dan during its grazing time—”

  “Welcome to Intro to Biology,” the professor interrupted. I stopped talking and gave the professor my full attention. “Without biology, folks, none of you would be here, so I expect you to take this class seriously.” I pulled out my laptop and started pounding out notes. I loved college.

  ***

  “So what’s your story?” I asked, as Harrison and I walked out of class together.

  “Clearly not as interesting as yours,” he said with a smirk. “I’m just your average guy from small town nowhere.”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s why I picked you to sit with, because you looked totally boring. What about that bar in your cheek? That has to have a fun story to go with it.”

  “Well, you see, Remy,” Harrison said. “I was skydiving in Mozambique, when—”

  “Hey, Remy,” Worthy said, catching up to us. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  I looked around, feigning nervousness. “I don’t know. What if Byron sees us?”

  Worthy shook his head and glared at me. “It’s called respect. Byron’s a friend and he asked me to keep my distan
ce, so I’m staying away. That doesn’t make me a chicken shit, it makes me a good friend.”

  He started to walk away and I stared after him confused. “Why do you care?”

  He stopped and turned to look back at me. “What?”

  “You’re never going to talk to me or see me again,” I said. “So why do you care what I think of you? Other people’s opinions are about as useful as a popsicle in a snowstorm and all of that.”

  He stared hard at me, a wrinkle twisting his brow. He looked confused and a bit lost and I wanted to grab him and find some way to help him. Unfortunately for Worthy, I had some pride. I wouldn’t chase him like a kicked puppy. “I don’t care,” he said.

  “Pretty sure you do.”

  He shook his head, his frown fierce, and stormed off, almost knocking over a girl in a mini skirt and thigh-high boots in the process. She cursed at him, but she checked him out as he walked away.

  “What was that all about?” Harrison asked.

  “He’s friends with my over-protective cousin and is staying away from me, as he just explained.”

  Harrison started walking and I fell into step next to him. “Still doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  I sighed. I was tired of thinking about Worthy. “What confuses me is a mini-skirt and thigh-high boots, is that really in fashion anywhere but a go-go bar or a strip club?”

  “I thought she looked hot as hell,” Harrison said.

  “You would.”

  He laughed and threw an arm around my shoulders. “Not as hot as you, though.”

  “Thanks. Do you want to be my boyfriend?” I’d never had a boyfriend before and Harrison seemed like he’d be easy to get along with and fun. I didn’t feel the attraction to Harrison that I felt to Worthy, but I figured that was a good thing. The way Worthy made me feel, the way I was so drawn to him when I didn’t even know him, that was bad news. Worthy was the big leagues and I had to work up to him.