“You fucking bitch,” Dean muttered, his face red. His posture was hunched, and he stepped towards me, swiping an arm through the air, but I was already gone, picking up my bag and linking my arm through Mel’s.
Together, arm in arm, we walked away from Dean’s screaming form.
Mel kept throwing looks over her shoulder as we rounded the sidewalk near the adjacent building, clearly worried Dean would still follow. He wouldn’t. Not yet. I’d made a fool of him in front of quite a few people. He’d lick his wounds and then try again. Maybe he’d try to get back at me, put all his focus on me and not Mel. That was something I could handle.
He’d already released a sex tape of me. What more could the prick do? I wasn’t afraid of him. This girl knew how to take care of herself. You didn’t go to bars and other skeevy places without knowing how to take down a guy who was bigger than you. That was common sense.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Mel spoke once she was sure the coast was clear. She let me drag her through campus, our arms locked together. “That was…wow.”
“He was being a dick. I don’t like dicks.” Well, I liked dicks, but not those kinds. I liked the real deal, the kind that filled you up and made you forget everything else. The kind attached to Levi.
Okay, right now it was only Levi’s.
“You have to be careful,” she told me, as if I didn’t already know. “He’ll want to get back at you.”
“He already released a tape of me and Levi,” I said, shrugging. “What more could he do? My reputation is shit, not that I had much of one to begin with anyway.” I’d never been a girl to worry about shit like that. A reputation? Who cared? As long as everyone was living life and having fun, what did it matter?
Mel’s feet abruptly stopped, and she managed to pull her arm from mine. She turned to look at me, causing my own feet to halt as I met her stare. “Dean was the one who released the tape?” Her voice shook a bit.
“Yeah, I mean, that’s what Levi said,” I spoke, trying to sound like I didn’t care either way. “I know I can’t trust what Levi says, but…” I shrugged again. “Kind of seems like something that bag of dicks would do, doesn’t it? I know Levi is a fuckup too, but Dean is the king of the dicks.”
She started to walk again, and I stuck by her side, going at her pace. She hooked her fingers through the straps on her backpack, tossing me an unsure look. “So you’ve talked to Levi?”
Ah, shit.
Too late now to rewind and take that back, huh?
“Yeah,” I admitted. “A little. He wants to…he says he wants to be with me, that he fucked up with you and he regrets it. He seemed genuine, but I know how liars are.” Liars tended to lie so well you never really knew until it was too late, and I didn’t want to be one of those girls, even if Levi had my heart.
Mel was quiet for a while, and our dorm building loomed on the horizon. “Do you like him?”
Her question came out of nowhere, startling me, and I whipped my head around to stare at her. My mouth might’ve dropped open at that. Okay, so cool Kelsey wasn’t exactly making a comeback yet, but she would be.
“I…I don’t know,” I muttered, inwardly frowning at how unconvincing I sounded.
“You do,” Mel whispered. “I can see it.”
I let out a harsh sigh as we walked through the front vestibule of the building, coming into the lobby and heading straight for the elevators. “It doesn’t matter, Mel. It doesn’t matter how I feel about him, because I know he fucked you over. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Mel pressed the up button, and we waited for either elevator to come down. “I don’t want you to not do something because you’re worried about me.” Her head tilted down, her chin touching her chest. “I don’t want to be a burden on you.”
“You’re not.”
The elevator to our left opened, a few students trickling out before we could get on. Once we were on, I hit the third-floor button and let the doors close.
“I am,” Mel said, amber eyes glancing to me. “I’m a burden to everyone. To you, to my parents…I was a burden to Dean when I was with him because I wouldn’t sleep with him. Everything would be so much better if I wasn’t around—”
She didn’t even finish the sentence before I cut in, “Don’t say that, Mel. Don’t ever say that. You’re my friend, and I care about you. If you weren’t here, I’d be lost.”
The elevator door slid open, and we got out. Mel was busy shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”
“I know so,” I said, hoping to convince her. Sometimes she got in these funks, radiating depression and sadness, and they were the worst things ever. I hated that I couldn’t make her feel better; I hated that I didn’t know what to say. She was my friend, and I was failing her just like how I failed Ash.
Mel said nothing else as we walked to our room. She had her key out, sticking it in the lock and opening the door for us. I watched as she went to set down her bag and take off her jacket, her frame like a skeleton.
She…she really wasn’t doing well, was she? She might put on a smile every once in a while, might laugh at the stupid jokes I made, but deep down, she barely hung on.
“There’s nothing I can say to convince you that you matter, is there?” I asked softly, hating how weird this was. Never before had I had to deal with someone like Mel. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I was boisterous Kelsey, and she was…she was just sad, depressed Mel.
Her thin shoulders went up and down once, and she was measured in looking at me. “No,” she answered honestly. “I’m sorry, but there’s not.”
“Well, you might not believe me, but it’s true.” I was slow in setting my bag on my desk, my hands feeling limp at my sides. “I do care about you, and you are my friend. I would never do anything to hurt you.”
Mel’s lips curled into the smallest smile I’d ever seen, but she said nothing as she sat at her desk and pulled out her laptop, getting to work straight away. That, or pretending to, so she wouldn’t have to talk to me anymore about this.
I went to sit on my bed, working to take off my shoes, staring at her back all the while. Her shoulders were hunched, her body almost curling in on itself as she sat there on that chair. She really was in dire straits, wasn’t she?
Shit.
Chapter Nine – Levi
When it was time for bio lab again, I couldn’t help but wonder if Kelsey would come up and talk to me, if she’d come to her senses and realized she belonged with me. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten what she’d done while she was gone—if I ever saw that fucker in person, I’d lay into him—but it was more that I needed her anyways.
She was mine. She was mine, even if she didn’t realize it yet. She drove me crazy, her mischievous smiles, her blatantly mean comebacks. Everything about her, really. I needed that girl, and somehow, someway, I’d make her realize that I wasn’t going to give up.
One day I’d told her that her resisting made me want to chase her more, that I never really wanted to chase anyone before. It had been true, and it still rang true to this day. I didn’t care if it made me weak or a fool; I was only weak for her, a fool for her.
By the time I arrived for lab, she was already in her seat, next to her partner. I hated that she’d emailed the professor and asked to change, but I understood why she did it. She felt she had to. I couldn’t blame her.
It just made the class period go by so slowly.
My eyes locked with hers as I walked in and made my way to my seat, though I eventually had to turn my back to her, since she sat behind me on the other side of the room. From her expression, I could tell she wanted to talk to me, but she didn’t want to admit it. This thing between us was a first for us both.
Today our professor brought in some pond water he’d taken from a local water source. Every pair got a petri dish of it, along with a microscope. We had to draw each organism we saw and try to figure out what they were. Fun stuff.
Not really. I hated this class. The
only thing that made it bearable was Kelsey, and even now, without her as my partner, the time crawled by so slowly. Frankly, I didn’t give a fuck about biology or algae or whatever the fuck we were learning about. I didn’t care. Who the hell did?
The minutes ticked by slowly, but the moment the professor let us start to clean up and pack up, the room turned into chaos, everyone trying to hurry to get out first, to reclaim their lives out of this stupid room.
Kelsey was the only one moving slowly, so I set my pace to hers. I ended up walking out of the classroom mere moments before she did, and I felt almost giddy inside when she stepped out of the hall and met those big brown eyes with mine.
Giddy.
I just described myself as giddy. God, Kelsey really was changing me, because never in my life had I ever described myself as fucking giddy.
“Hey,” I spoke.
“Hi,” she said. “I haven’t—” I haven’t decided. I haven’t had enough time. Whatever she was about to say, I didn’t want to hear it. I just…I needed to spend some time with her.
“That’s okay,” I said quickly. “I was just thinking, maybe we could swing by the union, get food.” Oh, yeah. Real smooth. Kelsey was the only girl who ever made my tongue feel so heavy in my mouth it didn’t want to work right.
“Food?” she echoed. “Like a mini-date?”
“No, just food. Like friends, or something.” Friends. That was good for a laugh. I was pretty sure both Kelsey and I knew by now we could never be just friends. We’d passed that point a very long time ago.
“Or something?” Again, with the echoing.
I narrowed my eyes at her as I said, “Stop being difficult. We’re getting food.” I turned on my heel and started heading to the stairwell, not glancing back to see if she was following me. I didn’t need to to know that she would stand there for a few seconds, scowling at me with those gorgeous eyes, and then swear at herself before rushing to catch up to me.
And that’s precisely what she did. I heard her mutter the word “Fuck” under her breath before she hurried to my side, all the while giving me a dirty look, like she was blaming me for this. Like I was controlling her.
I wasn’t. I just knew how she operated. I knew her too well by now.
And I knew, by the texts I saw on her phone, that she felt terrible about what she did while she was gone. Kelsey didn’t need me harping on her, even though I was pissed at the thought of another guy touching her, let alone being inside of her.
Honestly, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to kill that guy. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Mostly because I didn’t know who he was, and he was a few hours away from here, too.
“I hate you,” Kelsey muttered as we started heading down the steps.
I smirked, shooting a fast look at her. “You don’t, but feel free to say it as much as you want.”
Kelsey glared. “You cocky bastard.”
I said nothing at that, because it was true. I was a cocky bastard. A cocky bastard that was dying inside each day I didn’t touch Kelsey. Even a single day like that was too long.
How long had it been since we’d been together? Since I’d heard her soft moans and seen her lustful looks? Since I’d felt her writhing beneath me, her body taking mine in? The answer to that was, again, too fucking long.
The skies were grey above us, but it wasn’t raining yet. The temperature at night got cold enough for the rain to turn into snow, but the daytime temperatures were still in the mid-forties and fifties. Still a bit warm, but in this state, the weather took crazy turns. Who knew? We could have snow next week, or not until Christmas. You could never predict these things, even though every weather person kept saying this winter would be worse than last year—but didn’t they say that every year? Certainly felt like it.
Kelsey and I headed to the union in silence. She wanted pizza, so that’s what we got. Pepperoni.
We found some empty chairs on one of the far tables, and I ended up sitting next to her, being able to smell her, feel her hair brush along my arm as she leaned to grab herself a slice. What I really wanted to do was weave my fingers through that hair and pull her head back, kiss her neck in the way I knew she liked.
It grew harder and harder to keep my sanity while around this girl.
“So,” Kelsey spoke with her mouth full, something she did often. “What do friends talk about when they share a pizza in a romantic environment like this?” She motioned to the noisy space around us, the other students clamoring to get their food at the places further in, the ones that were taking up the other tables. If I had to guess, I’d say there were at least a hundred or so other SCC students sitting down around us.
Yeah. It was loud.
“If you think this is romantic, I could always take you to the bathroom and show you some real romance,” I suggested. “I mean, it’s what friends do.”
Kelsey’s cheeks turned a bit pink at what I was suggesting; the same color her cheeks turned when I was balls-deep inside her. It was a color I craved to see on her pale skin.
“Levi,” she hissed. “That’s not what friends do.”
“Oh, it’s not?”
“If you’re fucking all of your friends in a public bathroom, I think I should be a little concerned.”
I shot her a small grin. “Just a little?” Before her, I hardly ever smiled. I hardly found anything amusing. But she just…she came into my life like a fucking wrecking ball, creating havoc and breaking down my walls, and now that they were down, I wasn’t about to let her disappear.
“Yeah, just a little.” Kelsey shrugged, eating more pizza. Meanwhile I hadn’t touched my first slice. I was content just to watch her shovel it into her mouth like a garbage disposal. She had to keep those curves somehow. “I mean, we’re not together. You can fuck whoever you want.”
That was a lie, and we both knew it.
I leaned my top half closer to her, the smell of the pizza overpowering her scent, but I could feel her warm breath on my face, and that was something I’d settle for. “You’re the only one I want to take into a bathroom, Kelsey.” I thought that was better than telling her outright she was the only one I wanted to fuck, but what did I know?
“Lucky me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the cacophony of noise in the cafeteria area. Kelsey puckered her lips, and she studied me, setting her current half-eaten slice of pizza back in the box. We got no plates; didn’t need them. “You know, I’m a much classier girl than that. I don’t fuck in bathrooms, and I definitely don’t fuck in libraries or dead-end halls in the geology building.”
All three of those, more lies.
“I’m a high-class kind of girl,” Kelsey went on, shrugging. She crossed her legs, and her foot brushed up against my leg, sending a tiny shockwave of electricity through me. God, I wanted to grab her hand and drag her to the nearest quiet place and fuck those stubborn brains out. “You’re not my type, either.”
“Oh yeah?” I scooted my chair closer to hers, and the foot that rested against my leg moved; now her entire left leg touched mine. Our bodies were less than a foot apart. “Then what’s your type?”
“I like them short. Shorter than me. I also like them to weigh less than me. Pug-nosed, maybe even cross-eyed. You know I go crazy for a super hairy mole—”
“Bullshit.”
Kelsey stopped going on and on about her so-called perfect man, lifting her eyebrows. “Excuse me? Bullshit? I’ll have you know I’m a lady—”
“That’s bullshit too,” I told her pointblank, watching as her serious demeanor morphed into one of amusement.
“Ah, well. Could never really pull the wool over your eyes, could I?”
I shook my head, saying, “No, you can’t.” When she said nothing more, I found myself lifting an arm, tucking some of her wild, kinky brown hair behind her ear, pushing the strands that had tried to hide her face from me out of the way. Her face was honestly something I would never get tired of staring at.
For
that face…for that face I might just have to stay around SCC a while longer. I knew I’d always said I was out of here after two years, that I’d transfer, but…I didn’t know if I could go. Not without her.
“You know,” Kelsey spoke, “that’s not something a friend would do.”
My fingers lingered around her cheek, her upper jaw, and I said, “I don’t want to be friends.”
Kelsey hesitated a moment, but it didn’t take long for her to say, “Neither do I.” Before I had the chance to say anything else, she abruptly stood, grabbed my hand, and pulled me away from the table, leaving our pizza half-eaten and abandoned.
I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t need to.
She dragged me past the food places, around the corner near the apparel shop and bookstore. There were two public restrooms, one for guys and one for girls, and a third door for either sex, this one a lone toilet and sink in a locked room.
The single is the one Kelsey pushed into, dragging me in with no regard for any of the students who saw us both go into it. She released my hand once we were inside, the lights flicking on with the movement automatically, and she turned the lock. Her dark eyes practically ate me up, and she bit her lower lip.
She dropped her bag on the floor, and I did the same. “This doesn’t mean we’re together,” she stated, stepping towards me slowly, measuredly, waiting for my response.
She might not think this did, but I also wouldn’t think it meant the opposite. This was a step in the right direction, and right now I had a mighty need to feel those legs wrapped around me and her fingers tugging on my hair.
“Whatever you want,” I said, watching as she held out an arm, pushing my back against the wall. We stood in between the toilet and the sink and paper towel dispenser; thank God it was clean in here.
The hand on my chest trailed lower, stopping at the hem of my jeans. “I want you,” she whispered, pulling back her hand to take off her hoodie, revealing a t-shirt underneath. She laid her hoodie on top of the towel dispenser.
Mistakes : A College Bully Romance Page 26
