Love Story(21)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“I volunteered,” I said from the doorway. “I like it.”

Hunter whispered, “You always did like sitting in the closet.”

I hugged myself as a chill raced across my skin.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. He was fingering the filmy green fabric of the belly-dancing costume on the back of my door. In a normal tone he said, “I still can’t believe you’re taking belly dancing for your phys ed credit. It will never do you any good.”

“I think it’s so cool!” Brian exclaimed.

In the back of my mind I knew I should have thanked Brian for coming to my defense. All I could focus on was Hunter, who had touched another girl in the shower and now had the gall to stick his nose in my business. “What phys ed credit will do me any good?” I asked suspiciously. “Horseback riding?”

“You said it,” he muttered. “I didn’t.”

“I liked the idea of getting my abs in shape,” I said truthfully. “I’ve been doing it for three weeks and look.” I thrust my tummy forward to show him. It was flat. Not that he cared.

Brian stuck his head out of my bedroom to see. “You should get your belly button pierced. Say it like you mean it.” He disappeared through the doorway again.

“Are you kidding?” I called. “Do you know how much that would cost, not to mention the price of a charm to plug the hole?”

“Your grandmother would be furious,” Hunter said quietly, “just like the last time you got a piercing.” He touched one finger to the diamond stud on the side of my nose.

We held one another’s gaze for a long, electric moment.

I knocked his hand away and whispered, “Everything I do isn’t designed to make my grandmother furious. I don’t give a damn what she thinks.”

I flounced through the doorway, into my room. Brian’s rummaging hadn’t bothered me at all, but now that Hunter was coming in behind me, I glanced around frantically.

Nothing was out of place. Nothing would betray any more of my secret fantasies to Hunter. He already knew them all anyway.

Brian stood before a cheap frame nailed to my wall. “Wow, a rejection letter. You should take this down. Doesn’t it discourage you?”

Ugh, I’d forgotten about the rejection letter. It meant a lot to me to display it. That summer I’d finished the romance novel I’d worked on my entire senior year of high school. I sent it off to the publisher I’d written it for. After only a month, I’d gotten a rejection letter, which was very quick. They must have really hated it.

I searched my dresser drawer for the cream. “No, it encourages me. It’s my first firm step toward the writing career I want.”

Brian glanced over his shoulder at me. “Isn’t a rejection a step away from the writing career you want?”

“No,” I said. “All writers get rejections.”

“Not the ones who are published,” Hunter pointed out.

I grabbed the cream from the drawer and wagged it at him between my fingers. “Knife, please.”

Instead of giving me the knife, he held out his hand for the tube. I gave it to him. He set it on top of my desk and poised the knife blade above it. Brian and I leaned in to watch. I wanted to make sure Hunter wouldn’t mutilate the tube and spill its precious contents—and, I discovered as I edged closer to him, the air around him was so warm. My skin heated deliciously without touching his.

“This is like surgery. With a hatchet.” Lightly he slit the tube at the bottom along the crimp, then at the top where it flared out to the cap, then down the middle, connecting the top and bottom cuts. With the tip of the blade he lifted one of the flaps he’d made. “It opens like the space shuttle cargo bay.”

“Genius,” I said. “My hero.”

He straightened and looked at me. Brian and I straightened, too, because when Hunter straightened, the knife came closer to us.

“So, you have a plastic bag to keep it from drying out?” Hunter asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

When I didn’t move, he looked at Brian, then back at me. “Put it away and come back upstairs with us,” he told me.

“You go ahead.” I nodded toward my early American literature survey (bleh!) book on my desk. “I have a lot of reading to do.”

His face fell. Either he was an even better actor than I’d thought, or he was genuinely astonished that I refused to return to the party with him after he so gallantly performed surgery on my face cream.

“It was lots of fun though,” I said. “Quite an eyeful.” To Brian I said, “Do me a favor and make sure Summer comes home safe.”

“Will do.” Brian had already left my room and headed for the outer door.

Hunter stood there a moment longer, blond brows down, disoriented because another man had been put in charge. Then he recovered, resetting his face in the handsome default mode. “Have a great night, Erin. See you in class.”

“Thanks, Hunter,” I said in a tone that ran right up to the edge of sarcasm without going over. I walked him to the door, shut and locked it behind him, and dashed back to my bedroom to strip out of my damp bikini and bundle into soft sweats before I froze.

As I changed, I listened to their footfalls. Where my bay window ended on one side, my bedroom shared a wall with the stairwell. I didn’t want to switch my pillow to the other end of my bed because I would feel vulnerable with my head that close to the door—but some nights I was tempted when students whooped and tramped to the upper floors in the wee hours.

Tonight I was glad I could hear Brian’s fast shuffle, holding on to the handrail, and Hunter’s slower, heavier amble up the center of the stair tread. I listened to them ascend between the second and third floors, third and fourth, fourth and fifth, their steps disappearing behind the heavy fifth-floor door. This way I knew they were truly gone. The door was closed on the party. Hunter could get back to his blonde, and I could get back to work.

A few hours later, two sets of footsteps skipped back down: one fast as before, the other lighter and halting, tipsy. Brian’s voice chuckled at the outer door to my room. The door shut. Only the tipsy steps tripped between the beds, and then Summer was falling through my doorway, pushing my books aside and curling up in my lap.

I brushed her black hair away from her shut eyes. “What’s the matter?” I yawned.

“I mentioned the stable boy to Manohar,” she mumbled. “He got mad at me. He thinks I don’t really like him, and the only reason I was flirting with him was to get something for you.”

I could have been coy and said, I thought you were only flirting with him to get something for me. You genuinely like him after all? Gasp! Instead I said soothingly, “He lives in your dorm and you’ll have class with him the whole semester. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to work it out. He’ll come around.”

She rolled over and I scratched her bare back between the straps of her bright yellow bikini until Jřrdis came in from the art studio. I meant to read for early American literature survey (bleh!) all this time, but I dwelled on my own words to Summer. For once, I believed them. Summer and Manohar were brilliant and funny, and as long as they could step past the barriers set up by their own egos, there was nothing to come between them.