Total pages in book: 41
Estimated words: 38804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
After that, he slid back inside of me one more time before we both had to rush getting dressed and getting to campus.
I wasn't a fan of being late, but as I slid into my seat right as the professor walked in, it’d been worth it.
3
MAREN
I glared at Cris when I saw that he’d taken me to my dorm. “What are we doing here? I told you Jude’s address. That’s where I’ve been staying.”
He shrugged, turning off his truck and getting out. “Figured you could hit the refresh button. Get some clothes from here and then we can go and find where your other stuff is.”
“My computer is at Jude’s.”
He didn’t respond, just shut his door and walked around the front, waiting for me.
Fine. Fucking fine. I got out, shut his door, and strode ahead of him, ignoring how I was barefoot. The clothes I’d had on the night before were put in a bag, and he handed me the bag when we left his house. He ran upstairs and I wasn’t an idiot. I knew he was going up to talk to Ryan Jensen, my roommate’s boyfriend. It’d been on the tip of my tongue to ask if Mac was in there with him. My first ever roommate and my first ever best friend. I’d not talked to her, not really for so long, and being around Cris was driving me crazy. He was bringing up old memories, old feelings. The four of us hung out so much together. We’d had our own little world inside this crazy college experience.
It’d been nice.
Talking to Mac.
Laughing with her.
It felt right, easy being with her.
We trusted each other, which was a big deal.
Ryan was one of the best basketball players, Cris not far behind, so it felt like the world wanted in on what we had. That made it feel so much more special than it really had been, or that’s how I felt the first time I saw Chavez hooking up with someone who wasn’t me. So I couldn’t miss those times because what I felt hadn’t been totally true. But I did miss Mac. I hadn’t talked to her in so long. It felt like forever.
I started to ask, but Cris came back down and he gave me a haughty superior smirk, knowing I wanted to ask, so I swallowed that up right away.
Once I got my phone, I’d call her. She should know what was going on with me.
When I needed to tune everything out, including my feelings, I stopped hooking up with Cris, and that led me to tuning Mac out at the same time. I needed to do that in the beginning because it was too much. I couldn’t keep my shit together, but I was better now. Or I had more of a handle on things so I could talk to my roommate. I wouldn’t get eaten alive by all the other feelings.
He followed me upstairs, right as a door opened on my hallway. I kept going, but a girl said, “Oh, hey man.”
Cris held back, and as I got to my room, I looked over my shoulder. He was talking to a girl, who was eyeing me at the same time. I didn’t know her, but Cris seemed chummy with her.
I tried my door, but it was locked.
Which meant Mac had been at the house because she should’ve still been here. Her morning class wasn’t for another fifty minutes. She only left early enough to grab coffee or food because people sometimes recognized her as Jensen’s girlfriend and she liked to avoid that attention.
“Yo,” Cris said.
I looked his way.
He tossed something my way. Taking a few steps forward, I caught it, seeing it was a key.
I paused, a weird sensation prickling the back of my neck. “Was this Mac’s?”
“Ryan’s.”
I couldn’t move for a moment, needing to know. “Was she there this morning?”
He tilted his head up, a knowing smirk showing again. He raised an eyebrow.
That was my answer. My body got hot. Anger started to flood me. “Was she there last night too? At the bar?”
The girl’s eyes got big, the one standing next to him. She was looking between him and me, but she didn’t say anything.
“Go and get dressed. Clean up. I’ll wait and then we can have another whole discussion about what happened last night.” He looked at the girl, moving with his back to me. It was a clear dismissal, and something about it made me grit my teeth.
The girl edged back a step, so she could still see me, and those eyes only got bigger.
I frowned. Something about her was familiar. Not that she lived on this same floor as Mac and me, but something else.
But, shaking that off, I went inside and drew in a breath to calm my nerves.