I feel someone standing very close behind me, but not touching me. Well. At least he has that in his favor. He hasn’t just grabbed my hips and gone to town like a lot of other guys sometimes do. I could appreciate that.
A finger taps me on the shoulder, and I slowly pivot around and almost smack into his chest. The other thing that drives me crazy (and by crazy, I mean it turns me on) about him is that he is so. Damn. Tall. He makes me feel delicate, like one of those swooning chicks on old-time romance novel covers. Except, of course, that he’s way fucking hotter than Fabio.
“Good evening, Freya,” he says like he’s wearing a top hat and I’m wearing a hoop skirt and it’s a couple hundred years ago. That’s another thing about him. He’s kind of a dork sometimes.
“Hello, Rhett. Is your mom a Gone with the Wind fan? Is that why you got stuck with that moniker?” His eyebrows go up when I say “moniker.”
“I could say no, but then it would be a lie.” Haha, he’s named for a fictional bad boy. Could be worse. His name could have been Frodo or something.
“You, sir, are no gentleman,” I say, quoting the movie.
“And you, miss, are no lady,” he says, and I’m stunned.
I’m not going to tell him that I like his name. I’m also not going to tell him that Gone with the Wind is one of my top five movies and books. When I was little, my only dream for Halloween was to wear a hoop skirt and descend a set of stairs as everyone gasped. It didn’t happen, but the dream hasn’t died. Maybe someday. There’s always cosplay.
He’s watching me with one side of his mouth turned up, like he’s holding in a laugh about something.
“What’s so funny?” I ask. I hate asking. It gives him something to hold over me.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” he says, for a second getting serious. But before I can so much as blink, it’s gone, and he’s put his cocky bastard hat back on. He wears that one a lot.
“May I have this dance?” he asks. The flashing lights make his eyes look like they’re sparkling.
“No,” I say, taking a step back. This guy has a knack for invading my space.
“Why not?” His cocky bastard hat slips again for a second. Is me saying no actually bruising his ego?
“Because I don’t want to.” I hope the lie isn’t making me blink too much. I always blink a lot when I lie.
“Okay, fine,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender. “I’ll be at the bar if you change your mind, but only for a while. I have other places to be.” And then he fucking bows. Like, hand swept in front of him, one in back and going down until he’s nearly folded in half. It’s a feat that he has enough room in the crowded space to pull it off, but people seem to move out of his way when they see him coming.
He rises from the bow and then walks back to the bar, leaving me with my mouth open and wondering what the hell is going on.
“Did he just bow to you?” Tobi says in my ear.
“I think so.” An entire room and dozens of bodies separate us, but it doesn’t matter. I can still feel him here. Smell him above all the other scents that battle around me.
Rhett Miller is . . . something else.
Rhett
“Did you just fucking bow to her?” Jem says, laughing his ass of when I come back to occupy the stool he saved for me.
“Yup. Never underestimate the power of chivalry,” I say as he slides a sweating beer bottle over to me.
“I’ll take your word for it. Hey, I gotta bail,” he says, looking down at his phone.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Jem bails a lot, and he always has mysterious excuses. If I didn’t know for sure that he wasn’t a gigolo or a junkie, I’d be worried. But he doesn’t ask about my past, and I don’t ask about his. It’s worked for us so far.
“Enjoy chivalrously jerking off later,” he says, patting me on the shoulder before he leaves.
I watch her have a good time. She’s not afraid to laugh, that’s for sure. She’s also not afraid to be loud and speak her mind. I really, really like both of those things.
I’ve never had such a good time being this far away from a girl before. I also love how she knows I’m watching her and pretends she’s ignoring me. I told her I was going to leave, but that was a lie to see what she would do. I just like winding her up.
Like last week, she comes over to the bar by herself, but this time, she comes toward me on purpose.
Things slow down and everything around her melts away and blurs. Luminous. That’s the perfect word for her.
“Hello, Freya. Nice to see you again,” I say as if we didn’t just talk a little while ago. She arches one pale eyebrow and leans one forearm on the bar. Her shirt is low cut, and it makes me swallow hard. I’ve seen her in less than what she’s wearing now, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
“I thought you had other plans,” she says. Something resembling a smile plays on her lips, and I’m hit (not for the first time) by how much I really want to taste her mouth. Her lips look soft, and tonight she’s wearing a red lip stain. It makes her skin seem even paler and her eyes glow.
“Hmm?” I say, because I completely forgot what she asked me. She’s so damn distracting. Too much pretty in one girl.
“I said, I thought you had plans.” I sip my beer and pretend to be cool, calm, and casual. Normally, I can pull it off.
“Plans change,” I say, shrugging and leaning down so our faces are closer.
“Do they?”
I nod.
“They do.”
I’m not sure why she came over here but I’m glad she did. Even if we’re just standing here with silence between us. I like being around her, in any capacity.
To think that eight days ago I didn’t even know she existed.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“So?”
She looks away from me and back toward her friends. Tobi gives her a little wave and then turns her eyes to me, and I get a glare and an I’m-watching-you face. I’m not offended that Freya has such protective friends. It’s a good thing she has people who care for her and look out for one another.
Sighing, she crosses her arms.
“So, it’s annoying.”
“Am I annoying?” I fight the urge to laugh.
“Yes, you are. Constantly, incessantly annoying.” Her words say one thing, but her posture says another. She’s leaning toward me, and her eyes are whispering words she can’t say out loud.
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” She huffs, but uncrosses her arms.
“Whatever,” she says. “I don’t even know why I came over here.”
“Me neither. Why did you?” She opens her moth to answer but then slams it shut again.
“I don’t like you,” she says, pointing her finger at me.
“Fair enough.”
She turns her head slightly to the side like she does when she’s pondering something. It’s fucking adorable.
“Not much bothers you, does it?” I think about that for a second.
“No, not really. I guess I just don’t sweat the small stuff, to borrow a cliché. There’s enough shit in the world to actually get upset about already.” I’m very close to telling her way too much about myself, so I need to shut my trap. Jem doesn’t even know much about me, and I like to keep it that way. Being attracted to Freya is one thing. Sharing all my shitty secrets with her is something else completely.
She ponders that for a moment and then nods.
“Okay.”
“Did I pass?” I ask.
“Pass what?” A drunk guy bumps into her, and she lurches forward and into my arms. I catch her and she gasps a little. Her eyes go wide as she looks up at me. I’m finding it a little hard to breathe myself.
“Your test. I always feel like I’m trying to pass a test when I’m around you.” I shouldn’t have told her that. I really don’t want her to know how much she affects me. It freaks me the fuck out, to be honest.
“I .
. . I don’t know,” she stutters and then pulls away from me, blinking a bunch of times as if she’s trying to clear her head. “I don’t know,” she says again.
Taking a step backward, she bumps into someone else, turns around, and almost flees back to her friends on the dance floor.
I don’t even know what happened. I never seem to know what’s happening when she’s around. It’s like my world tilts on its axis and everything I once knew isn’t true anymore.
Being with Freya is like falling down the rabbit hole. I don’t know if I’m ever going to find my way out, or if I even want to.
4
Freya
I finally finish unpacking my stuff. I pause when I get to the folder with the bits of paper in it that changed everything. Just a simple green folder with a whole new life inside it.
I haven’t talked to my parents in two weeks. I moved up here all by myself with a small U-Haul trailer tacked on the back of my rusty blue Ford Explorer. It’s partially their fault when they declared that they would no longer help pay for my education if I was going to fritter my time away with cheer. So they basically made me choose between money and what I love to do. I chose cheer. And then I found out their secret and my decision was made.
Mia’s the reason I even started cheer. We became friends at school, as kids do. One day my parents weren’t home to get me from the bus, so Mia said I could come to her house. I did that day, and nearly every day after that. Her parents, Melissa and Neil, gathered me into their home and, well, saved me.
Mia did cheer, and one day when we were both seven, they asked if I wanted to come with her to see what it was about. I remember going with them into the gym and seeing girls twisting in the air and tumbling and all I could think was that I wanted to do that. It didn’t matter that my parents wouldn’t pay for the expensive cheer classes or travel to competitions. I was going to do it.
Melissa made up some lie about a scholarship program, but once I was older, I knew she’d paid the fee for me to go. Every day she would drive me and Mia to cheer. I kept my uniform at their house, and they even set up an extra bed for me in Mia’s room.
They gave me everything my parents wouldn’t (or couldn’t) give me. I’ve had a knife in my heart since I sat them down and told them I was moving here. Melissa’s been sending me letters every few days. She’s big on old things. Like silver tea sets and typewriters and baking everything from scratch. At night when I was back in my own home, I would look at the ceiling and wish that Melissa and Neil would adopt me. Or that I could go back in time and magically make them my parents.
Shaking my head, I put the folder in the bottom drawer of my dresser, under my sweatpants.
I need to screw my head on straight. Well, that and do some homework. Deciding I can’t focus in my suddenly depressing apartment, I pack everything in my messenger bag and walk to the library. On the way, I stop for a skim caramel macchiato and have to suck it down before I go inside or else I’ll get in trouble.
Avoiding the first floor, which is usually the noisiest, I take the stairs and walk all the way to the fourth floor. There’s a little nook in the very back stacks that no other person is likely to stumble across. Setting everything out, I work on math first so I can knock it out before I move on to gathering sources for my English paper and then playing around in Photoshop for my digital imaging class.
I have my earbuds crammed in my ears and the new Ed Sheeran album going, so I’m in the zone. But then there’s a tap on my shoulder, and I nearly bite my tongue in half in surprise. Good thing I hadn’t been drinking my caramel macchiato.
I whip around and find a grinning Rhett staring down at me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t do that,” I say, smacking him in the stomach with my hand. That’s a mistake, because damn, he has a lot of good stuff going on under that shirt.
“Sorry,” he says, not looking sorry at all. “Wasn’t sure how else to get your attention.” I turn my music off and get my heart rate back to normal.
“And why are you trying to get my attention in the first place? What are you even doing up here?” How the hell had he found me?
He squats down so our faces are level.
“Just saying hello. Are you against people saying hello to you?” I turn in my chair, completely distracted by my annoyance with him.
“I’m against you interrupting my precious study time,” I say and he leans his forearms on the back of my chair. Our faces are perilously close. Much too close for my comfort.
“I’m just saying hello. So, hello,” he says one side of his mouth pulling up, and from this close viewpoint, I can see he has a dimple in his cheek under the beard.
I won’t think about his beard . . . I won’t think about his beard . . .
“Fine. Hello, Rhett,” I say, my voice trembling a little. “I have a lot of homework, and I need to focus. Please.”
He sighs.
“Fine, fine. But you’re not the only one with homework.” I realize he’s got a tattered bag over his shoulder that’s crammed with books.
“This seems like a nice place to study.” I stare as he scoots until his back is against the wall right next to the table I’m sitting at and then starts pulling things out of his bag.
“You’re going to study right there?” I ask.
“Uh-huh. Seems as good a place as any,” he says, giving me a quick smile before arranging his books and notebooks into piles.
I have two choices. I can get up and move, which would show him how much he’s irritating me, or I can sit here and do my best to ignore him.
“Please, just let me get this done. I have a ton of work, and if you pester me while I’m trying to do it, I’ll . . .” I search for some sort of just punishment. “I’ll poke you in the eye with my pen.”
“If you can catch me,” he says, not perturbed at all.
“Stop it!” I say with a laugh as I stab my earbuds back in my ears and turn my music on again. I can still see him in my peripheral vision, but that’s the best I can do right now.
Rhett
I really did come to the library with the intention to work, and that’s what I’m going to do. Annoying Freya is a bonus.
I figured that the fourth floor would be the most deserted. Then I saw her blond hair, and it was like fate.
She doesn’t seem too happy that I’m here, but that doesn’t bother me. I just camp out on the floor next to her and get to work. I wish I knew what she’s listening to, but I don’t want to risk her wrath and ask. I respect her need to study.
I pull out my textbook for childhood psychology and get reading. The only sounds in this remote corner of the library are the turning of pages and the click of Freya’s fingers on her laptop keys. She’s an incredibly fast typist, but I wouldn’t expect anything less. I’ve only spent a week with her, but I know she’s smart. I fucking love smart girls. I’ve never understood the appeal of a girl who can’t string together a coherent sentence.
We work in silence for about two hours, and then she puts her arms over her head and stretches, her shoulders popping. I’m momentarily distracted from brushing up on Great Expectations for my English class.
She glares down at me, and our eyes meet as she takes her earbuds out.
“Can I help you?”
“Nope.” She looks like she’s going to put them back in but then leans over the table.
“What are you reading?”
I hold up my worn paperback.
“What class is that for?” All of a sudden she seems curious. Hell, I’ll roll with it.
“Brit lit. My minor is English.” I don’t add that I’ve read this book before.
“Cool. What’s your major?”
“Developmental psychology.” I watch her face as I tell her, enjoying every second.
“Oh, wow,” she says.
“Yeah. What did you think it was?” She’s a little flustered.
“I don’t know. I guess I just . . .” The hand holding her pe
n flails around a little.
“You assumed. It’s okay; you’re human.” I shrug my shoulders, mark my place in my book, and close it.
“What about you?”
“Well, I wanted to do photojournalism, but they don’t have that here, so I’m double majoring. Photography and journalism.” Well, shit. I’m getting seriously turned on by all this academic talk. “I like to write, and I love taking pictures. So it seemed like the best option to do both.”
“That’s impressive. But why did you come here if they didn’t have the major you wanted?” It doesn’t seem like a loaded question to me, but she instantly pales and looks away. Oh. I’ve touched on something she’d rather not talk about. Interesting. I file that away for future reference.
“I transferred here from somewhere else,” she says, so quietly that I almost don’t hear her. The hum of the air conditioners and the buzz of the lights overwhelm her voice.
“Where?” I ask, knowing she’s probably not going to answer me.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says, pressing her lips together and staring at her laptop as if she’s trying to set it on fire with her mind.
“Sure,” I say, and an uncomfortable silence sits between us. “Hey, do you want to grab some coffee or something?” I’m starving, but I don’t want to push my luck with her. I expect her to tell me to go to hell, but she just nods.
“Okay.”
* * *
I almost offer to carry her books but think better of it. We walk down to the small coffee shop next to the library.
“What can I get you? My treat.” She’s been deflated ever since I asked about why she came to MSU.
“Um, a skim caramel macchiato. No, wait. A large vanilla latte with an extra shot and whipped cream.” Okay, then. She sits down at a table for two as I order the coffees. Figuring she’s also hungry, and knowing I am, I get two croissants as well.
When I come back with the drinks, she’s messing with her fingernails. She keeps them short so she doesn’t gouge anyone’s eyes out during cheer, but they’re always painted different bright colors. She must do them every day or so.