Chapter 5
Oli
I gripped the paper pharmacy bag in my clammy hands, forcibly swallowing the smile that threatened me as Juni walked away. With my tongue piercing between my teeth, I ran through ideas of things to say to get her to turn back around. Anything. I could say anything. But my brain quickly began reprimanding me, reminding me why I was at college and insisting I didn’t get distracted. I sighed and continued walking.
Keeping my head above water was touch-and-go. There was always something to snap me back to reality; my roommate’s mental health, the lack of texts from my father in the family group chat, a boatload of homework... So, I often needed some kind of boost to get myself to bedtime.
Before returning to the dorms, I picked up a bunch of snacks and a bottle of whiskey with the fake ID my cousin made for me. It was most certainly going to be one of those nights.
When I arrived at the room, I found Jonah dozing in bed. The only visible part of him was his face, his body shoved underneath his blankets and his hood pulled over his hair. After detecting the rise and fall of his chest as I always did when I found him this way, my responsible facade destined for certain doom crumbled, and the guy who would do anything to poke fun at his best friend emerged.
I needed to take a load off. Desperately.
I grabbed the can of Silly String from the top shelf of my closet and took my seat at Jonah’s desk right by the head of his bed. Tossing my shopping bag on top of the papers gathered by his laptop, I leaned back in the awful pile of wood this university called a chair and folded my free arm over my belly. I held the can up with my opposite hand and pushed lightly on the top to elicit a quick spurt in Jonah’s direction. It landed on his hood, dangling in front of his face, swaying in and out with his breathing.
I chuckled to myself, wondering how many pieces of string I could get on him before he woke up and tackled me. Opening the bottle of whiskey, I began drinking from the lip as I sought out the answer to this important mystery.
Seventeen. The answer was seventeen.
The seventeenth squirt landed right on his nose, and his eyes shot open instantly. He palmed his face, likely searching for a bug or some other rational source of a ticklish nose, but he quickly found string after string of bright yellow goo all over his hood and pillow.
“Oli, you dick,” he whined, slapping the covers back and grabbing at the little fibers. He stood in front of me and let his palms fall to my hair, rubbing the crap into my scalp. “Now I’ll have to wash this sweatshirt.”
“Good.” And while he was at it, perhaps he could stop at the showers. I had relished my last shower at home before move-in day. He, naturally, skipped it. He had a literal rash on his back from how infrequently he cleaned up.
I was quick to stand and lift him off his feet, hugging around his waist as he flailed. I practically slammed his head into the ceiling by accident, but let him fall to his shitty bed, his sheets a mess. Jonah always pretended to hate my little pranks but, truthfully, they were one of the few times he and I actually laughed these days.
“I’m not stopping until I see teeth,” I said, wrestling with him as he failed to kick his feet at me.
With one of his ankles in each of my hands, he surrendered.
“Fine, fine!” he said with a smile.
I released him and sat back down in the chair. He lay back on his sheets and dangled his feet off the edge of the bed, rubbing his green eyes to wake himself up.
“Why were you sleeping so early?” I asked. It wasn’t even 7:00.
“Your questions are redundant and you know the answer,” he drawled.
That was true, but I’d hoped he’d give me a new reason. Something like, I was having so much fun being social today that I tuckered out. Not, The shorter the days are, the less I notice how much I fucking hate it here.
Jonah watched as I pulled the pharmacy bag from the shopping bag. I eased the bottle of vitamin D out of the white paper and stuck it on his desk without a word.
“Why do you keep doing that, Oli? It’s a complete waste.”
“It’s a waste because you never take them. You need to give it enough time for your body to adjust. Then, you’ll feel better. Low vitamin D levels are associated with depression and anxiety.” I spoke confidently as if I had the slightest idea what the fuck I was talking about (which I didn’t), nodding seriously (despite the yellow goo in my hair) like I was giving instructions to a child. Sometimes, it felt like I was.
“My vitamin D levels have nothing to do with my depression and anxiety,” he grumbled.
Realistically, Jonah knew himself well and he didn’t actually give one shit if I or anyone else thought he was childish. He didn’t care about my bottles of vitamins or futile attempts to help him, and he didn’t care what others thought about his habits. Even if fame and fortune depended on it, he was the type of person who would never change himself. In a positive way, I mean. He would probably work on the negative parts. Eventually.
I changed myself. I pretended. Frequently. Perhaps that’s why I took to pranks just to make myself giggle in the three minutes I had allotted each day between responsibilities. But, who knows? I wasn’t a psych major.
I was very bothered to find that my heart was still racing slightly, even though more than ten minutes had passed since I walked in the door. Thirty since I saw Juni. I took another shot straight from the bottle.
“Oli.” I recognized the warning tone in Jonah’s voice. It always came when I was about to go overboard with drinking or food. I was about to do both.
I clicked my tongue, rolling my eyes as I handed him the bottle. He pretended to be the responsible one for a few seconds, pinning me with a disapproving look, before snatching it from me and taking a swig.
Enablers, the both of us. Though I can’t say it wasn’t nice to have someone to wallow with.
I reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a sleeve of cookies, about to perform a magic trick in which I made them all disappear in under twenty minutes and then felt like shit about it for the rest of the night while I did the same thing to all the other food in the bag. Jonah rolled out of bed, cracked the window above his desk, and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his drawer. His lighter clicked, and he lit the disgusting roll of nicotine between his lips as he took his seat on the edge of his mattress.
“How was your day?” I asked.
Not awesome, obviously, if he was smoking, but he said, “Fine.”
I observed his messy black hair and his tired eyes. He looked like he’d been awake for years and like he’d spent none of them getting the nutrients he needed. His sweatshirt swallowed him whole, one frail arm reaching his cigarette toward the open window and the other bent backward into his sweatshirt to scratch the rash on his back. I hated it when he scratched it. A shower and the hydrocortisone I bought him over the summer would’ve been more effective.
I propped my elbows on my knees and hunched over, pulling cookies from the sleeve and eating them one by one. “Talk to Kai?”
“Yeah,” he said in a decently happy tone, tapping his cigarette on the windowsill. “She wasn’t responding as much at night these last couple of weeks, but now she is again. I think she’s less busy. Maybe she’s getting more breaks at work.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I hardly wanted to think about what Kai busied herself with at night, or what she did with coworkers or customers while working the bar which resulted in less attention on her phone. My eyes lifted to meet Jonah’s. By the way he looked at me, I could tell he didn’t want to think about it either. “That’s good, man. I’m glad.”
He pressed his lips together, looked at the floor, and returned the cigarette to his lips.
“You? Anything new?” he asked as he exhaled.
I paused, pressing my thumbnail into the side of my hand. Part of me wanted to complain about Juni, but giving her more mental space than she already occupied felt counterproductive, so I just said, “Nothing.”
Jonah was already sad enough, and he certainly didn’t need me whining at him. I was the one who always had it together, not the one who lost control of his own emotions. My personal business was my personal business, anyway. I took another sip of whiskey, washing down all the bullshit of the day. I was not at college to make an ass of myself. I was here to work, graduate, and move on with my life. No flirting. No pipe dreams. No failing.
◆◆◆
Thursday
I sat down in my seat for the second history class of the semester, determined to keep a giant, stone wall between myself and Juni. A fool’s errand, but there was no point in interacting with her. The two times I’d even tried to talk to her, when making the quip about my beard and when offering up information about my trip to the pharmacy, she had given me nothing but attitude. So, not worth it. Not worth even the smallest modicum of my energy, all of which I needed on board to get my shit done.
Juni dropped her things next to me, sitting in the same seat she had on Tuesday, just as I did. Which I only did because I’m a creature of habit. No other reason.
“Oliver.”
I didn’t look at her, but I registered her long, wavy hair in my peripherals. Her snippy salutation kicked something in my chest, for which I damned my own innards.
“Juni.”
“I know you’re kind of an idiot, Oliver…” Fuck. Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t react. “But if I have to tell you one more fucking time—”
“I’m very smart, Juni,” I said as calmly as I could, mustering a bored expression on my face. “I can assure you, I’m well aware you prefer to be called June. I just really don’t care.”
My left side quite literally warmed with her anger and, inevitably, I had to gather all my effort to push down my satisfaction. How was I supposed to keep a wall between us if she was just so damn easy? I had no choice but to bite back. All the important things I tried so hard to keep at the forefront of my brain, like historical dates and trigonometry, simply dissipated when she came around. Somehow, provoking her took top priority. Watching the way she reacted to me was so much more fun than memorizing facts and stressing about my schedule.
I watched her mouth gape in the farthest corner of my vision. Then, slowly, she sealed her lips back together as her body relaxed into a terrifying calmness.
“Oliver?” she asked kindly. I did turn to look at her then. She was so eerily frightening that I had to catch a glimpse. There was a faint, satisfied smile on her lips. “I am going to rip apart every inch of your sanity.”
Little did she know, she was already well on her way to doing just that.
June quietly stood and left the lecture hall. Obviously, I didn’t ask where she was going, but given we were still three minutes early for class, I could only assume the bathroom. To scream and kick the air with frustration, I hoped.
Her bag sat wide open on the floor next to me, and the book I’d seen in her arms the other night stuck out at the front of her things. I shook my head and sharpened a pencil for distraction, denying myself the intense desire to provoke Juni even more by grabbing it. I had clearly decided I was going to remain focused. I had very obviously chosen to stay away from this girl. But my pencil tip became lethal, and my hand reached down to snatch the book.
Maybe I was the one who was so damn easy.
The piece of literature, if one could even call it that, was riddled with stickies, some with little notes and smiley faces on them. My heart twisted at how adorable it was, and I flicked my chest in reprimand. I sifted through the pages, reading blips and blurbs of what Miss Juni deemed important with her markings. Mostly romantic moments, some sad quotes, and…
Well, that’s interesting.
Whoever this Ronan character was, he had some very peculiar thoughts about the line between romance and violence.
So, Miss Juni was beautiful, intelligent, and catastrophically freaky. Yeah, keeping that wall between us was looking more and more like an impossibility with each passing second.
A few minutes later, she sank back into her seat. I’d kind of forgotten where I was as I read on and on. I was suddenly thinking about the fact that I got precisely no action while Ronan here was getting his dick sucked for murdering a guy. She didn’t notice I was reading her book. She didn’t even look twice at her open backpack. It wasn’t until Professor Brown began speaking that I closed the book—though, truthfully, I didn’t want to as it was actually quite interesting—and set it flat on the table between Juni and me, the cover facing up.
I felt her eyes widen in my direction as I stared down at the front of the classroom casually. The urge to look at her was overwhelming, but it was obvious she hated being ignored, so that’s what I did.
“Oliver, what the fuck?!” she whispered loudly.
My cheeks tried to pry a smile out of me, but I forced them solid. “Really interesting read, Miss Juni. A close second to The Great Gatsby.”
“Fucking weirdo. I bet that’s, like, the only book title you even know.”
I sighed. It kind of was. I was only as smart as my education let me be, and it was evident Juni’s intelligence stretched much further. It made me feel like I had no idea what I was talking about. Still, if she was going to poke fun at my textbook smarts, I’d poke fun at her literary choices. “Not a fan, I take it. Why is that? Not enough cock sucking?”
Suddenly, a stiff set of fingers seized my jaw and yanked my face toward hers. My neck jolted with the force, and all smugness evaporated from my system. Anger boiled in my stomach. I couldn’t fucking believe it. She’d grabbed my fucking face.
“You better watch it, Oliv—”
“Do not ever touch my face again.” My gaze seared into hers as she clamped my cheeks hard. “I understand you don’t like me, June, but that is incredibly disrespectful. You do not know me like that.”
Her breath shook, and I immediately regretted speaking to her so sternly. I’d probably embarrassed her, or made her feel like shit, or—
“You are incredibly disrespectful,” she said, staring straight back into me with the same severity I offered her. “I don’t know you, nor do I want to. And I will touch whatever the fuck I want.”
Fuck, that was hot.
She didn’t drop her guard in the slightest, didn’t even yield when I’d clearly put a boundary between us. The worst part? I never let anyone near my face, but I didn’t hate this. I didn’t hate it at all. In fact, I desperately wanted to shove my tongue so far down her fucking throat that she’d choke on it.
I reached up, my hand enveloping her neck and the underside of her jaw, grabbing just as hard as she did me. She was so fucking soft and warm, so fucking ugh. My eyes shot to her mouth, and I swear I felt her lean forward. She gasped, and the involuntary groan that rolled past my lips was hard to miss. She looked just as terrified as I felt.
“Keep acting like such a brat, and I’ll take you up on that.”
“I’ll act any way I please. Especially when you are provoking me.”
Her hand pressed firmly still into my beard, but I loosened my hold. I genuinely thought I might snap her in half by accident if I kept it up. But I didn’t retreat. Instead, I let my loosening fingers graze over the skin they’d just seized which, oddly enough, out of everything in the last five or ten seconds, seemed to be what caught her attention the most. She twitched at the delicate contact, her fingers dropping off the tip of my chin.
“Then do it, June,” I murmured. “Touch whatever you want.”
She paused, and I desperately hoped she’d do something destructive.
“You’re a pig.” Her words contrasted heavily with her demeanor which sent blazing flames in my direction, a red-hot fire I wanted to consume and harbor inside of me forever.
Before I could think about how much I unfortunately enjoyed the entire interaction, Professor Brown pulled up a PowerPoint. Juni and I withdrew all points of contact, turning quickly toward the front of the room.
Apparently, I wasat college to make an ass of myself, after all.