16. Dahlia
DAHLIA
For the next two hours, while Jordan and Felix pepper Daisy with questions for her physics test and I help Jane come up with ideas for her music theory paper, I use any free minutes to start a running list in the Notes app on my phone of things to ask Felix.
“I think that’s it,” Jane says, voice full of glee as she raises her arms over her head. “I’ll read it over one last time in the morning, but I don’t think it’s too bad. We’re a good team.”
“Duh.”
She smiles and sneaks a glance at Felix. “I told you he liked you.”
Her words fill me with too much hope to accept. “He and Jordan are friends, and you heard him—Sigma wasn’t worth going.”
“Uh-huh.” She stands and heads into the living room. “I’m finally done. How goes the studying?”
“If I don’t know it by now, I don’t think I ever will,” Daisy says.
“You know it,” Jordan reassures her. It’s sweet to see how much he hypes her up. Everybody needs a hype man, or woman.
Felix straightens and our eyes meet.
“I’m so tired,” Daisy whines. “Knowing my luck, I’ll oversleep and miss the test.”
“No chance.” He stands and pulls her to her feet. “I have three alarms set. You’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna kill that test, sweet Daisy.”
She lifts up on her toes to kiss him. Jordan scoops her up and tips his head toward the rest of us. “Night, girls. Thanks for hanging out tonight, Walters.”
“Later,” Felix calls.
The three of us watch Jordan carry Daisy upstairs and then Felix smiles between me and Jane. “I guess it got pretty late,” he says. “I should go too.” He pulls out his phone. “Good to see you, Jane. Thanks for tonight, Dahlia.”
And with that, he starts for the door.
“Wait,” Jane calls, “getting an Uber this time of night is a pain. You either get the creepy old guy who wants to chat non-stop or some weird, young person whose car smells like they help transport dead bodies. Stay here. You can sleep on the pillow fort.”
Felix’s brows rise and a smirk plays on his lips. “The pillow fort?”
“Oh, it’s epic. You have to see it. Dahlia and I built it.” Jane starts up the stairs, leaving Felix no choice but to follow.
“I know what you’re doing,” I whisper-hiss as I pass by her in the doorway.
She grins and sing-songs, “You’re welcome!”
Felix walks into my room and toward the many blankets and pillows spread out on the floor between my bed and the window.
“Woah,” Felix says. “This is…I don’t even have words.”
Jane grins. “Awesome, right?”
“Is this for the many guys you lure back to your room, hot stuff?” Felix asks as he sits down in the middle of it. He lies back and crooks a hand behind his head. He looks silly and yet still so hot.
“Just my number one, boo,” I say, then cringe. Did I just use the word boo? “Jane is the only person who’s slept there.”
“I get chatty when I’ve been drinking.” Jane smiles. “Dahlia got tired of me falling asleep in her bed while I was talking her ear off.”
“I did not!” Even if she does thrash around in her sleep, I never would have said anything. Jane’s parents were really strict when she was younger, and she never did sleepovers with friends. I love giving that to her.
Jane ignores me and continues talking to Felix. “So we made me a little fort. I lie there and we gab about boys, you know, all the usual girl-talk stuff.”
He adjusts a pillow. “It’s like indoor camping.”
“Minus nature,” Jane scrunches her nose, “anyway, I’m so tired.” She fakes a yawn. “Night, night.”
She goes, shutting the door on her way out.
“She’s something,” Felix says, smiling after her.
“She really is.” I stand at the edge of the fort, not sure what to do. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want.”
“Are you kidding? This might be more comfortable than my bed.” He sits up, but instead of getting to his feet, he takes my hand and tugs me down to the pillows with him.
I land, not gracefully at all, beside him. “Really?”
“No.” He laughs. “But the company is better.”
I settle into the blankets. There are something like fifteen of them, plus a half-dozen pillows. Jane even bought a little stuffed teddy bear for her second bed.
“I like your room.” Lying on his back, he looks around the space.
“Thanks.” It isn’t big, so there isn’t much furniture. My bed, a desk, and a nightstand. The only thing on the wall is this season’s Valley U golf tournament schedule and mini Polaroid pictures of me, Jane, Daisy, and Violet over the past year.
“What’s your room like?” I ask, staring up at the ceiling. Felix’s body lies alongside mine, a pleasant warmth radiates off him.
“Well, it doesn’t have a pillow fort.”
“Missing out.”
“No kidding.”
I elbow him. “Really, give me a visual. I realized tonight I don’t know a lot about you, outside of football and parties.”
“That’s all there is to know,” he says, but I notice his jaw tics.
“Tell me about your room.”
“Okay.” He turns his face to look at me. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. Felix has a great mouth. It’s almost too wide for his face. I think that’s why I always notice his smile.
“It’s a little smaller than yours. The bed is pushed against one wall.
The TV and PlayStation are set up on the other side and eighty percent of the time, my clothes are sitting in the laundry basket on the floor because I don’t want to fold or put them away.
” A real, full smile takes over his face now.
“Anything on the walls?”
“A poster,” he says with a little reluctance.
“Of?”
He squeezes one eye shut and grimaces. “Me.”
“What?” I giggle.
“Lucas started it. He put one up as a joke; the guys all thought it was hilarious. I took it down, but then two more appeared. Took those down, and?—”
“Three more appeared?”
“Yeah.” He laughs. “So I left one up and they’ve stopped pranking me.”
“Isn’t that weird when you bring girls back to your room?”
“I doubt any of them have noticed,” he says in a tone that suggests he’s annoyed by it, but no one is making him hook up with random chicks.
“What else do you want to know?” he asks.
“I made a list.”
“Oh man, I better get cozy then.” He kicks off his shoes and turns on his side. The movement puts him so close, I can’t think.
“It’s in my phone.” I sit up. I can breathe a little easier without his mouth taunting me. “Which is downstairs.”
“Maybe just ask me the ones you remember,” he suggests with a playful smirk. He grimaces a little as he adjusts his back.
“Okay, for starters, how do you go out so much? You never seem worried about classes or homework. And I know from Jordan and Gavin that even the men’s sports don’t get preferential treatment from professors like I assumed.”
He grins. “Maybe they don’t.”
“So, you’re just more special?”
“Oh, I definitely am.” His smile is so big and magnetic, I find myself leaning forward.
“I got injured right before my freshman year. Had a thing with my elbow and couldn’t play.
It sucked, majorly, but since I was useless, I took something like eighteen credit hours both semesters that year.
And I took summer classes. This year is a breeze. Just the way I need it to be.”
“You’re an art history major, right?” It surprised me when I saw it listed below his roster photo on the Valley U football website.
“That’s right.”
“Why art history?”
He shrugs, then adjusts again. “The plan has always been the NFL, but if by some chance that doesn’t happen, I thought that was the safest bet. My parents own a gallery in Scottsdale.”
“You’d be happy doing that?”
“Fuck no. Anything but the NFL will feel like a disappointment.”
When he squirms this time, I say, “You don’t have to lie down here and pretend it’s comfortable.”
“No, it is.” He lets a little of that discomfort I saw in flashes settle over his features. “My back is tight. I meant to roll it out after practice, but I was in a hurry to get to The Hideout and hang out with my girlfriend before I knew she was going to blow me off.”
I laugh. “Turn over.”
He hesitates, but when I motion for him to flip, he does.
Lying on his stomach, I inch forward until my knees rest against his hip. I press my hands to his back. “Here?”
“Little higher.”
I adjust.
“To the right an inch.”
My fingers glide over and my heart races at the simple contact.
“Yeah, there.”
As I press in, he groans.
My pulse races and skitters as I massage his back. Warmth seeps through his T-shirt as I work on loosening up the tight spot in his back.
When I can find my voice, I say, “That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself for football.”
“I can handle it.” He turns his head and winks. “What else was on your list? I could talk about me all night.”
“I’m having a hard time remembering,” I say, which is true.
My skin buzzes with electricity. He’s here in my room, lying on the floor, so casually and comfortably, and flirting with me.
At least I think that’s what’s happening.
It’s a little hard to tell with Felix because he’s so charming.
I’m not even sure he knows he’s doing it.
We fall silent. My hands work and I feel his back loosening up, but my emotions are getting more jumbled.
Anxiousness mixed with confusion, a heavy dose of lust and angst. I do what I always do when it all becomes too much to keep in.
I blurt out the thing I shouldn’t say. “Jane thinks you like me.”
My hands still, and he rolls over onto his side again. He stretches and says, “Thanks. That feels better. Great, actually.”
“You’re welcome.”
An uncomfortable beat passes between us. But before I can blurt out anything else, he lifts a hand and lets his fingers tangle in my hair. “I do like you.”
“You know what I mean. Like me.”
“I do.” He fingers a strand of my hair by my ear and his knuckles graze my neck.
“But…”
“I’m not the guy for you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish that I were.”
That fuels a thousand more questions. Ones I’m not sure I’m brave enough to ask, but if I don’t, I might hate myself later.
“If you like me, then why aren’t you the guy for me?”
“You need someone to give you all the experiences and fun you’ve been waiting for.
Someone that will make you feel special and treat you like the absolute baller chick that you are.
” The way his blue eyes focus on nothing but me turns my insides to liquid.
“That’s not something I have time for or would even be any good at. ”
I think he’s wrong. He already makes me feel that way. Just being with him is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.
Felix sits up so his face is inches from mine.
My heart stops and I hold my breath. Is he going to kiss me?
Finally? I move just a fraction closer. Gently, he brushes the pad of his thumb over my lower lip, but he doesn’t bring his mouth to mine.
Instead, he says, “Don’t settle for less, okay? You deserve that.”