28. Mia
MIA
I was sitting on my bed, still fuming from the disastrous lunch out back, when I heard the soft knock on my door. After all the drama and tense talk, I found myself hoping it was Jenna, Evan, or even Raymond. He was growing on me.
But no such luck.
“Mia?” Diego’s voice was quiet, uncertain. “Can we talk? Maybe you could come downstairs?”
“No,” I said without getting up. “I’m not going anywhere. You can come in here if you feel the need to talk.”
There was a long pause. I could practically hear him hesitating in the hallway. “I think it would be better if we go down?—”
“Grow up,” I said, louder this time.
“Ouch,” came his voice through the door.
I felt only a tiny bit bad. “Sorry.”
“I’m not saying it’s undeserved,” he said, and I heard the door handle turn.
Diego stepped into my room, looking uncomfortable and out of place. He glanced around like he’d never seen it before, taking in my unmade bed, the textbooks scattered on my desk, the laundry I’d thrown in the corner.
“I’m sorry about lunch,” he said.
“Why? Isn’t that why you invited us out there? To accuse me of two-timing my roommates?” I stared at him and thought about what Cody had implied. “Or maybe three-timing?”
He didn’t answer that, but he finally sat down in my desk chair. I’d had so many visitors lately, I probably needed to replace the seat cushion. “Things got complicated,” he said finally. “Starting with the Halloween party.”
“You could say that.”
“That was the day you found out about Sara, right?” he asked suddenly, his voice gentle. “It took me a while to put two and two together.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. Just thinking about that day made my chest tight.
“I… that was a difficult day for me, too.” He didn’t elaborate, but then he sighed. “I don’t remember a lot of it. Do you know… how much we did?”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “We were in the middle of a room full of people.”
His tan skin didn’t often flush, but it did now. “Yeah, but at college parties, that doesn’t always mean very much.”
“My friends eventually found me and pulled me off you,” I said, the words coming out in a rush.
Diego groaned, putting his head in his hands. “Oh god. Not your friends from the scavenger hunt?”
“Yep.”
“And they recognized me?”
“Yep.”
“Holy shit.” He buried his face deeper in his palms. “I need to transfer to a new school.”
“Tori and Jayden aren’t the judgmental type.”
He didn’t look as if he believed that when he finally raised his head to look at me. “I had such a hangover the next day that I didn’t spend much time about thinking what had happened at the party. I was too hung up on why I was there in the first place.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed me a folded and creased sheet of paper. “You can see for yourself.”
My hand shook slightly as I took the paper from him. People didn’t generally keep a well-worn letter on them if it was good news.
I read the short letter once, and then twice. A tear slipped down my face.
“It took me years to find her,” Diego said quietly. “And another couple of years to get the courage to write to her. And as you can see, she wants nothing to do with me—my own birth mother.”
The terse message had been very clear on that point. She had a new family. She didn’t want anything to do with a long-forgotten son. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” He raked a hand through his hair. “But it doesn’t excuse what I did at the party.”
“You were upset. We both were.”
“I should’ve known better.”
Wait, what? “We were both sad and drunk.”
“And you deserved to commiserate with your friends, not get groped by a stranger.”
My jaw dropped. “From what I remember, the groping was mutual.”
“I’m older. I should’ve known better. I took advantage of you when you were?—”
The anguish on his face was real. And completely unwarranted. “That was on both of us.”
“I’m your RA. I’m supposed to?—”
“You weren’t back then.” I needed a moment to gather my thoughts, so I held up a hand when he seemed like he was about to speak. “Let me get this straight. We were both very upset. We were both drunk. We were both all over each other—but that somehow makes you the bad guy and me the victim?”
He hesitated, and then said, “Yes.”
“Oh, right. Because women are weak and delicate and must be protected.”
“Mia, you were drunk.”
“So were you!”
He stood abruptly, pacing. “I should’ve dealt with it better.”
“Why? Have you had a lot of practice receiving letters like this?” I held it up and he snatched it back, coming no closer than he had to.
“I haven’t been handling things well. That night or since.”
“You’re only three years older than me, Diego. While it would be nice to think that in three years, I will be a wise, mature adult who never makes a mistake, it’s unrealistic. No one expects that of you, so don’t expect it of yourself.”
Diego sat down again. “You sound pretty damn wise at age twenty.”
“It won’t happen again.”
That made the corner of his mouth rise, so briefly that I almost missed it. “I really fucked things up, didn’t I?” he asked.
“At the party? No. We were both wasted. But yeah, things haven’t been great this past week or so. Freaking out when you remembered it was me, getting so loud you woke a baby, and let’s not forget inviting us to the world’s most awkward picnic today.”
I studied his face, at the misery and regret there.
And I didn’t want to see it. He’d done all those things, but he’d also taken me to the clinic and carried me up the stairs and done his best to make me feel welcome in this house.
Probably the best thing for him was if I left him alone and shared no more closeness with him than I did with Raymond or Evan.
But I didn’t want to do that. There was so much to like about him, but it had gotten so damn complicated.
And he wasn’t the only man that had been on my mind lately.
“I fucked things up,” he said again.
“I told you, what happened at the party is on both of us.”
“Yeah, but since then.” He looked around my room, as if unsure how he got here. “And I’m still continuing to do it. So let me see if I can reverse that trend.”
“What do you mean?”
“First off, I want to be on Team Mia. If you’ll have me.”
That confused me. What kind of team was he talking about? And, um… what kind of game was this team going to be playing?
“For your video presentation,” he elaborated. “I can translate it into Spanish, so you could have closed captions in another language.”
Oh. That wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was really kind of him. I had been planning to ask him to join the team, but he’d been acting so guilt ridden since I got hurt that I’d decided against it. “Thank you.”
“Least I can do.”
“I was hoping you could do more, actually.”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“You’re in public health. You know how important it is to get the right message to the right community. I was hoping you could look over the script before Aaron records it.” I hesitated for just a moment. “I’d like to get your opinion on it.”
For the first time since he’d entered my room, he didn’t look upset, ashamed, or stressed. “I’d be happy to.”
“Great. Welcome to Team Mia.” It didn’t solve all our problems, but it was a start. And god knew, I could use the help. That was the whole point of the assignment.
He stood up and stretched automatically. The smooth, taut skin over his abs caught my eye as his shirt rode up. I looked away hastily when he put his arms back down.
When it felt safe to look, I said, “Maybe we could use this as a chance to start over?”
“Do you want to?” His eyes were sharp as he looked at me, but I didn’t feel pressure.
“Yes.” It was the truth. I liked him, and I wanted to get to know him better without all this baggage between us, if possible.
“We can’t go back,” I said, voicing what we both knew. “We don’t get a brand-new start. But maybe we can try to repair our friendship. I’d like to do that.”
“I’d like that too,” he said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. “Because, you know, we have to live together for the rest of the year. And I want to be your friend. A good one, not the crappy one I’ve been lately.” If there was a third reason, he didn’t admit to it out loud.
He was quiet for a moment, then looked at me with something that might have been hope. “How about we go to Forzano’s?”
I blinked. “Where?”
“That restaurant from the scavenger hunt. We won that gift certificate, remember?”
Going to a fancy Italian restaurant together felt like it might put a little pressure on the lines we were trying to draw.
“Come on,” he said, seeing my hesitation. “How many chances are we going to get to go to a place like that?”
He definitely had a point there.
“Okay, I’m in.”