2. Holly
TWO
HOLLY
Winter was brutal. Wind whipped through me as I shoved my gloved hands into my puffer coat pockets and headed across campus. My scarf was wrapped around my neck, and I buried my mouth into the knitted, scratchy fabric. My hat was tugged low over my ears, and my toes were still freezing even though I was wearing boots and had doubled up on socks. We were in the midst of a heavy storm, with several inches of snow expected, but we were also a mountain town.
Life didn’t stop. Classes were only cancelled when blowing snow reached blizzard conditions, but today’s snow wasn’t severe enough despite the burn stinging my cheeks. I wasn’t the only miserable one. Days like this meant there wasn’t time to stop and chat in the quad or throw a frisbee around in the open spaces outside dorms. Not that I ever did much of that, but chatter and shouts were nonexistent as I buried my face further into my scarf. The campus felt more like a ghost town even though there were dozens of us out.
My feet sank into the couple of inches of snow as I hurried up the steps to the business building, careful not to slip on packed snow that was already icing over. I stomped loose snow off the bottom of my feet as I reached the top step and covered area and tugged open the doors. Immediately, a blast of heat slammed into me, making me shiver in my coat, but it was enough relief to unwrap the scarf from my neck and face.
“Ugh,” someone said behind me. “Is it March yet?”
I recognized Dallas Bronx’s voice and glanced back as he tore off his stocking cap and shook off his mop of thick blond hair.
“Bad day?” I asked.
“When isn’t it? You ready for the test?”
“I better be, or else there wasn’t a point in driving in today.”
His brows arched. “You drive in this stuff?”
Southern kids. Most towns outside our area came to a complete halt at the mere threat of snow or ice. Granted, I knew we weren’t as tough as those who lived in the Rockies or farther north, at least from what I’d heard, but kids like Dallas who grew up on the coast thought every heavy snowfall was the end of civilization as we knew it. “You could always transfer back to Wilmington if you can’t handle it,” I teased.
“Please. I can handle just about anything. Doesn’t mean I’m not waiting for the sun to start shining again, though.”
Couldn’t blame him there. “You ready for the test then?”
“I’m never ready to listen to that man. Is he even alive?”
I snorted. Dallas wasn’t far off. Sometimes I swore Professor Morgan talked in his sleep and only stayed on his feet by his firm grip on the pedestal he used for his handwritten notes. The man had to have a laptop or computer somewhere, but everything he taught was hand-scribbled messily on a large whiteboard. I started taking pictures at the end of every class so I could decipher his writing on my own time.
We’d gotten stuck with the hardest professor and the professor with the worst personality. He was dry as campfire wood in a drought, which only made staying awake for Derivatives and Financial Risk Management more difficult.
Ironically, I hated math. Finance degrees were not only highly employable, but careers with the degree not only made decent money but also came with a high percentage of stability. They were the only two requirements I had for a career. I didn’t care what I did, as long as I made enough to someday have my own home and not worry about fighting for government assistance or worse, going without.
We headed up the stairs together. Dallas and I weren’t close, but we’d had dozens of classes together, and the older we got, the classes shrunk, which meant we’d been in small group assignments and projects multiple times over the years.
“Any plans this weekend?” he asked as reached the top floor.
I opened my mouth to answer and then froze. Dallas didn’t realize I was still stuck on the top step until he was five steps away.
“Holly?” He glanced at me over his shoulder and then shifted his gaze to what—or rather, whom—had snagged my attention.
Graham.
“What are you doing here?” My feet remembered how to work at the same time my mouth did, and I took one step toward him.
Graham was leaning back against the wall, one booted foot propped against it. His arms were crossed, but our school’s NCWU logo was plainly stamped in bright yellow against the forest green sweatshirt.
“You didn’t answer your phone.” He shrugged and gave me a look like it was possible the very idea of not calling him back or answering any of his dozen texts had simply slipped my mind. In the last month, probably more, since I met him, Graham hadn’t only somehow secured my phone number—something I was blaming Tracey for even though she swore she didn’t give it out—and had taken to texting. Calling. After his first dozen texts asking me how I was went unanswered, he switched courses. Now, the unanswered text threads from him had dozens of memes and even more TikToks. Most were stupid animal videos.
Almost all of them made me laugh.
He’d clearly never heard of the term ghosting.
“I figured you’d get what that meant eventually.” I grabbed the straps of my backpack and rocked back on my heels.
“You coming, Holly?”
I glanced at Dallas, who stayed standing where I left him, glancing between the two of us. Clearly, he’d heard. “I’m good. Save me a seat.”
Dallas gave one last lingering look toward Graham and then left.
“Is he the reason you haven’t called me back?” Graham’s gaze was on Dallas’s back and stayed there until he opened the door to our classroom.
A half dozen other students headed down the hall toward us and the stairs that I was blocking, so I was forced to step closer to him.
Or run.
I preferred not to show fear. I made the step toward Graham.
He smelled like spring mountaintops and warm sun. Clean and fresh and my favorite time of year.
“He’s none of your business.” It came out harsher than I intended, and I sighed. I was used to being alone, but I wasn’t rude . “And no. Maybe I’m not interested. Have you considered that?”
“No, actually, that thought hadn’t crossed my mind.” There was that boyish grin again. It did funny things to my stomach and to my common sense.
I tightened my grip on my straps so I didn’t reach out and flick a lock of his hair out of his eye.
“What do you want?”
The guy was relentless. He clearly wanted my attention. I was certain he’d been only looking for a fun time, but he hadn’t given up. And now he was in front of me, looking all shameless and cute.
And somehow…he knew exactly where I’d be.
“Dinner.” He shrugged and uncurled his arms from where they’d been across his chest, pushed off the wall, and took one step toward me.
My boots dug into the ground so I didn’t step back. “Why?”
“Because we both need to eat, and you seem like you’d be stellar company.”
I huffed out a laugh. He had to be joking, but the longer I watched and waited for him to laugh it off with me, the more serious he grew.
“You’re serious.”
“Very rarely, but about dinner, yeah. I eat a lot.”
This guy. He was making my head hurt.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“And if I go for dinner with you, you’ll leave me alone after?”
“Probably not.”
“Really?” I arched my brows in surprise.
He leaned in. It was the tiniest amount, and yet I was suddenly surrounded by him. His looks. The size of his shoulders. His mere presence was overwhelming. “Spitfire, if you really wanted me to leave you alone, you would have blocked my number.”
He reached out and booped my nose. He booped my nose. My jaw unhinged in shock, and by the time I thought to say something, he was gone, his hand gripping the railing and ready to head off down the stairs.
“One dinner,” I called out. “Where do I meet you?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find you.”
He vanished down the stairs, boots thumping and echoing with his hurried movements.
I gawked at the stairwell, filling with more bodies coming up the stairs.
He knew where I’d be. And he had my phone number…
I was going to go to dinner with him for the sole reason of finding out how .
Then I was putting an end to this. I didn’t have time for his games, and I didn’t have time for him. Not with graduation looming and my last semester in full swing.
I headed toward my classroom and slid in with seconds to spare and refocused.
Derivatives. Financial risk management. They were the only things I needed to focus on in my life.
But a girl did need to eat…
* * *
“Have a good weekend.” I handed the purchase to the customer and glanced at my phone.
I wasn’t checking to see if Graham texted. I wasn’t keeping an obsessive eye on it, hoping it’d light up. I wasn’t at all getting nervous about having dinner with him.
I also hadn’t canceled…nor had I blocked him…
A sharp poke hit my shoulder, and I spun, only to come face-to-face with Tracey, grinning from ear to ear. “I told you I didn’t give him your phone number.”
I texted her as soon as I finished my financial risk exam, before grabbing lunch at the student center. Fortunately, while the wind was still rough, the snow had slowed.
“Unless you also gave him my class schedule.”
“Like I have that memorized.”
“Then how’d he get it?” I grabbed a paper clip off the counter in the university’s bookstore and started unbending it.
Tracey and I met on our dorm floor freshman year. Back when Dad was still able to occasionally hold down a job and help me with tuition so my loans weren’t sky high. I’d lasted in the dorms for a year, then had to move back home by sophomore year, and by the end of my junior year, I was alone.
Back when we shared a wall in the dorm, we’d known everything about each other. Since then, that’d become more difficult but given that I worked two jobs and her propensity to spend the majority of her non-class hours either sleeping or partying, that was understandable.
“Have you talked to his friend at all?”
“Tucker?”
That was a no. “Wasn’t it Tanner?”
She giggled. “Probably. So no, obviously.”
I wasn’t surprised. She tended to pick up strays but discarded them just as quickly. Given how quickly and abruptly that night ended, I suppose I wasn’t surprised they didn’t exchange numbers or snaps or whatever. Which meant Graham couldn’t have easily reached out to Tracey, anyway.
“It’s so weird,” I muttered.
“What’s weird?”
We both jerked at the new arrival, and this time I was surprised. I hadn’t seen Graham come down the stairs to the bookstore, and I was usually pretty alert.
“You,” I said, but there was a tease to my tone. “You know my work schedule?”
He gave that same shameless shrug. “Maybe I’m here for school supplies.”
“By coming to the bookstore”—I glanced at the clock at the top of my laptop—“exactly two minutes before I get off shift?”
“Coincidental.”
Sure it was. The look I gave him said it, but his smirk turned into a grin.
“You can go,” Tracey said, nudging me. “I’ll clock you out.”
I faced her. The traitor. She knew I’d been blowing him off.
“Go have fun,” she whispered, but I had no doubt he could hear even as he turned toward a nearby shelf and flipped through packages of pens and pencils. “You’ve earned it. Take the free meal if that’s all you want to do.”
“Classy,” I muttered, and from his profile, Graham’s lips lifted a smidge.
Graham dropped the pretense of shopping and glanced at me. “Ready for your free meal?”
Tracey chuckled.
I rolled my eyes, and then I grabbed my coat and backpack, because Tracey was right.
A free meal never hurt anyone.
“Fine. But I’m driving.”
A girl needed to have some boundaries.
“Perfect. Because I don’t have a car.”
Wonderful.