Chapter 6 #2
“What?” I look at his wide eyes and realize he thinks I want to kiss him.
His teeth drag over his bottom lip, and it dawns on me that maybe I do.
A flush of heat steals across my chest, and for a heartbeat, I’m trapped in his gaze.
I clear my throat and tear my eyes away, looking anywhere but at him.
I’m going to have to figure out what to do with that thought sometime when he’s not sitting on my bed.
“I’m always writing scenes in my head. You should see the Notes app on my phone,” I murmur.
He narrows his eyes like he’s not sure what to make of the invitation. After a beat, he continues to thumb through the pages of the textbook on his lap. “Why don’t you just drop the class?”
“Because I need a math credit to graduate, for reasons unknown, as if calculators and tax accountants and the nine-times-table finger trick don’t exist.” I roll my eyes. “The midterm is on Friday. If I fail that, I fail the class. If I fail the class, I have to retake it in the fall.” I shudder.
“You won’t fail.”
“I might.”
“There are worse things.”
I tilt my head to the side. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand whatever language you’re speaking.”
“Having to retake one class isn’t the end of the world.”
“Sorry, again, my brain just can’t compute those words.”
He laughs, and it’s a sound I want tattooed on my eardrums. “I should have known, based on your reaction to coming in second place in the writing contest.”
A loud thud hits my door, and West and I both startle in surprise.
“Is Amber back already?” he asks. Whatever unexamined hopes I had for the evening dissolve like frost.
“Hello?” I yell.
“It’s snowing!” comes a loud, giggly response from a voice that’s not Amber’s.
I’ll bet. “Looks like someone raided the neighbors’ liquor stash.”
“Unless she’s telling the truth.”
“Well, you tell me, T-loc, does it snow in the desert?” I tease, branding him with the nickname given to Tucson locals.
“I’m not a T-loc,” he scoffs. “I’m from Casa Grande, which is even worse. And no, it doesn’t snow in this dust bowl hell.” We stare at each other while the sounds of slamming doors and thudding footsteps echo through the dorm hallway. “Except…sometimes it does,” he begrudgingly admits.
We slide off the bed, our feet hitting the floor in unison. I grab a sweatshirt from my floor as he opens the door. He grabs my hand and pulls me into the hall as I’m yanking boots onto my bare feet.
Campus is pandemonium. Hundreds of students are dancing, running, and screaming in the street in front of the Maricopa dorm. An open window on the third floor next door is blaring music through a speaker.
“No way,” I say, my breath clouding in front of me. I hold up my palms and watch wet snowflakes fall softly onto my skin. Of all the things I expected when I decided to go to college in the desert, this wasn’t on my list.
We step into the street, then quickly jump back as a group of students in their underwear run past us, soaking wet and shaking from cold. “What’s going on?”
“Skinny-dipping in the Old Main fountain,” comes the reply.
“Does it count if you’re in your underwear?” West asks. I glance up at him; he has snow flurries on his long black lashes. The sight makes me giddy. I’m drunk on cold air. “Has anyone ever told you that you have multicolored eyes?”
“No, just you.”
“Really?” I’m shocked. Sometimes I see his eyes in my sleep.
“You’re too gullible,” he says.
I shove him hard, but he clasps my frozen fingers in the palm of his hand, his gaze hot enough to make me sweat. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a mole right here?” He lightly brushes his thumb over the spot just above my lip.
Most of my features are unremarkable. I’m average height.
I have shoulder-length hair that’s dark blond or light brown, depending on the light.
My brothers tease me for my hazel “Bratz” eyes—they’re pretty big—but I could be a walking cyclops, and my mole would still get all the attention.
I wrinkle my nose. “Yes. Constantly. All the time. I hate this stupid thing.”
West shakes his head. “That’s dumb.”
“Your hair!” I pull my hand out of his and brush my fingers through his damp hair. Apparently, we’re people who touch each other now.
He frowns. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s curly!” I don’t know why, but the fact that his straight emo bangs curl when wet is the best revelation of my life. “Do you straighten it every day?”
He won’t look me in the eye. “Yes.”
“Can I convince you not to?”
He groans and covers his face like he’s been caught in a compromising position. “No.”
A girl from my dorm floor passes me a drink made up of party leftovers. I take a whiff and feel the burn in my nostrils. After a shudder-inducing sip, I offer it to West.
He shakes his head. “No, thanks.”
“You sure? It’s disgusting!”
“I don’t drink.”
“You were serious about that?”
He nods.
“There’s a story there.”
His wet curls are stuck to his forehead as he nods again. Curiosity burns me alive. “Will you tell me about it?”
“Someday,” he says easily, and I’m not sure if he’s making me a promise or dismissing my question.
We stand in the softly falling snow for a quarter of an hour, doing little besides watching our breath puff in front of us. I don’t know if it’s the weather or the boy at my side, but I’m frozen to my spot, unable to move. “I’m numb everywhere,” I say absently.
West moves to take off his hoodie, but I put my hand on his forearm to stop him. “I’m fine. You keep it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
He runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek, considering me for a long moment.
Finally, cautiously, he wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me into his chest. His long arms cross in front of me and wrap around my torso.
“This better?” he asks in a quiet, questioning voice while improbable, magical snowflakes fall around us.
I can only nod as the music pulses in my ears and my blood.
People pressed on all sides sway and sing and laugh and stick their tongues out to catch the falling snow.
My heart feels jittery and floaty, and West’s arms are the best jacket that’s ever existed.
I tip my head back against his chest and close my eyes, and in a shock of realization, it occurs to me that I’m chasing this feeling every time I sit down to write a single sentence on a blank page.
This expansive, ballooning, giddy, oh my god, I could live in this moment forever, but I’ll die if I don’t know what happens next feeling.
I jolt out of West’s arms. “I have to go write.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. I know exactly how to finish the scene I’ve been stuck on, and if I don’t get it out of my head, I’ll lose it.” I push myself onto my tiptoes and kiss him on the cheek.
He looks dumbstruck, his mouth trying several times to form a sentence before he figures it out. “What about your math?”
I hold up ten fingers and then drop a thumb.
“Nine times five is forty-five! What else does a girl need to know?” I slip through the crowd and race back to my room.
When I open my laptop, the words have never come easier.
I’m powered by the sound of his laugh and the feel of his arms and the sheer biology of my lips against his cheek.
I write until my eyes blur, sometime between three and four in the morning, then fall into bed with a grin.
I’m dead tired, happier than I’ve been in weeks, and blissfully unaware of the consequences of having West Emerson as a muse.