Chapter 12 #4
“Hey, if you do need anything, we’re here. You know that, right?” Janel reached an arm across the table and patted the back of my hand. It was one of those moments when I felt my heart lurch and my eyes prickle. I shook my head and tried to reassure her with another smile.
“Figured I’d find you here. Who the fuck gave you permission to take my car?”
All three of us gasped as Ivan, Janel’s twin brother, popped out of nowhere to berate his sister. His problem was the same as it always was—he didn’t want her to touch his precious car.
“Are you nuts? We are in a library?” she snapped back in annoyance, and I laughed softly.
Some things never changed, and Ivan was one of them.
I’d known him for two years, since the day I’d become friends with Janel.
The two of them were too alike, so they could never get along.
They were fraternal twins, and Ivan had green eyes that Janel was always envying.
Plus, he was ten minutes older than her and particularly eager to remind her of that in every argument.
That day, Janel’s brother was wearing one of his usual tracksuits, which, as always, looked great on him. He played basketball and was as tall and athletic as that implied, with a thick fall of black hair that framed his masculine face.
“I missed the bus. What’s the big deal?” Janel added, huffing as she shrugged her shoulders indifferently, a move that only served to infuriate her brother.
“I had to come here on my motorcycle because I couldn’t find my car parked in my spot. That’s the big deal,” Ivan retorted, pointing a finger at her. Bailey and I could barely suppress our laughter.
“Oh, come on, don’t be a baby. I even cleaned the seats, and who knows what kind of bodily fluids were on there?” Janel made a disgusted face, and with good reason. Ivan was extremely popular with the female portion of the student body, and his car was where he spent the most time with them.
And that was when we actually burst out laughing. Bailey tried to hide her face and go unnoticed, and I gave her a teasing kick under the table. Ivan just cocked an eyebrow at us with a serious expression, folding his arms over his chest.
“And what the hell are you two laughing about?” he asked, looking back and forth between us.
“Nothing, we’re just sympathizing with Janel. It takes guts to get into your car,” I joked, and he reached out to ruffle my bangs. He always did that, and I couldn’t stand it.
“Come on, knock it off.” I slapped his hand away, and he gave me a snaky smile.
“There, you’re definitely more attractive now,” he teased, showing off the dimple in his right cheek, a little detail of his face that had knocked many a girl for a loop. I genuinely thought that dimple might be cursed: It made everyone fall in love with him.
“And you! We’re going to talk about this at home.
” Ivan rounded on Janel and then left, though not before giving me another furtive look and a wink.
Despite his buffoonish show-off persona, I knew that he was actually a very quick-witted guy.
He spent any time he wasn’t at practice studying, and he’d actually been nice enough to pass his notes along so I could decide which classes to take.
Bailey watched me with a mischievous smile, and I frowned at her.
“What?” I asked. She adopted a suggestive stance and drummed her fingers on the table. She always did that whenever she was about to say something really absurd.
“I could see you with him,” she answered, and Janel raised her head up out of her book to look at her.
“With Ivan?” I laughed, shaking my head. He was a nice guy, but his reputation wasn’t much better than Neil’s. He changed girls about as often as he worked out, and I had decided I was done with guys like that. I wasn’t going to fall for it again.
“No, absolutely not!” I added severely, trying to put a quick stop to that nonsense.
“You’re gorgeous and smart, and I think you might like him. I certainly wouldn’t mind having you for a sister-in-law,” Janel noted wryly, but I was never going to change my mind.
“Ivan’s a nice guy, but…” I stopped. But my heart was somewhere else. I wasn’t ready to date someone new and might not be ready for a long time.
“Selene, you can’t rule out even the possibility of dating other dudes just because you knew a giant asshole in New York,” Bailey scolded me, and I gasped.
“Yeah. Sure, you lost your virginity to him, but maybe just chalk that up to experience,” Janel added airily.
“You can’t live the rest of your life chained to his memory,” she added, sounding more concerned. I just stared down at the table, considering her words and lost in thought.
How could I forget Neil?
When I first met him, I thought the same things everyone did: that he was beautiful but uninteresting.
I thought he was living his perfect life, sleeping with all those different women just because he could.
After that first night, when I hadn’t been able to sleep because of Jennifer’s screams, I had bought some ear plugs, not that he’d ever known or cared.
And then on the couch when he grabbed a handful of my popcorn? I realized how overbearing he was.
I’d hated him, couldn’t stand him at all. Especially when he treated me like a kid and tried to lord his greater experience over me. He sneered at me whenever I didn’t understand something; when I wasn’t on his level sexually; when I blushed at dirty jokes.
I had even been with someone else, but after I met him, I couldn’t do anything but want him.
It might have started off shallow and careless, but I always knew there was something different about him.
Every day was a new discovery.
He was special.
A total disaster, which is why I couldn’t hold a grudge or really hate him.
I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him even after he’d hurt me so badly once again.
All I could do was…thank him.