39 #3
I notice it around eleven-thirty, and then I can’t stop noticing it. Tessa moves from the counter to the window to the hallway, and every single time, within about four seconds, Rafe’s head turns. He looks, and then he looks away, and goes back to whatever he’s doing.
Tessa never looks at him once. Not once, in an hour and a half, which is impossible in a house this size.
“Something’s happening,” I say into Nash’s ear.
“With what?”
“Rafe and Tessa.”
Nash looks over at the kitchen doorway for about a second and a half.
“No,” he says.
“What do you mean, no?”
“He would have told me.”
“Maybe he doesn’t tell you everything.”
Nash gives me a look, and I laugh because I’m the girl who slept with him for weeks and told an entire room we were fuck buddies.
“Okay,” I say. “Whatever. I just think something’s going on.”
Later, I’m pouring a drink. Tessa’s beside me with her arms folded, being told by Kenzie about a professor. Nash is behind me with his hand on my hip. And Rafe comes down the hall with an empty cup and reaches past all of us for the two-liter.
“Move, Tess,” he says.
And everything in me stops.
Because nobody calls her that but me. I’ve lived with her since the last week of August. I thought she knew nobody on campus.
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t look at him either.
“Sorry,” I say. “Do you two know each other?”
“No,” Tessa says. “I have no idea who he is.”
Rafe puts the bottle down.
He looks at her for a second, and there’s something going on in his face that I’ve never seen on it before, and then it’s gone.
What the fuck?
“Oh, but you do,” he says to her. “Don’t you, little Tessa?”
My stomach tightens at his tone, and Tessa glares at him. She doesn’t look shy anymore.
He says, “We went to high school together.” He picks up his cup. “Four years.” He takes a sip. “Tell your new friend, Tessa.”
And Tessa goes completely white.
She sets her cup down on the table very carefully and walks out of the kitchen.
Rafe looks proud of himself.
What the fuck?
He watches her go for a moment, and then he walks out after her.
Kenzie says, “What just happened?”
I turn around and look at my boyfriend. “Do you know?”
He watches the door. “No.”
Rafe walks out the door after her. “Should I check on her?”
Kenzie shrugs. “Maybe they need to talk.”
I watch them through the door. “Maybe.”
Nash just looks at me and doesn’t say anything.
I’m still standing there with the two-liter in my hand when I see Paige.
She’s in the front room, drunk and happy, dancing with a guy I’ve never seen before. It’s nothing. She’s not looking around to see who’s watching. She’s got her hands up, her eyes closed, and she’s having the best night of her week.
And Koda’s in the doorway. He’s got his coat over his arm. He watches for about three seconds, and his face doesn’t do anything dramatic at all, and then he turns around and comes into the kitchen.
“I’m out,” he says to Nash.
“Okay,” Nash says.
I’m two drinks in, and I’ve spent two months being told there’s nothing to tell. “Koda.”
He stops.
“What’s going on with you two?”
He looks at me. “Ask her.” And he goes out the door.
“What the fuck is happening?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” Nash takes the two-liter out of my hand and puts it back on the table. “I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? Your roommate just—”
He kisses me.
Right there against the drinks table with Kenzie standing two feet away.
He grabs my ass, pulling me in.
Kenzie says, “Okay,” and takes her cup and goes.
And honestly? It works. Everything I was about to say goes straight out of my head. He’s got one hand on my jaw and the other one squeezing my ass. I’ve got both hands in his hoodie, and I’m laughing into his mouth, and I’m not thinking about Rafe Waleska or Koda Barnes for one more second.
We stay another hour. I dance. He watches.
By the time we leave, it’s late, and I’m warm and stupid. I can’t walk a straight line.
Nash lifts me up in one motion and acts like I weigh nothing. I hang onto him with a big smile on my face. For about two blocks, I have the best view in the world. I rub his cheek, and then I kiss him.
“We’re almost home,” he says.
I do it again, under his jaw, where he’s warm.
Home.
I pull his lip into my mouth and suck.
“Kylie. I’m walking.”
“You’re doing so well,” I whisper and kiss him again. Then I lick his neck.
“I’m going to drop you.”
“You would never.”
He doesn’t drop me. He carries me the entire way across campus, past the library and the dead skeleton on the door and the bike racks, and I kiss his ear and his cheek and the corner of his mouth whenever he turns his head to tell me to stop, and somewhere around the quad, he gives up telling me to stop.
He’s laughing by the time we get to Corvin. Not loudly. But he is, because now I’m licking and biting his face. I could seriously eat this man.
He carries me up three flights of stairs, which is when I decide he’s showing off, and down the hall past my own door to his. He has to put me down to get his key out, and I kiss him against the door while he’s doing it.
The door opens. He walks me in backward with his hands on my face.
And then the cold hits the back of my legs.
I break off. I look past his shoulder. Rafe isn’t here, but the window is open.
“Absolutely fucking not,” I say.
“Baby—”
I’m already going. I get two steps.
He catches me around the waist from behind, my feet come off the floor again, and I am laughing so hard I can’t breathe, kicking, entirely off the ground.
“It’s October,” I shout.
“I know what month it is,” Nash says into my hair.
He kicks the door shut behind us and drops me on the bed.