Chapter 11
“Did you party too hard, Miss Santi?” A loud, booming male voice pulls me from my wandering thoughts.
My head snaps forward, and I sit straight as a board.
All eyes are on me. Stupidly, I’d let my thoughts drift back to the party last night.
Zain. He’s been floating around my mind all morning.
When I woke up, I swear I could smell the subtle scent of cigarettes and woody musk.
I chalked it up to how it must be clinging to my dirty clothes basket.
“No sir.” I blink and pull my attention back to Mr. Thompson’s lecture on Bach.
He stands at the front of the room looking furious but quickly turns back around to the board, continuing on.
I tap my pencil insistently, and my top teeth scrape against my bottom lip.
I really hate being called out. My mind decides it’s a perfect time to take a trip down memory lane and map out his tattoos and deep muscles in my brain.
Ugh, there I go again! Bach, Vesper, Bach. Not creepy insane dudes with crazy psycho makeup.
Mr. Thompson dismisses class, and I can’t get out of the classroom fast enough.
I snap my laptop closed, jam the remaining papers into my JanSport backpack, and book it back to my dorm.
I have a few hours before my next class.
Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll catch a bit of sleep, though doubtful.
I plod through the hallway and flip out my phone to catch up on notifications.
Clara didn’t show up to class today, not that I expected her to after last night.
Guilt gnaws at my insides. I should have been more insistent on her not
taking drugs from a strange guy. I usually give her a pep talk before we do anything.
Especially in a neighborhood like that. Clara is a wild child.
It’s not in my nature to shame her for her choices, and that’s exactly what it would have been in her eyes.
She is working through her own stuff, and I need to handle her delicately.
I push through the glass doors of the Cadence building and into the cool morning breeze.
I quickly place a coffee order on my phone because, caffeine.
The wind whips through my dark hair, and now I’m wishing I wore something more than my leggings and oversize T-shirt.
The weather changes too rapidly here in Maine, and I hate it.
With Clara resting at the dorm, I figure grabbing her a warm latte will get her feeling better.
Caffeine works wonders for tired college students and epic hangovers.
The coffee shop is only a few blocks away and takes me no time at all to pick it up and return back to the dorm to check on her. I fumble with my backpack slung over my shoulders, being armed with two full hands of piping-hot coffee. I connect my Doc Marten with the door in a clumsy knock.
Clara’s grumbly voice rumbles through the door. “Go away!”
I chuckle. “Coffee delivery,” I chirp, knowing that’ll get her moving.
She’s ripping open the door in a flash, her blonde hair hanging loosely over her shoulders with a huge smile. Her big doe eyes light up, and she snatches one of the drinks from my grasp. She toes back over to her bed in her silky pink pajamas with a look of pure contentment.
“Feeling better?” I muse. I take a whiff as soon as I step inside of the room and frown.
Of course his scent is gone. It was all my imagination.
Why is he funneling through my brain? She sticks her tongue out.
“I feel like total trash. That jungle juice was potent as fuck.” She wrinkles her nose and takes a sip of her coffee.
Does she really not remember being given drugs?
Maybe it was just the alcohol. I kick off my shoes and sit cross-legged on my duvet, clutching my coffee.
“Clara, are you sure it wasn’t…well…maybe he gave you too much?
” I tread gently, knowing her drug use is a sensitive subject for her.
I run my fingers along the ridges of the coffee cup.
She looks up and blinks for several seconds before teasing the rim of her own cup with her fingernail.
Her face goes slack. “I know my limits, V. It wasn’t the drugs.
Trust me,” her voice softens to a low whisper.
Her drug use is something I will never be able to understand.
Our worlds are entirely different; Clara didn’t come from money the way I did.
Her family grew up poor. She worked her ass off for this scholarship.
Sometimes, I forget how different we both are. I love her just the same though.
I set my coffee down and move over to her bed to cozy up beside her. My arms drift over her shoulders. “Hey, I never meant it like that,”
She picks at the label on the coffee. “No, I know,” she assures me with a forced smile.
I nod solemnly.
She has her own demons she’s working out.
Most of the time she’s happy and full of fire, but when sensitive subjects are brought up, she shuts down, closes herself off from the world.
She quickly regains her bubbly personality.
“Soooo, last night I may have been out of it, but I was coherent enough to see that hottie you were talking to. Tall, dark, and handsome.” She wags her eyebrows and swivels to face me.
“You forgot dangerous and deranged,” I start ticking off more unredeeming qualities on my fingers.
She slaps my arm. “Stop looking for reasons not to be interested. There was totally something there with that dark, brooding alpha male energy. I saw the way you looked at him.”
I wave her off and fly off the bed so I can pace around the room. “I’m not interested in dating.” I wave flippantly.
Her sharp eyes zero in on me. “You’re too much of a good girl,” she quips.
She’s right. My parents kept a tight rein on me.
It wasn’t until college these last few months that I realized just how tight.
Anyone else in my position would be eager to fly; to be free and go wild.
Me on the other hand, I’m content in the life I’ve been given.
Or at least…I think I am. I chug down the rest of my coffee; it burns my esophagus.
Normally I take my time finishing it, but I really need the caffeine buzz to push through the rest of my studying. I guess there goes my power nap.
The next class comes up way quicker than expected. Clara is finally feeling good enough to make one of her classes, so we hightail it to the other side of campus. I know we are a few minutes late, but lucky for us Professor Brown doesn’t mind it. He’s one of the lax ones.
The hallways empty of students in record time, and soon we’re the only ones rushing around like chickens with our heads cut off.
We giggle and chat about the upcoming Thanksgiving break as we shuffle towards the classroom.
When we push through the double doors, all the air leaves my lungs, and my feet stay rooted in place as I instantly zero in on the back corner of the room.
It’s him.
Even without the dark, sinister makeup I know it’s him. He’s hiding behind an oversize sweatshirt with the hood up, but it’s definitely him. He seemingly sucks all the air from the room, greedily taking it like he owns it. I adjust my backpack on my shoulder and compose myself, or at least try to.