We can’t kiss. I don’t kiss.
It was a bad idea, but I couldn’t seem to escape him. Did this mean I wanted to kiss him? I didn’t know exactly what I was hoping for.
It seemed like forever had passed before a song played, but I knew it couldn’t have been longer than a fraction of a second.
A beautiful acoustic melody from a guitar filled the dorm room. Another song I didn’t recognize. The screen read it was “Rhythm Inside” by Calum Scott, and I couldn’t understand what was happening.
Ollie closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and let it slowly go before he paused the song and tilted his head to face me. “Mia, this is fucking crazy. I really want to kiss you …” His gaze moved back and forth between my eyes and my lips. “Fuck do I want to kiss you, but I want you to listen to these words even more because I couldn’t have said them better myself. Everything he says is how you make me feel when I’m around you.”
I tried to swallow as he pressed play and placed the phone above our heads. He turned back on his side to face me. Calum’s beautiful voice played in our ears, and Ollie moved the hair from my face and said, “Just listen.”
And I did.
By the middle of the song, I had lost all sense of my past and future. The only thing in front of me was Ollie—my present, and I was surprised I still had a pulse because his eyes on me were breathtaking. It was as if they didn’t belong anywhere else.
A mixture of panic and peace swept over me, and I couldn’t make sense of it. My breath caught in my chest, and an undeniable pull brought my hands behind his head and into his brown hair. I nestled my face into his neck, and Ollie wrapped his long arms around my waist, pulling me close against him.
The coconut smell of his skin and his breath in my hair washed away the panic, and all that remained was the peace. It was the feeling of walking through the doors of your home after an extended vacation. The feeling of the bell ringing after the last class of the day, and the taste of ice-cold water on a hot day in July.
Peace.
Out of all the things that could have happened in his room, hugging him was never a possibility in my mind.
The lyrics said to show him what I was feeling, and for some unexplainable reason, I wanted to be close to him. Around Ollie, I actually had a feeling, and it overwhelmed me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had hugged anyone. But I didn’t want to hug anyone else. I wanted his arms around me, and to keep this satisfying feeling inside me for as long as possible.
He slowly, gently rubbed my back as he breathed into my neck, and we held on to each other as our legs intertwined—unsure of where he started, and I ended. Ollie didn’t say another word, and neither one of us reached for the phone to ask another question. We lay in his bed as he cradled me and let the rest of the songs play out the way they were meant to.
Chapter Six
“Beauty and pain will invadethe same.”
—Oliver Masters
THE PARADOX OF A hug was even though it was physically comforting, the healing properties to your mental state was just as powerful—if not more. For so long I had been under the impression I was so dead inside, I didn’t need hugs. Though I lived with emotional detachment disorder, why did I so severely crave something so simple as a damn hug? And with my condition, why did it comfort me in the way it did?
Yes, I’d researched studies on human contact and the power of touch in my spare time, like I’d researched everything else under the moon. I’d wanted answers to everything—why people did the things they did—because I couldn’t understand an action as simple as a hug, and even after all my research, I was still left confused. It wasn’t until now, with Ollie’s warm arms around me, his body pressed against mine, when I understood everything I had been reading. With Ollie, I’d found a safe place. I’d found refuge from the storm inside my head.
But as comforting as it felt, it was just as scary. And the fear slowly grew bigger and bigger, pulling Ollie’s safety net out from under me with a force so much more powerful—the force of my past.
Instinctively, I pulled away and Ollie quickly searched my face. When he looked into my eyes—really looked—his face fell, and he slowly shook his head. “Where did you go?”
The air in my chest tightened as I knitted my brows together. “What do you mean? I’m right here.” I understood him, though. A part of me was slipping.
He placed his hand over my cheek, and his warmth battled the gradually consuming cold. “Your eyes … Something’s changed.”
I pulled his hands away and rolled off the mattress until I got to my feet. “I have to go.” Frantically, I searched the room as if I was leaving something behind.Oh, right, my books. I picked up my books off the floor and took one last glance at Ollie. He lay confused over the mattress as if I’d pulled a chair out from under him. “I’ll … um … I’ll see you later.”
Then, I walked out the door.
After dinner, I waited until right before curfew to head to the bathroom. Jake’s squeals ricocheted from the opposite end of the bathroom as I ducked under and in between people to find an empty shower. He already had a new white tee on with his plaid pajama bottoms and Bart Simpson slippers covering his feet. With nowhere to run, I waved as the rest of his friends turned to see me.
Isaac was brushing his teeth in boxers with beer mugs all over them, and Alicia sat on the sink beside him, talking his ear off.
“It’s always busy in here at night. When is the best time to come?” I asked as I sat my things down beside Alicia.
“In the morning,” Bria said as she exited the shower stall fully dressed with a towel wrapped around her hair. “You have a better chance sharing a shower than finding your own this late at night.”
Ollie strolled out of the shower beside Bria’s with black boxer briefs clinging to his glistening skin. A collection of black and white tattoos was painted along his chest and stomach as birds flew up his sides toward his back from a pair of hands. It was the first time I’d seen him this close without a shirt on, and the artwork hypnotized me.
