Ollie rested his hand on my face and moved my hair to look into my eyes. I held my breath in anticipation, waiting for what would come of it. There was nothing there. There couldn’t be. But once his green eyes stared into mine, it quenched his doubt.
His lips surrendered once again, and this time there was no holding back from either one of us. He pulled me on top of him, and I removed my sweatshirt between moments without his lips on mine. His taste, his smell, his warmth—it all left me intoxicated.
Ollie’s mouth moved slow over mine, savoring every intricate detail of me. Unhurried, he appreciated us like a work of art. His long fingers gripped my hips, and I raked my fingers through his hair as I sucked gently on his neck and behind his ear.
“Mia, we can’t,” Ollie breathed.
My nose grazed the length of his neck. “We can’t what?”
He flipped me over on my back, so he was now on top of me and settled between my legs. His hard arousal pressed into me as he said, “We can’t go any further.”
“Your body says otherwise …”
He hung his head for a moment, and when his eyes returned to mine, his cheeks flushed as he smiled. “Around you, my body tends to have a mind of its own.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Ollie deeply inhaled while he stroked my forehead with his thumb. “The problem is, I’m not just a guy, and you’re not just a girl, so the last thing we should do is treat this as such.”
“I’m still not following.” He wasn’t just a guy. He wastheguy capable of seeing me in a way no one else had. But I was just a girl, and suddenly I realized I would never be or give him what he needed.
“As much as our bodies would disagree, we’re not ready.” Ollie fell over to the side of me, and a chill replaced his warmth. “I’m not a quick fuck, Mia. Either you’re all in with me, or you’re not, and you’re not ready for that, and you’re not ready for what this school could do to us.”
Rejection.
Looking around the room, I was convinced there was a hidden camera. No one had ever turned me down for sex. What did Ollie mean “all in”? What did he mean “what this school could do to us”? Instead of entertaining him, I found my sweatshirt and pulled it over my head as I gradually came apart at the seams. What in God’s name was he doing to me?
Ollie ran his hand over his face before adjusting himself in his pants. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’m fine.” I leaned over him and pressed my lips to his forehead. And suddenly, I understood his mentioning of the stinging electricity behind my eyes. The lightning crashed, but I forced it away.
Around Ollie, I didn’t feel like myself at all. He made me weak, exposed, and defenseless; he was no good for me, and it was all because I had carved him out a damn door. It was dangerous.
And here I was, kissing his forehead like a sucker.
My hands stilled over the doorknob, and before I opened it, I turned one last time to see Ollie with his hands over his face and through his hair, and I shook my head and left.
The mess hall was crowded more than usual that evening, and I assumed it was because it wasn’t only Ollie and I who had skipped lunch. The storm had circled Dolor, and the worst of it had come back around for a second time. Zeke’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the seat and bobbed his head in all directions. I attempted to talk to him through the rain whipping against the window beside us. After offering to switch tables, it seemed to anger him even more as he shook his head violently.
“Zeke, it’s okay. It can’t touch you,” I assured him, but in a flash of lightning, a branch from a nearby tree slammed against the window, causing Zeke to fall out of his chair and scurry against an adjacent wall. He belted an ear-piercing shriek, and I pushed out of my chair and ran around the table to sit by his side.
Pinning his head against my chest, I stroked his curly brown hair as the scream dissolved, but he remained trembling in my arms. I was unsure of what had come over me, or why I felt the need to comfort him, but Zeke reminded me of someone and I had this compulsion to protect him.
I hummed a familiar tune as my fingers ran through his sweaty mop over his head, clutching him tight. Many eyes peered over at us, and the only sound was the bass of the thunder. Jake and Alicia’s jaws went slack mid-chew, Bria raised an annoying black brow, and Ollie dropped his fork as awe stuck his green eyes, but I ignored their judgments and continued to calm the storm inside Zeke, humming a tune as he slowly relaxed in my arms.
The hum and the brush of my hand against his forehead were all too familiar. A door that had been locked for far too long opened, flooding memories of my mother. She used to do this to me.
In the middle of the night, my mother would wake me from a night terror. She held me close against her chest, wiping the sweaty strands sticking to my face as she whispered things like,“This is all my fault, I’m so sorry,”before humming me back into contentment. She smelled like a cigarette soaked in perfume, and I found it comforting because it was the smell of my mother.
As the memory coursed through me, my hand shook, and my hums were no longer soothing but now breaking. And a hot panic consumed me as if I absorbed Zeke’s terror. A fog of fury washed over me, and I pulled away from Zeke. Using the wall behind me for support, I stumbled to my feet. All eyes were fixed on Zeke and me.
I gritted my teeth, my palms sweaty, and I rushed out of the mess hall in a panic over what would come next. The memories of my mother’s smell, her sounds, the touch of her hand only tore open an old wound, ripping it deeper and wider with each long stride to the community bathroom.
I gripped the edge of the sink as my chest heaved, begging for a fix. The girl in the mirror crumbled before my eyes, and I despised her. She was weak and broken. I locked her away with the memories of her mother, and suddenly, there she was, staring back at me with truth in her eyes, and I shook my head, resisting what she had to say.
My throat burned as a scream belted, and my cast crashed between the girl’s eyes, destroying her and sending shards of glass all around me. The basket from the sink flew across the bathroom before slamming against the wall—trial sized bottles spilled down the tile. I gripped my hair when the door to the bathroom flew open.
Ollie paused under the door frame with wide and worried eyes. My cast rested over my lungs as I paced the bathroom, hyperventilating. Ollie took a step forward.
