He steps aside immediately, letting me into the sacred space of his dorm room. Looking around, I notice Ryan’s not here, thank God.
“Is everything okay?” Jackson asks. The concern in his voice makes my chest do that stupid fluttering thing again.
“There’s a thing coming up,” I blurt out. “A charity thing. Roller skating. It’s a competition. Everyone thinks we’re fakingit, and I might have told them we’d win with a choreographed routine to ‘Xanadu.’”
Jackson blinks at me. Once. Twice. “You told them what?”
“I know. It’s insane.”
“‘Xanadu’? Isn’t that the Olivia Newton-John song?”
“You know it?”
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “My mom loves that movie. She made me watch it every summer when I was a kid.” He sits down on his unmade bed, patting the space next to him. I comply, hyperaware of how small the bed is. Our thighs are almost touching. “You really told the entire hockey team we’d have a choreographed routine?”
“They think you’re too good for me,” I say softly.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it, though?”
“Yes. It’s completely ridiculous.”
My heart is doing something violent in my chest. “So you’ll do it, then?”
“Of course.” He bumps his shoulder against mine. “We’ll be so adorable that they’ll beg us to stop. Though I should warn you, the last time I was on roller skates, I was twelve, and I broke my wrist.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“I’m just saying, if I take you down with me, it’s not personal.” He pats my knee, and I nearly flinch out of reflex.
“I’ll catch you,” I say.
His eyes darken, and for a heartbeat, his smile falters into something I’ve never seen before. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan’s desktop computer fan clicks with each rotation, a metronome counting the seconds of silence between us. Through the wall, someone’s bass-heavy playlist thumps in timewith my heartbeat, the lyrics muffled enough that I can’t make them out.
“I should go,” I say, not moving.
“You could stay,” Jackson offers, then immediately turns red. “I mean, to go over the routine.”
Stay. In Jackson’s room.“Okay,” I hear myself say.
Jackson beams, and something inside me catches fire.
20
JACKSON
Drew’s leg whirls through the air in what I assumed would be a graceful spin. But then his knee finds my crotch like a heat-seeking missile, and suddenly, I’m singing soprano.
“Fuck!” My vision blurs into kaleidoscope fragments of Drew’s horrified face as I fold in half, hands instinctively cupping my balls. Copper floods my mouth where I’ve bitten my tongue. “Jesus Christ, Drew!”
“Shit, shit. I’m sorry!” Drew’s hands flutter around me, unsure of where to land. “Are you okay? Can you breathe? Do you need ice?”
I wheeze something that might have been words if my testicles weren’t currently retreating into my body. This is the third time in the past hour that Drew’s “choreography” has resulted in bodily harm. First, he kicked me in the shin, attempting what he called a “sexy slide.” Then he somehow managed to headbutt me while doing a bend and snap. Now this.
