I glance again at the frosty windows. Nothing has ever sounded less pleasant than trudging across campus in the cold.
Too cold. You’d have to pry me out of these blankets.
Is that an invitation?
I blink at my screen, phone clutched in my hands, my mouth forming a small O. I quickly scan back through ourconversation, trying to decipher anything suggestive in it. I brought up sex, but in a funny way. I mentioned my bed (more than once!). Idaredhim to pry me out of it.
But he’s not—he wouldn’t—I didn’t summon him here for a Sunday-night hookup.
Right?
Room 314.
I send the text with shaky fingers, and then I press my face into my pillow.
Eight minutes later, he knocks.
“Hey.” West standswith his shoes toeing the threshold of my room, his cheeks pink from the cold and his chest heaving like he ran here. His hands are on my doorframe, his fingernails a scratched-up Sharpie-purple that I would hate on literally anyone but him.
“Hi.” A beat passes in which neither of us moves, but then I stand back so he can shut the door behind him, shrinking the room by a factor of five thousand. He shifts his weight, and I blurt the first thing that comes to mind. “Want something to drink?”
He rakes his fingers through his hair. “Sure. Do you have milk?”
I laugh until a flash of embarrassment flits across his face. “Wait. For real?”
He lets his hair fall over his eyes and walks around me to survey the wall over my bed. It’s empty except for a handful ofpictures from home and a poster of earnest writing quotes. Finally, West looks over his shoulder. “Or whiskey?”
“You wantmilkorwhiskey?” I open the mini refrigerator that fits under my loft bed and stare at a half-empty Red Bull that I was rationing for later and the chocolate protein shakes that Amber drinks for every meal. I look back at him. “Shockingly, we don’t keep either in our room, unless you want Amber’s almond milk. It’s expensive, though, so she might kill you.”
His shoulders creep up to his cheeks. “I was kidding. Whatever is fine. Or nothing, honestly.”
“The girls in 308 always have a stash of something, but they hate me ever since I accidentally left my retainer next to the sink four weeks in a row,” I say wryly.
His lips tilt. “It was a joke. I don’t even drink.”
“Yeah, neither do I when my parents are asking.” I flash him a smile, and he lets his bag drop to the floor.
“Do you really brush your teeth in the shower?” he asks as he bends over my desk to inspect a picture of me and a few friends from graduation. Most of them stayed in the San Diego area, but I didn’t have the grades to get into any of the UC schools. I doubt we’ll still be talking come Thanksgiving.
“Do younot? My brothers have done it for as long as I can remember. I thought it was standard.”
“Not standard. And not that hygienic, if I had to guess.”
“Oh.” I bite my lip, standing alone in a shoebox of a room with a guy who thinks I’m gross while my face heats like a solar panel. “I didn’t realize that was information I should have guarded with my life. That’s even more embarrassing than the quotes on my wall.”
He glances up at the poster that reads:The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
“No, it’s not. And anyway, my family calls the TV remote a ‘genie,’ and I didn’t know that was weird until I was, like, fifteen. We also howl at the full moon every month.”
I blink at him. “Why?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. We thought it was funny, and then we got superstitious about it. One month we didn’t do it because it was raining or something, I don’t remember, and thenextday my youngest brother broke his leg. I had to pull him to school in a wagon for six weeks. One day the wheel fell off, so I put him in a wheelbarrow. A neighbor called my mom, and she yelled at me for not telling her about the wagon.” He shuts his mouth abruptly and scowls like he regrets telling me all that. “We never missed a full moon again.”
“Never?” My real question is implied in my raised eyebrow.
West grimaces. “Never.”
I pull the blinds away from my window. “Is it—”
