I glance around the room as the new details settle in my mind. My eyes land on the white bunch of lace on the top of my clothes and then shoot to Colton. He’s looking back at me, but I can’t make out his thoughts.
Well, there goes my plan for space, shot to shit.
I suck my teeth. “So… roomies.”
He chuckles, surveying my luggage. “You better hope it’s a penthouse if you plan to fit all of this.”
“I’ll stick stuff in your room.”
“No.”
I grab a handful of my clothes and turn back to him. “Two drawers,” I say, and he tsks, shaking his head. “One drawer?”
He walks to the corner of my bed, one finger hooking the negligee. “I probably have space for this.”
I shoot up and snatch it from his hand, tossing it back in myunderwear drawer with a scowl. “Fine. I’ll fit everything in my room.”
He heads for the door. “It looks like packing is a long-term project. I’ll pick up dinner while you keep working.”
I tell myself not to watch him walk away. My brain commands my legs to stay locked, but they still walk to the doorway. I tell my eyes to mind their own business, but they somehow find his ass in those perfectly tailored slacks. I finally get control over my traitorous body and yank it back into my room like I’m fighting demonic possession.
Nope, nope, nope.
I’m going to take the next however long it takes to pick up food to reset. When that man steps back through my door, I’ll be composed, friendly, and definitelynothorny. And I’ll be packed.
But before I can stop myself, I tiptoe across the room to the dresser. I glance around like I’ll find hidden cameras to catch my guilty actions. I pause to listen for the door to make sure he isn’t circling back for something.
And then I sneak that damn negligee into my suitcase.
4
COLTON
MAY — THIRTEEN WEEKS TO WIN OVER THE FACULTY
I steppedfoot on a plane for the first time a week before my twenty-first birthday.
It was fucking terrifying.
West Virginia and Boston are close enough that when I needed to visit, I was able to take a train or, in desperate times, a shitty bus that made me wish I wasn’t going home at all. But planes were uncharted territory.
Without me asking, Quinn flew to Pittsburgh so we could fly out to Rome together. I spent the entire three-hour drive from home to the city a nervous wreck. But she was waiting there for me at the airport, two giant suitcases behind her and a backpack almost as big as her body strapped on. She talked for half of the almost ten-hour flight about the spots she wanted to show me—never making me feel bad for being too nervous to respond and letting me squeeze her hand every time my stomach dropped.
Like that first flight, I spend this one pushed up against Quinn, trying to focus on the movie in front of me instead of the way her leg presses against mine.
The memory of her flushed skin as we held that scrap of nothing between us plays on a constant loop, like it’s transposed over the tiny screen on the back of the seat, a thousand times more vivid than the superhero movie I put on. I don’t know what came over me in her apartment that day. It was like the angel on my shoulder passed out from the shock of the lingerie, leaving me defenseless against the devil pushing me to see how far we’d go, and now I’m left with a million what ifs.
What if Inez hadn’t called?
What if Quinn had followed through?
What if I’d kissed her when her eyes flicked to my lips?
It’s going to be a long summer sharing an apartment with her.
Once we gather Quinn’s six thousand bags, we grab a cab to our new place. It’s worth the extra cost—and fear, as the cabbie swerves between cars at an unholy speed—to see the city flying past us, flashes of concrete, marble, and steel making you feel like the taxi’s a time machine providing glimpses into history. It doesn’t matter how much time I spend here. Nothing can pull my attention from the world laid out before me. Not even Quinn.
When the cab drops us in front of an old building that definitely doesn’t have an elevator, Quinn looks between our luggage piled on the sidewalk and the small wooden door to our building. Then she clears her throat and gestures to her bags. “Well, get to it, Colton.”
