And I’m walking through it.
A hallway stretches before me, smelling immediately of boys. Carpet cleaner and various colognes masking something underneath that no one wants to identify.
My heart quickens.
Erik leads me up a stairwell and down a dimly lit corridor. And I follow him, because I don't know the way and he does. It’s as simple as that.
My stomach knots when we get to a dorm room door. The hallway narrows on me. I've been lying to myself. The entire walk here, I was pretending we were merely walking, or heading to a common room with couches scattered for the night owls or maybe a 24-hour kitchen where we woulddiscuss how to act now that we are here together. This is new for us. We are not at home.
Not in our world.
But there's just this door, with its small blackboard overhead and someone's name scrawled across it.
His name.
Erik Bellamy.
My heart is beating fast, but it also feels warm. That name means the world to me. That boy hung my stars and moon. Quite literally. He stood on a stool in my bedroom and stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and a big moon with a happy face that he called Happy Henri.
He unlocks the door.
When we enter, I notice the room is larger than mine, which is aduh-moment. I’m a first year, and he’s in his final year. Still, it’s larger than I expected.
Two double beds separated by a decent amount of space, two desks, and one long window.
His side of the room is immediately obvious to me; awards and trinkets and a picture frame are meticulously placed, not by size or use, but by how he perceives their value to him. His award for young entrepreneur of the year is front and centre while the clock he made in metalwork is being used as a paperweight on a stack of letters.
“No books?” I point out.
“Never heard of him,” he jokes, but it’s forced.
“I think we should talk,” I say, my stomach churning with betrayal. Asking him to back off after everything he has done for me?Is that betrayal?
“Okay,” he grunts. “Sit.”
I perch on the edge of his bed, smoothing my dress over my thighs, fingers fidgeting with the hem. I want to say, ‘Don’t you think that was a little over the top?’ ‘Don’t you think that wastoo much, too overprotective?’ I want him to meet me here, make it easy, and say he just lost his mind. That he forgot I’m a woman now. Not a little girl. That it won’t happen again. But none of these words reach my tongue.
My eyes shift to the other bed. Rumpled sheets and a phone charger dangling off the side—clearly not his. For Erik, ownership means things positioned, not thrown. He positions things and that’s where they need to remain.
Without another word, Erik fills a glass of water from a tap at the small kitchenette and brings it over. He holds it out. I’m not thirsty, but I take it automatically, my hand rising before my mind decides.
I sip from the cool rim. He watches my lips wrap around the glass, his gaze sliding down to my throat as I swallow. He sits beside me on the mattress, leaning forwards, elbows on his knees, fingers raking through his blond hair.
He groans. “I didn’t like that.” His hands drag down his face, and his eyes find mine. “You scared me there, Blesk.”
I look at my fingers. “I know.”
I didn’t.
But I should have.
"Going off with him like that in the dark?—”
"We just walked."
"I know. You said that already. You don’t know that guy like I do. You know he has a girlfriend, right?”
“He was just being friendly,” I insist.
