Crashing Into You (9 page)

“Evan?” I turned away. “What
are you doing?”

He leaned his head down and
brushed his lips against my cheek. His mouth hovered over my ear. “Don’t tell
me you’ve never thought about it.” Then he kissed me, lightly, on my neck.

My knees buckled. If Evan hadn't
been pushed up so close to me, I would have collapsed to the ground.

“Oh my God…
Evan
.”

He wrapped his arm around my
back, and pulled me even closer.

I wanted this. I wanted this
so much. I’d been dreaming about it since the moment I first laid eyes on him, way
back in English 101, freshman year.
 

But it didn't feel right. Not
with my roommate still in the picture. Not with their anniversary just days away.
I wanted Evan completely, but not like this.
 

He stared into my eyes. Touched
his fingers against my chest.
 

“Evan…” I said.

He smiled, and moved his lips
toward mine. “Sydney…”
    

I pulled away. A small raindrop
touched the top of my head. “Whoa, what?” I looked up. "Did you just feel
that?”
           

“Huh? Feel what?”

“I think it’s…” I didn’t even
have to finish my sentence. The rain started coming down hard, and fast.

“Oh
crap
,” Evan said.

“Run!” I shouted, and we both
raced around the trees, over to the front of McCarthy Hall.

The rain pelted the ground so
hard that by the time I found cover under the canopy, I was drenched with rain
from head to toe. Evan joined me at my side, just as soaked as I was. I pointed
at him, and we both started laughing.

“I guess Melanie was right,
after all,” I said.

He nodded, as he patted his
hands against his ruined jacket and jeans. “Yeah, I guess she was.” He reached
his hand toward mine again, but he didn’t try to touch it. He had to know as
well as I did that our little moment had passed.

“Did you…” Evan started.

“Did I what?”

He bit down on his lower lip,
like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to ask it. “Did you want me to walk you
to your room?”

I sighed. Of course I did. I
wanted it more than anything.

But I knew he couldn't. I
shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Evan. I think I’m just gonna
go to bed.”

He nodded, real fast, and
said, “All right.”

I put my card in the slot.
Pushed the door open. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

I entered the building and
let the door shut behind me. When I reached the other side of the entrance
hall, I turned around and waved. He was still outside, still in the cold, still
with the rain to contend with. He waved back, with little enthusiasm. He turned
around, put his jacket over his head, and started running back down the hill.

I pushed the elevator button.
I usually took the stairs, but I was too depressed to perform any real exercise.

“It was the right thing,” I
said, as I rode up. I rambled to myself, on and on, and paced back and forth. “No,
that was definitely the right thing. Not while she’s your roommate, Sydney.
Come on. If he really likes me, he'll just... he'll break up with her. Yeah.
That's what he'll do.”

I took a deep breath, and
slammed my fist against the wall, twice. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his
cheeks, his dimples, those wanting lips—so I kept them open. I headed
down the third floor hallway, and entered my dorm. It was pitch black inside.

“Melanie?” I asked.

No answer. She hadn't come
home early. She was still at the party—as I expected.

I didn’t brush my teeth, or
wash my face. I just curled up on my bed, and stared at the bunk above me.

Evan liked me. I kept
thinking it over and over again.

I’m not sure how long I stayed
awake. I tossed and turned, tried to clear my head, to no avail. Evan wanted
me. I wanted him. But it wasn’t right. Would it ever be right?

I finally dozed off, sometime
after midnight, but I didn’t sleep all the way to morning. Something woke me
up. The door opening. A loud thud.

I opened my eyes. The room
was all fuzzy.

“Hello?” I said. I blinked a
few times. “Melanie? Is that you?”

“Uhh, yeah,” she said,
softly, from above. She didn't sound too good.

“Hey. How was the party?”

“Fine,” she said, after a few
seconds of silence. Her voice sounded not just tired, but dejected, like
something bad had happened. I decided not to interrogate her, though; it was
3:30 in the morning.
 

“Well… goodnight,” I said.

I sort of had to pee, but
didn’t have the energy to get up. I laid my head back against the pillow, and
fell asleep.
 

Chapter 11

We were soaked, standing on
opposite sides of the elevator. His white shirt was see-through, and his tight
pants looked too uncomfortable to bear.

Evan circled me, inspected
every inch of my naked body, and struck his fist against the EMERGENCY button.
He pressed his chest against my back, ran his fingers down the crease of my
ass. When he started kissing me on the back of my neck, I let out a loud moan.

“Evan… stop…”

“Oh God... Sydney…”

“Stop, it isn’t right...”

“I know,” Evan said. “That's
what makes it so
fun
.”

He whirled me around, gazed
into my eyes. We locked our lips together, as I sunk my fingernails into his lower
back. I pulled him across the empty elevator, and pushed him up against the
wall. I removed his wet shirt, and unbuttoned his jeans. I pushed my hands against
his boxer briefs, against his hard-on.

“Oh my God,” Evan said, as he
breathed against my shoulder. “That feels so good.”

I dropped to my knees, pulled
down on his jeans, and started kissing the adorable tuft of hair beneath his
navel.

He pulled me back up to my
feet, kissed me on the lips again, and said, “You know how much I love you?”

I let out a deep breath, and
readied my answer. But he didn't give me time to respond.

He kissed me even harder. His
back glided up against all the buttons, and the elevator shook for a second.

Then it started to drop.

But I didn’t mind; neither of
us did. The elevator started plummeting all the way to the ground, and I still
pulled Evan to the floor, still wrapped my legs around his back. I pulled his
boxers off, and then he slammed his body against me so hard I thought I would
break.

“I want you,” he said. “I
want you
now
—”

The elevator struck the
bottom floor, and we both launched up against the ceiling.

“Evan!” I screamed.

I flung myself up and struck
my forehead against Melanie's top bunk. The pain was immediate. I sat back
down, and brought my hand to the top of my head.
 

“Oww...” I said.

I looked around. I was not in
an elevator. I was back in the bedroom. Rightly thrown out of an impossible
dream.

The sunshine from the window
almost blinded me, so I pressed my head back down against my pillow. The room
was dead silent; I didn't hear any movement from up top. Either Melanie was
still sound asleep, or she was already out the door and making the most of a
new day.

I reached down beside the bed
for my phone, and glanced at the time.

“Oh whoa,” I said. It was already
11:30 AM.

There was a text from Lukas,
too. He was already in the library. I jumped out of bed, stretched for a minute.
I looked out the window. The clouds and rain were gone. It was beautiful out, a
perfect day not to sit in a library studying, surrounded by textbooks and binders
and huge stacks of index cards—but such was my life.

“Just a few more days,” I
said.

And then
summer
.

I walked to the bathroom door
and knocked. “Melanie? You in there?” No answer. I went inside and hopped into
the shower.

When I showed up at the
library a few minutes past noon, I found Lukas sitting by himself at a circular
desk, three books sprawled out in front of him, his fists shoved up against his
cheeks, and his eyes bright red; he had already been studying for four hours. We
quizzed each other on sociology for a bit, but I knew pretty soon after I
arrived that he needed a break, so we grabbed a snack at the cart out front,
and took a short walk around the quad. We talked about our new place, about all
the fun things we were going to do this summer. We didn’t bring up Evan at all.

I didn’t really want to tell
anyone, most especially Lukas, about what happened last night. I needed time to
think it over. Was Evan ever going to break up with Melanie? I hoped he would,
and I hoped he wouldn’t. I was so conflicted, and I was grateful when Lukas
stuck to other topics, even though I had forced him to leave the library early
the night before. It was almost as if he knew I didn’t want to discuss anything
Evan, like he could literally read my mind.

We studied the rest of the
afternoon, took a short break for dinner, then returned to the library for some
last minute cramming. By the time we departed at 10 PM I was so exhausted I
could barely walk. My brain was so fried, so jammed with information, I didn’t
know if I’d remember my own name
in
the morning.

I walked into my dorm and sat
down on my bed. I stretched out my arms and legs, and let out a loud yawn. Even
though I’d only been up for eleven hours, I was ready to go right back to sleep.

I plugged my phone into my
charger, and set my alarm for 6:30 AM. My sociology final wasn't until 8, but I
needed some time in the morning to decompress, before I sat in a room for hours
on end taking a difficult test.

I set the phone down, and dropped
back against my bed.

And that's when it hit me.

Melanie knew. That he had tried
to kiss me. That he didn't love her anymore. That’s why she was gone; it had to
be. Evan probably spilled the news to her last night, or sometime today, and
she didn’t want to see me, not tonight—and not ever again.

I obsessed over the thought
for a few minutes but didn’t lie awake for hours, like last night. I was way
too exhausted for that. My head hit the pillow, and soon enough, I was out.

My eyes shot open the next
morning before my alarm even went off. I jumped in the shower, got dressed, and
put on a little blush, just enough to make me look decent. I grabbed my sociology
binder and headed downstairs.

The walk from the sophomore
dorms to U-Hall would have been filled with a lot more tension if it hadn't
been so dizzyingly gorgeous outside on that early Monday morning. Birds soared
through the air above me; the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashed against the beach
in the far distance. When I first moved to L.A. I worried that I was going to
be surrounded by nothing but smog and honking cars, but Loyola Marymount was in
its own little world up on that bluff, a paradise unlike any other.

I arrived at the classroom
ten minutes early, so I didn't immediately step inside. I looked through the
tiny window on the door. Only two students were seated, and neither one was
Evan. Part of me was relieved he wasn't there yet; part of me wished he
wouldn't show up at all. I needed to be focused on the final, not distracted by
Evan's wandering eye.

I found my seat on the right
side of the classroom and took out my notes. I looked over them one last time,
as the minutes crept toward 8 AM, and as the thirty other students made their
way inside. I looked behind me. The room was full. Only one student was
missing: Evan.

“All right, everyone,” Mr.
Hernandez said, an intimidating stack of stapled packets in his hands. “Please
put everything under your desk. All you need is a pen or pencil. I’m going to
hand out the scratch paper first, then I’ll give you the test. Are there any
questions?”

I glanced back. Still no
Evan. I looked at the clock. 7:59.

I raised my hand. “Yes, Miss
Baker?” the teacher asked.

“Mr. Hernandez, I don’t think
everyone’s here yet.”

He shrugged. “That’s not my
problem,” he said, and looked right past me. “All right, let’s begin. If you
will please—”

The door swung open, just as
Mr. Hernandez set the first piece of scratch paper on my desk. It was Evan,
breathing heavily, a sweat stain forming at the top of his white t-shirt.

“Mr. Taylor,” the teacher
said. “So glad you could make it.”

Evan landed hard on his seat,
and took out a pen. When Mr. Hernandez gave him the scratch paper, he used it
as a towel for his face.

I looked back at him, waited
for him to make eye contact with me. When he finally did, he waved, that same
friendly wave he’d been giving me all year. I pouted. Had he already erased Saturday
night from his mind?