“So you’re telling me you didn’t have sex?” Renee didn’t want to let it go. She was starved for romance since she didn’t have one of her own currently.
“Nope.”
“I’m sure you will soon. You can’t deny chemistry like that for long. Sooner or later. Boom.”
The kissing had been quite boom. I couldn’t imagine anything being more intense than that.
“It’s not like that.”
“Uh, yes it is.”
“I hate to say she’s right, but Renee is right,” Darah said.
“Why do you hate to say I’m right?”
“Because you’re usually wrong when it comes to things like this.”
“Things like what?”
“Relationships. It’s not a bad thing. You just seem to think more with your head than your heart sometimes. It’s not a bad thing,” she said again, trying to sound like it was a compliment instead of an insult.
“Whatever,” Renee said, waving off the thinly veiled insult. “So have you guys talked about it yet?”
“No. I’m going to avoid talking as much as humanly possible. I can’t get involved with him. If we did, and then it ended, one of us would have to move out.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
Was it? I’d been so sure that the solution to my problems was Hunter moving out. If he wasn’t here, I wouldn’t see him all the time. I wouldn’t think about him all the time. I wouldn’t want him all the time.
“Honey, if he moves out, that’s not going to change your feelings. You’re still going to want to jump his bones if he lives here, or in Istanbul,” Renee said.
“What about Istanbul?” Hunter said as he opened the door.
“We were just talking about how awesome it would be to visit,” Renee said, not missing a beat. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“Uh huh,” Hunter said. I saw that he had grocery bags on his arms.
“You get your car fixed?” I asked.
“Yeah, it was a belt issue. I got taco stuff if anyone wants some.”
“But we don’t have sombreros or margaritas,” Renee said.
“Uh, no,” I said.
“We can’t have taco night without those things. They are essential.” Renee got up and grabbed her purse.
“Who’s coming with me on a hat and marg mission?” She gave a pointed look at Darah, who also got to her feet.
“I’m in,” Darah said.
Renee was trying to give me a subtle look, but it didn’t really work. She just looked like she was in pain.
“I’ll help you with the tacos,” I said, sighing and getting up from the couch. I guess Hunter and I were going to have to talk sooner rather than later thanks to my roommates’ interference.
“I got that fake meat stuff for you,” he said, pulling it out of the shopping bag.
“Thanks.” He’d also gotten me some bottles of cranberry-lime seltzer water, which I was addicted to.
We both were silent as we unpacked the bags, setting the stuff out on the counter. I took the initiative and started working on the vegetables while Hunter got two pans going with the meat and the fake stuff cooking.
“So are we going to talk about last night?” he said as he stirred each pan with two different wooden spoons. He was so considerate about keeping my food separate.
“I don’t know,” I said, washing a pepper in the sink. We were standing so close I bumped into him a few times. “Do you want to?”
“How about we talk about the fact that you say you don’t like me, but you kiss me and then you sleep with me?”
“First of all,” I said, wiping the pepper off vigorously with a paper towel and moving on to a second, “you were going to kiss me. I just made it happen faster. And second, you asked me to sleep with you. I was worried if you had another nightmare you were going to fall out of bed. I was looking out for your safety.” I moved to the cutting board and started chopping.
He snorted as he stirred the meat and non-meat.
“Yeah, that was why I woke up with your legs and arms and body wrapped around mine like an octopus.”
“You didn’t seem to mind.”
He didn’t answer for a second so I looked up.
“I didn’t,” he said quietly.
“Me neither.” We both thought about that for a second.
“So what now?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“What do we do now? We can’t just be roommates.”
“You said you didn’t like me.”
“I don’t like you. I don’t like how your hair smells, and how I can’t stop thinking about waking up and seeing your face. I hate how my bed felt empty when you left. I don’t like how good you were with my family, especially Harper, and how I wanted to see you with them again, but not just as a guest. As a member. You’re right. I don’t like you at all.”
“When did you change your mind?”
“My mind never changed. I’ve wanted you since the moment you opened the door and had that stunned look on your face. It just took me a while to admit it. Why deny it now? It is what it is and it’s not going to change.”
“Oh.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m going to be nice. I’m still going to be an ass. I’ll just be an ass who apologizes and brings you flowers to say he’s been a dick.”
“Chocolate,” I said.
“What?”
“I’d rather have chocolate when you apologize.”
“Chocolate it is.” He smiled. “So does that mean what I think it means?”
“No. It just means that you get to bring me chocolate when you’ve been an ass. I’m going to weigh three hundred pounds.” I focused my attention back on the peppers. I couldn’t think about Hunter’s declaration of… whatever it was.
Footsteps didn’t make me look up.
“Taylor, look at me. Please.” Damn. If only he didn’t say please.
“I can’t promise not to make you mad. I can’t promise that I won’t hurt you. All I can promise is that I want you in my life, and I’ll do anything to keep you there.”
“What about the bet?”
“It still stands. A bet is a bet. The stakes are just a little bit higher, that’s all.”
“So if I asked you to leave, would you?”
“No. This is my apartment just as much as it is yours. I’ll only leave under three conditions. The ball is in your court. I stick to my word. And I don’t want to leave. Leaving means I don’t get to see you all the time, and I don’t want that.”
I swallowed and tried to sort my scattered mind. Yes, I did like waking up with Hunter. Much, much more than I should. On the other hand, I couldn’t get closer to him. That would only lead to things I couldn’t deal with. I wasn’t a carefree girl who could just jump into a relationship. I had too much baggage. I couldn’t carry it myself, let alone foist it off on someone else.
I was fucked up. Much more so than he could imagine. While it was true Hunter had his own secret, it didn’t seem to burden him like mine did. He wore it like one of his tattoos, a part of him, but not a dominant part. Megan was right; that one night did define me. It had since I was twelve. It wasn’t going to change overnight.
If he got close, he was going to get burned. Or worse, he wouldn’t like what he found. I couldn’t let that happen.
“I wish you’d never moved in,” I said, stepping back and looking at the peppers. It took all my effort not to throw myself on him, to kiss him, to tell him that I wanted him. Because to say that I didn’t was the biggest lie I’d ever tell myself.
I wanted Hunter Zaccadelli more than I’d ever wanted anything.
My hands were shaking so bad that the knife slipped.
“Shit!”
“Here, run it under the water.” Hunter dragged me to the sink, putting my bleeding finger under the water. The cut wasn’t bad, so I ripped my hand away as quick as I could.
“Thanks, I think I can manage. I’ve somehow survived nearly twenty years of life without your help, thank you very much.”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
“Yes.”
No, no, no.
He went back to the taco meat and non-meat, and I went back to the veggies. We didn’t speak again until Darah and Renee returned with sombreros and margarita mix and Mase and Dev and Sean and a few others from around the dorm.
I was relieved Hunter and I had a buffer of people to keep us apart. I didn’t know what I was going to do tonight. In our dark, quiet room with just the two of us, I was vulnerable. I was much more likely to change my mind under the influence of large pieces of Hunter’s exposed skin and the ease of sliding under the covers and sleeping with him again.
It would have been so easy.
Hunter went to bed early, and by the time I was ready myself, he had his back turned to me and the light off. He didn’t even say goodnight.
Eighteen
He avoided me the next day, even at work. We had three carts of documents and things to reshelf on the closed stacks, which meant we were going to be alone up there for hours. Luckily, I brought the radio and turned it on as soon as we wheeled the carts, Dolly and Daisy and Dulcie, off the elevators. One of the other student workers had named all the carts and put little cow faces on them. I understood the obsession with naming inanimate objects. Exhibit A: Sassy, my car.