“That’s what taxis are for. I don’t like hearing you like this.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are obviously not fine. How could you be? Claire, you don’t have to pretend with me.”
“It’s almost nine o’clock. I’m not finished studying and Senia’s coming back soon.”
I sit up in bed and reach for my crutches. “I promise I’ll let you study. And you know I have no problem with Senia being there. I haven’t hung out with her in a while.”
Senia loves me. I don’t know how she feels about surfer boy, but I remember her being pissed as hell the day Claire broke up with me. She was always on my side when Claire and I fought. It drove Claire crazy.
“You’d better not try anything like what happened earlier today. That is not going to happen again so just get that out of your mind.”
“I just want to be there for you.”
“I should be done studying by eleven.”
“Good, because that’s about how long it’s going to take me to hobble there on my crutches. See ya, babe.”
The sound of her laughter as I hang up makes me happy. She needs someone there. She probably doesn’t want to burden Senia with this stuff since they’re both carrying big workloads with their classes. But she needs someone to talk to and I’d rather it be me than him.
The taxi drops me off near the entrance at Spencer Hall at 10:44 p.m. It’s a Saturday, so people are still coming and going and I wait less than ten minutes for someone to open the door to let me in. Unfortunately, it’s a group of girls who look about ready to go partying and they instantly recognize me.
“Oh. My. God!” a blonde girl in a purple blouse cries. “You’re Chris Knight!”
The other girls snap their heads in my direction and fix me with hungry stares. “I’m just here to see a friend.”
“You have a friend in this dorm? OMG!” the blonde girl cries.
“That is so cool!” says another girl with auburn hair and red lipstick. “Can you tell us who it is?”
“So we can stalk him?” the blonde girl says, and all four of them roar with laughter.
“Sorry. I’m trying to keep a low profile. You ladies understand, right?” I flash them my crowd smile and it seems to work as they all let out a collective sigh. The blonde girl holds the door open for me to hop inside on my crutches and I nod at her. “Thanks, girls. Be good tonight.”
The blonde girl sighs as she lets the door fall closed behind me. I pull my hood up over my head so I don’t have any more run-ins and quickly make my way to Claire’s dorm. Claire opens the door wearing plaid green pajama pants and a pink tank top.
“I dressed up for you,” she says when she catches me checking her out.
“You know how much plaid turns me on.”
“If you weren’t crippled, I’d kick you.”
Senia gets up from her bed and she’s as tall as me now that I’m hunched over these crutches. “Christopher, Christopher, Christopher. Two visits in one week. Tell me, why have you stayed away so long?”
She holds out her arms for a hug and I grab both my crutches in one hand so I can give her a one-armed hug.
“Because I’ve been a huge ass, but I’m working on not being one anymore.”
She lets go of me and smiles. “Right answer. It’s almost as if you always know the perfect thing to say.” She winks as she turns to go back to her bed.
“Aw, come on. I was counting on you being nice to me.”
She grins as she grabs her phone off her bed, stuffs her headphones in her ears, and slides in under her covers. “I’m going to read now so I’d appreciate it if you all could keep the sex noises down.”
I turn to Claire and she shakes her head. “Don’t get any ideas.”
She grabs a textbook and her laptop off her bed so I can sit. She sets the book and the laptop on a desk then leans against the desk as she stares at the floor.
“You can sit down. I’m not going to try anything. I promise.”
She narrows her eyes at me for a moment before she relents and sits near the pillow while I sit near the foot of the bed. There are at least two feet of safe distance between us, but it may as well be two miles.
“I don’t want you to have to use the money in that trust account, but I think it should go to good use,” I begin the speech I’ve been rehearsing in my head since I got into the taxi thirty minutes ago. “I want to match that two hundred grand and we can donate everything to a charity for victims of sexual assault.”
She pulls her legs up onto the bed to sit cross-legged. Her gaze slides over my face as if she’s remembering something then she smiles, the smile that I love so much.