Rm w/a Vu(3)

Pushing my way past the gawkers in the dorm hall, I proceed to our R.A.’s room. I really hope she can move me into another room as soon as possible. It’s the middle of the semester, and I know it’ll be tough, but I’m not above hoping for a miracle.

My knuckles barely touch the wooden door before it’s yanked open. It’s almost as if she was expecting me. “Juliette, what can I do for you?” Daphne asks with a smile that brightens her green eyes.

“Daph, you have to help me out. I need to move out of my dorm. Please tell me you’ve got another room or bed available somewhere.” I flop down on her bed and let my heavy bag fall to the floor with a heavy thud.

Daphne leans against her desk, pulling her shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair into a ponytail. She looks at me, but she doesn’t speak for a minute. She’s trying to figure out what’s happened. Yes, she’s my R.A., but Daphne Robicheaux is also one of my closest friends. We met last year and started hanging out whenever we weren’t busy with our studies.

“Is Delilah’s revolving door of men still active?” she asks carefully.

I laugh, turning my head to her. “Something like that.” Daphne’s eyebrows rise, waiting for me to continue. “Her latest customer was Ben. My Ben.” Her eyebrows stay up, but her mouth falls open. “Yeah. That was my reaction too.”

A loud, repetitive knock on Daphne’s door fills the room. She shakes her head and pushes off the desk to answer it. It shouldn’t surprise me to hear Ben’s voice, and I refuse to get up to go talk to him when he commands Daphne to send me out.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Connely,” Daphne tells him fiercely. I can almost visualize her feral stare as she looks two feet up into his eyes, and it makes me smile.

“Don’t start with me. I want to talk to her now.” He sounds angry, which is laughable.

I push myself off the bed, walk to the door, and touch Daphne’s shoulder. Slowly, she turns and looks at me. “I’m going to go and stay with my parents. You’ll call me if something opens up?” While I know that Daphne would gladly let me crash in her dorm for a few days, I don’t want to run the risk of another run-in with Ben or Delilah. What better way to avoid that than to stay with my over-protective father?

“Juliette…” I ignore Ben as I squeeze through the very narrow space he’s left between him and the doorframe.

People are still staring, and it doesn’t help that Ben is following me through the dorm and out to my car, yelling my name the entire time. There’s a part of me that wants to turn around and tell him to screw off, but I know it will only open the lines of communication. And talking to him isn’t something I ever want to do again.

“God damn it, Juliette!”

I stop dead in my tracks, right next to my car, and turn on my heel to glare at him. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Ben. I didn’t do anything wrong. You’d do well to remember that.”

“You were never around!” he shouts, waving his arms in the air like a maniac. Our audience has followed us outside and is now watching our little soap opera play out. “You were always off doing something, and were so pre-occupied whenever we were together.”

My eyes widen, and I stare at him dumbly before I find my words. “So this is my fault? No. I don’t think so.” Shaking my head almost violently, I turn and unlock my old, green Civic before throwing my bag in. Instead of staying on the white leather seat, it falls to the floor after hitting the passenger side door. “And for your information, it’s not like I was off doing someone. I was studying. We are in college, you know. It’s what we do.”

Ben doesn’t seem to think he was wrong. At all. “Yeah, well, I have needs, Juliette.”

“Yup, I know.” I nod, pressing my lips together. “And it’s no longer up to me to meet them. Don’t come by my parents’ house either. My dad doesn’t take too kindly to people who cheat on his daughter.”

I hop into my car and start it up. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel the blood pulsing through my veins, can hear it in my ears. I sit there for a minute, trying to stop the shaking in my hands before I put the vehicle into drive. Driving all the way to my parents’ place isn’t something I want to do, as it’s a longer commute than I would like, but I really have no other options at this point.

Once I feel a little more in control, I put the car in gear and am just pulling away when a very large hand flattens against my window with a BANG! “JULIETTE!” I pretend not to hear him, pretend not to see him, and I press my foot down on the accelerator, my tires squealing against the hot pavement.