I'm also a liar.
"Any idea how much longer I should expect to be locked out of my room?" he asks.
"They just . . . um . . . got started." I move my backpack from beside me on the couch and slide my books into it. "I'll get out of your way."
He turns back to me. "You don't have to do that." The sound of moaning comes through the walls, and Arrow drags his hand over his face. "In fact, please don't go anywhere. I spend more time than I'd like to admit sitting here alone while they . . . do what they do. It's starting to make me feel like a pervert."
I laugh softly. I know what he means. Bailey isn't exactly quiet.
"Want a drink?" He strolls over to the mini-fridge under the window and sinks to his haunches.
I shake my head. "I don't drink."
He grabs something out of the fridge and stands. Turning, he quirks a brow and tosses a bottle of water onto the couch beside me. "You must be pretty damn dehydrated."
"Oh. Thanks."
Arrow takes a seat in the chair just as the rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk of the headboard hitting the wall comes from his bedroom.
I'm hypnotized by the movement of his throat as he drains his water. Hypnotized. By his throat. I'm so pathetic. Maybe I should have gone to that party.
He leans forward, his elbows on his knees. "I can think of a lot of awkward scenarios for meeting a beautiful girl, but this one takes the cake."
My cheeks burn. Beautiful. He just called me a beautiful girl. My stomach is a mosh pit of butterflies flailing to the beat of my hammering heart. I search for a clever response but come up empty. God, he even smells good.
Bailey screams out, and Arrow chuckles. "Think if we started being as loud as them, they would feel as awkward as we do?"
"Knowing Bailey, she'd just cheer us on."
His eyes shift to the door then back to me, but his annoyance has faded, and now he looks amused. "What year are you, Mia?"
"I'm not. I mean, I don't go here." He must not have understood what I meant when I said I was just a townie. I was trying to explain that I didn't go to BHU.
"Oh, are you visiting? Where do you go to school?"
"Terrace Community College," I say reluctantly. Blackhawk Hills University is a great school, and I'd love to graduate from here, but I can't afford it. Unlike Bailey, I'm not willing to strip to make it happen. I don't judge her for her decisions, but I know my limits. So I'm taking one or two classes a semester at the community college and working on an associate's degree in criminal justice. "Do you play football too?" I ask just to move conversation away from me. He's gotta play some sport. That body. Those big hands. Sweet mother of Jesus, a girl could go into shock from an estrogen overdose looking at those hands. My body pumps out the hormones like the survival of the human species depends on giving this man my babies.
"Are you joking?" he asks.
"Um, no. I know Mason's on the team, and I thought maybe you were, too."
He smirks, obviously amused by my question. "You don't follow sports much, do you?"
"Not at all," I admit.
He nods. "Yeah, I play ball." He points to the door opposite his own. "So do Brogan and Chris."
"Are you all friends, then?"
"Oh yeah." He grins. "In fact, initially Brogan and I were bunking, but Chris couldn't stand Mason's busy-er, social life." He drops his gaze. "Sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?"
"Bailey's your friend. You probably don't want to know about her new guy's bedroom activities prior to her."
I shrug. If that did indeed bother Bailey, she'd have no room to talk. "That's between the two of them."
Bailey cries out again, and the headboard thunking grows faster.
Arrow's eyes cut to the door, then back to me. His cheeks are the tiniest bit pink. "So if you don't go to BHU, I'm guessing you know Bail from high school?"
"We go back further than that," I say. "Bailey's been my best friend since we were four, and I caught her stealing my Barbie from the baby pool on my deck."
He laughs. "Interesting start to a friendship."
"I didn't have a choice," I say, grinning. "I said I was going to tell on her, and she said I couldn't and I had to be her friend. Or so goes the story Mom told me. I honestly don't remember a time when Bailey wasn't my best friend."
"Brogan and I are the same way," he says. "Well, minus the Barbie."
"I'm surprised we've never met before," I say, remembering from our texts that he's from Blackhawk Valley too. "I'm guessing you didn't go to high school at East."
"Westside," he says.
Our eyes lock. There's something about his eyes. They're not quite brown but not hazel, either. More like the color of rich honey. They're warm eyes. Kind eyes. But maybe a little haunted. Too mature for his age.
I swallow as his gaze drifts to my lips and lingers there for a minute.
The moment is broken when Bailey screams, "God! There! Yes!"
A few months ago, I accused her of being loud only because she likes the idea of people hearing, and she just laughed, neither confirming nor denying. At this moment, I'm confident in my hypothesis.
Arrow bites back a grin. "You wanna get out of here? Go for a walk and let the porn stars finish their business?"
"Please. I'd love that."
He opens the door and waves me through. "After you."
I follow him to the elevator and out the dorm's side door.
In promotional materials, BHU boasts it has one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country. That might be true. The pedestrian campus is covered in paved walking paths that weave over and around the wooded green hills and between the historic brick buildings.
Autumn is just starting to make her presence known, and a light breeze rustles through the trees, showing flashes of the first red, yellow, and orange leaves.
Arrow cuts his eyes to me as we walk. "So, Mia, that's a pretty name."
I laugh. "A guy named Arrow is asking me about my name?"
He arches a brow. "It's Spanish, right? Does it mean something? I took Latin in high school, so I'm pretty much useless in the foreign-language department."
"Mia means mine in Spanish."
"So you essentially walk around with people calling you theirs all the time?"
Laughing, I shake my head. "I never really think about it. It's just a name."
"Do you speak Spanish, then?"
Sometimes when people ask me this it feels like a politically correct way for them to ask if I'm Mexican, but for some reason the question doesn't seem so calculated coming from Arrow. "My mother was born in Mexico, and I grew up with her speaking Spanish at home." The admission comes with an ache that resides in the center of my heart. I miss that-the sweet cadence of my mother's voice as she chattered on about her day in her native tongue.
"I always thought it would be amazing to speak another language," he says.
"So, logically, you took Latin."
He stops walking and squats to pick up a smooth purple leaf from the ground. He grins up at me as he rubs it between his fingers. "Dad thought it would help me get into med school if the whole football thing doesn't work out." He stands and hands me the leaf. "It matches your sweater."
It's a redbud leaf-purple and heart-shaped, and probably the sweetest thing a boy has ever given me. "I love autumn." I keep my eyes focused on the leaf, too embarrassed by my own reaction to risk him seeing what it means to me.
"Football, bonfires, parking by the lake and watching the leaves float on the water in the moonlight." He swallows, as if the description brings back painful memories.
I instantly imagine experiencing exactly what he described but in his arms, wrapped in a blanket, our bodies pressed close to stay warm.
His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. "I used to love the fall."
"Used to?"
He shrugs and shifts his gaze back to the trail as he starts walking again. I follow alongside him and wait for him to explain. Instead, he says, "You really don't follow football?"
"Sorry." To me, following sports always seemed like a luxury reserved for rich people with too much time on their hands. Intellectually, I know that's not true. Bailey grew up in the same neighborhood I did, and she's obsessed with sports-well, her obsession is really with athletes and the way they look in their tight pants, but it's more or less the same thing. "I've tried to watch the Super Bowl a couple of times, but I don't understand anything that's happening on the field."
"Do you want to learn?" The melancholy I thought I detected in him when he talked about the season is gone, and now he sounds almost hopeful. It's cute.