Beth’s door was closed, so I figured it was safe to run back to my room wrapped in a towel. After I shut my door, I threw on some underwear and grabbed a pair of jeans from my dresser, hitching my legs through them quickly. When I pulled my jeans up, I noticed something unusual–the bottoms of my jeans barely reached my ankles. Thinking back to when I bought them at the beginning of summer, I could’ve sworn they’d been a little long on me.
I pushed the thought from my head and stuck my feet into my flip-flops. I had to be mistaken. There’s no way I grew two to three inches in the past three months.
I grabbed a shirt out of my closet and pulled it on, then dashed into the living room and picked my bag up from the couch.
Huh. Beth’s door was still closed. She was usually up by now. Maybe she overslept like I had.
I knocked twice in quick succession before opening her door. “Beth, are you–”
Whoa. Beth was in bed with Josh and they were–
I squeezed my eyes shut and quickly stepped back into the living room, closing her door. But the image of a very naked Beth riding a very naked Josh reverse cowgirl-style was seared into my brain…as was the image of her touching herself while she did it. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were–” My face burned as the words stumbled out of my mouth. “Sorry. I’m leaving now.”
As I left the dorm, I tried to shake the image from my head, but it was burned into my retinas.
“You’ll be working closely with your lab partners this semester, so get to know them. Make sure you exchange phone numbers and email addresses, because I will not accept ‘I didn’t know how to get in touch with them’ as an excuse for…”
Mrs. Beauregard’s voice droned out as I stared at my biology lab manual. Of course my lab partner–someone I was apparently supposed to become thisclose with–had to be someone I’d walked in on having sex. And not just regular, missionary sex, but full-on porn sex.
Josh cleared his throat next to me. “Ready to get started?”
I nodded, still unable to meet his eyes, and grabbed my book, following him to one of the nearby experiment stations set up around the classroom. I mumbled something to him about getting the beakers when my pocket vibrated. As I walked over to grab them, I pulled my phone out and saw I had a text from Gabriel:
Coffee?
I quickly typed a response:
Yeah, 1:15 ok?
Shoving the phone back in my pocket, I grabbed three beakers and carried them back to our table, setting them in-between Josh and I.
I perked up a little at the prospect of seeing Gabriel today. Our interactions were always…interesting, to say the least. He was obviously a ladies’ man, but it didn’t really bother me like it did with Thomas. Maybe it was because Thomas had somehow managed to get under my skin, whereas Gabriel was just…Gabriel. I didn’t give a shit who he slept with.
“Um, Em?”
Josh’s voice distracted me and I made the mistake of meeting his gaze. All I saw in my mind’s eye was him under Beth, his face contorted with what I assumed was pleasure as he pumped away beneath her, thrusting himself into her repeatedly–all of which made his balls swing to and fro, producing a light slapping sound every time they hit his thighs.
I barely stifled the shudder that threatened to overtake me. Those swinging balls would haunt me for the rest of my life, I was sure of it. I blinked in an effort to scour the image from my mind, and said, “Huh?”
Josh’s face grew pink as he looked down. “About this morning…”
I put my hand up to stop him from continuing. “Don’t worry about it. Never happened. Besides, I didn’t see anything.”
He exhaled slowly–relieved, I’m sure–and said, “Okay, good.”
My pocket vibrated again and I pulled my phone out under the table to check the text from Gabriel:
See you then.
I smiled and tucked my phone away, then opened my lab manual to the correct page. “Shall we?”
Gabriel’s car was already in the parking lot when I pulled in, but when I went inside, he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I stood on my tip-toes and scanned the moderately packed coffee house again, but there was no sign of him.
Hmm, that’s weird…
I didn’t let his absence stop me from ordering, and when I got my iced mocha, I went to a small booth in the corner to wait.
About five minutes later, I saw the handicapped bathroom’s door swing open out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over, thinking nothing of it until I saw Gabriel emerge. With his hair disheveled and his face flushed, he finished tucking his white oxford back into his slacks. He looked up and met my eyes, surprise flickering across his face for a split second before it was replaced with his usual easy-going demeanor.