His face darkened. “Cool cool cool.”
Charlotte realized in a rush that he assumed they were still in contact. “We’re not— We don’t talk.”
“You don’t need to explain.” Reece ran a hand through his hair again and a few more strands fell into his eyes. Agitation came off him in waves. “I’m sorry, I’m being a jerk,” he said. He took a step back, putting his hands up. “This is none of my business.”
“But it is your business!” she blurted out.
He raised an eyebrow at her tone. Charlotte didn’t care. She couldn’t look away from his face, tight with confusion and hurt. She needed him to understand that she really was sorry that she’d failed him. And that there was so much he didn’t know, so much that she never told him, that explained her behavior.
She’d never wanted to hurt Reece. She’d never meant for any of this to happen.
He took a deep breath. “Thank you for the apology. I appreciate it.” Instead of getting huffy like he might have done as a student, this new and improved Reece centered himself with practiced patience.
His eyes met hers, guarded under the fluorescent lights. Despite his intentional calm, there was so much in his gaze that she couldn’t read. “I’m sorry too,” Reece added. “This was something really great, before it wasn’t.”
She couldn’t look away from his stare, laced with sincerity and more dangerous emotions she didn’t dare name. She suddenly remembered the moment she noticed Reece’s rich laugh for the first time at the 3Ds support group. She remembered watching him thunder across the ice at a hockey game while Jio cheered beside her in the bleachers. She remembered her breathless gasp as he looked up at her while his mouth pressed against her inner thigh.
Something really great.
Once upon a time they clawed at each other, struggling to stay silent at the back of Mead Library during finals week. Desperate to touch and be touched, back when they were young and ravenous and stupid, their futures unbound, the taste of freedom in their throats.
Their relationship was something great, a firecracker burning bright and fast in the damp spring air. She also remembered that it was her fault they’d walked away with their fingers singed.
“It was great,” she agreed.
Before it wasn’t.
Charlotte studied him. Reece had changed in little ways too. She recognized the new wariness on his face. Stubble clung to his jawline, softer than it used to be.
His eyes were on her mouth again. Was the sexual tension between them just her imagination, another trick of déjà vu? Did he feel the same trapdoor sensation of falling headfirst into the past? He held her gaze a little too long, she was almost sure.
Charlotte licked her bottom lip, her own nervous tell, and Reece started and looked away.
“You know what’ll cheer you up?” Reece asked, unaware of the desire thawing in her chest. “Pong.” He adopted a cocky smile, his eyebrows waggling.
Charlotte groaned and shook her head. “No way.”
“You know you want to show those soccer pricks how it’s done.” Even when he used his low, seductive voice, Reece’s eyes sparkled with humor. “Let’s be twenty-one again. Let’s pretend Barack Obama is still president. We can play with water.”
“Reece…”
“Let’s go back in time, Charlie.”
It was the perfect invitation. Reece might as well have read her mind. She wanted to go back to those humid nights in his backyard when they licked away each other’s anxiety.
And god, did she want to say yes. She wanted to stand side by side with him at the end of that table and razz each other when they missed the easy shots. She wanted to goof around and slide her hand into the back pocket of his jeans.
But the idea of going back to that lounge, stuffed to the brim with noise and alcohol and people she used to know, was too much. She wasn’t used to the aggressive noise and blur of college parties. Even at her most confident, she’d never been a social butterfly. Especially now, when Ben could emerge from any corner, his knowing stare pinning her feet to the floor as her mind slid back in time.
“I think I’m done for the day,” Charlotte admitted. “It’s been kind of a rough one.”
Reece picked up on her dark energy. His head tilted to the side, all platonic concern once again. Whatever he saw on her face, it was enough for him to know she didn’t want to be convinced. “Okay. It’s only Thursday. We have plenty of time.”
Great. Three more days of this.
A sharp laugh ricocheted down the stairwell behind them, making Charlotte flinch. She knew he noticed by the way he stepped toward her automatically, like he wanted to protect her from the sound. “Let me walk you home,” he suggested.
She searched his offer for innuendo, but he exuded Older Brother Energy, the words innocent. She frowned, burying her disappointment (a deep, impenetrable blue). Her feelings were tomorrow’s problem. She’d deal with them later.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m on this floor. Room 107.”
The farther away they walked, the dimmer the noise from upstairs became. Her brain quieted like it always did when she left a crowded space.
She followed Reece down the long, winding hallway. Because they were partially underground, fluorescent lights kept the dorm’s ground floor brightly lit at all hours. The harsh white glow and the lack of windows to the outside world made it feel suspended in time. Déjà vu returned: It could be the August morning nine years ago when her classmates first arrived on campus and moved into identical cinder-block suites, two kids to a room. Only the silence reminded Charlotte that she was an adult who was not where she was supposed to be.
She didn’t want to go back to her room. She wasn’t ready to lie in her narrow bed unable to sleep, taunted by insecurities. She didn’t want to imagine what Ben thought of her swift retreat at the career center, or wonder if Reece’s jokes were flirtation or just kindness. Nor did she want to scroll through Roger’s email inbox to distract herself from the success of her peers. Even if she did calm down enough to drift off, Ben’s taunting, braggy voice would follow her into her dreams. She couldn’t be alone in that cinder-block box with her feelings, with this longing and fear and humiliation. Not just yet.
Without thinking, Charlotte stopped walking. Reece noticed she wasn’t following him and turned around. For a moment he just looked at her, leaned against a wall and angled toward him, a dare in her posture. Her skin felt hot as she watched his stare move from her lips to the pale arch of her neck to the slight curve of her breasts.
Her body coursed with adrenaline and cheap beer. She trembled. She felt prone, available. She wanted the distraction only he could offer her.
Let’s go back in time, Charlie. Was this what he had in mind?
Reece blinked. He didn’t walk away but something stopped him from coming closer, some hesitation she wasn’t privy to but could imagine easily enough. There were plenty of reasons why their hooking up was a bad idea. Not that long ago he fell for her, and she just let him fall.
This school belonged to her once too. Before she met Ben and lost herself, before their breakup turned campus into a haunted house of repressed trauma. She loved the vivid colors: the bright white marble of the library and the emerald green of the quad. Returning to campus after summer break had always felt like this, a mad rush of belonging and possibility as a new semester started. It welcomed her home and wrapped her up in its vivid palette.
This school taught her how to love herself for the first time. It hurt like hell to lose that feeling of belonging, but Reece had patched the wound.
