by Ella Maise
Jared: Oh but we worked so hard to make you pretty.
Me: I saw how hard you worked, and so did everyone else.
Jared: You coming?
Me: Sure, change the subject. I’ll just stay in and get some studying done. Coffee tomorrow?
Jared: Yes to coffee. Give Dylan a goodnight kiss for me.
I smirked. That little shithead!
I lifted my phone up high and took a quick shot of me giving him the middle finger with a sweet smile. A few seconds later, I got back one of him and his little sister as he scowled into the lens and covered her eyes with his hand.
Becky would make mincemeat out of him. Not only was she hyperactive, she didn’t get that other people needed sleep to function. She was also a little she-devil with the face of an angel. At least he was going to suffer, and knowing that gave me a little satisfaction.
Kissing Dylan good night…I didn’t think so. I was made of tougher stuff.
I knew Dylan had a team dinner and a study group because I’d overheard him talking to his friend on the phone. I wasn’t sure whether it was Chris or not, and it wasn’t like I could ask him either, but knowing he wouldn’t be home any time soon, I got comfortable in the living room and brought my laptop with me to get some studying done. If I could squeeze in some retouching of the last shoot I’d done for Leah’s fashion blog before I hit my bed, that would be even better. From the way things were going with my little photography job, I had a feeling saving up to move out at the end of the year wasn’t going to be as big of a problem as I had expected.
Facing the windows, I sat down on the floor, spread everything out on the coffee table, and got to work. The only break I took was to grab a banana and a piece of slightly burnt toast leftover from breakfast. It was a big letdown after imagining having a delicious cheesy pizza, but what’s a girl to do?
It was around nine o’clock when my eyes started to grow heavy from the school work, so I put in my earbuds and switched over to Photoshop to work on editing the fashion shots. The loud music I put on woke me up pretty fast, and I was able to tune out everything other than Leah’s photos on the screen.
This was what I loved to do. Sure, sometimes I spent more hours in front of my laptop than I did actually behind the lens, but that was how it worked. If everything went according to plan, I was hoping photography would be my future. It didn’t have to be fashion photos per se, but as long as I was using a camera, capturing different faces, emotions, memories, moments…heartbeats I knew I’d be fine.
At one point, my Spotify radio started playing “Gorilla G-Mix” by Pharrell, and in no time, I was belting out the lyrics to my heart’s content because it was one of my favorite sex songs. Everyone had those, right? I’d never had sex while it was playing—it’d be weird if nothing else—but whenever I listened to it, I could definitely see it happening if I closed my eyes.
At the very least, it always brought out my inner stripper. It was weirdly sexy, or maybe it was only sexy to me because I was weird? Might have been the latter, but I didn’t care one bit either way. Only Jared and Kayla knew about my weird R&B-hip-hop-sex obsession. Still singing, still sitting on the floor, I dropped my head back on the couch cushions, spread my arms out, and closed my eyes.
My hips moving of their own accord, I sang the whole thing, even made the gorilla noises, as if the lyrics weren’t enough. You can guess where I’m going with this, right? Because it’s me we’re talking about here.
When my eyes lazily opened, Dylan Reed was staring at me upside down. I closed my eyes, opened them again…tried it yet again for good measure…but he wasn’t going anywhere. When I’d first seen him looking down at me, I’d thought and hoped I had just conjured him up because I was feeling…a certain way. Watching Dylan Reed do push-ups and sit-ups was not something that was easy to erase from your mind, after all. Watching his muscles ripple under that smooth skin that begged you to touch, lick, and slurp, to…do all the things you couldn’t and shouldn’t and wouldn’t do to a friend…
My eyes fixed on the ceiling, I let out a long breath. He still hadn’t uttered a word. Reaching for my earbuds, I took them out, and the next song that had started playing slowly drifted away, taking Drake’s voice with it. The apartment was completely quiet. You could’ve dropped a pin back in my bedroom and I would’ve heard it from where I was sitting.
The roar in my ears started low until it drowned out pretty much everything. It felt like my heart was pounding in my brain like an intense bass line. Feeling a little lightheaded from the embarrassment, I sat up and the world righted itself. Biting my bottom lip, I gripped the top of my laptop with clammy fingers, clicked it shut, and then gently placed the earbuds on it. My face must’ve turned every color in the rainbow by then.
“You can say it,” I choked out in a low, low voice.
Eventually, he came into view and stood right next to the giant leather couch that was made for snuggling. I kept staring forward, out the window, but I could see his lips twitching in my peripheral vision.
He cleared his throat, and I bit my bottom lip harder.
Could I never win with this guy?
He sat down on the wide arm of the couch, and I shifted and pulled my legs underneath me, feeling vulnerable.
“I heard you when I was coming up the stairs,” he admitted.
I nodded, still keeping my gaze away from his. I tended to forget my volume; the whole building had probably been listening. Dylan kept going.
“I came in and called out your name, but you seemed to be too engaged. I didn’t want to scare you so I…waited.”
“Were you…uh, have you been standing there for long?”
There was a long pause then his voice came out low and deep. “I think I heard…’pussy growl’ at one point? That stuck for some reason. Let’s say it was a little before that.”
Yup. Okay, then. So he saw me squirm in my seat too.
Still avoiding his eyes, I nodded and stood up. I wanted to cry so badly. He stood up with me.
“I’m just gonna go jump off the building now,” I mumbled, ducking my head and trying to shuffle past him.
I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but I wasn’t expecting an electric current to go through my body when his big hand encircled my wrist in an attempt to stop me. Goose bumps prickled my skin where he was touching me and all the way up my arm. My hand flexed, but he got what he wanted. My body stilled, and I waited for him to start laughing or making fun of me at any second. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew he wasn’t like that, knew he wouldn’t want to embarrass me, but he’d still think it, would still tell his friends about his weird roommate. I wasn’t mortified because he’d caught me singing, but singing that song?
“Can you look at me, Zoe?”
When nothing happened, my eyes flicked up to his forehead, and I watched his brows slowly form into a frown.
I blinked, and the next second he was pulling me toward the kitchen sink. Letting go of my wrist, he tore off a piece of paper towel and held it under water until it was soaked. When he moved toward me, I arched back and made sure my head was out of touching distance. His frown getting even deeper, he reached out and curled his hand around my neck to keep me in place. Apparently, I was still in touching distance.
“Stay still,” he ordered, his tone practically bordering on anger. What had I done except make an ass of myself yet again? As his eyes wandered to mine, for a brief moment, I wished he could’ve been at least a little unattractive; it would’ve helped me act normal around him. Even his slightly crooked nose added to his allure. “Your lip is bleeding,” he muttered, almost to himself.
Ah, so that was the bitter taste I had swallowed—and here I’d thought it was the bitter taste of humiliation.
“My lips get really dry sometimes.”
When the wet cloth touched my bottom lip, I winced and reflexively curled my hand around his wrist to stop him—more like halfway around his wrist, since my hand was tiny next to his. Even though
it shouldn’t have worked, it did, and his hand stilled. I was so stupid that even his forearm looked sexy to me, the veins lining his skin. There were also those arm hairs I could still feel on my skin if closed my eyes and thought about the day I’d attacked him in the apartment, and then his big hand with its big, strong fingers gently touched my lip, bringing me out of my daydreams.
My eyes met his. “Sorry,” he murmured, his voice low, so low that my heart went from zero to sixty in two seconds flat.
Don’t look him in the eye, Zoe. Don’t do it.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered sheepishly as I pulled my hand down.
He turned his wrist once as if I had hurt him. I doubted it. He cleared his throat and resumed cleaning my lip. I let him, openly enjoying the attention I was getting. Okay, maybe not so openly, but at least I hadn’t done anything stupid—yet. When he was done, he balled the paper and tossed it into the trash. My eyes followed it, and if they weren’t failing me, there wasn’t much of anything on it, just a hint of pink, so what was with the sudden first aid help?
“Why is it that you always see me at my worst?” I asked, hoping he’d have an answer for me because I was coming up blank. I struggled to find someplace to put my hands—across my chest? On the island? Behind my back? On him? “I mean, getting caught singing is never the best feeling since it’s a private moment, but I was also semi-dancing, as I can imagine you saw, which I guess is weird when you’re doing it while sitting, but it still counts. To top it all off, that song? Why didn’t you walk in when I was singing to Ed Sheeran? I don’t sound so bad when I’m singing one of his songs. Getting caught by you, during that song?” With each sentence, my voice came out like a squeak. “Never mind.” I slowly walked around him and headed toward the hallway. “Any chance you won’t make fun of me for this?”
“Zoe—” he started as I managed to make it almost to the entrance of the hallway, but before he could finish whatever he was about to say, the power went out, shrouding us in darkness.
“What the hell?”
What the hell, indeed. There was a long eight-second pause where we stayed frozen, waiting for the power to come back on. “Uh…” I moaned, already going into panic mode. “I’m gonna say something, but you can’t laugh.”
“What?” he asked distractedly. He had already pushed away from the kitchen sink and was heading toward the windows, at least that was where his voice came from.
I cleared my throat and hugged one arm across my stomach. “Could it be a thief, maybe? Or thieves, plural? More than one? More than three? I stayed here last semester, too, and there was a series of robberies in the neighborhood. They could’ve cut off the power or something to make it easier to break in. We’re being robbed, I think. I saw this movie once with my dad where…” I trailed off.
It was looking like the few buildings around us had also lost their electricity, and the silver moonlight spilling into the apartment made it possible for me to see Dylan’s silhouette turn to me.
Instead of answering, he opened a window to check out on the street. “Yeah, the whole block is down. It’s fine, Zoe. I—”
“Actually, I’m not the biggest fan of—”
“I think you should ease up on the movies.”
“What?” Was that amusement I was hearing in his voice? “Are you smiling right now?” I asked incredulously.
I heard a low chuckle, but before I could respond to it, the universe decided to wrap everything up with a little red bow. The room started spinning, and I glanced down at my feet in confusion. Was I getting dizzy? I wasn’t that scared of the dark. Then the building started shaking, and my horrified gaze flew to the shadow of my roommate.
“Dylan,” I choked out in panic, an intense tremor in my voice.
Two seconds.
“It’s okay. It’ll pass.”
Three seconds.
I turned back and focused my gaze toward where the door was. Run away or stay? Run away or stay?
Four seconds.
“Dylan,” I choked out again, this time louder and more urgently as I swayed forward. My feet were dying to run—to the door, to Dylan, anywhere, really—and take refuge, but at the same time, I couldn’t seem to move an inch. I wrapped my shaking arms tighter around myself.
It would stop.
I heard footsteps.
I swear to God, if he runs away and leaves me behind, I will—
Five seconds.
Six seconds.
The earthquake stopped at the exact moment I felt Dylan’s front at my back and his hand curled around my shoulder.
“That was weird, but it’s over,” Dylan said casually, keeping his hand on me.
My heart started doing this weird thing it had never done before, big powerful thumps in slow motion. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath through the whole thing until I finally released it. My body started shaking as I pulled in deep breaths and let them go through my mouth.
That’s when Dylan put his other hand on my left arm and started rubbing up and down.
“You’re cold,” he mumbled.
Yeah, the dead are usually cold, I thought, but kept it to myself.
I couldn’t even give an answer as I struggled to get my breathing under control. Half an hour before, I would’ve said it was too hot when I was singing. Even the short-sleeved t-shirt I had on had felt like too much at some point, and that was L.A. for you. Now, as Dylan’s hands moved on my naked arms, I felt nothing but cold seeping into my skin. His thumbs slid under my t-shirt every time he swept up.
“We need to get out. We need to get out, right now.” I moved to run straight out the door, but his hands stopped me before I could take more than a few steps.
“Wait—wait a second.” He gripped my elbows and turned me to face him.
“We need to get out,” I repeated, breathing heavily.
Even standing so close to him, I couldn’t see the details of his face, but from the way his head was tipped, I knew his gaze was on me.
“It’s okay, Zoe. It wasn’t a big one.”
“Who says the next one won’t be?”
His hands started moving again, from my wrists, over my elbows, and up, up, up, at a slower pace this time.
“We’re fine right where we are.”
Were we though? Really, were we? I didn’t think so, not with the way the goose bumps prickled my skin where his hands were traveling up and down.
After a few seconds of staring up at the dark shape of his head, I dropped my head and sighed. There was magic in his hands, and slowly their warmth started to warm me up. They weren’t soft, not like my last boyfriend’s had been. He’d used more hand cream than me, which was fine, but Dylan’s hands—they dragged on my skin in the best possible way. I knew I’d remember the feel of them. He was sort of unforgettable.
“I’m really scared of earthquakes,” I whispered, just in case he hadn’t noticed.
“It’s over now. We’re okay.”
“I’m really, really scared of them, Dylan. Why is the power still not back on? Did it go out because of the earthquake?” I was still whispering. Unable to stop myself, I took a step toward him. I was maybe half a step away from actually standing on his feet, my face only inches away from his chest. Me shuffling closer wasn’t a cry for a hug by any means, but when his hands dropped away from my arms and a chill took their place, I felt like a complete idiot, a complete idiot who knew she was an idiot yet still couldn’t find it in her to back away from the safety of the big guy in the room. They always said you should take cover next to strong, sturdy things, right? Well, Dylan Reed was plenty strong and sturdy.
Then I felt a big palm at the base of my spine, which pulled a quiet gasp from somewhere deep within me and caused a very small shiver to work its way through my body. His hand slowly started inching up on my back as if he wasn’t sure if holding me would be okay.
Uh…
That was enough of an answer to a question I wasn’t even thinking of asking. I didn’t
wait for vocal confirmation, just buried my cheek in his rock-hard chest and held my breath. His other arm reached around me and rested on my back, a little higher than the other one, and I felt like it was okay to close my eyes. He’d make it okay.
“It was probably just a coincidence and has nothing to do with the earthquake.”
My arms were still wrapped around my stomach so when Dylan gently pulled me even closer to his body, closing that little half-step gap between us, my arms fell apart and I lifted one to rest on his chest, right next to my face and gripped his shirt at his waist with the other.
It was a little unsure, a little awkward. Fine, maybe it wasn’t so much awkward as the best hug I’d had in a while. Let’s call it the best half hug, maybe, because it wasn’t as if he was crushing the life out of me. That would’ve been the perfect hug. The embrace was pretty loose, but it was still a hug, and it was still appreciated.
And dear God, his touch was warm and strong. His cologne was different, dizzying, something warm and spicy, maybe a hint of cedar. Basically it was magic. How did he smell so good at that time of the night? Had he been on a date?
Was it too forward to hug a friend like this? If we were being honest, calling him my buddy or friend was stretching the truth a bit but was I gonna stop or back away? Nope, not a chance in hell. If this was the big one for California and the building was going to come down, I was going to be in the arms of this guy.
With our close proximity, I could hear his strong heartbeat. I tried to keep my focus on that rhythm and match my breathing to it, strong and steady.
When I had it mostly under control, I let out another deep breath. “You must think I’m crazy,” I muttered into his chest.
There was a four-second aftershock right at the tail end of my words. It was smaller than before but still noticeable. I buried my forehead in his chest and groaned.
“Shhh, it’s fine. You’re fine. It’s just a small one.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and closed my eyes tighter this time, my hand curling into a fist. His arms weren’t moving anymore, but he hadn’t let go of me either.