Unspoken (The Woodlands)

by Jen Frederick

  “You’re toast.” She rolled off the bed and exited the room.

  “I know it,” I told the empty space. Bo was funny, smart, and showing an inordinate amount of interest in me. I was so screwed.

  OTHER THAN THAT LATE MONDAY night text, I didn’t hear from Bo again. On Wednesday, though, he met me outside of class.

  “Cutting it a little short, aren’t you?” He checked his watch, a big black thing with many dials.

  “Class hasn’t started yet.” I tapped his watch, which showed we had about two minutes to find a seat. “Besides, I like to sit in the back.”

  “Since when?”

  Since the rumors regarding my supposed sexcapades had infiltrated the classroom and people behind me felt bold enough to lean forward and whisper things like, “Leave your panties at the Delts last night?” I didn’t know whose panties were waving from the fraternity flag; they weren’t mine, but protests were only met with knowing smirks.

  “Since Thor decided to hog the front row.”

  “I’m Thor?” he asked, sounding a bit too pleased.

  I guess being compared to a Viking war god was a compliment. I cringed inwardly at revealing that I sometimes envisioned him standing on the prow of a longboat with a horned helmet and a spear. In my fantasies he was shirtless even in the long, cold, Icelandic nights. Real Vikings, I theorized, would be immune to the cold. Or at least they were in my dreams.

  Adopting my best uncaring attitude, I waved a hand down his body. “You add a spear and a helmet and you look like you should be standing at the prow of a longboat.”

  Too busy rifling through my mental images of Bo, it wasn’t until he maneuvered me sideways that I realized I had walked all the way to the front again where we had sat on Monday.

  “Just because we’re lab partners doesn’t mean we have to sit next to each other in class.” I frowned.

  “I know.” Bo just grinned and pulled out my chair. “It’s a perk.”

  Remaining immune to his infectious charm was going to be near impossible. I was given a momentary reprieve when the professor greeted us with an announcement about our lab studies. “You’ll have two primary lab projects this year. The first is to test the hypothesis of nature over nurture by examining whether there are innate differences between males and females. The second is to create a crossbred plant or animal that can survive here in the Midwest and combines whatever traits are perceived to be lacking in the other.”

  I tried to pay attention to the details of our lab project, but as hard as I was attempting to ignore Bo, every shift of his body that brushed up against mine sent little prickles of electricity shooting throughout me. I felt his jean-clad thigh press against mine when he let his legs fall open. He stretched his right arm across the back of my chair. The smell of his cologne or aftershave or shampoo released into the air with each movement.

  By the end of class, I felt like I was drunk on Bo Randolph. How in the world was I going to make it through a five-credit course with Bo Randolph as my lab partner and not become totally obsessed with him? Get a grip, I scolded myself. So what that he was so good looking he belonged on a movie poster? So what that he sent cute text messages? So what that every time I inhaled, I could smell a warm, inviting masculine scent? None of these were things I couldn’t find in some other guy. Okay, maybe not as good looking or as funny, but there had to be hundreds of non-Central College guys who smelled good.

  And had big hands and broad muscular chests. And tousled blond hair with a thousand different colors that would take me a year to catalog, with a matching scruff around his chin and upper lip. I wondered what that felt like if it was close to your skin. Would it feel scratchy or soft?

  “Something on my face?” Bo asked, his long fingers coming up to wipe at his cheek.

  “Uh, no, why?” I said, still staring.

  “Because you’re rubbing your cheek and staring at me like I have parts of my breakfast hanging off my chin.”

  Heat burned my cheeks as I realized I was stroking my face as I fantasized about the texture of Bo’s stubbled cheek against my skin.

  “Ah, no, just a scratch,” I lied, turning my nails inward, wincing at the pain as I scraped my skin too hard in compensation. “Don’t you type?” I tried to distract him. He was about the only one in class without a laptop.

  “I can, but I also have impulse control problems.” He shrugged. At my questioning look, he went on, “I’d want to play a game or something. But I do get them typed up. Want to share?”

  Why not. “Sure, text me your e-mail address and I’ll shoot you my notes.”

  The indent on the left side of his mouth deepened as he smiled with approval. Was it wrong that I wanted to stick my tongue into that groove? I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, a movement that caught Bo’s attention. His eyes shifted down to my lap and then up to my face again. My breath stopped, or maybe it was just time that froze, as he leaned toward me, his ocean-blue eyes now the color of water at midnight. All thoughts of my immutable rules, the reasons why to avoid him, were gone, replaced by the shape of his lips, the hot, dark hue of his eyes, and the warmth of his breath as his face came ever closer.

  His mouth brushed lightly across my cheek and I felt him inhale, his nose an infinitesimal space away from my jaw. His chest contracted, and he let out a waft of warm air that lifted my hair away from my neck. “You smell good, AnnMarie. It’s hard to concentrate, so I need my pen and paper to keep me on track.”

  I was still shuddering when he drew back. An earthquake had happened inside my body. He was going to utterly ruin me.

  TO: annmarie.west@central.edu

  FROM: beauregard.randolph@central.edu

  SUBJECT: Class notes

  ATTACHMENT: NotesDay2

  AM—

  Did I ever tell you I actually hate texting? My fingers are way too big for those tiny little squares. I might not be in class on Friday. Have something going on the night before. May be too sore to show up. I know it makes me sound like a lazy jackass, but can I borrow your notes if I don’t make it?

  Bo

  Sore? My God, was he telling me he was going to be having sex all night and would be too worn out to show up for class? This was probably the reason he asked for us to exchange notes. The balls of this guy. He knew he wasn’t going to show up and was planning ahead. Affronted, jealous, and upset with myself for even caring, my return message was terse.

  TO: beauregard.randolph@central.edu

  FROM: annmarie.west@central.edu

  SUBJECT: RE: Class notes

  Really? Sore. Whatever, but don’t make this a habit.

  AM

  TO: annmarie.west@central.edu

  FROM: beauregard.randolph@central.edu

  SUBJECT: RE: RE: Class notes

  AM—

  Promise not to do this often. Have plans this weekend? Let’s go talk to some plant experts and get our lab project out of the way.

  Bo

  What kind of ass was he? Bo was going to screw some girl so hard on Thursday night that he wouldn’t be able to make it to class, but he wanted to go to do our “lab” project this weekend? And I’d already planned on going to the Natural History Museum this weekend to look up indigenous plants and talk to a staff member. I tried to remember if I’d mentioned this in class because I couldn’t believe he’d come up with this on his own. I was totally going to call him on this bullshit.

  TO: beauregard.randolph@central.edu

  FROM: annmarie.west@central.edu

  SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Class notes

  Sure. When, where, etc.

  AM

  I slammed my laptop shut before I could read any response but couldn’t turn off my thoughts. How could he flirt so blatantly with me one day and then give me the kiss-off the next? I fumed. The rest of the week I was testier than a five-year-old stuck inside because of rain for a week.

  “WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?” ELLIE ASKED me Friday morning as we were getting ready for class.

  Not
wanting to admit that it was thoughts of Bo making me act unbearably, I held up my birth control case. “Why do I take these when I haven’t had sex in months?”

  “Because you’re in college and you might have sex?”

  “Why not just use condoms?”

  “Because you’re smart and thrifty.”

  “Thrifty?”

  “Yes, birth control is free from the health center. Condoms fail. Abortions cost money and having a baby is like eighty thousand times more expensive than that. Birth control is an economically sound decision.” Ellie spoke in calming tones, as if she knew one wrong word would send my head spinning around on my neck.

  After my less-than-stellar first time here at Central, I’d tried out two more guys. One was a local, a gorgeous guy who introduced me to good sex. I followed him around like a stray puppy, which annoyed him, and he dumped me after a few weeks. My second try at the dating scene was last semester. I hooked up with an osteopath student from the College of Osteopathy across town, but we never clicked. He’d take time describing each bone in my body like I was an anatomy exam, and while he might have thought he sounded sexy, it came off like he wanted to dissect my cadaver. I ended things with him, but his sigh of relief when I suggested it wasn’t working out was telling. My lust for Bo was probably just a product of a long dry spell.

  “Right, economically sound.” I popped my pill in my mouth and swallowed. “Maybe we should go out this weekend and put this pill to good use.”

  Ellie’s face lit up. “Sounds like a great idea. I’m going to do some recon at class today to figure out where my future boyfriend will be partying.”

  “Does future boyfriend have a name?”

  “Ryan Collins.”

  “Can’t wait to accidentally run into him at a bar this weekend.” I winked at her.

  “Me either.” Ellie smiled wryly at me. “It’s okay to crush on Bo. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  Despite my attempts at diverting her attention, Ellie had accurately identified the source of my bad mood. I gave her a tiny shrug. “It’ll be forgotten this weekend.”

  Being the good friend she was, Ellie didn’t laugh in my face at this bald-faced lie.

  To my surprise, when I arrived at class on Friday, Bo was already there, leaning against the door, waiting for me. He had a black eye and a puffy lip. There was a bruise over one of his cheekbones and his hands were scabbed and swollen. He could barely hold the pen in his left hand, yet he looked happier than I’d seen him all week.

  I rewound my memory of the e-mail he’d sent. Sore? Something going on? My mind had jumped immediately to the bedroom because that’s where Bo spent most of his time in my imagination, but I’d apparently interpreted the whole thing wrong.

  After I’d stared at him for what seemed like five minutes, he broke out in a huge grin and held out his hand. “Stop looking at me. I’m not supposed to smile.”

  “What the hell, Bo?”

  “The other guy looks worse?” he offered as some kind of half-baked explanation, leading me down to our now customary seats in the front.

  I shook my head. “Were you fighting?” I whispered, not wanting anyone else to hear me, particularly not the two freshman girls who sat behind Bo and me and had clued in to what a magnificent addition he was to the homo sapiens species. I actually saw one of them give the thumbs-up toward heaven the other day in class after Bo leaned over the table to pick up a piece of paper that had floated off. You could bounce a quarter off that ass.

  Bo leaned close to whisper back, “Yes. Why are we whispering?”

  “Isn’t it illegal?”

  “The Casino,” Bo explained in a normal tone, not caring who heard him. “Different regs there.”

  “Like no regulations?”

  “Pretty much.” He nodded and started to cross his arms but winced when he realized his hands were too tender to be tucked into his body.

  I bit my lip to keep from asking a bunch of nosy questions. “Do you need me to take notes for you today?”

  “Yeah. Do you mind?”

  I shook my head. “When you e-mailed me and said you would be too sore for class today, I thought it might be something else.”

  Bo gave a hoot of laughter. “Nope, but it was all consensual. You jealous?”

  Yes, I was, I thought sourly, but I didn’t want to admit it. For some reason, now that Bo was my lab partner, I’d begun assigning other ownership thoughts to him. What a crazy thing to do. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t have a good comeback other than the truth, which I certainly was not going to share. Conveniently, the professor began his lecture, but Bo leaned over and whispered, “Nothing to be jealous about, Sunshine.”

  Sunshine? Bo slouched against his chair and spread his legs wide, brushing up against mine. He slung his right arm over the back of my chair. If I leaned backward, I could have pretended he was hugging me. Concentrating for fifty minutes was a bitch. At the end of class, I quickly packed my belongings, afraid that if I spent one more minute with him, I’d throw him down on the table and see what bruises he had hiding under his shirt today. And if I could kiss them to make them better. If I spent even one more minute with him, I would be, as Ellie had put it, toast.

  Chapter Five

  AM

  DESPITE OUR BIG TALK OF partying all week, Ellie and I stayed in and watched movies when the weekend rolled around. While we watched actresses drum songs on the bottoms of cups, I shored up my anti-Bo defenses. I made a new list of excuses why I shouldn’t be crushing on him and ran through them each morning. None of them were very good, but that wasn’t the point. If I could make it through this semester without tearing my clothes off in biology class, the little white lies I told myself would be worth it. When Monday rolled around, I intentionally arrived late to class and sat in the back. I didn’t remember much of the lecture, as I spent the whole time staring at Bo’s head and wishing I was sitting right next to him. Bo turned around once and found me in the first pass. We stared at each other for what felt like an eon but was probably seconds. I couldn’t read his emotions but I knew what I was feeling. Regret.

  On Tuesday, I met up with Ellie back at the apartment after classes were over. When I came through the door, she shot me a pleading glance.

  “What’s up with the puppy eyes?” I peered at Ellie, who was standing with her hands clasped in front of her next to the paisley sofa we’d bought from a garage sale on the west side. It was so hideous—blue with red floral paisley designs all over looking like grotesque snails—that we both agreed it had circled around to awesome. Plus, it was super comfortable. We theorized the person who’d bought it was colorblind and sat on it and felt as if he was lying in marshmallows. Then he fell in love and his new partner made him throw it out. At least that’s the story that Ellie and I made up.

  “I need to ask you for a huge favor.” Ellie looked pitiful and hopeful at the same time. Like I would ever say no to her. Ellie had been my rock since we were kids. Half my courage in sticking it out here at Central came from knowing she was standing right beside me.

  “Sure, buttercup. What do you need?” I flopped down on the sofa, tossing my phone on the coffee table.

  “Willyougotodinneroncampustoday?” Ellie spilled out her request so fast that it was like one long word. I thought she was joking at first because Ellie knew I never ate meals on campus. Not since about midterms of my freshman year. Not since the unspoken words and low murmured whispers turned to actions. But when she didn’t laugh or give me a verbal cue that it was just a prank, I turned to look at her.

  She gave me a pained, wry smile. “It was a stupid idea.” Unlocking her hands, Ellie came to rest on her side of the diseased-looking marshmallow.

  “Tell me about it,” I said quietly. The invitation was all she needed. Turning to me, Ellie hitched one leg up on the sofa. As I looked at her glowing face and her sparkling eyes, I knew I was going to be eating on campus tonight.

  “I’m totally in lust with that gu
y, Ryan, that I told you about from my Rocks for Jocks class. I need to know more about him,” Ellie babbled. “I’m pretty sure he’s a freshman. Maybe on the baseball team? I mean, I assume he’s a jock because why else is he taking that course?”

  “So he’s eating where tonight?”

  “Oh, um, I overheard him say he was meeting ‘the guys’ at the Quad Commons Café.” She blushed and said, “I don’t know what it is about him that I find so adorable, but he’s all dorky cuteness.”

  “We need to do a little covert stalking is what you’re saying,” I finished for her.

  She nodded. “I know I’m asking for something big here.”

  “Nah.” I shrugged. “I’ve been thinking that my self-imposed exile is kind of dumb. How am I supposed to crush on Bo Randolph if I avoid campus?”

  “You really want to go?” Ellie looked skeptical.

  “And miss the opportunity to stalk this guy with you?” I grabbed her hand. “Tell me more.”

  As Ellie described his mini Mohawk and retro cool eyeglasses, I mentally assured myself that everyone had moved on from my sex life. There had to be other scandals, other bits of gossip that people were exchanging. By the time Ellie had finished giving me an exhaustive rundown of this guy’s entire physical appearance from his eyebrow piercing to his dark wash jeans and plaid button-down shirt, I’d convinced myself that I had nothing at all to fear. What could anyone say that they hadn’t already said? Clay Howard’s threats were probably hollow. He couldn’t be on campus all the time, and the likelihood of running into him in the QC Café was very low.

  Still, I spent an inordinate amount of time later that day wondering if my jeans were too tight or my T-shirt showed too much cleavage. In a fit of uncertainty, I changed into a pair of loose fitting khakis and a white button-down shirt and left the room to find Ellie inserting earrings in front of the hall closet dresser. Ellie looked me over and almost stabbed herself through the cheek with the earring post.