Fall in Love

by Anthology

  “I’m sorry to have interrupted,” I say, aware of hot cheeks. I always blush when things get awkward, even if I’m the only one who is filled with tension. “I’ve never roomed with anyone. I guess knocking is essential.”

  Lara giggles and flashes a smile at her boyfriend. He’s pulled on a shirt—a white dress shirt, which he tucks into faded jeans. Jeans that only look worn and abused, but must have cost several hundred dollars. He draws on a black leather coat that fits him like a glove.

  Her boyfriend is gorgeous. The way she gazes at him, and the hot way he returns her look makes my heart ache for Ryan. I want to be sharing a look with my boyfriend. Or a kiss. Or a bed. But that’s not happening for months.

  Lara’s boyfriend steps forward and in a deep voice with a trace of the Kennedy accent, he introduces himself. “Jonathon Powell.” He shakes hands with my stepfather, then me.

  Jonathon has green eyes, I notice. Thick, thick black lashes. Sculpted cheek bones, a sensual mouth. He’s got strong, handsome features like Ryan, but Ryan has an appealing small town guy look. Jonathon looks like a rich kid—the kind I know from high school. Yet for all he wears confidence as casually and perfectly as his leather jacket, he doesn’t exude the arrogance I’ve seen in wealthy boys—the snotty, cruel self-importance that comes from being a rich man’s son in the fishbowl of a small town.

  I suspect I’m going to find myself locked out of my room on a few nights because Jonathon is in it. I’d better prepare for it. I can’t see how Lara will not be making out with this gorgeous dark-haired male every chance she can get. “Do you need any help moving in furniture?” Jonathon asks me. “I can have my driver assist you.”

  His driver? What college boy has a driver? Strangely I’m unwilling to take his offer. I feel if I took it, I’d be insulting his “driver”. “No. I can manage. I only have a computer desk and a chair.”

  Dad had been looking less than impressed, but at the mention of a chauffeur, he looks at Jonathon in a new way. I know that look on his face—it’s awe. “Powell as in Powell Electronics and Aviation?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jonathon says. “Those companies were built by my grandfather. My father decided to go his own way and started Powell Chemicals, then Powell Pharmaceuticals. Over the last five years, he’s amalgamated all the companies.”

  My stepfather looks impressed. I take it Jonathon comes from a wealthy family. He must be accustomed to that look on Dad’s face. I’m mortified by it.

  I realize we really should leave them alone again. Four people in a dorm room are a serious crowd, for a start. And we interrupted them.

  I move to Lara. I catch a hint of a masculine scent on her—Jonathon’s scent. It’s light but seductive. Ryan smells like spring rain. This scent has an exotic tone, dark and sensual.

  “I’ll go down and get my things,” I say. “Do you want some time before I come back up? I can look around for a while. Or something…”

  Lara shakes her head. “Jonathon has to go, anyway. But thanks,” she says softly. She dazzles me with her smile, and I think we’ve started out okay. I’ve made up for breaking up her kiss with the hot, rich guy.

  Jonathon says goodbye to us, but he pauses at the door. “I’m throwing a party Saturday night.” He’s looking at me, which makes sense, since Lara must already know. “I’m sending the limo for Lara at eight. Please come, too, Mia. I would love to have you.”

  His voice softens a bit on the last two words. I feel a sudden tension. But his gaze is on Lara now, and I blush again. Really, how could I even have felt there was more to those words? He belongs to Lara and she is beautiful. I don’t have to worry about any unwanted attention.

  He opens the door and for a moment music bursts into the room. Two girls run past shrieking and laughing. One wears shorts and a tube top, the other one has one towel wrapped around her body and another around her hair. My dad leaves to accompany Jonathon downstairs, promising to start bringing my stuff up.

  The door closes. Then I realize what I thought I heard. “Did he say limo?”

  Lara nods her head. “He did.”

  ***

  I’m on a meal plan and the residence cafeteria is already open for the fall term. Lara has loaded a Caesar salad, a slice of vegetarian pizza, and a large bottle of water on her tray. A boy with a black beard stands in front of me, arguing with a cafeteria lady who has refused to cut the crusts of his sandwich. I dart around him.

  My phone vibrates. I take it out. I read Ryan’s text, which says: Are you at Yardley yet? Do you like it? How’s your room? Did you get the classes you wanted? Miss you. Ryan.

  I’m dying to talk to him, even if it is just a flurry of texts. But I find I can’t write. All the things I want to say are the wrong things to say.

  Have you ever had a lifelong dream that felt like a big mistake? This is how being here, far away from Ryan, feels. I know it’s wrong. Sacrificing your future and dreams for a relationship when you’re only nineteen is wrong. It would end badly. The way for Ryan and I to have a life together is for both of us to lay the groundwork for our separate futures.

  I send back an innocuous message: Right in the middle of dinner. It’s beautiful here. Room is great.

  I was going to text that my roommate is pretty, but something stops me. What if…

  What if I were to lose Ryan to Lara somehow? Sounds insane, I know, since I can’t see how they would meet. She has Jonathon, why would she want to poach Ryan? But I can’t lose the feeling, deep in my heart, that if I really love a guy I should probably want him to do better than me and my sorry past.

  At the next station, I get an order of the night’s special pasta and fill a Styrofoam cup with tea, and I join Lara at the table.

  She tells me she grew up in Boston, but her parents split up. She’s into sports, though she didn’t go for an athletic scholarship so she could focus on academics. I like Lara. I can see why Jonathon, apparently heir to a fortune, is with her. Who wouldn’t be besotted with her? I think it will be fun to be roommates with Lara.

  But in my heart, I wish I was sharing a room with Ryan. Living with Ryan. Starting a new life with him.

  I’m going to have to be honest with him someday. I can’t start a life with him without doing that. It’s not fair to him.

  ***

  “I think I’m going to walk around campus. Get to know it,” I tell Lara.

  We’ve left the cafeteria, which is in the bottom of the main building known as Res Commons, and we’re walking back toward our dorm, which is called the Laker Residence.

  “I’m going back to the room. See you later.” She strides away and waves at me.

  The sun is low, turning the leaves to shimmering gold. The sky behind the mountains is purple, streaked with deep red clouds. Windows glow with the dying sunlight, and the sunset looks dazzling on the old stone buildings in the centre of the campus. That’s where I head, but after I walk a few yards, I hear footsteps behind me. I turn. I’m about to say ‘hi’ because I assume Lara decided to come with me after all.

  There’s no one there.

  Okay.

  I guess I heard the wind in the trees, or the echo of my own footsteps, or maybe someone came out of one door of a residence building and went in another.

  There’s a rustle of leaves in some bushes beside the building nearest to me.

  For some reason, even though it’s not dark yet, my stomach drops and the shiver of the leaves freaks me out.

  I jog toward the Laker building, bursting into an all-out sprint when I reach the front lawn. I rush though the front doors. There I double up and rub at a cramp in my side. My penne and meat sauce really didn’t like all that jiggling.

  I look out the glass entry doors. Two girls are walking along, chatting. One holds a stack of books.

  Great. This is how I respond to being on my own. Freaking out over nothing.

  Trying to act casual, as if I didn’t just sprint away from imaginary demons, I take the elevator up the third floor. But I
do make sure my key is in my hand, so I’m not fumbling with it at the door.

  Lara is sprawled on her bed on her stomach, watching a movie on her laptop. I sit on the edge of my bed and text Ryan.

  Here in my room, I write to him. How is your school? My room has two windows and a bathroom. Luxury living at Yardley.

  My thumbs stop. Longing tugs at my heart but I don’t want to put it into words. I don’t want to make him ache. For a long time, Ryan didn’t think he should go to college because of his father, his lack of money, his low marks. Admittedly my text is boring and not at all sexy, but if I try to say anything else, I’ll probably cry with longing.

  Ryan responds in minutes. We send messages back and forth until my vision is blurring. Then he sends me a picture.

  He is standing in front of a narrow bed, a window behind him. A grey t-shirt, like the older one he gave me but bigger, stretches over his chest. His biceps strain the short sleeves. It’s a beautiful Ryan smile. His head is cocked a little to the side, and the picture catches him just looking up, his blue eyes gorgeous under a sweep of long lashes.

  There’s a shaky video, too. Ryan shows me his room, while he banters with his roommate, a dark-haired guy who puts his face in front of the phone camera and shouts “Hi, Mia. I’m Philip,” before Ryan wrestles the phone away from him.

  I’m blinking back tears. It physically hurts my heart when Ryan sits on his bed and says softly, “I miss you so much already, Mia.”

  I want to touch him. I want to be sitting on his bed with him. We fall back together and he gets on top of me. I want him inside me so much, I can barely stand it.

  Desire hits hard. I feel that ache in my pussy, and I really want to play with myself. But I can’t do anything about it with Lara in the room.

  I’ve never shared a room. It’s frustrating. I want—need—to work off this lust.

  “I think I’m going to take a shower,” I say.

  Lara looks up from her screen. “Okay. If I need the bathroom, I’ll use the common room.”

  I step in to the small bathroom and lock the door. The mirror reveals my blush. I’m red with embarrassment because I know why I’m really taking a shower. It takes me a while to figure out how to get the water so it’s not freezing cold or boiling hot.

  But after much trial and error—and squealing—I get it right and step under perfect, warm water. The spray splatters my cheeks, my neck, my chest. Ducking my head, I wet my hair, then toss it back, so water streams down my spine. Turning three-sixty, I close my eyes and get wet all over, letting the water run over my ass, then I turn to soak my breasts and stomach.

  Mmmm, I really want to have a shower with Ryan someday.

  I would slide wet, soapy hands all over him. I would wash his ass first, because I want to touch him there, and because it would probably surprise him that I didn’t start with his delectable shoulders or his perfect chest.

  Just like on the dock, he would be slick and wet. But so warm.

  God, I wish I had seduced him months ago. So we would have had time to try all these things. But there’s nothing I can do about that except cry with frustration.

  Rubbing two fingers through my wet pubic hair, I stroke my clit really gently. I like to start slowly, teasing at first. Even just the lightest touch makes my knees weak. Pleasure jolts through me.

  I imagine pressing against Ryan from behind, my tummy against the hard, tight curves of his ass, my breasts against his broad back, my nipples totally excited by brushing his skin. I would slide my hands around him, wrapping his hips in soap and bubbles.

  I can imagine exactly what it would be like…

  His crisp pubic curls would tickle my hands. In my imagination, he sucks in a deep breath. It feels so real to me I can imagine his chest expanding with his sharp, fast breathing. I can almost see him bow his head and hear him let out a groan as I cup his balls in my soap-slick hand. I move my fingers and gently juggle the two firm testicles inside their soft, wrinkly sac.

  My fantasy is to blow Ryan’s mind. I imagine running my hand up from his balls to the base of his stiff, upright cock. I wrap my fist around the hilt, squeezing tight, and I jerk my hand up and down. He’s so slippery I glide easily, and while I’m rubbing my hand along his shaft furiously, I put my lips to the head, gobble it into my mouth and suck hard enough to make him howl.

  I’m rubbing my clit fiercely, wound up and ready to explode.

  In my fantasy, Ryan draws his cock from my mouth and lifts me up, pressing me to the tile wall. I wrap my legs around his hips. He and I are soooo wet. His cock is so hard and I’m so wet and ready, it slides right in and fills me. He holds me up easily because he’s so incredibly strong.

  I imagine the head of his cock stroking inside me. I make spirals on my clit, imagining it is Ryan’s groin slamming into me with each thrust.

  Oh. Oh God.

  The orgasm is so close. I know I’m going to be there any moment. Water streams down my back, my ass. I want to hold off the climax, make it last. I slow the strokes, but I’m right on the edge, and one tiny brush makes me come.

  I swallow my scream of pure delight. My legs shake and I slap my hand on the shower wall so I don’t fall down. Wave after wave rushes through me. I rub my clit again, and another orgasm explodes on the tail of the first.

  Even in just fantasy, Ryan does things to me that no one else has done. He consumes me.

  I step out of the shower. I towel off, blow dry my hair. When I’m done, I discover Ryan has sent another message.

  Can’t sleep. How am I going to survive without you, Mia?

  I don’t know how to answer him. It touches my heart, but makes me realize I don’t know how I’m going to survive without him either.

  Since the first night Ryan and I got together, he’s completely changed my life.

  ***

  Within an hour and a half, I’m frustrated again.

  Lara and I do a junk food run which involves sprinting downstairs to one of the common rooms of our residence—a room filled with chairs, racks of magazines, two tables with computers and another flat screen television. One entire wall is covered by vending machines. Healthy-ish choices are noted by large green circles. After spending a quarter hour marveling at the junk food deemed healthy (baked yet still high-fat corn things), Lara opens up her purse and starts to feed into the machine the impressive amount of change we gathered. We begin at the lowest item number that we figure is healthy and work our way up. With armloads of baked chips, fruit bars, and diet soft drinks, we race back upstairs.

  “This is how we will avoid the freshman fifteen,” Lara says as we dump our loads on her bed. “By eating healthier.”

  I lift a brow. “Yeah, but a truckload of stuff isn’t going to help, healthy or not.”

  She sticks out her tongue, looking gorgeous even while doing that.

  She fires up her laptop. “Pride and Prejudice. The BBC version. The version,” she says.

  I feel a pang. Lara is taking English Literature. She pointed out, over dinner in Res, that a math or science degree didn’t guarantee a job anymore either. And she knew more people getting work with an arts degree than with a science or engineering degree.

  Munching chips, we stretch out on Lara’s bed and watch.

  We reach the part where Elizabeth takes a wrong turn in Netherfield and encounters Darcy in a billiards room, preparing to do some serious work with his cue.

  Lara sighs. “I think Jonathon looks like Darcy.”

  I have to admit he does, but Jonathon is even more gorgeous. I’m mesmerized by the look shared by Darcy and Elizabeth. It’s filled with awareness. There are a few heartbeats of awkward intensity, then a moment where they surrender and stare at each other, completely wrapped up in each other. At that point, Lizzie bolts.

  It leaves me wanting to the scream: “There’s a pool table. Throw him down on it already.”

  But nobody does that in Regency England.

  In my head, I’m doing it. I am not
focusing on Pride and Prejudice anymore. In my head, I am in a bar with Ryan; a country-style bar in Milltown with a row of pool tables illuminated by low hanging lights. The warm, honey-yellow light caresses Ryan’s profile, washing over his straight nose, high cheekbones, and his full lips. I love to watch him when he’d engrossed in thinking—there’s an incredibly sexy vibe about him when he’s totally focused on something.

  When I used to tutor him, I’d be completely turned on watching him work on math problems or his English homework. My panties were always wet when I helped him study for his final exams, and sometimes I had to bite down on my fist to keep myself from jumping his bones.

  But back to my fantasy…

  The lights play all over his body, highlighting the bulge of his biceps and the definition of his triceps. He’s wearing a worn white t-shirt and jeans that cling to his hips, but have room around his tight butt, so you just get hints of how gorgeous his ass must be.

  I love the way he moves when he plays pool. He takes slow, easy steps because his mind is calculating his shot. He doesn’t say much, just nods when his opponent is trying to distract him or trash-talk him. He leans over, back muscles rippling under his shirt, jeans tugging tight against his butt. Most female conversations in a bar come to a complete halt when Ryan plays pool.

  He doesn’t notice. He’s not pretending—he really doesn’t notice. His focus is only on the game. Except when I’m there. Then he’ll look up at me before he does his final line up for the shot and he’ll grin. I’ll almost melt at the way he looks at me.

  Ryan is only nineteen but he always got into this bar. He was never carded. His father had apparently served two years in prison in place of the guy who owned the bar, and in return for his father’s magnanimous gift (taking two years of his life away from his son rather than ratting out a drug dealer), Ryan was allowed in whenever he wanted. His drinks were on the house, but Ryan never touched anything except water. Ryan’s father had driven an irreparable rift in their family so his son could score free bottles of water.