“That’s a conversation for another day.”
“Let’s have your notions decide then,” I said, remembering his words from the night before. He believed in something stronger than science, and I couldn’t judge him for it. Most people believed in that shit.
“What are you proposing?”
“We’ll use music to decide the next …” I glanced up at the same clock as mine above Ollie’s door “… two hours. Where’s your phone?”
Ollie reached under his mattress for the phone and handed it over to me.
“Think of it as a magic eight-ball. I push shuffle, and it’ll answer our questions based on the lyrics.” I looked over to him for a hint of understanding, and he rolled his head back but eventually agreed. “First question, why is Ollie here?”
Ollie nervously laughed as I pressed shuffle and a song I’d never heard before came through its speakers. The bright screen read it was “Lean on” by Major Lazer.
Glancing up from the bright screen, Ollie’s mouth dropped open. “That’s fucking weird,” he breathed as he looked at the phone and back at me as if I’d done some kind of magic trick.
“Didn’t have anyone to lean on?” I grinned.
He grabbed the phone out of my hand. “We’re still not getting into it. My turn.” He waited in thought while the chorus played for a second time and shook his head before he continued, “Oh, magic eight … phone, should Mia get up and dance right now?” he asked into the phone and peeked over at me with a wayward smile.
Shuffle was pressed.
The intro to “Killing Me Softly with His Song” by The Fugees flowed, and Ollie’s eyes widened as a smile crept across his face. “That’s it … you have to get up, Mia. You can’t turn down the Fugees, it’s an unsaid law.” He stood and pulled me off the mattress until both feet of mine were planted in the middle of the dorm room. My face flushed and Ollie, with a massive grin, fell back over the mattress. “Come on, love,” Ollie teased, and held up his head in his hand. “The notions are saying you have to dance.”
And finally, I did. My hips swayed to the smooth beat, lost in the rhythm. Adrenaline rushed through me as Ollie’s eyes followed my body’s flow. His eyes met mine as they burned with fever. “You’re missing out,” I said with a teasing conviction.
Ollie’s eyes beamed back at me with a wild smile. “I can promise you I’m not.”
Before the song came to an end, I grabbed the phone from his hand. “What is Ollie thinking right now?” And I pressed the almighty powerful shuffle button.
Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire” played and I hunched over as a loud laugh came from inside me. Ollie’s stuffed his face into a pillow and my laughter turned into the quiet kind as my vision turned cloudy.
“This whole thing has got to be rigged somehow,” he said with flushed cheeks. He quickly jumped to his feet and towered over me while trying to grab the phone from my possession. My laughs only increased as he pinned me to his torso and wrestled the phone from my hand.
“Is your sex on fire, Ollie?” I asked through each breathless laugh.
He was able to secure the phone from me and fell back over the mattress as I sang the song with an air guitar and an invisible drum set. Around him I was free, stuck in a natural high as I whipped my hair and did stupid dance moves. Ollie watched me in awe, and I enjoyed the way I physically affected him. The dimple, the blushing, the glowing smile. It was all worth every embarrassing move as his eyes radiated in my direction.
“Should Mia leave or stay with me?” he hesitantly asked out loud and pressed the button.
An unfamiliar song played. He glanced up at me and waited for my reaction.
My laughing dissolved as I tried to recognize the tune. “What song is this?”
He smiled. “Wait for it.”
I put my hands on my hips as I waited for a voice to come through, and when it did, I grabbed the phone from him and looked on the screen. It read, “Nice to Meet You Anyway,” by Gavin DeGraw. What the hell? I tossed the phone over the mattress beside him and turned to leave since we were now following by the rules of my own game.
“Uh-uh. Where you going, Mia?” He wrapped his long arms around my waist, pulling me back. Shrieking, I fell on top of him and onto his small bed. “Gavin might think differently, but you’re not leaving,” he said through a laugh. Ollie rolled me over to his side, and when our eyes met, our laughter slowly faded.
We were so close, his staggering breath reached my lips. His fingers applied an eager amount of pressure to my side as his eyes wandered from my eyes to my mouth, and I had to concentrate on breathing to make sure I still was.
“Ollie …” I breathed.
He trailed his fingers up my arms, and I couldn’t seem to move. My body was under a spell of him. His warm hand left my arm and reached behind me for the phone still playing the Gavin DeGraw song.
Ollie turned his back and dangled the phone in front of him. His eyes darted over to me then back at the phone. “Should I kiss Mia?” he asked, then pressed shuffle.
I held my breath.
We can’t kiss. I don’t kiss.
It was a bad idea, but I couldn’t seem to escape him. Did this mean I wanted to kiss him? I didn’t know exactly what I was hoping for.
It seemed like forever had passed before a song played, but I knew it couldn’t have been longer than a fraction of a second.
A beautiful acoustic melody from a guitar filled the dorm room. Another song I didn’t recognize. The screen read it was “Rhythm Inside” by Calum Scott, and I couldn’t understand what was happening.
Ollie closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and let it slowly go before he paused the song and tilted his head to face me. “Mia, this is fucking crazy. I really want to kiss you …” His gaze moved back and forth between my eyes and my lips. “Fuck do I want to kiss you, but I want you to listen to these words even more because I couldn’t have said them better myself. Everything he says is how you make me feel when I’m around you.”
I tried to swallow as he pressed play and placed the phone above our heads. He turned back on his side to face me. Calum’s beautiful voice played in our ears, and Ollie moved the hair from my face and said, “Just listen.”
And I did.
By the middle of the song, I had lost all sense of my past and future. The only thing in front of me was Ollie—my present, and I was surprised I still had a pulse because his eyes on me were breathtaking. It was as if they didn’t belong anywhere else.
A mixture of panic and peace swept over me, and I couldn’t make sense of it. My breath caught in my chest, and an undeniable pull brought my hands behind his head and into his brown hair. I nestled my face into his neck, and Ollie wrapped his long arms around my waist, pulling me close against him.
The coconut smell of his skin and his breath in my hair washed away the panic, and all that remained was the peace. It was the feeling of walking through the doors of your home after an extended vacation. The feeling of the bell ringing after the last class of the day, and the taste of ice-cold water on a hot day in July.
Peace.
Out of all the things that could have happened in his room, hugging him was never a possibility in my mind.
The lyrics said to show him what I was feeling, and for some unexplainable reason, I wanted to be close to him. Around Ollie, I actually had a feeling, and it overwhelmed me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had hugged anyone. But I didn’t want to hug anyone else. I wanted his arms around me, and to keep this satisfying feeling inside me for as long as possible.
He slowly, gently rubbed my back as he breathed into my neck, and we held on to each other as our legs intertwined—unsure of where he started, and I ended. Ollie didn’t say another word, and neither one of us reached for the phone to ask another question. We lay in his bed as he cradled me and let the rest of the songs play
out the way they were meant to.
Chapter Six
“Beauty and pain will invade the same.”
—Oliver Masters
THE PARADOX OF A hug was even though it was physically comforting, the healing properties to your mental state was just as powerful—if not more. For so long I had been under the impression I was so dead inside, I didn’t need hugs. Though I lived with emotional detachment disorder, why did I so severely crave something so simple as a damn hug? And with my condition, why did it comfort me in the way it did?
Yes, I’d researched studies on human contact and the power of touch in my spare time, like I’d researched everything else under the moon. I’d wanted answers to everything—why people did the things they did—because I couldn’t understand an action as simple as a hug, and even after all my research, I was still left confused. It wasn’t until now, with Ollie’s warm arms around me, his body pressed against mine, when I understood everything I had been reading. With Ollie, I’d found a safe place. I’d found refuge from the storm inside my head.
But as comforting as it felt, it was just as scary. And the fear slowly grew bigger and bigger, pulling Ollie’s safety net out from under me with a force so much more powerful—the force of my past.
Instinctively, I pulled away and Ollie quickly searched my face. When he looked into my eyes—really looked—his face fell, and he slowly shook his head. “Where did you go?”
The air in my chest tightened as I knitted my brows together. “What do you mean? I’m right here.” I understood him, though. A part of me was slipping.
He placed his hand over my cheek, and his warmth battled the gradually consuming cold. “Your eyes … Something’s changed.”
I pulled his hands away and rolled off the mattress until I got to my feet. “I have to go.” Frantically, I searched the room as if I was leaving something behind. Oh, right, my books. I picked up my books off the floor and took one last glance at Ollie. He lay confused over the mattress as if I’d pulled a chair out from under him. “I’ll … um … I’ll see you later.”
Then, I walked out the door.
After dinner, I waited until right before curfew to head to the bathroom. Jake’s squeals ricocheted from the opposite end of the bathroom as I ducked under and in between people to find an empty shower. He already had a new white tee on with his plaid pajama bottoms and Bart Simpson slippers covering his feet. With nowhere to run, I waved as the rest of his friends turned to see me.
Isaac was brushing his teeth in boxers with beer mugs all over them, and Alicia sat on the sink beside him, talking his ear off.
“It’s always busy in here at night. When is the best time to come?” I asked as I sat my things down beside Alicia.
“In the morning,” Bria said as she exited the shower stall fully dressed with a towel wrapped around her hair. “You have a better chance sharing a shower than finding your own this late at night.”
Ollie strolled out of the shower beside Bria’s with black boxer briefs clinging to his glistening skin. A collection of black and white tattoos was painted along his chest and stomach as birds flew up his sides toward his back from a pair of hands. It was the first time I’d seen him this close without a shirt on, and the artwork hypnotized me.
Everything was black and white—the symbols on each bicep, the artwork scattering up his arms, and in the center of his torso, right below his chest, tree roots spiraled together into a silhouette of two people. He shook his head, and his hair sprayed water in all directions, knocking me out of his trance. When his eyes fell on mine, I lost the ability to move my feet as his lips parted. “Hi, love,” I think he said, but my head felt submerged underwater.
“You coming through tonight, Mia, or what?” Isaac asked, pulling me from the tide.
I snapped my head to the side. “What’s tonight?”
“We celebrate Thursday nights with something special,” Bria whispered as her gaze roamed over the rest of them.
My gaze followed behind hers as everyone’s faces lit up. Ollie dropped his head and turned away, and I wondered if he didn’t want me to find out about it. “No, I’m good.”
“Oh, c’ mon, Mia. You can embrace us with your talents,” Jake cut in. I narrowed my eyes at him and gave him a shut-up look. The last thing I needed was everyone requesting a read from me. I wasn’t a circus act. What I had to say about the five of them would only hurt feelings, and once I opened my mouth, it was impossible to stop.
“What talents?” Ollie asked as he towel dried his hair.
“Nothing. Forget it.” I disappeared behind the curtain and undressed, hoping the topic would cease.
“She wasn’t fun, anyway. A waste of perfectly good vodka.” Bria’s whiney bitterness bounced off the tiles. “She doesn’t deserve what we have in store tonight.”
I saw right through her reverse psychology, but I couldn’t understand why she wanted me there in the first place. She’d made it perfectly clear she didn’t like me and didn’t want me going after Isaac or Ollie.
“Still not coming, Bria,” I shouted from under the water.
I did want to go—shit—but for some reason, I had to prove a point. I wasn’t under Bria’s influence like the rest of them, and although she couldn’t control me, it did sound way better than staring at the ceiling in my room.
“Don’t listen to her, Mia. Come and have a good time,” Jake’s voice boomed as the rest of them whispered to one another.
Rolling my head back under the water, I weighed my options. “I’ll think about it,” was all I could come up with at the moment.
Everyone had disappeared by the time I exited the shower, and I had one minute to get back to the dorm before the doors locked automatically for the night. After barreling down the hall, I made it safely behind my steel door with seconds to spare.
Jake, Isaac, and I sat around the blanket sprawled out on the floor in its usual place. Ollie sat on his mattress with his back against the wall, a touchy Bria beside him.
Alicia hadn’t made it tonight, and it was even more awkward without her fearless mouth and spunky attitude to fill the void.
“What’s so special about tonight?” I asked as the chatter disintegrated.
Ollie reached into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulled out a small plastic bag. Isaac sprang to his feet and crossed the small space to snatch it out of his hand. “No fucking way.”
“Calm down, junkie. You think I’m feeding your roxie and oxy addiction? It’s only mandy,” Ollie said as Isaac examined the bag.
I lifted my head in Jake’s direction. “What’s mandy?”
“Ecstasy.”
“Oh, we call it molly.”
“Have you ever done it before?” Ollie asked from the mattress.
“Yeah. Once,” I lied. Just because I was considered “no good” didn’t mean I had a history with drugs, but confessing my lack of experience would only start another conversation I didn’t want to have.
“Tonight’s about to get weird,” Isaac said, emptying the tablets into his hand. He was usually quiet, and this was the first time I’d seen him excited about anything. His dark brown eyes flicked over to me as he dropped a small pill into the palm of my hand.
Glancing over at Ollie, I popped the pill into my mouth and he slowly shook a disapproving head.
After the second tablet, it didn’t take long for the effects to kick in. Jake’s eyes went wide beside me. “Whoa,” he said, or moaned—I couldn’t tell anymore. “Mia, can I ask you a question? Actually, I’m not going to ask you … I’m just going to ask,” Jake rambled, “should I go back to Jacob, or is Jake really a cooler name?”
“I like Jacob. I like Jake, too. But if you were to change your name, why not get something even cooler … like Cash, or Knox.”
“Ooh, Knox. Call me Knox, yeah?”
“Okay, Knox. I’m going
to try to stand up.”
“Wait,” Knox said, grabbing for my arm and stopping me. “What do you want me to call you?”
“You know, I never really thought about that.” A laugh came from my lips as my favorite show popped into my head. “Crap-bag. Call me Crap-bag.”
“Crap-bag?”
“Yeah, just think of a bag full of crap,” I said, reciting the line through another spurt of laughter from the show Friends.
“Crap-bag. Crap-bag,” Jake repeated as the whole room lit up around me.
All the colors were more defined. Radiant. Ollie’s eyes burned into me from only a few feet away, but I swore it seemed like he was miles away from me. Standing to my feet, I used the wall behind me for leverage before walking toward him and swiping the iPhone from the mattress. “We need a change in music. I need to dance.” The screen was so bright, I had to pull the phone away for the words to make sense.
“Mia, you okay?” someone asked, and my eyes scanned the room to see where the haunting voice was coming from. “Mia?” Ollie looked up at me from the mattress. “You alright, love?”
“Never been better,” I think I said, and pressed play on “Feel So Close” by Calvin Harris. The phone dropped from my hand as the room spun around me. The mattress beneath me was like a cloud, and I jumped in circles as a smile grew on my face. My entire being had a mind of its own as the chemicals took me over. I was feeling it: the music, the mandy, myself. Spinning in circles, my body felt like a feather floating in the air. Drifting.
Adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream and my smile became a permanent stain as my hands traveled up my waist and through my hair. Another pair of hands found my hips, and I turned to see Isaac wearing the same smile. He felt the same electricity as me, and this madness wasn’t stopping anytime soon. The vibration influenced me, compelled me to let go and feel the music, and the music couldn’t have been loud, but each pound of the bass beat harder, each stroke of a key more distinct.
Isaac pulled my back against him, and I peered down at Bria who watched us from Ollie’s side. I had one of her men, and she couldn’t claim them both in one night. Which one was more important to her?
Stay With Me (Stay With Me Series Book 1) Page 7