7. Ryan

Jesus fucking Christ, what a week.

I admit I haven’t handled the truck situation as well as I could have. By that, I mean I’ve handled it by avoiding it completely. I know, I know, avoiding it isn’t the best way to adult, but I also know the tow truck and repairs will cost money I don’t have, and I passionately hate speaking to people on the phone. So instead of calling around to get it sorted, I’ve spent a lot of time lying in bed, staring vacantly out the window, as the fist reaches into my chest and squeezes the ever-loving shit out of my heart.

In fact, I’d love it if I could spend a whole lot more time doing that, but Miller fucking MacAvoy seems to be going out of his way to be in the room when I’m here. He’s always around. Always. I don’t know how the hell he expects to fit in all his fist-bumping and ass-slapping if he’s always here and not hanging out with the miscreants he calls friends. It doesn’t seem to bother him though. He’s here all the time. All. The. Time.

He seems to take pleasure in getting up in my business. He talks constantly and asks me stupid questions until I lose my train of thought completely. If he’s not talking, he’s doing things. Offering me drinks and moving my stuff around, making me feel like I’m going crazy.

I’ve been so busy trying to keep a handle on everything that I’ve fallen behind on my laundry. My hamper is full to the top, and I’m wearing a T-shirt with a big Pomodoro sauce stain on the front today. I skip my last lecture so I can hit the laundry when the place isn’t heaving with people.

Imagine my surprise when I get to our room to find my hamper empty and neat piles of freshly laundered clothes folded on my bed.

“What the fuck?” I glare at him until he looks up from his phone.

“Oh, you’re welcome. I was sending my laundry out, and I noticed your hamper was full.”

“I thought I made it clear the other night that I don’t need your charity.”

“Well,” he replies, waving a dismissive hand at me, “if it helps, it’s not my charity. My dad pays the bill, and he doesn’t give a shit either way. If you have a fetish for doing laundry, fine by me. I’ll leave you to it, but if not, I’ll just send it out when I send mine. Okay?”

The only thing worse than Miller MacAvoy acting like a dick is Miller MacAvoy when he isn’t.

I don’t answer. Instead, I rip the thin plastic bags open and start packing my clothes away, huffing and puffing in annoyance as I do it but taking care not to disturb the perfect pressing they’ve been subjected to. On top of everything else, my clothes smell like Miller’s now. Crisp cedarwood and amber and a gluttonous side-serving of rich boy privilege.

It’s fucking distracting.

He’s fucking distracting too. I seem to be having a reaction to him. A strong one. A bad one. A totally irrational one, given how much I can’t stand him. It’s just that he’s half-naked most of the time. His body is hard, taut, and toned, with bulky pecs and biceps clenching and relaxing right in my line of sight. It’s not like I can choose to not see him. He’s right there, a couple of feet away from me. All the time.

All the goddamn time.

I’m trying to stop myself. Believe me, I am. It’s one thing to be curious. I’m fine with that. To me, it seems normal. I mean, who doesn’t wonder what it would be like to be with someone of the same sex. Literally half the population is the same sex as me. How can I possibly rule every single one of them out? Seems unrealistic to me.

While I’m fine with being curious in general, I’m not at all fine with being curious about Miller specifically. I’m the furthest thing from fine about that. Couldn’t be less fine about it if I tried.

When I’ve finished packing away my laundry, he pulls himself up slowly off the bed. Abs clenching, biceps bulging as usual. It’s early March, but he seems to be under the impression it’s mid-summer. In the Sahara. He’s taken to acting like shirtless is not only an option, it’s the expected dress code.

Stop this shit, I warn myself firmly as I drag my eyes off his chest.

“Feeling better?” he says with an over-personal smile.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in business law in ten minutes?”

I’ve had to learn his schedule, so I know when I can safely panic in my own fucking room in private, and even that isn’t foolproof because the guy’s attendance record is in the toilet. Best I can tell, he has friends who take notes for him, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s one of those pricks who pays others to complete their assignments.

Hmm, wonder how much you make doing assignments for pricks?

No. No, no. Absolutely not.

That goes against everything I stand for.

“Nah, I’m skipping it.”

I look longingly at my bed and then sit at my desk. I’ve been falling behind since I moved in here. It’s impossible to concentrate when Miller’s around. Even when he’s not talking, his presence is…big, for want of a better word. It takes up a lot of space. So much space that my lungs feel crushed, and it’s hard to breathe when he’s around. I’m on edge, overly aware of where he is, what he’s doing, and what he’s going to do next.

He’s still now, sitting on the sofa with a magazine in his hands, reading something that definitely isn’t business law. Even though he’s at my back, I can feel him. Pages flutter as he turns them. His breath saws in and out. I feel him shift his gaze. I feel it as sure as I’d feel it if he reached out and touched me. A warm whisper of skin on skin. Fingertips trailing lightly over my shoulders and down my back.

I spin around accusingly, waiting for him to look away. He doesn’t.

“What are you looking at?”

“You,” he replies as if it should be obvious.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that? I-it isn’t normal. It’s fucking weird.”

He shrugs casually, full lips peeling back into something resembling a smile. Gray eyes as stony as ever. “Just trying to figure it out, I guess.”

“Figure what out?”

“What it is about you that makes you so hot.”

A quick burst of fury flares in my chest and rapidly fades. The sudden spike and drop leaves me feeling deflated and confused. I’m tired. Completely exhausted. I must be because what he’s just said definitely warrants a lot more than a quick burst of anything. It deserves a complete and sustained meltdown.

I scowl at him, using every ounce of my power to make him cower.

He smiles and shrugs again, totally unapologetic. His eyes are on my mouth, slowly tracking down to the hollow at the base of my neck. “Can’t help it.”

“Try,” I croak. I clear my throat and reach for my water bottle.

The fist squeezes. Hard. Almost painfully so. It’s a different fist though. Not the one that plagues my nights and tortures my sleep. Not the one that finds me whenever things around me slow and fall quiet.

This one is worse.

This one reaches deeper. And squeezes lower.

“Where are you going?” Miller’s eyebrows shoot up into the hopeful look of someone angling for an invitation.

“Emily’s room.”

His mouth twitches. “Emily’s? I thought you said you didn’t know her?”

“I didn’t. I only met her a couple of weeks ago.”

“Mm-hmm.” He nods as if he doesn’t believe me, which makes me feel lightheaded with rage. “So why’re you going to her room then?”

“She asked me to come over to help her hang fairy lights in her room.”

He nods again, the same as before, but worse. “You know, I happen to know Emily pretty well, and let me tell you, she’s a highly competent woman.”

Annoyance peters out and is replaced with exhaustion. “What’s your point, Miller?”

“My point, Ry, is—”

“Don’t call me Ry.” It’s not the first time I’ve said this. More like the tenth. I say it with meaning and that makes his eyes crease at the corners.

“My point, Ryan, is that Emily can hang up her own goddamn fairy lights if she wants to. That’s not why you’re going over there.”

Okay. I’ll bite. “Why am I going then?”

“She wants you.”

I’ll admit, I do laugh then. I have to hand it to him. It’s funny as hell. “Um, it’s Emily Parker we’re talking about. Have you seen her?”

“Like I said, I know her.” His eyes flash, and the heat in the room cranks up a degree or two, making it uncomfortably warm.

I’m too tired for this shit. This week has kicked my ass. I feel worn down to the bone, hardly able to muster the energy to argue, so I open the door and head out.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he calls after me.

Warn me? Warn me about Emily? I’m not sure if he’s mocking me or if he’s out of his mind, but he must be crazy to think a girl like Emily would ever be into someone like me.

Hmm, wonder if delusional is something that might be of interest to Bev?

I’ve been back to see Bev twice in the past two weeks. Both times, she shook her head when she saw me and yelled, “Next!”

I knock on Emily’s door and take two steps back, which seems a little excessive, so I quickly take one step forward and then drop into a pit of self-doubt about whether I’m too close. This is me. This is what I’m like. Seriously, this is the shit I deal with daily, and that idiot MacAvoy thinks Emily is into it.

I’d laugh if I wasn’t so tired of being in my own head.

“Ryan!” Emily opens the door and flings her arms around me. “How are you?”

“Good, thanks,” I say stiffly, feeling my cheeks heat from a welcome I admit is a lot warmer than expected.

“Come on in.” She waves me in, looking at me expectantly as I take in her room.

There’s color on every surface. Her bedding is floral, and there’s a teal-and-white striped rug on the floor. The walls are plastered with art, every inch covered in pastels and primary colors. It should be way too much, and it damn nearly is, but somehow, with the plants on her desk and the hot-pink neon light that reads Welcome to the Shit Show above her bed, it seems to work.

“Wow.”

“What do you think?”

“It looks like a unicorn ate too many sparkles and threw up all over the place.” A shadow ripples in her eyes, so I quickly add. “In a good way.”

“Too much?” She gives me a big, toothy grin. “I might have gotten carried away. Gotten super excited to have my own place. You know what it’s like.”

“Nope.” I laugh. “I don’t know what that’s like at all. Can’t even imagine it.”

She bites her bottom lip. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

I mean, it kind of is, but I don’t want to make her feel bad about it. I’m pretty sure Bev would have caved and given me this room if Emily hadn’t been there the first time I went to complain about Miller.

Emily pulls four strings of fairy lights out from under her bed, and we start untangling them. “How’s your week been? Did you get your socio paper done?”

“Yeah, that went fine. I got it done, but, ugh, my truck broke down on the way to Pepe’s the other night, and I’ve been trying to ignore the problem ever since.”

“Oh no! Where’s it now?”

“Uh, I pulled over and parked on a side street when the engine started making weird sounds.”

“Ryan! You can’t just leave a car parked on the street. You’re going to get hit with a ton of fines.”

The second she says it, the fist punches a hole clear through my chest.

This is it, the underlying stress that’s been with me for the last few days. The stress I haven’t completely been able to name or face.

“Shit,” I say softly. “I’ve got to go.”

She’s on her feet quickly. “Can I give you a ride?”

“Nah, thanks.”

I’d love a ride, but I’m barely hanging on by a thread, and I don’t want her to see the fallout if I find my car covered in tickets. I don’t think I can handle that.

Please, please, God, let him be out, I pray as I open the door.

By some miracle, my prayer is answered. Miller’s study lamp is on, but the room is otherwise dark. I draw the curtains and sit heavily on my bed, arms hanging limply at my sides. My throat aches and my eyes sting. I haven’t cried in years, but I feel like crying now.

Three fucking tickets.

Seventy dollars each.

As if I didn’t have enough problems that are out of my control, this was in my control. I should have called the tow truck as soon as it happened. I didn’t want to miss my shift because I was out of granola bars and ramen, and I was fucking hungry, but obviously, it’s what I should have done. And given that I didn’t do it right then and there, I should have called the tow truck the second my shift finished. Or even early the next morning.

It was the height of stupidity, and it’s no one’s fault but my own. Obviously, I’m still going to have to pay for the tow truck. Now, I’m just going to have to pay the fines on top of everything else.

What the hell was I thinking?