One Hot Fall Term (Yardley College Chronicles Book1) (5 page)

The first one is going to be living in residence.

***

The dorms are four storey rectangular buildings fashioned in beige, with blocks of bright colored stucco. I sigh. The closest I’m going to get to a one-hundred-year-old stone building with character is if I get to open a door and take a peek.

Vans and trucks line up outside. Furniture is being hauled through the door by grunting and sweating fathers, guys, and girls in sweats and yoga pants. Tearful goodbyes are everywhere, which reminds me of Ryan. And it reminds me that my stepfather and I will be saying goodbye in a few minutes.

 
Don’t let him kiss me.
Hugs are awkward enough.

The main floor is entirely common areas and offices. A fourth-year student named Alison is assigned to give me the tour. She’s tall, with straight brown hair, and glasses with severe, square, navy blue frames. Alison points toward a kitchenette, a games room, quiet study areas, and a communal T.V. room. In there, I can hear guys shouting. It sounds like Ryan and his friends watching football and my throat tightens.

Alison takes the stairs up from the common rooms to Floor 3, which is one of the women’s levels. I hold a key tagged with my room no, 310. It turns out to be a corner room. Dad’s pleased. Apparently he’s paying extra to get me better accommodations. A corner room has two windows.

When I unlock the door and push it open, I get my first lesson in roommate behavior. Knock first.

What I see is a broad, tanned male back with a woman’s hands clinging to it. The woman has long, sparkly fingernails, the tips painted cobalt blue, dotted with tiny fake diamonds for stars. As the door creaks, the hands let go of the guy, and she peeks around him. Instead of being angry, she gives a glowing smile—the kind that grace teeth-whitening commercials. Her boyfriend has black hair and a shadow of dark stubble. She’s blond, with impossibly straight hair that flows over her shoulders. In a pink tank top and grey sweats—bulky sweats, not ass-cupping, flared yoga pants—she looks amazing. Graceful. Slender. Incredibly attractive.

I’m a little intimidated. It’s going to be hard getting up each morning and seeing such perfection, because I suspect she’s one of the lucky females who looks good when she rolls out of bed. I never like to be seen without mascara. Though Ryan has seen me that way, and it’s never scared him away.

Her boyfriend steps back, smiles at me, surprisingly confident for a man caught shirtless by strangers. He does have a great chest.

She sticks out her hand. “Hi, you must be my roommate. I’m Lara Williams. Lara, like in Croft, but with zero similarities.”

Her self-effacing comment wins me in a moment, though I’m thinking Lara Croft would
wish
she looked like this girl.

I shake her hand. My father throws disapproving glances at the boyfriend, and I wish this whole moment would be over. “I’m Mia Reynolds. This is my father, Daniel Reynolds.”

I hate to say it, but I watch my father carefully as he shakes hands with Lara. He looks at her long enough that my stomach plunges. I can see he’s looking at her not as a college girl his daughter’s age, but as an attractive female.

I so want this over.

“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, then 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 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 father, 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 father 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. Then 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, then 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 the 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 on 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, then 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 which 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 in the 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, and then 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 my breasts and stomach.