Metamorphosis (9 page)

“Well, I would say ‘good morning,
sunshine’ except that it’s almost time for dinner and you would get all
pissy
about the ‘sunshine’ thing,” she said, clearly not
happy with me. I shook my head at her and gave her the “please-not-now” look.

“Where’s Jess?” I asked hoping to
redirect her thoughts. “What are you reading?”

“Jess is at work and I’m reading
Taking Chances; I’m at 38% and it’s getting really good. You should read it, I
think you’ll really be able to relate to this one,” she said with a sliver of
dissent in her tone.

I ignored her attempted
dig,
I wasn’t even sure what she was referencing. “I was
going to start that one this weekend, I saw that it got really good reviews.
Why do you say that I’ll be able to relate?”

“Oh you’ll see,” she smirked as
she stood up and stretched her petite body, uncoiling it as if she hadn’t moved
for hours. “Come on, get your stuff, I’m ready to go back to our place.”

After I collected my things from
Jess’ room, we jumped in
Evie’s
car and headed the
short distance back to our dorm. The first few minutes we didn’t say a word to
one another. I wasn’t sure why she was so pissed off at me to be quite honest,
and of all times in my life, I really needed her support at that moment. I was
an emotional basket case.

Evie
broke the silence. “So are you
going to tell me what happened last night, or are you just going to let me
assume the worst?”

“I… I… I don’t know what happened.
I’m a mess.” I said putting my face in my hands and shaking my head.

“O-
kay
.
Well, let me start the story for you, tell you the parts that I know, then you
can finish it and correct me if I’m wrong,” she offered.

Without waiting for a response
from me she began recapping the events of the night before. “Last night, we
went to Jess’ house where we met her roommates Meg and Ash. You and Ash
eye-fucked each other up until the point we got to the party, which is where
you and I discussed you not getting involved with him. You then met and made
out with Dylan, a
hottie
that seemed like a pretty
nice
guy, that
was clearly into you and only you.
Meanwhile there was Ash, who had not just one, but two whore bags that hung all
over him and suck faced with him all night. Everything seemed to be going great
up until the point you and Ash decided to make the jam session a contest on
whose song choice lyrics could piss the other off more.”

I raised my eyebrows at her last
comment and she looked over at me in the passenger seat and laughed, “Yeah, I
picked up on it pretty quickly. I thought “You’re
So
Vain” was a nice touch, totally unexpected but completely appropriate.

“Anyways, so we left the party,
you and Dylan seemed to part on good terms, and you and Ash didn’t say another
word to one another. Right after we got back to the house, you, me, and Jess
got ready for bed and went to sleep,” she continued. “Now this is where it gets
a little sketchy for me because the next thing I remember is waking up at 11:00
this morning in an empty bed. Jess was in the shower getting ready for work and
you were nowhere to be found. I checked in the living room, thinking maybe you
had gotten uncomfortable with all of us in the bed, and moved to the couch… but
noooo
. I looked in the kitchen, the bathroom, even
Meg’s room, but you weren’t in any of those places. I knew you couldn’t have
gone far since your purse and phone were on the kitchen counter, but after
about 30 minutes I started doubting my she-went-for-a-walk theory. Before I went
into complete freak out mode, Jess convinced me to let her peek into Ash’s room
just to make sure you weren’t in there, which of course, I knew you wouldn’t
be…

“So you can imagine my surprise
when she told me that you were cozily sleeping, wrapped in Ash’s arms.” She
pulled her car into the parking space at our place but neither of us moved.
“What the fuck, Sam? The one thing I had told myself last night was that I
wasn’t going to let you sleep with anyone. I know that you feel inexperienced
compared to everyone else, I know that you feel like you need to hurry up and
do everything, but there are other virgins in college. I didn’t want it to
happen your first night out… not like that… not with someone like him!” She was
yelling at me at this point while pounding her fists on the steering wheel.

“
Evie
,
wait,” I cut her off mid-rant. “I didn’t have sex with Ash.”

“You didn’t?” she asked, confusion
covering her face.

“Uh. No. Give me a little credit,
My God, E. I mean
,
I do have a little self-respect.” I
said. I tried to lighten the conversation, “I may be a little desperate and
over-eager but I’m at least going to require a good dinner before I spread my
legs for someone and I would prefer that he hadn’t been with someone else in
the previous 24 hours, neither of which Ash fulfilled.”

Evie’s
shoulders dropped as she exhaled
a huge sigh. “Oh, thank God. Do you have any idea of the guilt I’ve been living
with for the past few hours? Thinking that I had failed in my best friend
responsibilities? I mean I went to the point of getting in bed with you at 3:00
in the morning, thinking we were all going to sleep… only to find you in the
bed of some self-proclaimed man-whore the next day!” her voice escalated again.
“If you didn’t fuck him, what did you do? What happened exactly?”

“Can we please go to our room to
finish this conversation?” I asked, hoping a break from talking and the fresh
air would calm her down a bit. She nodded and we grabbed our bags and headed
upstairs.

As soon as the door closed,
Evie
turned to me and grabbed me in a tight hug. “I’m sorry
I was upset with you. I’m sorry I assumed that you would do that. I know you
are upset right now, so tell me what happened. Tell me everything and we will
work through this.”

This was why I loved
Evie
. She was the best thing in my life, and I knew that
she would always give me advice that was in my best interest. She was my
life-cheerleader.
Evie
had saved my sanity on more
than one occasion and I couldn’t live without her. So I told her everything.

“Everything you said earlier was
right,” I began, as we moved to the couch. “When I first met Ash at the house
last night, I had this crazy reaction to him, like the kind of thing we read
about - my body got overheated, I had goose bumps all over, my stomach clenched,
you know. It was weird, almost indescribable, but as soon as I heard Jess say
what a ladies’ man he is and then the smooth talking he did when he introduced
himself to me… well, I thought I was just being silly, just overreacting like
an idiot to the first hot guy I met, one that obviously excels at charming
females into bed. So when I met Dylan, I did like him…
I
mean, I do like him.
He is great - all the things you said, I really
enjoyed talking with him, we got along great, he was respectful, and yes, he
isn’t hard on the eyes.” I stopped to pull up a vision of Dylan in my head and
swoon momentarily. “I didn’t think about Ash at all when I was hanging out with
Dylan, until we came inside and Ash starts that shit with the songs. It was
like he was singing the words to me, trying to make me uncomfortable… to piss
me off. And obviously, it worked, which is why I played what I did, as you
picked up on.

“I was still irritated with him
when we got back to the house, I had no intentions of even talking to him again.
But I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to get a drink, and he came into the kitchen
for a drink too, and he asked me why you called me Sam.”

“What? Why?”
Evie
asked.

“I don’t know, I guess he was just
curious about where the name came from. I told him about my strange aversion to
nicknames. And it was so weird, that connection was there again. It’s
undeniable; I don’t even know how to describe it. He asked me to go to his room
to talk, he promised he wouldn’t touch me and for some reason, I believed him.”
Evie
rolled her eyes and shook her head at me
simultaneously.

“I know, I know, just trust me. So
we went to his room, talked just a little really… not about much of anything.
And then we shared the most explosive, soul-capturing kiss in the history of
mankind and then we went to sleep,” I said nonchalantly and looked at the
floor.

Evie’s
mouth opened and for a moment
nothing came out. “And? You’re just going to leave me with that?”

“No, the next part is where it
gets confusing,” I started to say.

“Oh, because up until now it all
made perfect sense?” she interjected sarcastically.

“Please,” I begged. “Just bear
with me.”

She nodded as to tell me to
continue.

“So this afternoon when we woke
up, it was like waking up in heaven,
Evie
. Our arms
and legs were tangled together, his masculine scent all around me, I could feel
his erection on my back… it was seriously like a scene from one of our books. I
was afraid to move, afraid to break the moment. And as most things that seem
too good to be true, it was.

“When we woke up, Ash told me that
we couldn’t see each other or anything, that last night was it. He acknowledged
that there was some unexplainable fascination between the two of us, different
from just a physical attraction, but I needed this time of, oh what did he call
it? Oh, my time of changing from a girl to a woman, or some
bull
shit
. He said that I was better without him and that he would just hurt
me or
hold
me back. So basically he was letting me go
because it was the best thing for me. And then he called me his butterfly, his
Psyche… whatever the hell he meant by that. Honestly, I was too caught up in
the fantasy of the whole
thing,
I didn’t want to ruin
it by asking. It was like my one little night of fairytale.”

I released a defeated sigh as I
laid
down on the couch with my head in
Evie’s
lap and my feet dangling off the side. “So now I don’t know what to think. Part
of me feels like it’s fucking absurd to believe that two days after moving
here, I met my soul mate, who just so happened to be the first male I was
introduced to, oh and he’s a man-whore that doesn’t want to give up other pussy
but wants to call me cool names like Butterfly and Psyche.” I looked up at her
and said as seriously as possible. “By the way, Psyche and Butterfly are both
way fucking cooler names than Sam. You could’ve done much better.”
I couldn’t keep my face straight through the last word
,
I started cracking up
.
Evie
stood
up laughing too, causing me to roll off the couch and hit the floor with a
thud. This just made me laugh harder.

“Come on Butterfly,” she said
mockingly as she stood with her hands stretched out to me to help pull me up.
“Get your wings out and fly our
asses
to the store. We
need to stock up on food and drinks. Tonight we are having a Magic Mike and
banana split party; watching Channing Tatum and Alex
Pettyfer’s
asses
prance around while eating ice cream is the
perfect distraction for you. Right now, you need to let your mind rest, stop
thinking about it ~ about Ash, about Dylan, about everything.

Evie
was right, I needed to stop over
thinking it, over analyzing it. Ever since I had left Ash’s room, I had been
replaying different moments of our time in his bed. I needed to let it go, at
least for now.

“Sounds like a plan, but don’t
think I’ve forgotten that you owe me breakfast and the score in the book whore
challenge is now 1-0.” I joked, trying to pull myself out of my funk.

“Whatever, last night was just a
practice round for you… I was too worried about watching over you, making sure
you didn’t act like a fool or have too much to drink,” she argued.

I just shook my head and laughed;
I wasn’t giving up this victory.

Evie
had also been right about Magic
Mike and the ice cream, it was exactly what I needed to forget about everything
else. Exhausted by the events of the last week, I went to sleep easily when the
movie ended, with visions of men in black pants and ties dancing in my head.

The following day, Monday, was our
last free day before classes were to begin. It was raining outside so
Evie
and I both decided to stay in our room to recharge
before our schedules became insanely hectic. I was way behind on my reading so
I decided to have a rainy-day-read-a-
polooza
.
Following
Evie’s
lead, I downloaded Taking Chances
and the recommended play list and immersed myself in the lives of Harper,
Brandon, and Chase. I loved listening to the playlists suggested by the authors
when reading their book. To me it’s
like
the
background music to a movie, it provides another sensory layer to the story.
It’s amazing how the right music can enhance a good
book,
it heightens the intensity levels at those crucial moments.

About an hour in, I clearly
understood why
Evie
wanted me to read this book. I
could completely relate to Harper ~ starting college naïve and inexperienced,
being attracted to more than one guy, trying to figure out who she was. The
story captivated me from the beginning; I couldn’t put it down. Just as I was
really falling in love with the characters, when I had decided how I wanted the
story to end, the book took an unforeseen turn, a twist that was
gut-wrenching
, heartbreaking, and tear-inducing. I then
spent the next three and a half hours crying, for most of the second half of
the book, as the author slowly put my broken heart back together again.