Premature Evacuation (Underground Sorority #1) (16 page)

We fell into each other like old times, like new times. This was one way I could repay my debt. I reached my steady hands under his shirt, scrunching it up and pulling it over his head. His lips found mine, a kiss with such power, it nearly sucked the life out of me. His fingers fumbled to get my clothes off, and my heart raced marathons. It seemed like we were in a rush, like we couldn’t wait even one more second. “The candles are still in my car,” he whispered, hot breath on my ear.

I didn’t need candles or gimmicks. I didn’t even need crazy positions. All I needed was already in my arms.

He must have felt the same way because the entire time we stayed in the most boring position of all but it was absolutely perfect. We kept eye contact the entire time instead of squeezing our lids shut to enhance the pleasure. He used the slow, deep trusts I liked the best.

“God, I missed this.” He pulled my body close to him; his wet mouth nestled neatly into the crook of my neck. His body shuddered and I knew it wasn’t from the cold air creeping in through the cracked window.

Tears streamed down his face and clumped into a puddle on my clavicle. I had a flash of Harrison accusing him of crying, hurling it at me like a weapon.

“You know, Mac, when I was in the police station, all I could think was: ‘thank God she’s okay.’ I couldn’t live with myself if you weren’t. My own life didn’t flash before my eyes, yours did.”

Guilt stabbed my heart, digging a long spike into my arteries. But then Corey wrapped me tighter and dissolved the guilt with a stronger emotion. Warmth bubbled in my chest and spread down my arms and legs until I tightened my entire body around him. “I’m glad we’re
both
okay.”

“I’m sorry, for you know, all that shit I put you through before. I want to be with you.” He kissed me deeply. “I want to
deserve
you. I’m going to change.”

There were no more obstacles. Nothing to hold either of us back. Corey had finally committed to me.

But I was starting to realize that maybe he wasn’t the one that needed to change. I was.

H
E KEPT TRUE TO his word. I tried to do the same.

I awoke before Corey and turned onto my side to study him like I would a subject I was about to paint. The rectangular shape of his eyes and his puffy lower lids that folded over like he’d tucked his eyes into a blanket. His pouty parched lips, the ridges in them as pronounced as the deepest canyon. The height of his chest rising as oxygen swam through his veins. The precarious pause between breaths, an interval where he had everything he needed to sustain him. Every pore dotting his skin and the blotchy patches of redness that always appeared in the morning or when he was drunk. I charted these patches in my mind as if I were sketching I canvas, tracing the exact curvature of his nose, the tip tilting upward to mimic the silhouette of a cat’s paw.

My feet landed with a soft patter onto the hardwood floor, and I eased open his desk drawer until I pulled out a college-ruled notebook. He didn’t have any pencils so I carried a pen over to the bed, propped the notebook on my bent knees, and drew him. Artists only ever showcased their finished pieces, but it was the process I liked best, when a blank canvas transformed over the course of pencil marks and brush strokes. A glimpse at a work in progress always had so much potential. Corey was a work in progress.

I was still only a sketch.

As I settled the notebook onto his nightstand, Corey popped one eye open, his mouth curving into a smile. “Hey, you.” He pulled me back to him, his body warming me with sauna-heat. His fingers trailed along my arms, dropping tingles along the way, then slid along my stomach. He paused there, scrunching up the fabric. “Did you sleep in your clothes?”

“You stole the covers in the middle of the night. I got cold.”

“You should bring over pajamas. Leave them here.”

My chest swelled, filled to the brim. A change, the first step. I’d overheard girls at the sorority defining their relationship’s seriousness on a scale of zero to
The Guy Let You Leave Items At His Place.
Fallon occupied an entire drawer at her boyfriend’s off-campus room.

“And a toothbrush?” I asked.

“Hmmm.” Corey pressed his index finger to his lower lip. “That might be bad idea.”

I raised a brow.

“Because then I’d never stop kissing you.”

I slept over every night for the next week. We didn’t go out to Quigley’s. We certainly didn’t go to any sorority events. In his room, we could be alone. We could be ourselves; and for me, it was important to define who that person was.

Well, except for Nate, who refused to be sexiled. Sure, he’d give us an hour sometimes but then he’d stomp into the room and slam drawers until we pulled apart and stayed that way until morning.

On Thursday, his fraternity was having a large Afterhours party that started at two A.M. We’d tried to skip it all together but Corey’s house chore for the week was set-up. I had to finish my animation final by the morning so I killed time in the graphics lab until the party started. Afterhours was held in the basement but when I arrived, I headed for the second floor. A brother guarded the stairway.

“You can’t go up there.” He crossed his arms.

I squinted at him, trying to place his name, but I didn’t recognize him. I’d only met a few of Corey’s seventy-five frat brothers. “Have to drop something off in Corey Taft’s room.” I dangled my purse in his face as evidence.

His face softened. “Oh, are you Corey’s girlfriend? He told me he has a girlfriend now.”

My breath caught. The word
girlfriend
hugged me like a caress. He’d mentioned me to brothers I didn’t even know! I nodded and stomped up the stairs. Inside the room, I pulled a bottle of lotion out of my purse and some concealer, then added them to the half drawer Corey had cleared for me. I now had a stash of all the essentials: toiletries, spare shirt, and even a tampon in case of emergency.

At Afterhours, Corey swept me in a dance and paraded me around to all his brothers. Bodies—mostly girls—packed the finished basement whose only decoration consisted of beer stains on the wooden floor and paint splattered walls that must have lost a competition to some pledge hazing ritual. The dark lighting hid the rest. Hard rap music pounded in my ears.

Bianca pulled me away and thrust a beer into my hands. “You are not going to believe what Nate told me tonight.” The tone of her voice and straight face didn’t indicate whether this was good news or bad news. She made everything seem like a juicy tidbit of gossip.

I chose to interpret this as good news. “That he
loooooves
you?” I raised my brows a few times in succession.

Her smile wavered. “Oh, not that. Still haven’t told him how I feel yet.”

We swayed in a dance, grinding too close and earning cheers from some of the brothers. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

“I want to be sure he’s going to say yes.”

“You two hang out every single day. He’s going to say yes.”

“Stop making this about me, this is about you!” she said. One of the frat brothers approached her but she held up an uninterested hand to him and he shuffled away.

I pursed my lips. “About me?” Oh God. It
was
bad news. Probably something about how often I slept over.

She nodded, a smile stretching on her face. “He said Corey told him, and I quote, ‘It was a rough time when I wasn’t with Mackenzie. I’ve never been happier than I am now.’”

Those words rung in my ears, spoken in Corey’s voice, as if he had said them directly to me. My entire body tingled. “He told Nate that?”

“Yes! That’s huge. He
looooves
you,” she teased in the same tone I’d teased her with.

And I loved hearing her say that. The important part was that he told this to Nate, his best guy friend. Guys didn’t say things of that caliber unless they meant it.

But he still hadn’t said it to me.

That night, we lay in his bed, his arms surrounding me. Night descended upon us like a thick winter shroud. He whispered something in my ear, something that sounded like French. His accent was impeccable, or at least it seemed that way to me.

“What are you saying?”

“I said ‘you’re beautiful.’” He kissed the top of my head softly.

“I don’t believe you. You probably said, ‘I hope the chef makes tacos tomorrow.’”

He whispered something else, and this time I caught the word
taco
in the middle of the sentence.

I chuckled. “I know some French, too.
Je suis de petits poisson.
”

“You’re a little fish?”

“It’s the only phrase I know. My mom taught it to me when I learned how to swim.” Tears knocked at the back of my eyes. I hadn’t thought of that memory in a long time, the way she stood there in her one-piece bathing suit, cheering me on like I was going for the Olympic gold. My throat tightened.

“Vous êtes mes petits poisson.”

“Now, what does that mean?” My voice came out all hoarse.

“You’re
my
little fish.”

The tears spilled over, though this time not out of old memories. I was truly happy. “I know one more,” I said to distract myself.

“Oh yeah?”

I whispered the French lyrics of
Lady Marmalade
, the ones that translated to “Would you like to sleep with me tonight?”

He raised one eyebrow at me. “You know what that means right?”

“Yes. That’s why I said it.” But he didn’t try and obey the lyrics. For the first time ever, we didn’t sleep together.

We slept next to each other.

Ever since I made that collage for Fallon, she had been painting wacky self-portraits. A few photo copied Frida Kahlo paintings gave her inspiration, and for lack of a better subject, she settled on painting herself. Her pictures were quite beautiful with hyperrealistic brush strokes, and I really did think she had developed a nice theme. She’d even received more praise than I had in class.

But self-portraits didn’t translate into abstract sculpture. And she was about to fail her sculpture composition final. Mackenzie to the rescue.

I met her in the sculpture studio. Clay-streaked tarps covered every table. Gray stains littered the dull concrete floors while exposed brick walls gave the room a prison feel. At least the painting studios had glossy white shellacked walls, blank canvases all around. And the graphics labs only had gorgeous Macs with their sleek silver consoles and their perfect names.

Fallon pointed at her project, a lump of clay sitting on the table. “It looks like a giant blob of clay.”

I pursed my lips, opting for the glass half full approach. “What’s it supposed to be?”

“Something beautiful.”

“Well, I know that. But what’s the assignment?”

She laughed so hard she snorted. “No, really. That’s the assignment.”

I cringed. Open ended assignments were the worst when you lacked inspiration.

“I think I took the assignment too literal. I tried to make a pun out of it. You know,
beauty is in the eye of the beholder
.” She twisted the oval shaped lump around where two circles had been carved into the center of the clay to resemble an iris and pupil. “Behold, an eye.” She clapped a clay covered hand on her forehead, leaving a streak behind.