Remembering Us (4 page)

My mouth drops open a little bit, stunned at how well he has my parents nailed. He has just said everything I have thought since I turned fourteen and adamantly refused to go through another year of ballet.

I take a minute to process what this means, that Adam knows my parents so well and their opinions of me. The frustration I always feel when I talk to him begins to simmer inside me. All of the answers I get only lead to more questions.

With my eyebrows knitted together, I pull away from his gaze and back to the library. “So why did you bring me here?”

Adam scoots up, sitting cross-legged like me so we’re sitting next to each other. His knee brushes mine and I flinch, and then relax, feeling strange that I’m touching a stranger, but maybe too nervous to pull away and see the disappointment or anger in him. His hands are still behind him, propping him up as he looks out at the lawn and the library stairs.

“This is where I saw you for the first time,” he finally says, his voice low and uncertain.

If Adam notices my heartbeat pick up, beating a rhythmic drumming sound in my ears, he doesn’t mention it.

He points a finger at the library stairs. “You were coming out of the doorway right there,” he starts, then drags his finger to the left side of the lawn. “I was over there, kicking the soccer ball around with some guys from the team during a break from our classes.” My eyes drift to the two places that aren’t very far apart from one another. “You skipped down the stairs, and then once you reached the bottom, you threw your arms and legs around some blonde guy and you laughed.”

I push my eyebrows together and press my lips together. Tyler? That can’t be.

“You laughed so loud and sounded so happy that I was distracted. When Zander kicked the ball to me, it hit me in the side of the head and bounced to the sidewalk, landing almost at your feet.”

I gasp and turn to him. “That was you?” I remember everything he’s telling me. But that can’t be. From what I’ve been told, Adam and I didn’t start dating until October of my junior year. I dated Tyler my sophomore year. Tyler met me at the library after I was done studying for my Finance 250 final. He had just found out he passed his BioChem midterm. He had been so worried about finding out his grade, not wanting to ruin his straight ‘A’ average. I was so happy for him that when the ball landed at my feet, I kicked it as hard as I could, sailing the ball over some guy who was on his knees on the grass and to the group of guys behind him who were laughing their heads off.

Adam smiles at me, watching the memory play out in my head. Two days after that, I found out Tyler cheated on me at a frat party with a girl from Kelsey’s sorority house. Kelsey didn’t waste any time telling me, and I broke up with Tyler immediately. I wasn’t that upset. Our families ran in the same social circles and when my mom encouraged me to date him, I did it just to get her off my back. When we dated, I never felt anything more than a decent friendship. I mostly stayed with him because it kept my parents happy. The next weekend, I saw Tyler on campus with a bloody lip and smiled to myself when I passed him with a simple ‘hello’. I figured he got caught sticking his tongue in the wrong girl’s mouth and her boyfriend didn’t like it too much.

A hint of pink blossoms on Adam’s cheek as I stare at him, as if he’s embarrassed or nervous at what I’m thinking. “You were the guy on the grass?” I ask, with a slight twinge of humor in my voice.

“You took my breath away that day. I didn’t even know who you were, and I knew you had a boyfriend, but you seemed so beautiful when you laughed and then when you threw your arms around Tyler, I wanted to find out more about you.”

“And you did?” I ask, confused. This was still months before Adam and I met.

He shrugs unashamedly. “I heard about you from some girls in the Gamma house at a party we had one night at our house, but that was after …” His voice trails off, but a darkness flickers across his brown eyes. I don’t miss the anger that quickly appears and then vanishes just as fast.

“After Tyler cheated on me,” I finish for him. His hands press into the grass and his body goes tight. I gasp again, my eyes wide. “You beat him up for me? Why would you do that?”

“Because it takes a special sort of entitled asshole to think he can cheat on his girl and get away with it. I wanted to teach him that he wasn’t worth shit when he walked around thinking the world owed him something special just because he existed.”

“So it was to bring down a spoiled rich boy and had nothing to do with me.” Tyler never meant that much to begin with and I wasn’t all that broken hearted when we broke up, but for a stranger to beat him up for my honor? Who does that?

“It had everything to do with you.” Adam’s voice is quiet and he stares out at the library stairs as if re-creating the day he first saw me in his mind. His statement makes my pulse quicken and I press my hands together, rubbing my fingers so he doesn’t see them tremble.

“But you didn’t talk to me then; even after you knew we broke up.”

Out of the corner of my eye, Adam shakes his head. “No, it was almost summer break and I had to go home. I figured I’d try to find you again when school started back up in the fall.”

“And did you?” But I already know the answer to this question. It’s everything that happened after that summer that I don’t remember.

“The very first week.” His voice is almost a whisper and sends a shiver of nerves … or excitement through me. I’m not ready to find out which.

“But you told me we didn’t start dating until October.”

“You made me work for it.” He smirks and I want to ask him what he’s remembering. I can only imagine. From what I can tell, we’re completely different people. I grew up in a financially privileged home, while it doesn’t seem like he did. I was raised to be snotty and pretentious, and while I’ve always tried hard to fight it, I had a bad tendency to judge people before I knew them my first year of college. I worked hard to change it, to step away from my family and be my own person, but when your parents pay for everything and run your life, there is little leeway with breaking from the reins.

Something in my gut tells me that meeting Adam snapped the reins my parents held in half, and they don’t like it very much.

“Where is your home?” I have been told very little about Adam. There are no pictures of anyone in his family on our black and white photo mural. I also haven’t asked any questions.

“Iowa.” That’s all I get. I turn to Adam when he’s silent for too long and all I see in his eyes is a coldness that would chill the strongest of men to their bones.

We’re sitting in the library, tucked into the back corner on the fourth floor where the special collections are kept. I love studying back here because it’s completely quiet. It’s my favorite place to study but trying to help Adam with his Statistics homework in such a private place is dizzying.

No man has ever affected me the way he does with his dark eyes that seem to unravel every thought I have before it’s spoken, and his strong fingers that perhaps not-so-accidentally brush against my arm or my thigh while I’m explaining the concept of linear regression.

I laugh at whatever it was he just said and shake my head once, giving him a frustrated smile. “I’m not helping you in order to get a date. I hear you have plenty.”

One side of his lips twitches. “I don’t date, Amy. I don’t need to.”

Right. Because Adam is sex on a stick and most of the girls on campus are willing to jump into his bed without being asked.

“Then you won’t be hurt when I tell you no. Again.”

“I may never recover.” His eyes darken and my belly does that flip-flop thing it’s been doing for the last few weeks when he brushes up against me. I blink, trying to clear my thoughts and regain my sanity, but when I do, Adam’s hand is no longer holding his pencil on the table. Instead, his hand is brushing away a lock of my brown hair and his hand rests on the back of my neck, playing with my hair and pulling me forward.

My breath hitches just as his lips are inches from me. I freeze, putting pressure on his hand to stop the forward movement.

His eyes sparkle in mischief.

“What are you doing?”

His tongue darts out, sucking lightly on his top lip, making it almost disappear. He laughs. I blush, knowing he just watched me check out his mouth. Kissed his mouth with my eyes alone.

“I’m going to kiss you, Ames. And then you’re going to finally agree to a date with me.”

“One kiss and I’ll be unable to resist you? Is that your plan?”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

I bet his kisses leave a girl gasping for breath and throwing her morals to the floor along with her clothes.

He wipes the smirk off my lips by lightly brushing his lips once, and then twice, against mine. I instantly know why every girl wants to get their hands on him and his hands in their pants. My body lights up like a wildfire as he presses his lips against mine more firmly, taking what he wants and expecting me to give in. God I want to give in, to just once in my life go for what it is that I want and not what I’m told is best for me.

And I’m just about to throw away all my fears about him. I twist my hands that were frozen on the table out from underneath his arms and place them on his thighs. His muscular legs tighten and his lips turn into a slight smile against mine.

“Adam? Are you up here?”

The shrill sound of a high-pitched voice is like a bucket of cold water on my head and I jerk back away from him.

His eyes are still closed and I was right. I’m gasping for breath.

I press my lips together to stop my lower lip from trembling. How could I be so stupid to finally give in to him? I’m just a chase, a challenge. I just let him have what he’s been trying to get for weeks. And I handed it over so easily.

Adam frowns when he opens his eyes, right as the girl comes around the corner and sees us sitting way too close together to be studying. Never mind the fact that we’re both breathing heavily.

Shame fills me. Not only for kissing Adam, but for giving in to the man who already has his afternoon sex appointment showing up.

“There you are.” The girl smiles at me in a way that says she knows I’m no competition for her. I sit back, clumsily gathering my notebook and textbook into my back pack. “I was wondering if you forgot about me.”

Adam drops his head before turning to her, and I see his smile out of the corner of his eye. The same one he just gave to me. The same one that says he can have everything and anything he wants.

“Of course I didn’t forget, Lexi. I was just running late.”

He says it calmly, like he’s completely unaffected by the kiss we just shared.

I want to kick my own shins at my stupidity. I deserve it. I need someone to knock some sense into me. It obviously flees to the dark corners of the room whenever Adam is around.

I stand up, throwing my bag over one shoulder, anxious to get away from him. Away from him and Lexi together, knowing what they’ll be doing in about five minutes in these private, hidden corners. “Right. Well, I’ll, uh …
I’ll see you in class then.”

I don’t look at him as I start to walk away, but he grabs my wrist and tugs on it so I have no choice but to stop and look down at him. He’s still sitting in the chair, grinning like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“Why are you running?”

I look to him and Lexi. She’s a cheerleader for the football team and on the soccer team’s pep squad. She probably spends hours lusting after Adam, watching him running up and down the soccer field. Shirtless. Sweaty.

“You have plans.”

He shakes his head and frowns. “She can wait a few minutes. We weren’t done here.”

Lexi is standing behind him with her arms crossed, letting me know that she very well can’t wait a few minutes. “Adam.” He looks at Lexi but keeps a hold of my hand. “We really need to go.”

He tugs on my hand and smiles that same damn smile. This time it doesn’t work on me.

“We
are
done here.” By the tone in my voice he knows I’m not just talking about the tutoring. I pull my hand out of his and I’m at the end of the long aisle stacked with books all the way to the ceiling when he calls my name.

Against my better judgment, which has always led me on the straight path in the past, I turn back to him. He has his book loosely held in one hand at his side, the other draped around Lexi’s shoulder. She leans into him and he doesn’t pull her hand away when she lightly wipes it across his chest, giggling. She giggles. In what universe is a giggling twenty-something attractive?

“I’ll get my date one way or another.” He winks and they disappear.