Thin Love (7 page)

“What does?” For just a second that control slipped, her unflustered expression fractured, the relaxed set of her features jumped to worry, but it disappeared before Kona could mention it.

“You. Figures someone like you wouldn’t be into sports and would have a hard on for old dead white guys who wrote plays and sonnets.”

That earned him a smile, but just a small one. Keira dropped the pen and folded her fingers on top of the table, just inches from his hands. “And what about you? I bet your major is something like Advanced Spear Throwing or Caveman Studies.”

Her dig surprised him, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. “You’re funny. No seriously, you’re freakin’ hilarious.”

“Right back at you.” Kona laughed at the exaggerated roll of Keira’s eyes and he decided right then he liked her relaxed. He liked the way her normally stoic expression softened the hard stretch of her cheeks; how when she found something funny those blue eyes of hers seemed lighter, nearly gray. But then he stared a second too long and Keira stopped smiling. That newborn softened expression melted from her face. “What?” Her voice was sharp, defensive.

He sighed and moved his head in a shake. “You got a real problem interacting with people, right?”

“I’m fine with people. It’s you I’m not crazy about.”

“What did I ever do to you?” The glare she gave him told him she still hadn’t forgiven him for standing her up. “Aside from missing our first meeting.”

“I don’t like players and I don’t like entitled jackasses.”

Ouch,
he thought, wondering exactly what she’d heard about him. He thought the “entitled” comment was this side of ridiculous. “Woah, hold on a second. You think I’m a player?”

“You offered to do me if I did this project on my own.”

“Did I say that?”

The blushed return, colored her smooth skin as though she thought she might had
misinterpret
e
d Kona’s not so subtle offer that first day in class, but when he smiled at her, she recovered, hid her embarrassment behind her fingers over her cheeks. “You didn’t have to. It was in your eyes.”

Kona liked teasing her, liked seeing that pretty flush warm her skin. At her suggestion, he thought he’d push her a little further to see just how pink her cheeks would get. “That’s your own perverted mind, sweetheart. How do you know I wasn’t talking about tickets to the game or offering to wash your car?”

“You licked your lips and looked like you wanted to eat me whole.”

Now there’s a good idea,
he thought. “You offering?”

Keira’s laugh seemed real. She didn’t hide behind anything just then. She didn’t look away from him, or dip her head like she couldn’t manage to stare at him head on. And Kona took that laugh and the insult behind it, because he liked her smile, he liked how her laughter was sweet, sexy.

“You really are full of yourself.”

“You don’t know me.” He knocked his knuckles against her wrist so that she’d know he wasn’t pissed.

“And you don’t know me.” Keira cleared her throat, as though she wanted to push back her humor and the smile Kona had raised in her. Pen in hand, she pulled the notebook toward her and tapped the end against the white paper. “So why don’t we stop chatting and get through this. The sooner it’s over, the quicker we can go back to acting like we don’t know each other.”

“There’s a problem with that.” When she frowned again, seeming a little confused that he was challenging her, Kona made sure his smile was sweet and not flirty, that he didn’t bite his lip. “Maybe I want to know you now. You’re angry, maybe I want to know why that is. I like girls who don’t put up with shit.”

“Sounds like you’ve got some mommy issues.” Kona’s smile shifted swiftly and Keira grabbed his hand, gave it a playful shove. “Hey, that was a joke. You know, funny, ha ha?”

“Yeah. I’m in freakin’ stitches. How would you like me trashing your mom?”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t care.” She sat back, withdrew from the good nature of their interaction and Kona knew he’d hit a nerve. “I know what a domineering bitch my mom is. Go ahead an insult her all you like.”

“Well, that’s just sad.”

“Spare me your sympathy.”

Kona wasn’t good with awkward silences. Really, he hadn’t experienced many of them. He always seemed able to take the funk out of any girl he’d pissed off or lighten the mood with a little flirting, maybe some mild touching. But Keira wasn’t like the girls he’d been around. She didn’t do bullshit pacifying. She was blunt, and he liked that about her, but he also knew there was a reason she rarely smiled. He didn’t know her well enough to ask where that came from so he relied on what he was good at; on the skills that never failed to keep girls happy when he was around them.

“Hey, what do you call a dog with no legs?”

“What the—”

“You can call him anything you want, but that asshole ain’t coming to you.”

And just like that, the awkwardness passed. Keira’s laughter returned and despite the dumbass joke, Kona smiled, liking that she wasn’t so uptight that she didn’t dismiss his attempt to lighten the mood.

“Oh, that’s bad.”

“I know, but it made you smile.” He pulled out his own pen and moved Keira’s notebook around so he could write on it. “Come on, let’s get this shit done.”

“Three years of off-the-radar self-defense classes, Kona. I don’t need a bodyguard.”

“Off the radar?”

Keira shrugged, a flippant gesture that she had to force. She wasn’t interested in detailing her private life. Not to Kona, not to anyone really. “My mom’s radar. She doesn’t think women who are athletic can find husbands so I took the self-defense classes when I supposed to be going to Mass.”

Keira was reminded of Father Reynolds, the funny, excitable Irish priest in her parish. He’d had an affinity for Bruce Lee and was obsessed with jiu jitsu. When she’d asked him about self-defense classes in the privacy of the confessional, Father Reynolds forgot all about doling out absolution for her transgressions. Instead, they made a pact. He’d cover for her when her mother mentioned Keira attending Mass, but she had to promise to show him what she’d learned.

“But you run track.” Kona’s deep voice erased the warm memory of Father Reynolds and his boney legs trying to perfect a roundhouse. Keira noticed that Kona wasn’t walking behind her now. He was at her side, so close she could smell the faint hint of sweat and cologne.

“Yeah, well, running doesn’t count to her. Not much of what I do counts for much with her.” A brief glance up at his face and Keira smiled, amused by how confused Kona looked. It was that frown, those pushed together eyebrows that had Keira finishing her explanation. “She says track is good for my muscle tone and will keep my hips narrow.” Another scan at him and Keira stopped walking. He was no longer frowning, no longer seemed perplexed by her explanation. Kona watched her for a moment, something he did when she told him unbelievable things, and she hated the pitying expression on his face. She hated that he was gleaning more about her relationship with her mother, just as he had tried to do when they were in the study room.

Seeing that expression unnerved her. So did the way he stood at her side, with his eyes fanning around them. He looked on guard, territorial. Keira didn’t like how casually they walked together. She did not like that their steps had kept time with one another, that their movements down the steps and onto the sidewalk felt comfortable, natural. “Point being, I don’t need you to walk me to my dorm.”

“It’s late, Keira.” He didn’t stare at her when he said that. Instead, Kona looked over her head, to the empty sidewalk and the road that ran in front of them. The rain had slowed to a mist and the sky above had calmed. Still, Keira wasn’t scared of the emptiness. She craved it. It had often been a companion that she never tried to drive away.

“It is,” she told him, adjusting her backpack further up her shoulder before she walked away from Kona. He followed. “And I’m capable of fending off would-be whoevers.”

“My car is at Kenner.” Two small strides and he again kept time with her. “You’re just a little ways from there in Graham, right? I’m going in that direction.”

That stopped her instantly. She didn’t recall mentioning her dorm. “How do you know where I live?” She didn’t remember, in fact, even telling him her name. But Kona Hale was resourceful and well connected. She’d figured he find out what he could about her despite her nondisclosures. When he only shrugged, avoided staring at anything but her frown, Keira sidestepped, making him look down at her. “You checked up on me?”

Kona widened his stance, defensive, preparing for something that Keira had no intention of starting. She had no desire to argue with this guy. She’d had enough of him for one night, but that didn’t mean she was going to walk away from him, letting him think it was okay to nose around in her business. She cocked one eyebrow, tapped her foot and Kona relented, let his arms hang loose and unclenched at his sides. “You wouldn’t tell me your name. I had to find out so I didn’t look like an asshole when we met tonight.”

Leann would never tell Kona anything. Besides, Keira knew her cousin had spent the entire day in the theater building preparing for the dance recital for her Advanced Lyrical class. The only other people that knew anything about her were her teammates. Most of them were giggling, stupid bitches that only ran because their team locker room was right next to the football team’s.
Unbelievable,
she thought, ticking off the names in her head of each girl she planned to bitch out. “You could have asked, you know.”

“I did.” Back again was Kona’s sigh and that time he added the slump of his wide shoulders. “You wouldn’t say shit.”

Flustered and more annoyed that their meeting hadn’t been as horrible as Keira thought it might be, she looked away from him, stepped back so that the temptation to roll her eyes left her. Tonight had been, not nice, no, but surprising. Kona was clever, she knew that by the brief mentions he made about his Calculus and Finite Mathematics classes. Keira didn’t like it, didn’t like him, and especially did not like that her assumptions about the beefy Volkswagen had been wrong.

“I’ll see you in class,” she told him, walking away before he could stop her. Keira wasn’t naive and just the small interactions she’d had with Kona told her he wasn’t the sort of guy who’d just did as he was told and let things lie. She knew for every step she made toward Graham, Kona made two.

But she wouldn’t look back, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing she wondered if he was behind her. Keira didn’t know why he cared or what had motivated the change in his attitude. Maybe it was her temper in the cafeteria. She’d certainly hadn’t ever acted that furious in class, and in her mind Keira heard her mother’s cool, nagging voice telling her she’d waved a red flag right in the big bull’s face.

Keira pulled her cardigan tighter around her chest, trying to shake off the swift breeze rustling the large pine trees that lined the sidewalk. As she hurried over the wet pavement, she passed a girl, Bethany, she thought her name was, that lived two doors down from her and Leann. She only managed the nod because, again, her mother’s voice popped into her head.

The woman told her not to chat, not to become too friendly. “Other girls,” her mother would say, “are at the university for the same reason you are, Keira. They’re working on their MRS. degree.”

The sad thing was, her mother really believed that. She didn’t expect much from Keira, she never had. She wanted her daughter to keep fit. She wanted her educated because she believed that the best wives of doctors and lawyers were the ones who could carry on intelligent conversations. Keira wasn’t friendly by nature and blamed that on her mother’s constant niggles about other girls being competition. She knew that archaic mentality was her mother’s issue, not Keira’s, but the refrain of keeping yourself guarded, of seeing other girls as the enemy, kept Keira from socializing with anyone but her cousin.

When Graham Hall came into view, Keira slowed down, figuring by now Kona had given up and jumped into his car at Kenner. The sidewalk was completely empty and Keira relaxed, thinking of nothing but a hot shower and her warm bed. It was this thought, in fact, that kept her senses dull, kept her instinct silent as she walked near the dim alley between Graham and a row of married housing units.

She did not hear the break of limbs against sneakers or sense the shadow behind her until she slipped into the dark corner of the building. A stranger came at her fast like a whip and managed to grab hold of her backpack before she could react.

“Hey!” she shouted, more surprised than mad that the guy in the black t-shirt and worn jeans had managed to catch her off guard. “That’s my shit, you asshole.”

“Mine now, bitch.” And he took off, laughing over his shoulder as Keira followed. Her phone, her wallet, her keys were all in that bag and Keira didn’t rationalize the stupidity of chasing after the thief until she was right behind him, until he stopped short and lifted his fist ready to strike.

When his hand came forward, Keira dipped, moving out of his way to land a punch right on his chin. It stung, and she swung around, cradling her fist against her chest, ready to bite back the pain when he lunged forward.