He stops, peering into my eyes. The familiar feeling of drunkenness starts wrapping around my head. I have to shake myself out of it just as he asks, “Really want to know what I want?”
I nod.
He leans closer, getting all into my space. I’m afraid to breathe because I know what will happen if I do. My body will wake up and take notice—or more so than it already has.
He doesn’t stop closing the distance until his cheek settles against mine, making my eyes fall half-mast. Feels like the heat of him pressing against the side of my face is scalding hot, but I know he’s not running a fever, that’s just how my body has always reacted to his, like a goddamn bitch in heat.
But then my face falls with each syllable that falls from his lips, horror taking over. “The sight of you disgusts me. I’d want nothing more than for you to disappear like you did sophomore year. What happened back then, little con—hmm? Get stuffed like a turkey and need to run for the hills?”
My anger simmers, then boils over. What he implied hits too close to home. Too, too close.
Without thinking, I lean away while my hand slices through the air. A loud, deafening sound filters through the air, quickly followed by dozens of sharp gasps from everyone around us. It takes me a moment to realize what happened. To realize how his proximity and filthy words caused me to react with violence—so much so, I lost my cool and smacked the shit out of him.
He stares down into my wide, disbelieving eyes as his glimmer with malice. I watch, entranced, as a devious smirk plasters across his face. “My turn.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I jump up out of a dead sleep, my business ethics book sliding off my chest to fall open-faced onto the floor. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I shift around on my bed and try to orient myself with what’s going on.
Ever since I came back to the apartment this afternoon, I’ve had my nose in my book studying.
Answer me this—why would a teacher give a pop quiz over the syllabus? No one reads those things anyway. They merely follow along with the teacher, so they don’t become lost in the curriculum. At least, that’s what I would have done if it hadn’t been for Mr. Erikson throwing this test out there at the last minute.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Releasing this snorting-breath, I quickly acclimate myself and toss the quilt off me. Scooting out of bed, I maneuver my way through my pitch-black room. Not even a streetlight is shining through the half-open drapes.
Nearing the door, I nearly take off my little toe when I stub it on the end of the bed. I cry out as pain like no other assaults me, traveling up my leg, along the planes of my back, and into my brain.
“Motherfucking hell. Son of a bitch!” I cry out and hop on one foot as I cradle the other to my chest.
I was dreaming of good things. Abs, tattoos, nipple piercings—and now I’m getting my ass handed to me by the foot of my bed. Lovely.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Hold on, just a goddamn minute!” I scream out in a shrill tone.
Whoever it is wants to die because not even a second later … Bang! Bang! Bang!
Jerking open my bedroom door, I don’t even bat an eyelash when Jenna’s opens, too. She comes storming out into the middle of the living room, hair in all sorts of disarray, practically snarling at whoever it is.
“I’m going to eat your children!” she yells out in a banshee warrior cry.
“Jesus crabgrass,” I grumble out, shaking my head as I hobble my way toward the door. “Put some clothes on, Jen.”
You guessed it—she’s naked. And she cares not about people seeing her this way. If I’ve learned anything over the last few days, it’s the fact that Jenna is a free spirit. She does what she wants and makes no excuses. She’s what I want to be when I finally grow up because she seems to have her life all figured out.
Fuck the world and their rules. That’s what she believes in.
She growls from behind me, “Who the fuck is bangin’ on the door at three in the flippin’ mornin’?!”
My eyes immediately flit to the clock on the wall, seeing she’s right. Donald fuck on a merry-go-round. “Whoever it is, they’re dead,” I say as I jerk the door open.
I die a little on the inside by what I’m faced with.
Two of the campus security officers are standing on the other side of the door, holding their little flashlights and walkie-talkies like it makes them special. They look about our age, but it’s clear to see they don’t go to school here. No student at GOU would be caught dead as a rent-a-cop.
Clearing my throat, I ask, “Um, can I help you, gentlemen?”
“Yes, you might be able to. We’ve heard some people in this building are hiding paraphernalia.” He must see that I’m a bit skeptical, so he flashes a warm smile toward me, and then flips around the lanyard hanging around his neck.
Right there. Clear as day. Talon Davis—security watchmen.
Flick. The guy on the right, with his Justin Bieber hairdo, points his flashlight right into my eyes, blinding me. “Wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, darlin’?”
My hand shoots up to block the offensive beam, even as a newly robed Jenna comes to stand beside me. “Paraphernalia? Like, drugs?”
“Look at her go. Little miss smarty britches,” Doppelganger Bieber snaps out.
His face practically twists into a snarl, smiling her way as his eyes leer up and down her microscopically covered body. Nausea rises when he waggles his thick eyebrows at her—disgusting waste of space male.
I scrunch my face in revulsion, and my eyes fly to Jenna to see she does the same, going even further by declaring, “Not in this lifetime, pal.”
Doppelganger Bieber doesn’t look too put out, just merely shrugs his shoulders and resumes his verbal assault on whether we have drugs in our apartment. I notice that he’s getting just a tad bit louder every time he asks, and we both confirm, with utmost certainty, that we do not have drugs.
When he pops his gum from out of nowhere, Jenna and I jump simultaneously. The noise is so loud, it’s like a piercing gunshot going off in the dead of night, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls with an echo.
Just from what little I’ve encountered when it comes to Doppelganger Bieber, he’s already a prick in my eyes. With his loud gum popping, smart ass comments, not taking no for an answer, and pointing his flashlight into our eyes.
“Such a charmer,” I grind out. “Now, get that damn light outta our faces and quiet the hell down. We’ve already told you we don’t have drugs here, now go the fuck away.”
“Take your tone down a notch, woman.” This creepy vibe is starting to roll off him in waves. I’d much rather deal with the one that started talking first. “What do you think, Talon?” he asks, shoulder checking his partner. “Think these two have something to hide?”
“You can’t come in here without a warrant,” Jenna howls, blistering mad as her face turns three shades of red. Technically, she’s not wrong. However, she must not have read the fine print on the housing application.
Security, for any reason, has the right to come in and out of designated housing while we are home if they have probable cause for students going against school guidelines.
Before I can explain that to her, the cop I thought was the nice one shoves past me and walks into our apartment without so much as asking. Doppelganger Bieber follows right behind him, smirking the entire time like he’s won the prize for the biggest douche bag.