A few days had passed since Hunter and I made our arrangement, but we’d yet to have an encounter. Though the prospect of being with him again made me excited in ways I hadn’t previously experienced, I was also too much of a chicken to pick up the phone and tell him how much I wanted him. I’d been spending more time with Sophie and Grace, unsure of exactly why I was hesitant to spend time with Taylor. It wasn’t until Taylor and I were walking home from class and my phone started to ring in my pocket that I figured it out. My heart started to beat faster as I scrambled to pull it from its tight denim confines, and I swore out loud as my clumsy fingers dropped the phone and it smacked against the pavement before skidding away.
“Jesus, Cameron. Butterfingers much?” Taylor laughed. I ran to retrieve it and couldn’t help but smile as I saw Hunter’s name displayed on the screen. Hurriedly, I opened my phone and tried to sound collected as I answered.
“Hello?”
“Is now a bad time?” It suddenly felt very warm and I found myself unconsciously tugging at the collar of my polo shirt.
“A bad time for what?” I asked playfully.
“For you to take a walk over to my room,” he said, and even though he sounded together, I knew that he was probably just as nervous as I was.
“I guess I could do that.”
“If it’s a bad time-”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll be there soon, okay?”
“I’ll be waiting.” And with that the line went dead. I almost forgot that I was with Taylor until he snatched the phone out of my hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked almost hysterically.
“Seeing who just made you blush like a thirteen year old girl,” he smiled. I grabbed the phone back before he had the chance to see my recent calls.
“That’s none of your business, thank you very much,” I said as calm as I could, but my heart was beating even faster now.
It was then that I realized that I did not want Taylor to know that I was going to be having sex with Hunter whenever we both felt like it. The thought of him finding out and the horrendous and unrelenting teasing that would follow was almost too much to handle, but even worse was the thought that he probably really wouldn’t care if I was hooking up with Hunter. That would mean that he really didn’t have any feelings for me at all, and that wasn’t something that I was ready to hear.
“Okay then, so are we going to go do our homework now?” he asked, starting down the sidewalk that would take us to our dorm. I stopped in my tracks and looked at him.
“Actually, I’m going to go this way,” I said, gesturing with my elbow down another path. He cocked an eyebrow at me before turning to walk away.
“Fine, don’t tell me what’s going on. I’ll see you later,” he said before walking away.
“Taylor! You don’t tell me everything, either!” I defended. He just waved his hand in an almost dismissive way and kept on walking.
As I walked away, I could feel the anger inside me start to boil. Every little thing he did and said that was careless ate away at me until it was all I could think about. I didn’t understand why everything had to be so complicated with him, and why he couldn’t just realize that I had feelings for him like every person who knew both of us had managed to see. Taylor was all I thought about until Jacobs Hall stood looming before me. I knew that Hunter was inside and I knew what was going to be happening soon. The last time we’d been together we’d been really drunk and all of our inhibitions had been gone. It had been a really long time since I’d had sex sober, and the first time I’d ever had sober sex with someone I wasn’t dating.
My ID got me into the building and I climbed the two flights of stairs to his room, the whole time hoping that I looked okay and being thankful that I’d broken out the Nair that morning. When I reached his room, the moment finally seemed real and it took a great deal of courage to raise my hand to knock on the dark wood. I knew that I had to play it cool, as it had been my idea in the first place to take our “relationship” to this particular place. He opened the door a few seconds later and all thoughts of Taylor immediately exited my brain. He looked gorgeous in a blue striped dress shirt and jeans. It was all I could do not to throw myself at him on sight.
“Took you long enough,” he smiled as he stepped aside to let me enter.
“I was all the way over by the music building, so cut me some slack,” I smiled back. We seemed to do a lot of that.
“It’s fine, I was just starting to think that you’d changed your mind about the whole thing, even though I was really hoping you hadn’t.”
“I didn’t change my mind, but I did think about it the whole trek up the stairs and how it’s going to be different this time.”
“You mean because it’ll be even better because we won’t be plastered?” He stepped closer to me and I again caught myself pulling at the neck of my shirt. “Hot?”
“Scorching,” I managed, my voice coming out much more breathy that usual. He went over and turned on a standing oscillating fan.
“That better?” he asked as he watched the newly formed breeze blow my hair slightly off my face. I nodded and without warning grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him tight against me, kissing him hard. In that second I wondered what I had been so nervous about. He was exactly right, it did feel so much better now, even just the kissing. God he was a good kisser. He managed to take back control of the situation and guided me towards the bed as I undid all of his buttons, leaving his now bare chest open to my curious fingers. I moved my hands purposefully up from his abs all the way to his shoulders where I pushed his shirt from his arms.
“Anxious?” he asked as I turned and pushed him to sit.
“Shut up,” I said. I straddled his lap and pressed myself against him, eliciting a groan from deep within his chest.
“I think you’re a little overdressed,” he stated as I started to work at unbuttoning his pants.
“I thought I told you to stop talking,” I teased, leaning in to kiss him again.
“Can we slow down? I’m not really in the mood for a quickie.” I didn’t respond, I just let him take the reigns. He placed a hand on either side of my face and pulled me in for a slow kiss so hot it made me clutch onto his sides for support. His hands moved their way down my arms before pulling my shirt as high as it would go before we were forced to break our kiss to remove it completely.
“You’re right, this is better,” I said, practically purring as his hand made its way to my breast, touching me through the black lace.
“See? You’re not the only one who knows what’s what, Ms. Cameron.”
“You can feel free to prove me wrong any day.” My eyes fell closed as the cool air hit my skin as my bra joined my shirt on the floor. I sat there reveling in the feeling of his mouth and hands on me and realized that I hadn’t had to lie or hold back anything since I walked into his room. I just stayed there, clutching onto him as he managed to work me into a heavy-breathing mess before even taking off my pants. He was damned good.
Once we’d finished, we were laying on his bed on top of the covers, letting the air from the fan cool us down.
“I don’t think I could move right now even if I wanted to,” I stated, not even venturing to try to open an eyelid to look at him.
“Wimp,” he laughed, poking my side before sitting up.
“Oh, I should go, shouldn’t I?” I asked, finally looking at him. His hair was a mess and he had faint traces of my lipstick all over his lips and neck. “Do you have anywhere to go tonight?”
“I have class at 7, why?”
“You should probably clean up first. I made a mess out of you.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He handed me my clothes, which he had picked up off the floor, “Whoa, either I’m going crazy, or your pants are moving on their own.”
“I have it set on vibrate from class still, sorry.” One glance in my pocket was enough to make me realize that I did not want to be answering my phone.
“No one important?” he asked with a smile before pulling a t-shirt over his head. I returned a forced smile and had almost finished getting dressed when it started to ring again. “You sure about that?”
“Just not someone I want to talk to right this second,” I lied, knowing that Taylor was probably getting pretty mad that I was avoiding his call. I always answered my phone right away. “Bye.”
“Bye. Thanks for coming over.” With that I left and grabbed my phone out of my pocket as fast as I could.
“What, you’re avoiding me now, too?” he asked without even waiting for my hello.
“Taylor, shove it. I was in the library,” I said, falling into the perfect story as the library was next to Hunter’ dorm.
“Oh. Well, I need help with my homework. Can you come over now?” I looked down at myself and realized that I most likely reeked of sex and Hunter.
“Um, can I take a shower first?”
“Were you really in the library?”
“Yes, god. Fine, I’ll be there in ten minutes. And we’re really doing homework, not watching TV. I have stuff to do.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled before hanging up. I tried my best to straighten myself up as much as possible on the walk home, hoping Hunter hadn’t left any hickeys or other marks on my exposed skin. Thankfully, Taylor was actually too engrossed in his homework when I got there to notice my appearance.
“Hey,” I said, plopping down on the futon and pulling out my music homework.
“Hey, have you looked at it yet?” he asked, not taking his eyes off of the computer screen.
“No.”
“Then what were you doing in the library?” Think quick, Cameron.
“Looking over a script for my drama class.” He nodded and turned his focus to our assignment.
“I’m having trouble with the analysis of the Beethoven. I can’t figure out the key change in measure 110.” I turned to that page and absently chewed on the end of my pen, trying to focus on the chord progressions and not think about the events that had transpired about a half hour prior. After we’d figured out the rest of the analysis, I gathered my things and started for the door.
“Do you want to hang out later?” I asked.
“Uh, I can’t. I’ve got plans.”
“What, like a date?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll see you later then.”
“Yeah, bye Cams.” And with that I left, reeling from what had just taken place. No jabs. No annoyances. Just simple working together and normal discussion. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t us. Something felt very wrong and yet I knew that I had no one to talk to about it. Sophie and Grace wouldn’t want to talk about Taylor, and Jackson and Chris were never around or they would have noticed, too.
I entered my room and found myself alone. Sophie’s away message claimed that she was up in David’s room and Grace’s said she was actually at the library. My muscles were starting to ache in weird places and I knew that a hot shower was in order. I undressed and threw on my robe before making my way down the hallway to the bathroom where I washed away the smell of Hunter and wondered if Taylor already knew. That was the only reason I could come up with as to why he had been acting so strangely earlier.