16 Chapter 16

Knowing the storage room door would be unlocked around this time of the day—a secret only a few knew—I pulled it open, waited for Linda to pass, and silently closed it behind me. A dim shaft of sunlight sneaked through a small window, spilling a muted shade of the afternoon’s color over the edges of the lined shelves crowded with tools and materials of all sorts. The maintenance room was a relaxing place, one I’d especially visited before Linda’s arrival. It was the only place in school where I could find peace, and the small old couch in the corner made me feel at home. So with the quiet air pervading the room and—

Was that a leak? An incessant, rhythmic sound, like water droplets falling onto the ground, played in the air. Following the nagging, little noise, I realized there was a second sound trailing it. Gasps. Someone else was here. And with the awareness came a clear image. Besides us, I was certain there was more than one person haunting this shadowy room—and I was certain what the noises were. I turned to look at Linda and pressed my finger to my lips, asking her to not break the silence masking us. I tiptoed to the third row of shelves, the noises getting deeper, and stopped at the edge. Wanting to have fun for at least a few seconds, I readied myself and jumped into their space with mighty strength, screaming at the same time, “Busted!”

The girl unstitched herself from the guy as if she’d suddenly touched acid and jerked her head in my direction so fast that it was a wonder her neck hadn’t cracked. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if she’d had a heart attack in the process. But more than alarm, her eyes gleamed with humiliation, whereas the guy’s wide eyes froze in worry—at least, until he grasped the sight of me and realized I wasn’t part of the school staff.

“What a Kodak moment,” I told them with a wicked smile. “Just look at your rosy faces and swollen lips. You must be a passionate kisser, huh?” I asked the guy who was now straightening his shirt.

He threw me a quick scan from head to toe, one of those that guys specialized in, and stopped on my lips. “Want to find out for yourself?” he asked huskily, pushing away all trace of worry from his face.

“You idiot!” The girl slapped him on the arm and stormed away. She must’ve seen Linda before snapping the door close because she shouted, “Enjoy your threesome you morons!”

Since all his focus was aimed on me, the girl’s biting words didn’t reach their goal. His brain only seemed to be between his legs. “So…are you up for some tasting?” he asked, looking at my chest and suddenly finding it hard to detach his eyes from there.

If the circumstances were different, with no Linda waiting for me in one corner, and with no desire to punch him in the face for being such a prick with that girl, I would’ve considered his offer and maybe ended up making out with him. Despite his callous and poised attitude, the guy was really cute, and it’d been so, so long since I’d kissed someone that it was growing into a sharp pebble in my shoe. I couldn’t even remember what it was like pressing my lips against someone else’s, and that wasn’t normal. For anybody. I wasn’t an easy girl, I’d hardly had two boyfriends and never kissed a guy who wasn’t, but I had my needs and they were calling to me—especially now that my body was desperate to stamp out that ball of fierce fire inside of me. A kiss would’ve helped to the cause, no doubt.

But this wasn’t the place, and he wasn’t the guy. “Kind of desperate, are we?” I told him with a tilt of my head, stamping my hands on my hips.

“For you, always.” He slipped his hands through the arcs of my arms and settled them on my lower back. “I’ve always known there was some warmth inside all that coldness,” he said, looking down at me. “And I'm more than willing to have a sample of it.” He leaned his face toward mine.

I smiled. “If you don’t get out, right now,” I said calmly, though infusing the right amount of sourness to stop him midway. “I’ll chop off your friends there,” I glanced at his lower part. He shot a glimpse to the same area. “And have them for breakfast.” I ended with an innocent grin.

Maybe my voice had been more vinegary than I’d intended, or maybe the image hadn’t been so pleasant to his senses, because he released me a moment later and strode out with a final look at me—an anxious look. I tapped my shoulder inwardly for that one.

Linda, standing on the corner as if she’d been grounded, stared at me with awe.

“What?” I asked.

“Did you really just tell a guy you were going to chop off his…you know.” She motioned her hands to the area in discussion.

“It worked didn’t it?”

“Sheesh, no wonder why guys are so afraid of you.”

“Oh, what a cruel world, loneliness hunts me. I’ll never meet love.”

She shook her head. “And you really don’t care.”

“Of course I don’t. The day I’ll decide I want a guy…he’ll come to me in a heartbeat, easy as that.”

“Coming from some other girl, I would’ve said she was bigheaded. You though…there’s no point in denying the truth, you can have whoever you want,” she said, suddenly wistful, dropping her eyes to her shoes. Brad’s image was most certainly piercing her mind. “And he’ll be really lucky, Dafne. You have a huge heart, even if you hide it most of the time,” she said, looking up at me.

I gave her small smile. “Yeah, yeah, I know the speech. But I'm sure the luckiest guy will be the one who finds this sweet damsel in distress.” I waved my hand in her direction. I paused and looked at her, fathoming her sorrow, and sighed. “Someday you’ll find your knight, Linda—because, believe it or not, knights are the heart-stirring and cool ones. Fairy tales just got it wrong, somehow,” I told her. “Brad was just the lame, spoiled prince with skin-deep beauty that stumbled in your way.”

She chuckled, the gleam back in her eyes. “I think I’ve never heard a better analogy.”

“Well, it’s true.” I shrugged. “Princes suck.”

She laughed. “Yeah, you never struck me as the princess type.”

“Never.”

“But you do have the heart of one. Just look at the nice things you told me.”

I snorted, but kept the barely-there-smile on my lips.

A groan spurted between us. Linda lowered her eyes to her stomach. “Looks like I haven’t totally forgotten it’s lunch time.” She raised her eyes to me once more, a plea brimming them.

“If you want to know what happened with Ian, you’re staying here.” I reached the bottom of my tote and fished out some supplies. “Rainbow or chocolate?” I held them up in my hands.

Being the curious person she was, she knew she didn’t have a choice. “Rainbow.” She sighed in resignation, plucking it from my left hand. “My stomach will resent this, you know.”

“It’s just this once, Linda,” I said, settling down on the floor. It was a little dusty, enough to trace random shapes with my fingertip, or to leave the faint print of my butt on it, but I didn’t care. I could wash my hands later. “There, you can have my throne.” I pointed to the couch in front of me.

She walked up to the old fella and bent to wipe off the surface with her hand. A small cloud of dust floated into the air. “I guess you’ve been here more than once.” She sat down on the edge, reluctantly, keeping her back away from touching the rest of the couch, her slender arms squeezed to her sides. She reminded me of those well-mannered girls in old movies, all straight and chin high, ready to have a cup of tea in the parlor. The only thing missing was the funny hat, the too long dress and the lacy gloves.

Her stiff posture, however, had nothing to do with old-fashioned manners. Unlike me, dust was a nagging issue to Linda. It would’ve been to anybody whose second name was “Tidy.”

“Once upon a time, this place and I used to be like two peas in a pod.” I peeled off the chocolate and sank my teeth into my second sin.

“I’ll take that as you spending a great deal of time here—because the simile is kind of loose.” She poured some of the skittles on her hand. “Two peas in a pod need to—”

“Stop with the mechanics,” I said annoyed. “I really don’t care. Just focus on my next words because I won’t repeat them. If I do, I may incinerate myself in a blast of fury.”

Before losing the impulse, I lunged myself into the explanation, telling her about the movie session, the humiliating tearful moment, the utterly embarrassing exposure, and the damned truce he’d tricked me on, leading me to a whole new level of hate. Being played was something that punched my thin boundaries of forbearance, and the fact that I’d been played by Ian, nonetheless, pushed those fences far into the stratosphere, blurring my limits of good judgment.