A. Jackson - When We Met

A small smile crossed her face. “No need, really.”

“Thank you guys, again.” Pushing away from the counter, I went upstairs to shower and try to forget how badly I’d just humiliated myself. I’d gotten halfway through my junior year without talking to Kier. It wouldn’t be that hard to go back to how it had been before yesterday.

And it hadn’t been hard. Well, it had, and it hadn’t. It’d been nine days since I thanked him for the battery he hadn’t even bought for me, but it’d been impossible to forget about the quiet guy next door. I looked for him during the party at their house a couple of days later, but before long I’d gotten lost in drinking games—not that I would have said anything if I had seen him. And even though I knew he was in the back left corner of the lecture hall in our class on Monday and Wednesday, I refused to look back there, even though everything in me was screaming to do so. I didn’t remember anything from those classes other than once they were over, I’d let out a relieved breath.

After looking for him for a few minutes at the neighbors’ party tonight, I’d given up. It was stupid to look for him. I’d never seen him at one of these parties anyway. For all I knew, he wasn’t even here tonight. He could be at work if he had a job; he could be out with his girlfriend—oh my God. He could have a girlfriend.

“He could have a girlfriend!” I said out loud, and the guy I was curled up against on the couch gave me a funny look.

“What?”

I threw my hands up in the air. “This whole time I’ve been— Where the fuck did this bread come from?”

The guy laughed loudly, and curled his arm around my waist. “Baby, you are wasted. You keep forgetting about it, but you’ve been holding it for an hour at least.”

I stared at the gold foil as I leaned away from his body. I didn’t like the way he called me “baby.” “Did you give this bread to me?”

“No, and you won’t let anyone touch it.” He pulled me back toward him, his mouth going to my ear. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Mm. No, no.” I made a sound of disapproval as I scrambled away from him and off the couch, taking a few seconds to get myself steady when I was standing.

Holding the bread close to my chest, I moved through the tightly packed bodies, needing air. I don’t know why I didn’t go toward the front door. It would have made more sense to leave and go to my house, but before I knew what I was doing, I was standing in front of a door in the hall on the first floor.

“Safe room,” I mumbled to myself, and tapped my finger against the wood.

Unrolling the top of the foil, I tore off a piece of the warm bread and put it in my mouth as I continued to stare at the door, like if I stood there long enough, it would do something for me.

It didn’t.

I let my forehead fall roughly against the door and whined, “Stupid safe room. You didn’t go all wardrobe on me and lead me to Narnia.”

The door swung open and I stumbled forward.

“Shit—I got you,” a deep voice grunted as a pair of arms caught me and helped get me standing again. “Guess it’s time to go home?”

I looked up and gasped. “You. You have a girlfriend!”

Golden eyes widened with shock. “What?”

“You have a girlfriend, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“You don’t?” I breathed, and staggered closer to his body. His hands tightened on my upper arms to keep me where I was. My lips fell into a pout. “And you didn’t fix my car.”

He laughed softly and moved to wrap one arm around my back. “Hold on to your bread, Indy.”

I held up the bag and shrugged. “I don’t know where it came from,” I murmured. “But it’s delicious.”

“I bet it is. Up you go.” He lifted me into his arms, and I squealed.

“No, no! No!” I said sternly, my eyebrows slamming down.

“If you’re in my room, then it’s time to get you back to yours.”

My face fell, and I kept my eyes trained on the bread in my hands as he walked us down the hall, through the people at the party, and out the door. “I bothered you. In your room. That was your room, not Narnia.”

He missed a step and tightened his grip on me as loud laughs burst from his chest. “Narnia? What the hell did you drink tonight, Indy?”

I tried to glare at him, but I probably just looked like a three-year-old not getting her way. “It was the safe door. It was supposed to be magic,” I whispered. “No magic.”

He did stop walking then. “What did you just say?”

“No magic,” I repeated.

“Before that.”

I stared at his face for a few seconds before popping a piece of bread in my mouth. “I don’t remember,” I said honestly. “Why are you carrying me?”

“Because you would fall otherwise.”

“Nu-uh.”

“You did the first night,” he grumbled, and looked away.

I stopped chewing. “What first night?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He began walking again, his hardened eyes straight ahead.

“Cookie?” I asked when we walked into my house.

He snorted as he kicked the front door to my house shut. “You’ve called me a lot of names, but that’s definitely a new one. No.”

“I know your name,” I said, and held up my hand. “Do you want a cookie?”

His dark eyebrows pinched together. “That’s bread, Indy, not a cookie.”

I looked at the bread and frowned before offering it back up to him. “It’ll be our secret,” I whispered. “We can pretend it’s a cookie.”

He smiled wryly at me before dipping his head and biting the food out of my hand. “Amazing cookie.”

I watched his mouth as he chewed, and didn’t know if I should be embarrassed by the fact that my breathing was heavy now. “My room is—”

“On the second floor,” he finished for me. “I know.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Why’d you call my door the safe door?” he countered, his eyes flicking to my face for a second before he began climbing the stairs with me still in his arms.

This felt familiar . . . and right. But that couldn’t be right, because I’d only talked to Kier twice, a week and a half ago.

“Indy?”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you call my door the safe door?”

“When did I call it that?”

He exhaled heavily but didn’t say anything else as he finished walking up the stairs and straight into my room. My eyebrows pinched together, and I wondered again how he knew where my room was, but before I could ask, he was lowering me onto the bed and pulling the bread from my hands.

“This is mine,” I complained, and tried to pull it back toward me.

“I know it is, but I’m betting you have about five minutes before you’re asleep. And you don’t want to fall asleep with garlic bread in your hands, do you?”

“Yes! Yes, I do!”

A bright smile crossed his face as he uncurled my fingers, one by one. “No, you don’t.” Once it was in his hand, he straightened and looked down at me, his gaze lingering on my face for a few seconds. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes. Get changed.”

“For what?”

He stopped midturn and looked back at me. “To go to sleep.”

“But I’m not tired,” I insisted when he walked away. He didn’t respond. “I’m not.”

I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to know why he never talked to anyone, and why he didn’t have a girlfriend. I wanted to know why he sat in the back of the class, how he knew where my room was, and why he wasn’t the one to fix my car. I wanted to know if he’d been as consumed in thoughts of me the last week and a half as I’d been in thoughts of him.

Unzipping my hoodie, I yanked at the sleeves and fought with the material until it was off my arms and on the floor. Then I grabbed my long-sleeved shirt. But that proved to be much more difficult to deal with. I ended up on my side with one arm hanging out of the hole where my head was supposed to go, and the other caught up in the material along with my head before giving up.

I didn’t need to get undressed anyway, and it was oddly comfortable. Or that could’ve been because I was drunk and any position would be comfortable, but my eyes were already shutting, even though I knew I wanted to stay awake to talk to Kier.

My eyes were shut and my breathing was deep when I heard a low laugh followed by the sound of glass being set down on wood. “Kier?”

“Yeah, Indy?”

“My shirt attacked me,” I mumbled before letting myself go back to the place where sleep was calling me.

“I can see that.”

His hands were touching my arms, maneuvering them through the correct holes of the shirt as he tried to pull it off my body. When he was done, he moved me back so I was lying on the pillows, and I heard his footsteps cross my room before the light behind my eyelids disappeared.

My eyes cracked open, then shut again as he lifted one of my legs to tug my boot off. “Are you staying?”

“No,” he said as the other boot slid off, a dull thud sounding in the otherwise quiet room when it hit the floor. I was so close to sleep that the sound seemed miles away.

I felt a pull on the button of my jeans, and groggily slapped at his hands. “No,” I protested, and tried to open my eyes.

“Don’t kick me, Indy. You’re safe with me. Safe door, remember?” Kier’s voice filled my head seconds before his hands touched my ankles, grabbing the bottoms of my jeans and pulling them down.

“No, no,” I said louder, panic filling my voice as my eyes finally snapped open.

Kier let my pants fall to the floor as he pushed my legs onto the bed and pulled the comforter over my body, his eyes never once on any part of me as he did so. When I was covered, he glanced at me and cupped my cheek. “Get some sleep, sweetheart.”

He turned and walked from my room, shutting the door behind him as he did. But before he left, his fingers twisted the lock on the doorknob, and I knew he’d made it a safe door. He hadn’t been about to take advantage of me. He was taking care of me, and he was making sure no one was getting in my room tonight.

Kier

I jogged down the steps of the house and hurried over to my SUV. As I neared the end of the walkway, movement to my right captured my eye, and I paused when I saw Indy slowing from her run. Her eyes widened before she glanced away, and she looked like she was trying to figure out a way to avoid seeing me.

Two weekends of her remembering my name, but nothing had changed during those weeks. It was painfully awkward to see her now, especially after the morning I’d had Darryn and Misha make Indy believe they’d been the ones to fix her car instead of me. But I hadn’t wanted her to know, just like I didn’t need her to know about how I took care of her every Saturday night. Until she figured it out, there was no point in talking to her about it.

I glanced at my SUV before looking at her again, a grimace tugging at my lips as I decided against what I knew was the right thing to do. “I thought you’d be gone for Thanksgiving break,” I said when she got a little closer.

“We still have classes for a couple days.”

“And? Most people skip them so they can actually have a full week off.”

Her green eyes fell to the straps of my backpack before she looked to the ground. “You’re not.”

“My parents aren’t big on celebrating Thanksgiving.” Or any holiday for that matter, including birthdays. “They take a trip every year instead, so there isn’t much of a point in going home.”

“Without you?” she asked, her eyebrows pinching together when she looked back up at me.

“Most years.”

“That’s sad.”

I laughed. It might have been sad when I was ten, but now it was normal. “Not really. Have your parents ever taken a trip without you?” She didn’t respond for a few seconds, but finally nodded. “That’s all it is. We just don’t do the whole traditional holiday thing, never have. When are you gonna head home?”

“I’m not.”

She looked uncomfortable, so I didn’t press for anything else. When she looked at the ground again, I took that as a cue to leave and turned to walk back to my car.

“What is it about you?”

I paused but didn’t turn around for a few moments, and then it was only to look over my shoulder.

“I don’t know you. Other than right now we’ve only talked to each other twice and it was for a handful of minutes, but I feel like I know you. I feel—I don’t know how to explain it,” she huffed, and a frustrated smile crossed her face. “I’m about to embarrass the hell out of myself, but I don’t care anymore. I feel like when I’m near you, I’m safe, and it makes no sense to me. It is the weirdest feeling to have with someone I only know three things about.”