Breathless (3 page)

I got two chicken breasts, and Georgia ordered herself
a grilled cheese. With that on our plates, we went over to the salad bar and
chatted while we compared the different things that we wanted from what was
available. At least there was a good selection; I made myself a big,
complicated salad with lots of different vegetables and dipped some of the
bread sticks into the different salad dressings to figure out which one I
wanted.

While we were playing around, I noticed a group of
girls walking into the food service area, all dressed in purple and gold, their
coordinated look screaming that they were members of one of the sororities. I
nudged Georgia and pointed to the chattering group and both of us rolled our
eyes, grinning at how ridiculous they all looked together. “If I ever think
that’s a good idea,” I said to Gigi lowly, “smack me upside the head as many
times as you possibly can until I’ve come back to my senses.” Georgia laughed.

“Ditto,” Georgia said, glancing at the girls one more
time and shaking her head. We headed out of the service area and out into the
seating portion of the dining hall.

If I had been impressed when I first walked in by just
how many students were piled into the building, the loud shouting, talking,
laughing,
moving
crowd of students at the tables blew
my mind a second time. Gigi and I looked around for a quiet table somewhere;
neither of us particularly wanted to jump into a crowded one with a bunch of
screaming people, even if we weren’t anti-social. There was only so much of a
crowd that either of us could take at any given time. I scanned the tables,
trying to find somewhere we could both sit and eventually just shook my head.

We stood off to the side, watching as more and more
students trickled through the archway leading from the service area to the
dining room, and finally Georgia found a relatively clear area close to the
door. I shrugged when she pointed it out to me and we both headed that way,
setting our trays down with our food and drink and quickly claiming the end of
the table before anyone else could get in our way. “Oh my God, there are so
many people,” I said to Georgia.

My high school had been kind of small; Georgia told me
that she’d gone to a magnet public school—it wasn’t huge, but her graduating
class had been much bigger than mine. We compared notes on our different salads
and the other things we had gotten, and I thought to myself that I fully
planned to try all of the various juices the cafeteria dispenser boasted; after
all, I knew what the different sodas tasted like already. Georgia and I were
talking about what we were most looking forward to in our classes, some of the
different clubs that we might be interested in, and I finally started to relax.

“Hey look,” Georgia said, pointing towards the
entrance. “Hockey players.” She grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes, looking
obediently in the direction she gestured to. The guys who were coming into the
dining area were all in matching jackets bearing the school colors, and they
were somehow louder even than the people around us, shouting and laughing,
shoving each other playfully as they made their way out of the service area. It
was obvious that they felt like they owned the school. I laughed at them,
shaking my head at Gigi again; it seemed like jocks were the same thing in
college that they had always seemed to be in high school. I started looking
again and picked off the names from the backs of the jackets, curious in spite
of myself. There was a Smith, a Locke, a
Havers
, and
finally, my eyes lit on one pair of broad shoulders bearing the name Steel.

There couldn’t be more than one or two people with
that particular last name—not at a school this small. From behind, he didn’t
look that exceptional: broad shoulders, sure, and some obvious muscle under the
jacket he wore, but that was every guy in sports. He turned to head towards the
tables, and at the sight of him from the front, I was mesmerized. Johnny—if it
was him and not his brother or someone who happened to share the same last
name—was gorgeous. He had short, dark blond, curling hair and a smiling face.
His eyebrows were a little darker, over a pair of bright eyes, and his whole
face looked surprisingly gentle in the instant before he laughed at something
someone else on the team said. He was definitely the most gorgeous guy I had
seen in my first hours on campus, and I couldn’t help but stare. “Look,” I
hissed to Georgia. “That’s got to be him, I mean there can’t be two guys who
are that gorgeous with the same last name, could there?” Georgia looked over at
the group again and laughed.

“Yeah, I think that has to be Johnny.” She stared with
me for a moment and grinned. “Man, if he wanted to come up to our room and
spend the night, I’d let him—RAs and rules be damned!” I laughed and tried to
look away, even though I knew that I was watching him way more intently than I
wanted anyone to know. I was a little star-struck, to tell the truth; he was a
gorgeous guy who I would have noticed no matter what, and it didn’t hurt at all
that he apparently had some reputation on campus not only for the sport he
played, but for being a
hottie
.

Georgia and I finished up our salads and grabbed some
fruit, swiping a few cookies to take with us back to the dorm, which we slipped
into a wad of napkins and tucked into our bags. We didn’t really feel like
lingering in the dining hall—it was too crowded and way too noisy. “Let’s head
back,” Georgia suggested; I was only too ready to agree—there were more and
more students pouring through the archway from the service area into the dining
room, and pretty soon all of the tables would be fuller than full.

We picked up our trays and followed the signs around
the corner to the dish area, talking about what we still had to do that night.
Georgia had gotten a nice-sized flat-screen TV as her birthday present from her
parents, and she was suggesting that we could hook it up in the common area of
our room, so we’d both have the freedom to watch TV whenever we wanted. I put
my tray on the conveyor belt and laughed at a joke that Georgia made about
binge-watching TV instead of getting our work done, shaking my head; I had
already concluded that I had lucked out big time with my assigned roommate.

I took a step backwards, not even looking—a stupid
idea, I knew even as I did it. Immediately, I collided with someone and
half-yelped, turning on my heel to apologize to whomever I had run into. I
looked up—and up. When my gaze lit on the face of the guy who I’d managed to
bump, I felt my cheeks burning with the blood that rushed into them. It was
Steel. Johnny Steel. I exhaled, trying to think of what I could say. “I am,
gosh, I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry,” I said, laughing nervously.

Johnny shrugged, grinning down at me. “Should we
exchange insurances? I don’t think you did more than ding my fender—I’d hate
your rate to go up.” I found myself laughing more easily at the joke, and my
blush started to recede. Off to the side, in the corner of my vision, I could
see Georgia standing there, just staring at the two of us, almost openly
gawking at the gorgeous man I’d had the bad luck to run into. “I’m
Johnny—Johnny Steel,” he said. I smiled, still a little nervous at the
confirmation of my suspicions. “What’s your name?” I tried to shake off my
shock and nervousness.

“Becky,” I said, smiling again, feeling the warmth
still lingering in my cheeks. Johnny smiled down at me, his bright eyes—up
close they looked like they were blue—looking me up and down.

“Well, Becky, I’m glad to meet you. What’s your
major?” My brain froze over. What was my major? I glanced sideways at Georgia,
as if she could help me.

“Uh, my major…” I licked my lips, my heart pounding in
my chest faster and faster.

“You know, that thing you’re here for?” Johnny’s
playful smile took any sting out of his joke. “You know, other than parties and
clubs.” I laughed and shook my head.

“English. I’m planning to major in English.” There was
a quick silence, and I tried to think of something funny or at least smart, to
say to him. But before I could, one of his friends called a question out to
him, and Johnny looked away from me for a second, raising a hand to acknowledge
the call and shouting back that he’d be right there. He looked down at me with
another big smile on his face.

“It was great meeting you, Becky. I’ll see you around,
I hope.” I nodded, unable to think of what else I could possibly say, and
watched as he turned and walked away quickly, meeting back up with his friends.
Georgia came back to my side, shaking her head with a star-struck grin on her
face.

“Girl, you have got to be the luckiest person on the
planet!” she said, managing somehow to keep her voice low enough to not be
heard by the entire cafeteria. I rolled my eyes as we started to walk towards
the exit. “Johnny Steel knows your name—and he’s… damn, Becky, he’s gorgeous.
You’re lucky.” I shrugged.

“I’m sure he just…he’ll forget about me altogether in
twenty minutes. I’m not going to let it turn my head.” I didn’t know what to
think of the crazy random chance that had made me back up into Johnny. In my
mind, as we walked back to the dorms, all I could think of was how gorgeous he
was, the way his smile seemed so sweet and nice, his playful joking. I probably
wouldn’t see him ever again—or at least, rarely—but it was a nice little twist
on my first day on campus. I quickly discarded the idea that anything could
possibly happen, but in spite of that, I wasn’t sure what to make of how
charming he’d been to me.
Probably just
nice to everyone,
I told myself as we walked across the quad towards the
dorm buildings.
Don’t think about it
anymore. You’ve got way more important things on your plate.
But I had to
admit to myself at least that it was fun to have been noticed at all, even if I
was pretty sure that I’d be forgotten in a matter of moments.

Chapter
Four

By the time we were back in the dorm room, Gigi and I
had finally managed to calm down a little bit about our run-in with Johnny—or
rather, my run-in. We had both decided that it was high time to start
organizing and unpacking the last of our things. Mom and Dad had set up my room
for me, but of course, I wasn’t a child anymore—I could put away my own
clothes, take care of a few things for myself. Georgia had more of her own
stuff to tackle than I did, and of course there was also the common area to
take care of.

We called across the room to each other as we went
about the different chores we had in our own spaces, asking each other
questions about what our lives had been like, what are parents were like, the
sort of things you talk to your new roommate about. “I swear, my mom’s nuts,” I
told Gigi while I was putting the last of my things in the shower. “All she
cares about is money and status—she and Dad both hate that I’m planning to
major in English. They’d much rather I did business or something like that.”
Georgia laughed.

“My parents are pretty okay,” she called back from her
bedroom. “I mean, if I had wanted to be an English major, they’d probably be a
little bit wary of it…” I laughed. “But they’re okay with me studying whatever
I want, as long as I’m prepared to work hard.” That was the thing, I thought;
my parents didn’t want me to work hard, they wanted me to keep having
everything more or less just handed to me. I knew for a fact that Mom still
harbored the delusion that I was going to meet some wealthy trust-fund kid in
college and never have to work a day in my life. Part of why I hadn’t chosen
Brown University had simply been that I wanted out of that crowd.

“Everyone at my school was, like, shocked that this
place even existed,” I told Georgia while we were taking a break from our
unpacking, lounging in the common area. “All my friends were going to Yale or
Harvard. One of the kids in my class is going to NYU for film; someone else is
going to UC Berkeley. Big-name schools, precious networking opportunities.” I
rolled my eyes.

“Well, you’re already doing pretty well on the
networking,” Gigi said with a little grin, raising an eyebrow. I rolled my
eyes. “What? Do you have a boyfriend?” I shook my head.

“I haven’t dated anyone in months.” I shrugged.
Georgia looked at me in shock.

“Why the hell not? You’re hot as hell and you’re smart
and funny. Obviously Johnny even thinks so.” I blushed and shook my head.

“At best, he thought I was some dumb, cute
freshie
. What about you?” Georgia shrugged and looked at
her hands.

“I had a boyfriend, but I broke up with him like…a
month ago.” She shrugged again, and sighed. “I miss the big dummy, of course.”

“Why did you break up with him, then?” I shook my head
at her. “I mean obviously you liked him a lot.” Gigi laughed.

“Oh God, yeah—I mean, he was my first, so of course I
liked him. But he’s going off to school in another state, and we were never
going to be able to see each other, at least not until break…” she shifted on
the couch and smiled. “I just decided that it didn’t make sense to try and play
some long-distance relationship game, and it would be better for both of us if
we were both free. He can do his thing and I can do mine. Besides, if it’s
meant to be, we’ll end up together, and if it’s not, why put myself through all
that heartache for no reason?” I had to admit that it made sense; if I’d had a
boyfriend when I’d left for college, I’d probably have broken up with him, too.