First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (75 page)

I’m seeing Samantha’s eyes. Maria has the same sad, broken look in her eyes that I watched choke out the joy and happiness in my little sister as Dad grew more and more violent.

I close my eyes and shudder as memory after memory suddenly resurfaces, each one just as painful as ever.

“
Deep breaths, Owen... long deep breaths. You can do it
,” I think. I can usually calm myself down, but it isn’t working tonight.

“You okay dude? What’s wrong?” asks Craig, and he grabs me by the arm. “What happened?”

“I’m okay. Really,” I lie, trying to shrug him off. In my mind, Samantha is falling again. She strikes the floor at bottom of the stairs with a terrible, sickening thud, and I shake my head as if it’ll make the memory go away.

“I’m sorry... I have to go home,” I blurt out, and I snatch my arm away from Craig. “I’ll catch you later.”

Craig shouts after me in confusion as I weave through the thick crowd of students, but I don’t answer him. He doesn’t understand what goes on in my head, and he’d treat me like a nutcase if I told him even half of my nightmares.

I need to be alone.

Friday, February 15 – 8:35 PM

Maria

Craig holds the door open for us, and I cling to Tina as we squeeze into the dark, crowded little bar.

“God, this place is awesome!” calls out Tina above the din, and I cannot disagree more strongly. I’m sure the architect was going for a different effect entirely, but the combination of a low ceiling, randomly-placed arches and curved walls make me feel like I’m inside a tomb.

I instinctively bristle as a guy bumps into me while trying to get to the door.

“So where’d your buddy go anyway?” shouts Tina as Craig catches up to us near the bar.

“Fuck if I know, babe,” he answers. “He just got all weird and ran off on me. Said he had to go home.”

Tina raises an eyebrow at him, and for a moment, I think she’s going to lose her temper at the ‘babe’ comment. After a long stare, she thinks better of starting anything and brushes it off.

“Look, open seats by the bar,” shouts Craig, pointing to three empty chairs at the opposite side of the semi-circle of booze worshippers.

Tina takes one quick glance at me and then shakes her head.

“Nah, let’s grab that one in the corner instead.”

She points to an empty cocktail table with black leather chairs in the far corner, set apart from the milling crowd of students, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Okay, you girls grab the table and I’ll grab the first round. Your old favorite still good, Tina?”

Tina raises an eyebrow again and then rolls her eyes and nods.

“Yeah, works for me. Grab Maria a Guinness while you’re up there, okay?”

“Sure thing – gimme a minute and I’ll be right there.”

I don’t want Guinness at all, but as I open my mouth to protest, Tina gives me the zipper again, grabs me by the arm and drags me to the table.

“So who the heck is this guy anyway?” I ask nervously. Tina rolls her eyes as she answers.

“Oh, Craig’s a guy I dated back during freshman year when I was a bit more desperate. Good guy, but not what I needed.”

I nod, understanding exactly what she meant. Back when we were freshmen, Tina dated pretty much anyone with a pulse just to feel like she had a connection to other people. She got better. I didn’t.

“Tina, you okay with him hanging around? Want me to make an excuse for you?”

It wouldn’t be hard to come up with one; I’m skittish enough from the crowd already.

“No, don’t worry about it,” she says. “He’s a good guy. Really. Relax and just trust him, okay?”

I say nothing and instead awkwardly force a smile as Craig sits down next to Tina. As he puts down the drink tray, I scoot my chair so that the table is in between us.

“Okay... Guinness for Maria, Cosmo for Tina, and ye old Leffe for me.”

“Oh god, that stuff is practically piss-water,” moans Tina, and she sips her deep red Cosmo.

“And yours is fruit-flavored battery acid,” quips Craig. “I’ll keep my stomach lining, thanks.”

Just as I decide that they must hate each other, Tina starts to laugh.

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” she asks, smiling radiantly.

“Nope. Still an insufferable prick.”

“Good,” she says, taking another sip of her drink. “Don’t ever change. It suits you well.”

I don’t understand their relationship one bit. They might as well be speaking a different language to me.

“Who was that guy you were with earlier?” I ask, cutting in during a lull in their conversation.

“Oh, him? That’s my buddy Owen. He’s my roommate.”

Tina’s eyes light up at my question and she stares at me excitedly.

“Ooh... did you think he was cute?”

“No, I was just wondering who he was,” I stammer. “I thought I recognized him.”

My face grows hot, and I bow my head and look down at my lap. Tina should know better than to single me out like that, and she
definitely
knows better than to think I’m attracted to him.

The only reason I asked is that I recognized Owen the instant Tina collided with him. He’s my statistics TA, and I made an ass of myself in front of him just this morning.

“Hey, he’s single if you want me to set you up with him,” offers Craig with a wide, toothy grin.

I look up at him wide-eyed and shake my head vehemently.

“Hey, he’s an okay guy! You should really...”

“Craig, no. Drop it,” cautions Tina, and she shoots him a glare that could kill kittens from a hundred yards.

“Okay, forget I said anything. But seriously though, I’ll introduce you if you’d...”

“Craig!”

He shuts up instantly at Tina’s angry hiss.

I let myself sink into the deep, comfortable cushions of my chair and manage to relax a little as I sip my beer. The thick, bitter drink feels so heavy as it goes down my throat that I know I’ll never be able to finish the whole thing. It’s perfect for a lightweight like me.

Tina and Craig chat happily together, and I start to unwind. This is fun. I can deal with going out when I’m not the center of attention, when I’m safe with friends and away from the crowd.

I tense up again almost immediately as Craig turns his attention back to me.

“Dang, Maria – you’ve barely said a thing all night. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m... I’m fine,” I stammer awkwardly, unsure of what else to say.

“You sure?” he asks, looking at me curiously. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable again.

“Maria gets nervous in crowds and doesn’t go out a lot,” explains Tina, coming to my rescue and drawing his gaze away from me. “She’s a bit of a shut-in, and I’m trying to help her get out more.”

He glances back at me, and I nod in agreement with Tina’s tale. Her story is just true enough to hide the
real
truth.

The attention is off me again, and I relax again. I can feel the beer starting to take effect, and I both like and hate it at the same time. It’s making me sleepy and making everything feel okay to me, but I also feel like I’m not myself. I feel exposed and weak because of it.

Maybe I don’t drink very often because I’m terrified of not being in control. It makes sense to me in a stupid, Psych 101 sort of way.

I lean back and relax in the chair until Craig’s voice grabs my attention away from the softly spinning ceiling.

“You know what? You’re just like Owen,” he says, staring intently at me, and he tips his bottle back and takes a big drink. I wrinkle my nose as I catch a whiff of the strong, acerbic odor of his deep yellow beer.

“How so?” asks Tina curiously, as if I’m not sitting right next to her and listening to the two of them talk about me.

“Damned if I can get him to go out and do anything,” he answers. “It took me weeks of nagging to even get him to say he’d come out tonight, and after all that work, then he went and had some kind of panic attack or whatever.”

“Wait, seriously?” Tina and I ask in unison.

Craig seems a bit surprised by my sudden interest, but he simply shrugs and nods.

“Yeah, I’ve got no idea what’s up with him. Dude’s skittish.”

For one brief second, I almost want to meet Owen. I want to see what he’s like—maybe he’s broken like I am. Maybe I could trust him after all.

Reality catches up to me in a hurry, smacks me in the face for being so stupid and slams the door on the idea. I couldn’t even hand him a test paper without panicking; how on earth could I possibly handle meeting him? Besides, all sorts of people have panic attacks, not just messed-up people like me.

Craig downs the rest of his beer, slams the empty bottle down on the tray so hard that I nearly jump at the noise, and then grins as if he’s proud of scaring me. Tina looks like she wants to gouge out his eyes, and I almost wish she would.

“Here, this is for you, Tina. Happy birthday,” he says, and with a tipsy grin, he pulls a yellow sticky-pad and pen out of his pocket.

“One: it’s not my birthday, and two: a sticky-note?” asks Tina, looking disdainfully at him as he scribbled something on the paper. “Oh, and if this is your phone number, I’m gonna rip your throat out.”

“You never told me when your birthday was, so I just made up a date. Here you go,” he says.

He gets up from his chair and then bows politely to me.

“Good night, Maria. It was nice meeting you, but I’ve gotta go before Tina murders me. Have a great weekend.”

I smile back at him and watch over my shoulder as he heads out the door. He’s a weirdo but seems safe enough, I guess. Tina had fantastically weird taste in guys as a freshman.

I turn back to her just in time to see her tear the yellow note in half.

“What, did he seriously try to give you his number again?” I ask with a laugh.

She smiles awkwardly and then slowly nods. Tina is never shy about
anything
, so I immediately recognize the lie. Craig must have written something terribly embarrassing for her to be nervous.

“Oh come on, let me see it. What else did he write?”

“No way!”

“Come on, I’m not going to call him or anything.”

I lean in and quickly snatch the two halves of the note out of her hand before she can protest. My eyes go wide as I read the note, and I suddenly feel cold.

Owen Maxwell: [email protected] - 607-918-8218.

Introduce Maria. Now.

I look back up at her and shake my head.

“No, please don’t. He’s my TA in stats.”

“You never told me
that
part. What’s he like? Tell me everything!” she gasps excitedly. She seems
way
too happy about this.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I answer, shrugging. “You know how I am. I just keep my head down and take notes.”

She stares at me as if she doesn’t believe me, but it’s really all I can tell her. It’s almost the truth.

“Tina... please don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

“Relax. I wasn’t going to – that’s why I ripped it up.”

She smiles understandingly, shoves the shredded note into her pocket and then gets up to order another Cosmo.

I let myself sink back into the chair again and try to calm myself down.

There is something else I could have told her: I could have told her about Owen’s soft, gray eyes and how I can’t get them out of my mind.

She’d take that the wrong way, though. I know her—she’d think I have a crush on him.

Friday, February 15 – 11:40 PM

Owen

It’s nearly midnight, I’m still a train-wreck, and I only have two tests left to grade. This is the first time I’ve ever wished I had more work to do. I’m going to run out of things to keep my mind occupied at this rate.

I don’t know what came over me while I saw Maria. That one quick glance, that fear in her eyes... it’s as if all the bad memories just burst back to life all at once. Every bad thought, every nightmare, they were all right there, fresh in my mind again.

I absentmindedly chew on the end of my pencil with my eyes closed tightly as Samantha stares blankly up at me from the bottom of the stairs. She’ll never forgive me for betraying her. How can she? She’s dead because of me.

The pencil crunches between my teeth, and the sound snaps me out of my waking nightmare and back to reality. I throw the broken pencil into the garbage, grab a fresh one, and I’m chewing shamefully on it again before I know it.

Two pages left to grade on the test.

Grading this student’s test isn’t keeping my attention away from Samantha because not a damned thing’s been wrong yet. It’s the first one of the night without a single wrong answer, and the next page proves no different. I glance up at my laptop to check the grade-recording spreadsheet. The current average grade is a sixty percent. This one’s going to blow the curve out of the water.

There is one mistake on the final page, but I’m not sure I should even mark it. The professor makes me grade students on their work as well as the final answer, and while her answer is right, the girl’s handwriting is so tiny that I can barely trace her work. I think she transposed a number on paper but kept it straight in her head.

“Hell with it, she’s got the right answer,” I mutter, and I subtract a single point. Her 99% grade just wrecked every other student in the class.

I type in the score, turn back to the first page of the test to grab her name, and nearly flip out as I read the name scrawled in tiny, nearly illegible script.

Maria Ayala.

“What the fuck...”

I’m dumbfounded. I’d written her off as an idiot who failed the test so badly she was nearly in tears, and I couldn’t have been farther from the truth. My nervous, green-eyed student just broke the curve for everyone else in the class.

She wasn’t scared of failing at all. She was scared of
me
.

Dark, terrified eyes fill my mind, and I can’t tell if they belong to Samantha or Maria anymore. The fear is the same.

Why is Maria scared of me?

I drop her test on the wobbly coffee table, flop down on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. Most of the furniture that came with this apartment is garbage, but the couch is top-notch. I love how I sink into it—it feels like the couch is going to swallow me. My thumb instinctively traces along the scar on my jaw as my thoughts wander. My mind, not willing to give me even a moment’s peace tonight, immediately drags me back down into a deep, dark, and scary place inside me.