Page 67 of Miss Behaved
Monica follows me across the hall into my room when they disappear into the elevator.
“You sure you don’t want me to come with you to the airport?” she asks, tugging at the hem of her jean shorts and fidgeting with the pockets.
“No, you don’t need to be stuck there for another two hours,” I say, stuffing a pile of clothes into my bag.
What I don’t say is that I don’t think I can handle the hope of being around her much longer. If she comes to the airport, there’s a chance I’ll drag her with me onto the plane and never let her go.
“You pack like a sociopath,” she says, dropping down onto my bed and laughing. “Folding prevents wrinkles, you know.”
“Is this bothering you?” I grin and stuff another balled up shirt into my suitcase.
Monica throws her hands in the air. “I can’t watch this.”
She hops up, but I grab her wrist and spin her against my chest before she can get past me. Her big brown eyes look up at me through her thick eyelashes, and a breath hangs between us.
I want you.
I need you.
I love you.
You’re mine.
I choke on every word that tries to get out and kiss her instead, wrapping my arms around her small waist and lifting her up on her toes to meet me. Inside the kiss is all the things I want to tell her but can’t.
And it feels too much like goodbye.
Our lips parting draws out the emptiness. Space that’s about to stretch further between us. I’m going home to a city that’s as lonely in the club as it is in my apartment, because she won’t be there.
Tears pool behind Monica’s eyes, but she blinks them away. I want to shake her shoulders, break loose all the things she’s not saying. Figure out if the same confessions that are on the tip of my tongue are stuck on her hers. But I keep quiet.
“I should pack,” she says as my hands let go, but she holds there, inches away, and stares at me as if she wants to say something. I open my mouth to speak first, but my phone rings and shocks us both back into our heads.
Monica’s gaze drops to the screen that’s flashing on the bed, and her lips turn down in a frown. “Blue Dress, Decent Tits is calling you,” she says, taking a step backward.
It takes me a moment to process the words that just came out of her mouth.
Fuuuuuck.
I could kill Brandon right now. We met these girls at a bar a few weeks before I left, and we couldn’t remember their names, so he saved their numbers under, “Blue Dress, Decent Tits” and “Blonde with Juicy Buns.”My wasted ass thought it was hilarious at the time, but watching the light escape Monica’s eyes gives me a sinking feeling.
There’s always a moment when you know things are about to fall apart. It might be the breeze that kicks up before the storm, or the first drop of rain hitting the pavement. The wind shifts. The air changes. And you know in your gut that a tornado is about to rip your life to fucking pieces.
I feel that shift when Monica takes another step back and tries to force a smile, the same way I felt it that morning ten years ago, when I woke up to the screaming engine of my dad’s truck.
It whispers,The teeth of the universe are coming.
“That’s not what it looks like,” I say to her. Although those words in and of themselves sound like a cop-out. “A buddy of mine was being funny.”
She dips her thumbs into her pockets and shrugs. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“I want to.”
I take a step forward, but she shifts the same distance back.
“We were drunk, and he put the numbers in my phone.”
“It’s fine,” she says, but her voice doesn’t sound like it. “It’s not like I was celibate before I got here either. We’re both single people doing our thing.”
