he said, right? That I’m perfect.
I mean, yes it was only for sex but still. It was something.
I never had much interest in being perfect but ever since I was ten, I wanted to be perfect for him. I wanted to somehow bridge the gap between us and match him.
Turns out, I do.
I do match him and oh my God, I can’t stop smiling.
And I thought this was the extent of my happiness, what I’m feeling right now. The bubbly, floaty sensation in my limbs and my stomach.
But I was wrong.
My happiness can be doubled. My happiness can be red hot. It can be bursting and pulsing and seeping out of my skin.
Because as soon as I turn around from the reception desk, my books against my chest, looking for an empty table where I can park myself and solve all the goddamn equations, I find him.
He’s here and he’s looking at me.
Like he was expecting me.
He’s at a table in the corner, directly beneath the overhead light that brings out the gold in his hair. It brings out the gold in his skin too, especially in the curve of his bulging bicep when he raises his arm to rake his fingers through his strands.
My own fingers twitch when I see him do that, comb back the fallen strands, and my throat dries out at the sight of his beautiful face. At the hollows of his cheeks and the seam of his lips.
The blazing blue of his eyes.
It’s wrong what they say. That when you die, your body turns cold and blue. No, blue doesn’t mean winter and death.
Blue for me will always mean warm summer and life. Fire.
Blue for me will always mean him.
My Arrow.
He’s sitting back in his chair, wearing his usual V-neck gray t-shirt, and when I simply keep standing in my spot, he folds his arms across his chest and raises his eyebrows, making him look all kinds of arrogant and sexy.
Then he does something even sexier, something that causes flutters to explode in my belly.
With his eyes on me, he nudges the chair by his side out with his foot. In a silent invitation to sit by him.
And I have to smile at that as well. I have to.
There’s no way that I can’t.
There’s no way that I can’t walk up to him now, my breaths and heartbeats a mess. My thighs a mess too. Of pulses and my wetness.
When I reach him and press the aching juncture between my legs against the table he’s chosen, his gaze drops to it.
He licks his lips as if he knows that I’m wet down there and he’s reliving my taste.
“You’re here,” I whisper.
He lifts his eyes. “I ran into your friends out in the courtyard. They told me you’d be here.”
“So you came to see me?” I ask, breathless.
Resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, he commands, “Sit.”
“What?”
“I heard you got extra homework.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So I’m here to help you.”
I press my books to my chest. “You’re here to help me with my trig homework?”
Without answering me, he repeats, “Take a seat, Salem.”
Confused and so totally floored because he came here to help me, I sit and put my books on the table. He straightens up and goes for them when I say, “Where were you all day? I was looking for you.”
He pauses then, his hand in the process of opening my notebook. With his head bowed, I hear him sigh.
I’m not sure what that sigh means but I keep going, nonetheless. “I even came by your office but you weren’t there.”
I did go by his office during lunch.
Not sure for what. I mean, I wanted to see him but I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I saw him.
Okay, I’m lying.
I knew exactly what I’d do when I saw him. I’d throw myself at him and climb his body and demand that he fuck me right then and there.
Again, he doesn’t answer me and I frown.
He simply resumes flicking through my notebook until he comes upon a blank page. Then, he writes something on it.
I watch, mesmerized. Like I’ve never seen him write before. I have; we lived in the same house. I have seen him do his homework in the living room with my sister, but for some reason I can’t stop watching.
I can’t stop watching the way he grips the pen, so authoritatively, so possessively – like he gripped me last night – and how large and dominating his fist looks.
When he’s