“Don’t rat me out and ruin my rep,” I said, which got Brittany and Valerie laughing, far more than I deserved for the joke.
“I’m genuinely surprised you guys came,” he added. “I assumed no one was even paying attention to the extra credit anymore.”
“We only have three weeks until the final,” Brittany said, “and I didn’t exactly kill my midterm, so…”
“And she didn’t kill her midterm, so that’s why I’m here too,” Valerie joked.
James and I enjoyed a laugh before I heard, “Hey, ladies.”
As they turned, between them, I noticed Daryl and Brian coming our way.
Seriously?
I didn’t have to turn to James to know he was eyeing me, wondering how I was going to respond.
Brittany and Val greeted them as I muttered to James, “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”
“You good?”
“Slightly annoyed, but I’ll be fine.”
I’d have to be, since I was going to be seeing him from this day through the rest of the year. Plus, as long as he didn’t talk any more shit about James, we didn’t need to have any beef.
Brian eyed me uneasily as they got closer.
“Hey, man,” I said, trying to break the ice.
“Hey.” He reached his hand out for a truce. “We cool?”
I took his hand, and we tapped shoulders. “Yeah, man. We’re cool. Even though I’ve gotta do some time over you.”
He snickered, but I felt the tension dissolve, and it reminded me that I hadn’t needed to put on such a show, that he was relatively harmless. With that out of the way, we all found seats. The lecturer arrived and began discussing his novel about the depression era. I’d half expected the other guys to be a bunch of assholes, especially considering the speaker wasn’t the most entertaining, but they were well mannered and listened intently.
James and I sat next to one another. At first I kept my distance, but as my leg grazed his, I realized what an opportunity we really had and pushed it closer, nonchalantly, as though my leg just happened to push against his like that. I wondered if he would pull away, but he kept his in place.
As the lecturer went on, I kept pushing my leg a little closer…and then I felt him shift his leg closer to mine too.
I suppressed a sigh of relief as I looked to my classmates to make sure they hadn’t caught on. I knew they couldn’t any more than they could read my interest during class. Each day, this aura of feelings for James grew bigger and bigger, to the point where now I was sure even the lecturer was enveloped in it.
By the end of the event, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come up with a paper about the lecture, since I’d been so caught up in how much warmth we’d managed to generate with our legs wedged together as they were. After applauding the speaker, we all stood, James and I exchanging a look as we grabbed our jackets. It confirmed he knew exactly what we’d done.
Like so much of what we did these days, it wasn’t right, but that couldn’t rob me of how it felt.
James thanked the other guys for coming, and we headed out to the parking lot.
A drizzle was coming down, which made everyone dash off to their cars. James hadn’t mentioned anything about our agreement, so I left same as they had. I figured maybe we’d have to save it for another night. But as I was on my way back to my car, I heard his voice behind me, calling my name. I whirled around so fast, I had to work to keep myself from doing a spin.
James jogged to catch up with me.
Something about the way the streetlight caught his smooth face reminded me of how his skin had looked in the orange glow of the setting sun. It seemed as though each time I looked at his face, I unearthed some deeper layer of beauty than the last. Not just because he was hot, which was something I’d known from the beginning. Only…every little piece of him I had discovered had led me to the sort of beauty that permeated beyond flesh.
He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a box wrapped in brown paper. He eyed it for a moment, seeming to struggle with the thought of handing over his secrets, his darkness. That feeling was familiar to me, considering what it had taken me to hand him