I have to speak. He clearly lives on my floor, and if I walk away from this without saying a word, it’s only going to be more awkward when I run into him in the elevator, at the stairs, in a class.
“Sorry, adrenaline still working its way through me, had a hard time getting my words out,” I say, reminding myself to fill my lungs. That’s what Ross, my counselor, tells me to do when I feel the world closing in on me. Stop. Breathe deeply. Ross is a thousand miles away, but I’m supposed to call him twice a month. I’m starting to think twice a week might be necessary for a while.
“Understandable.” Southern accent. Dimples. Smile. “So, you live…down there?” he asks, gesturing down the long hallway that leads to my room.
“Room three thirty-three,” I say. Why in the hell did I tell him what room I’m in? That’s completely unlike me, and it feels…unsafe.
“Ah, well…nice to meet you, three thirty-three. I’m three fifty-seven.” He gives me his hand, and I shake it, feeling every cell of his fingers spark against mine. The feeling is foreign, and scary, and amazing all at once.
“You going to any of the parties tonight, Thirty-three?” I like it when he calls me by my number, and the fact that he’s suddenly given me this nickname makes my stomach feel warm, regardless of how trivial and meaningless it probably is to him. It also makes me realize that I never gave him my name. I should do that. Shouldn’t I do that?
“No, I’m pretty exhausted. We drove straight through from Arizona. And you can call me Rowe,” I say, my heart racing just to get through this part of the conversation. I don’t know why, but for me, every interaction causes the same internal struggle others feel while giving a speech. Only for me, it’s the tiny speeches, the one-on-ones, that strip me completely.
“Rowe.” He smiles after saying my name, and my god do I want to hear him say it again. At the same time, I keep looking toward my room in my periphery, the other part of my brain—the dominant part—trying to convince me to go back to safety and hide. “I’m Nate. And I’m really glad I decided to take a shower tonight.”
This is flirting. I remember it, vaguely, as he smiles and walks backward to his room on the other end of the hall, his eyes lingering on me just long enough to send a rush down my spine. I mimic him, and don’t turn away immediately either, willing myself to keep my smile in place, to leave the night on this high, to burn the look on his face into my memory—a new face, brand new to my life, and worlds apart from the demon that haunts me every night in my sleep.
I take advantage of my roommates being gone and push my bed a few more feet away from the door, almost flush to the window. Cass will notice, but I’m pretty sure I can convince Paige that the bed was always this way. And for some reason, I think Cass will back me up on it.
Getting my bed ready is always a process. I have four pillows and two blankets. Not because I’m cold, but because I’ve learned my mind rests easier if I have some sort of barrier pushing against my body. I know that the foam and cotton of the quilts will do very little to protect me in reality, but for some reason, they make sleep come easier. So I go to work, rolling and folding until I’ve built a fort of sorts along the side of my mattress—something to lay against so I can feel hidden while I sleep.
If I sleep.
Then come the medications. There’s the first dose I took a few hours ago—melatonin. I take the Ambien now. I fought taking pills for a long time. I didn’t want to go through life being drugged up. But I wasn’t sleeping. Like…at all. And it turns out not sleeping messes with your brain, and you start seeing things—things that you should only see in your sleep.
Even three stories up, I can hear the chirp of the crickets outside my window. I like their sound. It’s even and steady—something to focus on. So I keep the glass open, letting the warm air mix with the air conditioning as it spills in through the screen. I pull my laptop into bed with me, cross my legs, and log into Facebook. Writing to Josh has become a ritual, and my string of messages to him is more of a diary now. I never read them again once I hit send, though. I just pick up where I left off each time, starting a new thought but never going back.
So I made it. I’m a college girl. College. We were supposed to do this together, remember? And I sure as hell wasn’t supposed to end up in Oklahoma. I know, I know—my fault totally on that one. I picked it. It’s actually a pretty nice campus. The buildings are all made of red brick, and the trees here are enormous. Everything is so…green. I have two roommates. I like one of them. I guess I can live with the other one. It’s orientation week. I’m not sure I can hide in my room the entire time. I don’t want to. This is my great test, what I’ve worked toward for two years. But my courage diminished with every mile we trekked on our way to Oklahoma, and I fear my tank’s close to empty. One of my roommates, Cass, the one I like? She fought hard to get me to go out tonight. I think I’m going to have to give in on some of the social things, so it might as well be the school-sanctioned ones.