Chapter Seven

I had already blow-dried my hair after I got out of the shower so at least it was dry. I went into the changing stall that was made just to change clothes, usually for shy and modest people but now for me as well.

It was like a small changing room that you would find in any clothing store.

I set my bag on the bench and started getting dressed.

I changed into black cargo pants, a plain white t-shirt, and lack converses with white laces.

I put my towel in the tote bag and quickly brushed my hair, walking back to my room soon afterwards, people starting to populate the hallways again.

As I was almost to my room someone spoke over the PA system. “Classes will still be held today. Do not skip class just because of the fight. The fighters, who shall not be named but know who they are, will report to the Dean’s office immediately. That is all.” The Dean’s secretary said.

That sucked. It would have been nice to get out of classes.

I opened my door and set the tote bag on the floor next to it. I figured with irritation that I’d probably have to go the common girls’ bathroom every time I wanted or needed to change clothes. How annoying.

I scanned my dorm room with my eyes.

It looked like Zane was starting to unpack.

“Didn’t you hear the PA?” I asked as I watched him pull a black t-shirt on.

“I did.”

“Well? They called you.” I said as he put his now empty black duffle bag on the top shelf in the small closet, where my bags were as well.

“I know.”

I frowned. Whatever, it’s not like I cared what he did or didn’t do or if he got into trouble. However, I couldn’t deny my disappointment when he put his shirt back on. He had such a nice sculpted chest that it was a shame that it had to be covered.

Maybe an upside to having him as a roommate would be to see his chest.

And I could feel his eyes on me when I landed face down on my bed and started banging my head against my pillow.

He was probably thinking, ‘What the heck is she doing?’

I was trying to get these girly thoughts out of my head. I began to wonder if it was wrong to hate someone just because they’re hot.

As I lifted my head and looked at him I saw him smirking.

I threw my pillow at him.

But of course he just had to catch it before it hit his face.

No guy should have a face or body that perfect. It was just unfair to the female population because he was so hard to resist. There had to be something wrong with him; besides, you know; his attitude and personality. I mean something wrong with his body.

“What are you smirking at?” I asked rudely with a glare.

“Nothing, just noticing how cute you are,” He said.

“You’d better not try anything or you’ll be sorry.” I warned, or threatened, rather.

He just chuckled, set my pillow down on the end of my bed near my feet, and headed for the door.

He never gave an answer as he left for the Dean’s office.

I groaned and put my head face down in my pillow again.

He was making me feel like a girl. I had never felt like this before and I wished it would end. I didn’t want to feel like this. It was weird and unknown land.

For one thing, I wouldn’t stop feeling this way if I didn’t stop thinking this way. That was for sure. Too bad it wasn’t that easy when you were going to share a room with the guy.

No more thinking that he’s the best looking guy you’ve ever seen. I told myself.

I groaned again. What was happening to me?

---

Classes went extremely slow today and each felt like it would never end. At least I got all my homework done in my classes. The teachers never really gave us much homework anyways, possibly because they didn’t want to have to grade that much.

I dreaded going back to my dorm room where Zane would most likely be. He hadn’t been in any classes today and I wondered why. It was pointless trying to avoid him forever because sooner or later I would have to go back to my room.

I was extra slow today at the end of classes in walking back to my dorm.

Finally, though, I reached the door that was open just a crack, signifying that he was already inside.

I stopped outside the door, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

Please help me be me again. I said to my pendant, pretty much desperate.

I opened my eyes and opened the door, walking in.

I set my backpack on my bed and sat down next to it.

I was dong a good job at avoiding him for now but I couldn’t go forever without looking at him. Maybe I’d be able to get Beth to let me room with her. That would be much better than this.

I reached underneath my bed and took out my book. I leaned against the wall—that the bunk beds were next to—and my pillow and opened my book. I had gotten to chapter eight and was no where near finishing this. I began to wonder if Jennifer had given me this on purpose because she knew it would be too long and boring and mushy for me to finish. If that was the case then I’d probe her wrong. However, it did seem somewhat possible that at some time, somewhere in the world, this book was a soap-opera. It sure did seem dramatic enough.

“What are you reading?” I heard Zane ask.

I looked up and saw that he was standing right next to my bed. I looked quickly at the page number I was on before slamming the book shut and stuffing it behind my pillow which I then continued to lean on. I had done the whole process pretty fast.

“Nothing,” I instantly replied.

Zane narrowed his eyes at me, I narrowed mine back.

Before I knew it, Zane was crawling on my bed toward me on his hands and knees.

I tried to shrink back but had no where to go. My back was already pressed into the pillow which was pressed tightly against the headboard of my bed.

Uh-oh.

I brought my legs up so that my knees were against my chest and my hands were on top of the sheets on either side of me.

“Wh-what are you dong?” I breathed warily in spaz-mode again.

He smirked. But this wasn’t like his regular smirk and there was something in his eyes that I couldn’t quite understand.

He reached my knees and then placed his hands on top of them, on his knees now. He gently and slowly moved my knees to either side of me, the bottoms of my feet pressing together.

My heart was beating uncontrollably and I held my breath. What was he doing? But a better question was why was I letting him do whatever it was that he was trying to do?

Why is this happening? I asked my pendant. What’s going on?

I didn’t get a reply. Why not? Did the question really go so far as to stump my pendant?

Zane leaned in toward me, took his hands off of my knees and put them on top of my own hands, and smirked, looking me right in the eyes.

My eyes widened. He wouldn’t! He couldn’t! I barely knew anything about him, barely even knew him!

Zane leaned down further until his cheek was resting against mine and I could feel his warm breath on my ear.

Whew. Thank goodness. I was afraid that he was going to kiss me there for a second, although his breath did tickle my ear.

“Hope,” he whispered into my ear, and I could’ve sworn that I heard the tiniest bit of huskiness in his voice, “come now. There is no reason to be secretive from me.”

He was so close that I couldn’t help but take in the smell of him, cinnamon. I thought to myself that it could have been worse. He could have not been wearing a shirt. It was a good thing that he was; otherwise I would have been a goner from my own heartbeat pounding itself to death.

Hah. Now wouldn’t that be a laugh? Who knows, maybe Zane could be my answer to dying.

Zane brought his head back again and looked at me in the eyes, our noses so close that they were almost touching.

My heartbeat pounded even faster, if that was possible.

Please, don’t let him. I begged my pendant. Please, stop him. I don’t care what you have to do, just please don’t let him kiss me.

I could feel him searching my eyes for something, but I didn’t know what. A look of disappointment almost crossed his face, probably because he couldn’t find whatever it was that he was looking for.

That’s when Zane suddenly broke out into a random grin, his pearly whites’ shining since I was so close.

An object was brought past the side of my head as Zane leaned back to sit on his bottom of the bed, in front of my legs, not touching any part of me.

I hadn’t even noticed that one of his hands had left mine to retrieve the book until I saw it in his hands.

Darn him. He did that on purpose to distract me! Didn’t he know how I felt when he was doing that? I was sure he could’ve heard my heart overworking itself. This called for revenge. Payback was inevitable, but the question was when, where, and how. He was going to feel what I had felt and I was going to enjoy torturing him emotionally.

Zane looked at the object in his hands and then turned back to look at me and smirked.

“I did not think that you were the romantic type. And I can tell that there is a lot of romance in this book.” He held up the book after he spoke.

The front cover was a picture of a buffed man without a shirt on and a toned, beautiful woman on a beach in Hawaiian clothes with the sunset behind them, their hair blowing in the wind just so. The book was several hundred pages long, I wasn’t sure for certain how many pages there were since I hadn’t checked. I didn’t think I wanted to know. It would only add to the agonizing torture.

I frowned at him and sent him the best glare I could manage while my heart was still working to slow itself.

“Believe me; it is not out of pleasure.” I told him as I made a move to grab the book back as calmly as I could.

“Then why are you reading it?” Zane asked as he held his arm with the book in it out of my reach.

“Why do you care?” I asked him, upset that he couldn’t act his age. Although, I wouldn’t really know how guys around our age acted since I didn’t hang out with them, only my brother. I just had a guess of how they should act.

“Because I do not like it when people keep secrets from me,” Zane replied.

“Don’t you keep secrets?” I asked in irritation.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Then why can’t other people keep secrets?”

“It just bothers me.” He said.

“That’s not fair.” I said as I once again attempted to reach for my book.

I didn’t realize till he was chuckling the kind of position we were in.

Zane was sitting with his legs crossed facing the wall with his back to the room, holding his right arm out of my reach horizontally. I was leaning over his lap on my hands and knees trying to grab the book with my right hand. My shirt had crawled up a bit revealing a bit of skin on my lower back and I was losing my balance quickly. I didn’t know where his left hand was, but I hoped it was as far away from me as it could get. I didn’t like surprises.

I looked over at Zane and saw him smirking and looking at something other than my head, which I realized was my butt. He looked into my eyes, not moving his head at all, and I could tell that he was testing me, just to get on my nerves.

“Don’t you dare,” I all but growled.

His gaze went back to my butt and I was suddenly looking for his left hand, my right hand still reaching for the book in his own right hand.

I saw him slowly raising his left hand towards my butt, which was slow only on purpose because he was trying to get a reaction out of me.

When his hand was close to its target, I quickly decided what to do. I positioned myself with haste yet smoothly so that I was now lying face down on Zane’s lap, giving up my attempt for the book. I did not waste time in rolling over so that I was face up with Zane smirking and gazing at my face.

“Just remember that you were the one who got into this position willingly.” He reminded me.

“Pervert,” I growled this time, glaring holes into his face.

“I would rather be a pervert with a girl in my lap than a modest man without a girl in sight.” He told me as he bent down low so that his face was a foot or so away from mine.

I wanted to wipe that smirk off of his face so badly that I thought about slapping him. However, I did not know enough about him as to how he would react to being hit. After all, he had been in a fight with another guy just because the other guy said something that he didn’t like. I didn’t know what he thought about when it came to fighting girls either. He didn’t seem like the type to get really angry if I’d slapped him—for a good reason, of course—but I couldn’t be sure.

He brushed a few strands of my hair out of my face and my heart jumped.

I grabbed his wrist and removed it from my face while glaring at him. “Don’t touch me.” I told him angrily, releasing his wrist once it was far enough away from me.

He laughed. “Says the girl who’s lying in my lap,” he said, not trying to contain his laughter at all.

I sat up, my butt in the gap in the middle of his crossed legs. “There, now I’m not lying anymore.”

“No you are not, even better,” he said with a smirk.

I then realized my mistake. I had brought myself closer to him and without having to reach or move, because I was sitting, my face was now much closer to his than it had been even when he had bent down over me.

Out of my peripheral vision I saw that his right hand was now resting on the bed beside him, the book underneath his hand.

I quickly moved my left hand toward his right one and grabbed it, lifting it off of the book. I grabbed the book and brought it toward me in a hurry, wrapping my arms around it and holding it to my chest.

Zane laughed again. “Was that your first time holding a guy’s hand?”

“I wasn’t holding it,” I said with a glare, “I was removing it. There’s a difference.”

Zane looked at me knowingly and a light bulb went off in my head all of the sudden.

How could I have been so stupid? I could have gotten off of his lap long ago, and yet here I was, still sitting in it.

I quickly scrambled off of his lap and toward my pillow, still holding my book to my chest.

“It took you long enough to realize that.” Zane said with a smirk as he climbed off my bed.

I glowered at him. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. I blamed him of course.

“Hope, be careful, we would not want your face to stay like that permanently, now would we?” He said with a pout and a mock-serious voice, like scolding a young child but laughing on the inside while doing it.

“What ‘we?’” I asked as I slid the book back underneath my bed and stood up, moving toward the door.

“You just got here and you are leaving already?” I heard him ask from behind me.

“I can’t stand another minute in here.” I told him as I put my hand on the door knob.

“Awe; and we were having so much fun too.” I heard him say, mock-hurt in his voice, it was so obvious.

“Well I think I’ve had more than enough ‘fun’ for today.” I said and then left my room, slamming the door behind me.

As I walked down the hall I realized two things: one; that I had bare feet, having forgotten to put my shoes back on after taking them off before I climbed on the bed, and two; realizing that I had forgotten my key as well from the rush I had been in to get out of there.

If he went through any of my stuff he was so dead.

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Hey guys, here's chapter 7. I hope that you liked it. I threw in some little scenes just for the heck of it. This is partly a romance story. It's 4:48 AM for me, and I'm dead tired, but I wanted to finish this. I have recently watched The Mummy 1 & 2 and want to see the third one now. I feel bad for Imotep at the end of the second movie, how sad for him. TT. Moving on. I got a recent want to see Dracula 2000 with Gerard Butler in it, the dude who played the Phantom in the Phantom of the Opera and who played the dad on Nim's Island. In the movie, he plays Dracula. :) And he looks GOOD in that movie!! I'm tellin' ya. I also REALLY want to see Red Eye with Cillian Murphy ('drools') and Rachel McAdams (the girl who played Regina on Mean Girls). On my netflix I have like 5 movies in a row with Cillian Murphy in them, including Batman Returns. He plays the Scarecrow dude and his identity: something Crane. Anyways, I watched Charlie's Angels 2 recently, and I had to feel bad for poor Seamus. But, I realized, that Seamus, pronounced SHAY-mus, is a REALLY cool name, and the dude who played him in the movie was hot. Or, at least, he looked hot in the movie even if he wasn't in real life. Or it could have just been his Irish accent, anyways, it was cool. Until he died. And that Thin Man SCARES the crap out of me! I'm serious, ewie!! 'shivers' For those of you who have reviewed I give you an air hug (hehe) and for those of you who are still reading this thing, even though it is very long, I give you an air high-five and an air slap on the back, then an air death hug. Lol. Sorry. I am NOT crazy. NOT I tell you, NOT. 'drools' Cillian Murphy. Haha. 'drools' Johnny Depp. I'm sure you feel that way too, if you like men, that is. 'drools' -insert name here- haha. Okay, maybe I AM a teeny tiny bit crazy. Ta-ta for now!

"I want Fabulous, that is my simple request, all things fabulous, everything better and best. I need a little fabulous, is that so wrong?"
(HAHA) -Sharpay Evans, portrayed by Ashley Tisdale, from High School Musical 2.

"Scooby-dooby-doo, where are you? We've got some clues to find now. Scooby-dooby-doo, where are you? We need some help to find them."
-I think that's how it goes...

"And we'll have a gay old time!" "Wilma!"
-People, just so you know, it means HAPPY, got it?! Good!

I know, complete randomness, so sue me! And I'll sue you right back!

Talk2UL8er!!