Page 112 of Collision
“Now that I’ve heard your voice it is. Is it too corny to tell you that I miss you already?”
My mouth turns up in a small smile. It fades instantly, however, when I hear the door open behind me.
“What the…”
An angry voice startles me. I turn sharply and nearly fall off the bed. Thomas and Finn are looking at me from head to toe with their mouths wide open. I immediately end the call with shaking hands. I’m so frightened that I drop the phone and it falls to the floor. “What the hell are you two doing in here?” I scream, trying to cover my entire body with my arms.
“What the fuck are you doing in here half-naked?” Thomas lashes out at me furiously.
“What does it look like?” I angrily wave a lock of my wet hair at him.
“Are you with him?”
My eyes widen. Him who? Matt?
Like a lunatic, Thomas rushes into the bathroom to find him. Once he’s figured out that no one is there, he returns to us with a heaving chest. Finn and I stare at him in bewilderment.
“The water heater at my house was broken this morning. And Matt was nice enough to offer me a hot shower.” Why am I bothering to explain myself to him? “Now, why did you two barge in here without knocking?”
“We heard some noises coming from this room. We knew Matt wasn’t there and came to check,” Finn explains more calmly.
“I certainly wasn’t expecting to find you in here in your underwear,” says the cantankerous, tattooed man next to him.
“I don’t mind,” Finn interjects with a pleased expression. He stares shamelessly at my legs. “In fact, if you wanted to turn and get into that position you were in when we came in, you’d be doing me a real solid. Love the Brazilian panties,” he continues, as I try to cover myself up as much as possible with my hands.
Thomas turns to him with his jaw tense, grinding his teeth. “Stop looking at her, or I swear I’ll throw you out and beat your ass.”
Finn continues to stare at me, biting his lip. I’m starting to get reallyembarrassed. I don’t have enough hands to cover all the bare surface area on my body. My clothes are in the bathroom, but to go get them I would have to turn around, and I have no intention of showing my butt to that degenerate Finn. Thomas moves to stand squarely in front of Finn with his arms folded, blocking his view.
“Knock it off,” he warns him, grimly. “You’re pissing me off.”
“Okay, okay,” Finn says, raising his hands innocently. “You know what? I think I’ll head downstairs and have a nice, ice-cold soda. I’ll wait for you, but don’t get any ideas; they’re expecting us in the gym in twenty minutes.” He shifts his gaze to me and smiles. “Nice to see you again, pretty girl.” He winks at me as Thomas pushes him out the door and locks it behind him. I take a deep breath, trying to relax. Everything is fine. Except that Thomas turns toward me, enraged.
“You didn’t even lock the door, are you out of your mind?”
Damn, I forgot about that!
I pick up the phone from the floor and put it back on the bed. “I must have forgotten; I thought I had,” I explain myself calmly. In reality, I am anything but calm. I was stupid.
“You forgot?” He widens his eyes. “You’re in a frat house. Anyone could have walked in.”
I roll my eyes. I can’t stand it when he treats me like a child. “That’s what I said. Stop it,” I answer angrily. I turn my back on him and go to the bathroom to get my clothes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he says from outside the bathroom door.
“Tell you what?” I ask as I move back into the room. I head for the bed, avoiding his gaze as if it might petrify me.
“About the shower. You could have done it at my place,” he says in a feeble voice. If I were in a slightly better mood, I would have burst out laughing.
“After the lovely treatment you gave me? Don’t make me laugh.” I slip my skirt on, wiggling it over my hips and then pull on my shirt.
Thomas scrubs his face with his hand. “About this morning…”
I sit down at the foot of the bed to slip on my Converse. He comes over to stand next to me. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I cut him offbefore he has a chance to add anything else. I have no desire to hear anything he has to say. Not after all the nasty words he’s thrown at me.
“Well, I do.” He kicks his foot onto the bed, rests his elbow on his knee, and leans his chin on his palm, staring at me until I return his gaze. When he knows he has my full attention, he sits down on the floor, facing me. For a moment, my bare thighs are just inches from his face, and it seems to distract him. But he quickly averts his eyes back to me.
“I’m sorry.”
