Page 2 of Fostering Chemistry
I yanked my gaze back up. “Five. You?”
“A bit less than that.” He sounded a little awkward as he answered, but before I could unpack that, he moved on. “You’ll like it here, but you’re in the minority. Jenna over there is your only female roommate.”
I looked over at the young woman on the other sofa. She had bold platinum blonde hair that I admired. Mine had redhighlights, but my natural mousy brown still showed through. “Is she from last year, too?”
“No, only me, Diego, and Cody.” He scanned the room and sighed. “Cody’s not here, but you’ll see him around… eventually. He’s a good guy, but he keeps mostly to himself.” Aaron gave me a slow smile that made my pulse jump. “But don’t worry. You’ve already met the best housemate—me.”
I smiled back despite myself.
His brows creased. “There was another girl who was supposed to move in today, but something came up and she couldn’t make it.”
My stomach dropped. That wasnota subject I wanted to discuss. Sara had been my foster sister in my early teens. We were as close as real siblings until our foster mom got pregnant with twins, and we were sent to different places.
We’d kept in touch and planned for this for years—to both study at Langley, finally living under the same roof again.
“Do you know why?” I asked carefully, hoping that he didn’t.
“No,” Aaron said. “But things happen. Maybe she’ll come next year.”
I hoped so, but it didn’t seem likely. Sara had changed while we were apart. I knew things got rough in her new home, but I didn’t know she’d started using drugs. I caught her with them a week or two into Stepping Stones. She swore it was a onetime thing. It wasn’t. When the program administrator caught her last week, she got kicked out of school.
When I found out, I rushed back to our temporary room, but she was already gone. After crying for most of the day, I went toa party, got drunk, and made out with some random guy—three things I never did.
That night was a blur, but flashes of memory flooded my mind—me in the guy’s lap, kissing him hard, and feeling his hands all over me. Luckily, some friends pulled me away before it went too far.
“There he is,” Aaron said, snapping me back into the present.
As my new residential advisor stepped into the room, my breath caught in my throat. I didn’t know why at first. Diego looked like any laid-back grad student: white T-shirt, faded jeans, open flannel shirt, and a good-natured smile. His warm-toned skin, dark hair, and Latino features somehow felt familiar.
Too familiar.
My chest tightened, and my mouth went dry. I knew him from somewhere. Maybe he’d given a Stepping Stones talk? But if he had, I wouldn’t be frozen, struggling to remember how to inhale.
Then it hit.
It washim. The random man I’d kissed like my life depended on it. The one I’d straddled, writhing in his lap as if we were alone. The one whose hands had roamed over nearly every inch of me.
Oh.
My.
God.
My new residential advisor was the guy from the party.
2
MIA
What should I do?
Where could I hide?
And why the hell didn’t sofas have an escape hatch?
I drew my knees up to my chest and clutched them tightly, which hid some of the parts of my body that he’d touched, but not my face. For that, I dipped my head down, wishing I’d kept my hair down so that it could cover my eyes. Not that that was a good look.
Aaron side-eyed me. “You okay?” he whispered.
