Page 75 of Crimson Promises
“Don’t you dare,” I groaned. “At least you didn’t have to work this morning on some ancient collection on Christianity and then go right into Ancient Greece. I’m positive my brain looks like a slice of Swiss cheese.”
“Why don’t we take a break?”
I kept my eyes closed. If I opened my eyes, I would have to return to work, and I wasn’t ready. Oh God, I sounded so whiny. “I want to, but we’re so close to being done.”
“Trust me, if we take a break, it’ll help refresh our minds, and then we can be finished. I’ll set a timer so we don’t get too distracted.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. I raised my head and squinted against the fluorescent lights. I glanced around at our neighboring study groups. People to the left and right of us had rotated.
Ben clapped his hands together. “I think we should play a game.”
Who was this cheery, optimistic man? And where was the broody and mysterious Bennett who exuded a don’t fuck with me attitude?
“A game? What are we, five?”
“Trust me. I think it will help get you out of the funk that you’re in.” He stuck his lower lip out and widened his eyes in his best Puss N’ Boots imitation.
“Argh, fine.” I relented.
Ben ripped out two pieces of lined paper from his notebook and slid one across the table to me. “Divide the page into two sections.”
I took my black pen and drew a wobbly line down the middle. “Done.”
“Now, on one side, write your name and mine on the other.”
Once I was done, I peered at Ben’s page. He wrote in all capitals. His handwriting was unusually neat for a guy.
“Alright, so here is how it’s going to work. I'll read a question from this list I so conveniently Googled.” He tapped his phone for good measure. “In the column with your name, you would write your answer to the question, and in the column with my name, you write down what you think my answer would be.”
I tapped the top of my pen against my chin.It sounds like an altered version of twenty questions.“Okay, simple enough."
“First question: How old were you when you lost your virginity (if you have)?”
My pulse jumped. My only intention with the guy was to have a good time. I didn’t need him to learn about the irregular parts of me. I wasn’t ready to bare myself for him, metaphorically. Physically, it was an entirely different subject.
I scribbled down eighteen. Ben didn’t need the entire sob story of how the guy had pursued me relentlessly until he got what he wanted and then wanted nothing more to do with me. I wrote sixteen for Ben. Somehow, I was sure he had not needed to grow into his looks. He easily could have been a teen heartthrob.
“Next question, what’s your favorite movie?”
Easy, P.S. I Love You.There was something so heartbreakingly beautiful about Holly picking the pieces of her life back together after a tragedy. I’d lost count of how many times I watched it. For Ben, I wrote down the Fast and the Furious series. He had a thing for bikes. I took a guess it extended to all things with a motor.
Ben went on to list a total of twelve questions.
* * *
* * *
Once I had written everything down, we switched papers, and I couldn’t help but gasp as I read over his answers to the questions.
* * *
* * *
Ben had guessed practically everything right about me. A big part of me wanted to concentrate on just his answers. His favorite place that he had ever traveled to had been Sardinia. I knew it was off the coast of Italy. I had dreamed of traveling to Europe for most of my life. I even remembered cutting out pictures from travel magazines and making collages or vision boards. I had always wanted to escape to somewhere else. Naively, I had thought that other cultures wouldn’t be so mean. Italians had made pasta and pizza and said, “Ciao Bella.” What better paradise could there be? I wanted to know what it was like, what it smelled like, what the food tasted like. Or how was he even able to get there if he didn’t have any family? It was expensive to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. I had checked.
Instead, I couldn’t help but focus on how he was able to get so many things right. First, he didn’t freak out about my cut, then he had gotten all my favorite snacks and now guessed—but I think it was more like heknew—all these things about me. I began to hyperventilate, my heart racing, and I broke out in a sweat. Pressure began building in my chest as if a boa constrictor was squeezing the life out of me. I had willingly put myself in a glass box with a possible stalker. I had gotten almost entirely naked with him. What the heck was wrong with me? My thoughts spun and spun until I had to close my eyes just to shut out the rest of the world.
I heard Ben’s chair squeak back. “Are you okay?”
