Page 32 of More Than Chemical
The hallways of our dorm were H-shaped—two vertical legs connected at their midpoints by a center horizontal hallway. From the stairwell, I stepped onto his men’s-only floor at one end of the first leg.
The off-white walls were bare, and except for a few hockey pennants, the doors stood blank. On my floor, the girls knew how to dress them up and make it homey. There were silk flowers, beads, and excessive amounts of bling. Here, it was like walking down the wing of a hospital.
As my terrible luck would have it, only half of the rooms had names on them, and none of them saidDallas.
I turned into the center hallway to access the second leg. A guy with shaggy blonde hair passed by, sliding a glance at me. I could have asked him where Dallas’s room was, but I was embarrassed. I knew what kind of girl went in search of a guy like Dallas at one o’clock in the morning.
I made it to the end of the center hallway, by the bathrooms, and turned back to look down the long passages. I pulled my phone from my pocket. I could text him.
But that might be too weird. I mean, I had this concrete intention now. I wanted him, but if he responded with his room number and I knocked on his door, I wasn’t sure what I would do next.
Come on, Ade. You’re such a wimp. Just text him.
I started typing.
Behind me, a door creaked open. I moved to the side to avoid whoever was coming out.
“Adriana?”
When I heard his voice, I jumped and spun around.
Dallas wore a white T-shirt pulled tight at his shoulders, a pair of loose plaid pajama pants with the drawstrings hanging and wool clogs.
I swallowed hard. He looked even better comfortable and rumpled with his hair mussed and his eyes glassy.
“Hi,” I said in a bit more of a high-pitched squeak than I’d intended.
He glanced down the hallway. “What are you doing?”
I should make something up, but I couldn’t think of anything. “Trying to find your room.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “Was there something you needed?”
I shifted my weight to my other hip. What the hell was going on here? Why wasn’t he showing me to his room? “I just…well…I was trying to find you because…because I wanted to explain more…more about my dad.”
My heart rate spiked.
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. You don’t need to.”
“No, I really do. I…” I looked around me, not wanting to say this in the middle of the hall, but I must. “You’re the first person on campus I’ve told. No one knows except Jay because we went to high school together. I don’t speak to my dad anymore. Basically, I’ve disowned him. Hence the new name.”
He didn’t say anything. He sucked in a deep breath and released it. Then stared at me with a distant gaze, pondering something deep, something beyond me.
“I just wanted you to know that, because I don’t want you to think…what he did…is anything I would condone. Also, as I said before, I’m asking you…no, begging you…to please keep this to yourself.”
Suddenly, his eyes turned clear, like he’d made up his mind. He smiled wide and deep. Basking in his glow made my insides soften like cotton candy on my tongue.
“Okay, I can do that,” he said. “My room’s this way. You want to come in?”
I nodded then followed him, watching him closely. Omigod, I was so into him. He had that high muscled hockey butt, but he wasn’t bursting at the seams with brawn. His body was defined, yet lean.
He opened the door to room 227 and waved me in. It smelled a little like coffee and also his cucumber scent.
Except for a string of white Christmas lights, it was dark. Music was playing, but not loud. I glanced around again because there was no one else in the room and there was only one bed.
The door clicked shut behind me.
My back went rigid. “This is a single.”
