Page 14 of Don't Puck Him

I close my eyes to the world and see Wren.Mine.

7

WREN

Ican’t stop thinking about what happened with Hunter last night. Though it was fairly typical of misogynistic behavior – using protection as an excuse to ‘save’ me from the plight of being harassed – something about it was intriguing. I’m still simmering in the realm of seeing him as just that. A man using every excuse in the book to act in a way that is considered ‘masculine’ in this society. But there is something else beneath it that has stuck with me.

A bit like a piece of food wedged between your teeth that you can’t wrangle out.

I wake up with a minor headache, pop a Tylenol, and look through my agenda for the reading list for the following week. I’m a pretty astute student, and having been raised under my mother’s disinterested eye, it grew out of instinct. I run my finger down the notes and drum them against the sheets.

I can’t keep Hunter out of my mind. The way he looked at me when putting that asshole off. It’s nearly haunting.

“Fuck,” I scoff at myself.

My roommate snores away, having attended the same party I did, so I grab my agenda and backpack and creep out into the hallway. I slip my phone from my pocket and check the time. 10:47. The library is still open on the weekends, albeit briefly, but I will take my time to work on my latest assignment from Mrs. Chasten.

The sky is gray and muted as I walk along the campus, which is also quiet from the previous night’s shenanigans. I was expecting just as much from a college experience. Movies and TV shows have groomed me into that belief. But I certainly was not prepared to cope with the privilege of it all.

I make it into the library, which has a serenity about it that I can appreciate. A scatter of students take up the two floors, ones like me. They are either strict students or a total antisocial bores, but I’m not sure which it is. Maybe a blend of the two.

I walk along the aisle of computers, nodding to the librarian as I make my way to a cozy corner I commandeered for myself during the first few initial visits. There is a wide, crisp window overlooking the campus, and it is tucked away enough to not encourage any unwanted attention. I walk ahead, still spinning about Hunter and the swimming look in his eyes that straddled the line of control and care, when the devil himself appears before me.

“Wren.”

I stop in my tracks, wondering if I’ve gone mad. We have been reading Hamlet in Mrs. Chasten’s Introduction to the Classics course, so the notion of madness really hasn’t been far from my grasp.

Hunter appears before me, solid as a rock, holding a textbook between his solidly locked claws of hands. He looks a bit like a statue standing there, expression blank and indifferent, corded muscles of his neck tensed in eternal indecision. If he hadn’t said my name, I may not have noticed him at all.

Fat chance.

“Hunter,” I reply, averting my eyes and moving toward the table. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be nursing a hangover?”

I place my book bag on the table, doing my chest to feign disinterest. My heart is doing the tango in my chest when I feel a brush of air sway toward me. He’s there again, right in front of me.

He shrugs. It’s an annoying gesture on anyone, even someone as good looking as him.

“The same thing you are. What are you doing here, Wren?”

I slip out the copy of Hamlet from my book bag and hold it up to him, then place it down the table in the place I marked it. I raise my eyes to his and narrow them, torn between wanting him to stay and wanting him to go.

“So you’ve come here to nurse your ego instead?”

Hunter’s lips twitch, resembling any normal person’s attempt at stifling tears. But he isn’t stifling tears. He’s desperately trying not to smile.

“You didn’t like that, did you?” Hunter says, a dark smugness casting over his eyes that completely decimates my earlier thought about this man being capable of tears.

I scoff, then flip through my book to get to the soliloquy I had been assigned to write about. I can still feel him standing there, considering whether to stay or go, an energy as palpable as a beating heart.

“What has she got you doing now?” he asks.

His cadence has receded into something casual rather than subtly macho and severe. I sigh, tapping the title of the book, then place it back down again.

Why is he lingering? Why on Earth does this guy give a shit about what I’m studying?

“I can read the title, Wren,” he says, then pulls out the chair in front of me to sit down. “I took Mrs. Chastain’s course in first year as an elective. What a mistake that was.”

I lift my head, resting my chin against my fist. His palms are laid flat on the table with the air of an awkward drama student. But why is it endearing?

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