Something in the locker room made Patrick freak out every time. Something about this silence between us in the moments of weakness and exposure made his heart race and his mood sour. And after this, I was pretty sure I knew what was up.
You fucking creep, I told myself and tucked the watch into my backpack before storming out of the gym. I’d gone too far with him for the sake of curiosity. His behavior had made no sense. His physiological responses were scattered all over the place. But here it was, out in the open, needing only one more glance at the data to confirm what I’d suspected.
Patrick wasn’t afraid. Those weren’t the heartbeats of someone who was scared or shy or experiencing panic. It was lust. Pure, primal lust. The kind of lust that could wreck you and leave you panting for more. The kind nobody had ever been recorded experiencing around me. Nobody except Patrick.
And even then, it was too egotistical of me to think that he’d actually responded that way because of some secret attractiontome. I wasn’t attractive. I didn’t have a gravitational pull that everyone else was born with. The fabled chemistry I had with people was very muchonthe charts. Thinking the campus womanizer was into a lanky virgin withDoctor Whobox sets filling up my shelves was the craziest hypothesis of the century.
I went to my room and unpacked. I tossed the smartwatch into the drawer and out of sight. It was only causing me trouble, and seeing it tempted me too much. Besides, the data was going to disappoint me. There was no way his pulse corresponded with my failed attempts at being attractive. And if somehow it did, then it was wrong. My methodology was off somewhere. There was something that wasn’t accounted for.
The room felt tiny and suffocating. I left everything behind and hurried out. The chill evening air greeted me like a healing kiss. I walked off campus and in the direction of the lake. My mind didn’t clear like I’d hoped. The fog didn’t lift. But it was better than pacing around my little room and wanting to see if Patrick was horny for me—because he wasn’t.
Patrick’s cold goodbye chilled me more than the October evening in Chicago ever could. He didn’t need to drool all over what I’d exhibited tonight to become clearly aware of what I was doing. And it put him off. Anyone could have told me this would happen. On some level, I must have known.
I walked and thought about it. In the night air, it felt as though I had more space to reason and think. These things filled me to overflowing, but the open sky couldn’t be filled.
I had overstepped today. Patrick had allowed me into his life and his space, and I had used it to measure just how attractive I was to someone who wouldn’t notice me if I stood all by myself in the middle of nothing two feet in front of him without the excuse of my thesis. I had to stop doing that.
It had felt good, though. For the first time ever—or in however long I could remember—taking my clothes off in frontof another person didn’t feel like taking a shield off before an enemy soldier wielding a sword. It hadn’t felt like an admission of defeat. It hadn’t felt like exposure to all the nastiest things that he could think of me.
Something about Patrick had given me confidence that I had lacked before.
I never would have undressed for a crowded beach. I never would have done it in a locker room right in front of another person. Normally, I changed quickly and faced away. But just the mere suspicion that Patrick might want to see what I had to show made me do it without hesitation.
And then he understood that I had done it for his benefit. And he disliked me for it.
Lessons had been taught and learned today. And when I returned to my room, I didn’t take the smartwatch out of the drawer.
He textedme like he promised. It was late morning, and I was listening to a lecture when my phone vibrated in my pocket. He sent a single line of text: his place, two in the afternoon. What had been an engaging lecture instantly turned into torture. The professor droned on and on, and the seconds refused to tick away.
I knew what he was going to say to me. He was going to stop the project. I only hoped he would have the pity to say it’s justtoo time-consuming. If he told me I’d made him uncomfortable, I would die of embarrassment on the spot. It was what I deserved, but I still hoped he would be the better man.
Keeping my breaths even, I powered through the hours and dragged my guilty ass to Patrick’s dorm. When he opened the door, he was alone and wore a smile like it was any other day. “Come in,” he said.
I stepped inside warily, waiting for the snare to close, but he only walked over to his bed and crashed down.
“Elio’s out,” he explained. “He’s always out these days. Jaxon’s keeping him on a tight leash.”
“Yikes,” I said, looking around the room. Elio’s bed was perfectly made and had been every time I was here. Patrick’s was a cozy mess.
“Nah, it’s what he needs,” Patrick said. “Someone to control him a little.”
I nodded, trying to see how this connected to us.
“To be honest, I sometimes envy them,” Patrick said. “Write this stuff down,” he added with a grin.
I let out a nervous laugh. “What do you envy?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve never been in a relationship?” Patrick asked.
I shrugged. “I’m assuming you’re totally transparent when you talk to me, so yeah.”
“Right,” he said, and sarcasm was impossible to miss. “Well, I haven’t. Not once.”
“Only because you didn’t want to, I’m sure,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe. But it makes me wonder why I’m avoiding it.”
I licked my lips. Was this some kind of bait? I decided to bite it. “Maybe you can’t imagine settling down for a while when the single lifestyle is good to you.”
