“Count me out,” Cole rumbles from his spot beside me.
Sarah gives him a look like a rabbit cowering under the shadow of a wolf before nodding several times and pounding the delete key on her phone. He really does intimidate people.
“Cole, why do you hate fun?” JP drawls, not one to be menaced by Cole’s brooding.
Cole shrugs. “Maybe we just have different definitions of what fun means.”
He shifts back onto his elbows so that he’s stretched out beside me, and I can’t help running my eyes over his body before he has a chance to realize I’m checking him out. He’s gorgeous, of course—tight black jeans, loose grey t-shirt, the strokes of ink crawling up his arms emphasizing the dips and swells of his muscles. His tattoos are mostly geometric pieces, striking patterns of shadow and shade I’ve traced with my own fingers too many times to count.
I know how hard he worked to get them. I know how many parlours turned him out for being ‘too dark,’ how many artists told him they didn’t have enough experience with his ‘medium.’ Cole’s ink is part of a battle to forge a place for himself on a path not many guys who look like him take. Back when Sherbrooke Station was first trying to get signed, they’d walk into meetings with labels and get asked if Cole was their rapper. Reporters always want to know why he went into rock instead of soul or jazz—that is, when they want to know anything about him at all. His ink is a way to display that he belongs here, that the colour of his skin doesn’t determine what kind of music he can play.
I’ve always admired that about him. Even before the feelings between us began to deepen, I thought he was the strongest person I’d ever met. I didn’t just fall in love with him; I fell into the highest kind of respect for him. Even when we’re driving each other crazy and all I want to do is curse his name, I can still see and appreciate the courage in him, the bravery that holds him up when so many others would fall.
“Yo, Roxy!”
JP’s voice calls me out of my trance.
“Stop drooling over your boyfriend and take the phone already. We all know Cole is sexy, okay? But we have a game to play here.”
I feel myself start blushing and hope the glow of the fire hides it as I take the cell phone I realize JP has probably been holding out to me for several seconds already.
I glance down at the screen and see that I’m supposed to be guessing what JP’s favourite food is.
“This is too easy,” I complain. “My choices are spaghetti, eggplant parmesan, or ham.”
The entire group joins in as I call out, “Ham!” JP’s obsession with ham sandwiches is probably known to anyone who’s been around him for longer than five minutes.
He raises his hands in the air. “What can I say,mes amis? I am a man of fine tastes.”
A point pops up next to my name after I put the answer in, and the screen brings up the question I’m supposed to answer about myself:
What’s your favourite colour?
This is possibly the lamest game to ever exist, but we’re all too tired to give a shit. I notice Cole craning his neck to see what’s on the screen.
“Thought you weren’t playing,” I tease.
“I’m observing.”
He continues to observe as I type my answer in: black. I consider adding ‘like my soul’ but end up leaving that out. Since I basically never leave the house without at least one article of black clothing on, this is probably going to be as easy to answer as the ham question.
The app prompts me to hand the phone over to Sarah. Her other two choices are hot pink and sky blue, which makes everyone burst out laughing.
“Well we all know how much hot pink Roxanne has in her suitcase,” Sarah jokes, “but I’m going to go with black.”
The game continues like that for a while. Things get lively when Ace guesses Matt’s birthday wrong and Matt decides to tackle him for it, but mostly the boring questions just lull us into an even deeper state of lethargy until someone finally shuts the game down and we decide to call it a night.
Cole and I end up trailing along at the back of the group. I can feel him as much as I see him—a shadow at my side, looming over my every step. The sensation instantly has me wide awake. There’s a magnetism to him, a force that raises goosebumps on my skin no matter how many times I brush up against it.
We’re far enough away from the people ahead of us that no one else hears his murmur to me.
“You lied about your favourite colour.”
It doesn’t even matter what he’s saying; his voice always calls me closer. I find myself slowing down to match his steps as the shapes of the group get farther and farther away from us.
“No, I didn’t,” I rebuff him, trying to cut the tension with a teasing tone. “Black is my go-to colour. I wear it almost every day. Anyone who’s seen my closet would agree.”
“But it’s not yourfavouritecolour,” he persists.
