More to the point, however, is that it suddenly feels unfaithful to be shut up in a room with Kristen when I asked T out tonight. Even if we won’t see each other until June, it doesn’t feel right to mess around with Kristen immediately after firming up that agreement.
“Listen,” I start gently, but she cuts in, setting her fingers on my lips.
“Shhh. I know what you’re going to say.” Her mouth is only an inch from mine, and I smell the wine on her breath. “That we need to stop hooking up. But do we? Really?”
Frowning, I pull my head back and meet her gaze. “I think so.”
“No one will know we’re in here. I bet Dylan forgets this room exists.”
“That’s probably true,” I hedge, “but that isn’t why I’m saying no.”
“You give such good dick,” she says, and yep, there it is: the familiar desire to dissolve into the floor. I enjoyed Kristen’s dirty mouth for approximately ten minutes the first night she flirted with me, until I realized it wasn’t ever connected to actual sex. We’d be getting iced coffee at Starbucks, and she’d lean over and tell me she wanted me to lick her with my cold tongue. She’d hold up a 100 ml graduated cylinder in the lab and run her tongue over her teeth. Passing me in the hallway, she’d tell me she could see the outline of my dick in my pants. In bed, this kind of talk would be one thing; it could be private and fun and filthy. But in the middle of Starbucks, the lab, the hallway? Come on. All I could ever think to say was something like, “Cool.”
“Thanks,” I say now.
“I mean it.”
“I believe you.”
“You don’t want to bend me over that couch?”
I’m really trying to be laid back about this. I just want to get back downstairs, thank Dylan for a nice party, and get home. “Not tonight.”
“I could ride you. I’d ride you so good, Cally.”
I have to swallow to not release the laugh-wail that seems to expand in my throat. She’s never called me that before and would have no way of knowing I hate that nickname. “Not here.”
“No one makes me come like you,” she says, leaning in, smelling my neck. “Every time. Better than I do alone.”
“I’m sorry . . .” Squeezing my eyes closed, I set my hands on her shoulders, carefully urging her back.
“You’re serious?” she asks, stepping away and looking at me with new clarity.
“Yeah.” I swallow, nodding. God, it is going to be so awkward in the lab tomorrow. “I’m sorry, Kristen, but I do think we should stop for real.”
She stares at me for three endless seconds. “You’re an asshole, Callum.” She turns and leaves the room. Silence rings out.
Silence, except for a tiny rustle. A miniature squeak. Another sound that I now register seems to be coming from the closet.
Chapter Fifteen
FEBRUARY 14, 2024
Terra
Callum? my brain screams, a high-pitched, internal shriek. Callum Sundberg? The graduate student in our program a few years ahead of me and Elise? The literal embodiment of charisma? The capable-yet-intimidating TA for our neuroanatomy seminar? The man so tall and hot and untouchable we peek at him around objects—trees, books, doorways—like looking at an eclipse? Callum is in the room on the other side of this door? As soon as I heard Kristen say his name, everything clicked into place. God, of course Callum is the man who “gives good dick,” who made her come like no one else, who just turned down sex so absolutely, so decisively, that she left without another word.
I smother my horrified laugh and bend, pressing my face to my knees. I cannot fathom being turned down like that by a man like Callum Sundberg. Truthfully, I cannot fathom having the nerve to proposition him in the first place, but then to be so summarily rejected! I feel Kristen’s humiliation as a spike in my own pulse. How could any mortal come back from that? I would sooner dig my own grave out in Death Valley, climb in, and slowly desiccate to death.
But in an instant, that humiliation is nothing. Because the closet door swings open, and Callum Sundberg is right there. Well over six feet, beautifully fit, with light-brown hair and gleaming hazel eyes, he’s looming over me, staring down with a mixture of surprise and horror to where I’m curled up around my half-empty bottle of wine.
“Holy shit. I thought I heard someone in here.”
Like an idiot, I wave. “Yes, hello.”
“Are you okay? What are you doing here?”
“I’m fine. I came in here to escape the party and then heard someone coming and panicked.”