My Favourite Mistake. Chelsea Cameron M.

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СКАЧАТЬ I chucked the phone book on the couch. Darah and Renee were looking at me like they were worried I was going to explode. I was on the verge. “If you were a gentleman, you’d offer to sleep on the couch,” I snapped.

      “Well, Missy, you’ll come to find out that I’m not a gentleman. I plan to take full advantage of this situation.” My mouth dropped open in shock. No guy had ever talked to me that way.

      “Is it hot in here? I think I’ll open the window,” Renee said, scurrying over to our one window, located at one end of the couch.

      Darah looked at me and then Hunter and back. “Well, there’s nothing we can do right now. Let’s get his stuff in, and then maybe we can go down and see if anyone is at housing,” she said. Darah was always the peacemaker.

      “Sounds good to me,” Hunter said, walking right into my bedroom as if he owned the place.

      “I can’t believe this is happening,” I said, closing my eyes. I heard “Back in Black” by AC/DC coming from my room. Hunter’s ringtone.

      “Hey, man. No, I just got here. Room 203. Yeah, that would be great…” He nudged the door shut, and I glanced at Renee and Darah.

      “I didn’t think we were going to have to do this so early, but I think we need a roommate meeting,” I said. We’d agreed that we would have weekly roommate meetings to air our grievances. I was all for getting that shit out in the open so we didn’t end up hating each other. I’d had a horrible roommate last year, and I didn’t want to deal with that again.

      I listened, but it sounded like Hunter was still on the phone. I could hear him rummaging and prayed he wouldn’t break anything. Then I would kill him.

      “I don’t see what the big deal is,” Renee said. “I mean, it would be the same if one of us had a boyfriend staying over. Paul stayed over all the time when Darah and I lived here last year.”

      “But that was because you were sleeping with him,” I said.

      “Maybe I’ll sleep with Hunter,” she shot back. Renee had broken up with Paul extremely recently and was on the prowl for a rebound. We all knew she and Paul were meant to be and that they would eventually realize that, but Renee was still in the anger stage.

      “Are you uncomfortable with staying with him, Taylor? It’s okay if you are,” Darah said.

      “I can’t imagine why I would be uncomfortable about sharing an extremely small room with a guy I’ve known all of a half hour who keeps making creepy comments. Can’t imagine why I’d have a problem with that.”

      “If you want, Renee and I can switch. I’ll stay with him, and Renee can stay with you,” Darah said.

      “Why can’t he stay with me?” Renee whined.

      “Because you’ll rape him in his sleep,” I said.

      “You can’t rape the willing, Tay,” she said, winking.

      “You’re disgusting.”

      “How about we draw straws?” Darah said.

      “Do we even have straws?” Renee said. “How about we do numbers or something? Here,” she said, grabbing a UMaine notepad that someone had left on the kitchen counter, along with a pen. “I’ll write our names down and we’ll put it in…” She grabbed the baseball cap I’d discarded earlier. “And Hunter will pick. There you go. Problem solved.”

      My door opened and Hunter emerged, another grin on his face.

      “You weren’t talking about me, were you?”

      Like he didn’t know. I rolled my eyes as Renee wrote each of our names on little bits of paper and tossed them in my hat. She put her hand over the top and shook it up.

      “Pick one,” she said, shoving the hat in his face.

      “Okay,” he said, sticking his hand in and pulling out a folded slip of paper. Renee slowly unfolded it. We all waited as she paused dramatically.

      “Taylor,” she said, turning it around so we could all read my name in black-and-white.

      “Shit,” I said.

      Two

      “What’s with all the peacock stuff?”

      It was an hour later, and I was just as stuck with Hunter as I was when he’d walked in the door. I’d even gone down to housing, which was right down the hill from our dorm, but no one was there. Too busy making sure the freshmen didn’t collapse under the weight of their massive electronics when they carried them down the hall, no doubt.

      I was doing my best to ignore Hunter, but he wouldn’t shut up. Clearly, he was one of those guys who liked to chat.

      “Don’t you know peacock feathers are bad luck?” Out of the corner of my eye, his biceps with the seven tattoo flexed as he pulled a couple of shirts out of his footlocker.

      Yes, I did know they were bad luck for most people. It was none of his business why I had them everywhere, including on my comforter, hung in frames on the wall and strung on a dream catcher my sister had given me. It was none of his goddamn business.

      I wished Tawny was here. My sister would have known exactly what to say to Hunter to get him to leave. She couldn’t get out of her work as a paralegal, and Mom couldn’t get off work, either. I guess they figured since I was a sophomore, moving wasn’t such a big deal. Still, I missed Tawny.

      “You pissed at me, Missy?”

      The nickname was the last straw. I whirled around and glared at him. “Look, I don’t know you. You don’t know me. As soon as humanly possible, I’m getting you out of here, got it? I’m not your baby. I’m not one of those girls you can smile at and crawl into bed with. Got it? Stay the fuck away from me.”

      Those blue eyes seared into me. He was the kind of guy who could see things that other people couldn’t—things that I’d spent my entire life covering up and hiding from the masses. I’d only met a few people who could see past my carefully cultivated facade. I’d dropped most of them like a bad habit, with the exception of one. I’d have to squash this ASAP before he decided he might want to see what the world had done to piss me off so much.

      “It’s kinda hard to stay away from you when we’re living in the same place,” he said.

      “I. Know. That,” I said through gritted teeth.

      He held up his hands. “Don’t be mad at me. Fate picked your name.”

      “I don’t believe in fate.”

      He laughed. “Me neither. I just believe in luck.” He pointed to the seven on his arm. “Never can be too careful.”

      “I don’t believe in luck, either.”

      “Clearly.”

      We were interrupted by a booming voice. Hunter stepped over the chaos СКАЧАТЬ