Chapter 6: The Dorm Room Invitation
The walk back to the dorms was a silent negotiation. He led; she followed, a half-step behind, a shadow with the click of heels on pavement. He could feel the weight of her attention between his shoulder blades, a physical pressure. He didn’t offer his arm. He didn’t speak. The hundred-dollar bill in his pocket felt like it was burning a hole through the denim.
His building was a concrete slab, impersonal and vaguely grimy. He shoved the main door open, the lock always busted, and held it just long enough for her to slip through. The elevator was out. They took the stairs, their footsteps echoing in the fluorescents.
“You could have just taken the money,” she said, her voice bouncing off the cinderblock walls on the third-floor landing. “It would have been simpler.”
“Nothing with you is simple,” he grunted, digging his key out of his pocket at his door, 312.
The key stuck. He jiggled it, shoulder leaning into the wood. He felt her move closer, not touching, just standing in his space, smelling of night air and that fucking cherry blossom.
The lock gave. The door swung inward, revealing the cave.
His dorm room was a testament to controlled chaos. The black leather armchair was buried under a mound of clean-ish laundry. Textbooks formed precarious towers on the floor. An empty whiskey bottle served as a bookmark in a finance tome. The air was stale, layered with old smoke, cologne, and the faint, ever-present smell of boy. The desk lamp was on, casting a yellowing circle of light over the half-unmade bed, where his volleyball jersey lay crumpled like a shed skin.
He tossed his keys onto a cluttered desk, hearing them skitter. “Home sweet home. Don’t expect room service.”
Jennie stepped inside, closing the door softly behind her. She didn’t look appalled. She looked fascinated. Her eyes scanned the trophies, the faded posters, the general disarray. Then they stopped. On the wall above his desk, wedged between a schedule and a pin-up, was the Polaroid. It was years old, edges yellowing. A younger Jennie, her hair in pigtails, grinning at the camera with a gap-toothed intensity that was already unsettling. She was holding a popsicle, and it was dripping on her shirt. Leonid was caught half in the frame, blurry, looking away as if annoyed she’d pointed the camera at him.
He saw her see it. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor went through her hands before she clasped them in front of her.
“You kept that,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
He busied himself at his small mini-fridge, pulling out a half-full bottle of cheap whiskey and two relatively clean glasses. “It got stuck in a book. Forgot about it.”
He knew she didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe himself.
He poured two generous fingers, passed her a glass. Their fingers brushed. Her skin was cool. He took a long swallow, the liquor burning a familiar, welcome path to his stomach. He needed the blur.
He sank into the armchair, clearing a space for himself by shoving clothes to the floor. He pulled out his rolling tray and a small bag of weed. His movements were automatic, practiced. She watched, still standing, sipping her whiskey. She didn’t sit until he gestured vaguely to the foot of the bed.
She perched on the edge, back straight, knees together, like a student in a dean’s office. The contrast was absurd. Her in her little black dress, him in his jeans and a worn t-shirt, in this pigsty.
“So,” he said, concentrating on the crumble of dry weed, the filter tip. “You win. You’re here. What now?”
“You tell me,” she said. “You’re the one who allowed it.”
He laughed, a short, sharp sound. “Allowed it. Like I could stop a force of nature.” He licked the paper, sealed the joint. He lit it, the end glowing orange in the dim room. He took a deep drag, held it, let the smoke curl from his lips. He offered it to her.
She leaned forward from the bed, took it. Her eyes locked on his as she put it to her lips and inhaled. She didn’t cough. She held the smoke, then exhaled slowly, a thin plume joining the haze in the lamplight. She passed it back. Their hands touched again. Longer this time.
He took another hit, then reached for the game controller tangled in its cord. He booted up the console, the TV flickering to life with a neon garage menu. A racing game.
“You play?” he asked, not looking at her.
“I can learn.”
He shrugged, tossed her the second controller. “Don’t cry when I lap you.”
They played. Or, he played, and she experimented, crashing her digital car into walls with a serene detachment. He found himself explaining the mechanics, the drift turns, the boost timings. His voice loosened, the whiskey and weed sanding down his edges. He told her about his shift, not just the wealthy woman, but the old regular who always tried to short his bill, the new manager who was a dick about inventory.
“He makes us count the maraschino cherries,” Leonid muttered, taking a corner perfectly. “Who steals fucking cherries?”
“Someone with a deficient sense of opportunity cost,” Jennie said, her car spiraling off a cliff. Her tone was dry, academic.
He snorted. Then he laughed. A real one, from his gut. It felt strange in his throat. “Yeah. That’s it exactly.”
He glanced at her. She was smiling, a small, private thing, just for him. Not the blade-smile from the bar. Something softer. It hit him then, in the quiet between game music and the hum of his mini-fridge: he was comfortable. He was talking, complaining, unloading, and she was just… listening. Not judging. Not offering advice. Just absorbing him.
It was terrifying.
He passed her the joint again. This time, when she leaned over from the bed to take it, her silky hair cascaded over his forearm where it rested on his knee. The touch was electric. Soft, warm. He didn’t pull away. He let the strands lie there, a strange, intimate weight.
She inhaled, held it. Her eyes, already dark, seemed to swallow the lamplight. She exhaled, the smoke veiling her face for a second.
“Why do you do it?” she asked quietly, the game forgotten, her car idling on the pixelated track.
“Do what?”
“The performance. At the bar. With people like her. You hate it.”
He stared at the screen, at the blurred colors of his stalled car. “Money. It’s not complicated.”
“It is for you.” She shifted, drawing her legs up under her. The movement brought her closer. The scent of her, of cherry blossom and now a hint of his whiskey and weed, enveloped him. “You could be excellent at anything. You choose to be excellent at something you despise. It’s a form of self-punishment.”
His head snapped toward her. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Jennie.”
“I’m not. I’m observing.” She placed the joint carefully in the ashtray. “You punish yourself so you don’t have to feel guilty for not being who you think you should be. It’s inefficient. And it hurts you.”
The accuracy was a punch to the solar plexus. He had no defense. He just looked at her, this strange, beautiful, terrifying girl who saw right through the cracks in his facade.
“And what do you do?” he shot back, his voice rough. “You punish yourself by wanting me. That’s way more fucked up.”
She didn’t flinch. “I don’t see it as punishment.”
“Then you’re delusional.”
“Perhaps.” She leaned forward then, closing the final distance between them. She was on the floor now, kneeling beside his chair, her face level with his. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. “But it’s the only thing that feels real.”
The air vanished from the room. The only sound was the low hum of electronics and the ragged in-out of his own breath. Her eyes were pools of absolute certainty. Her lips were parted, slightly glossy.
He remembered the garden. The phone call. I’m thinking of your hands.
All the barriers, the pretense, the annoyed excuses, crumbled to dust. He was tired. He was blurry. And she was here, offering a reality so intense it burned away every other lie.
He didn’t decide to move. His hand just did. He lifted it, his fingers tracing the fall of her hair where it lay on his arm, then moving up, pushing it back behind her ear. His touch lingered on the shell of her ear, then cupped the line of her jaw. Her skin was like heated silk.
She shuddered. A full-body tremor that seemed to originate deep within her core. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second, a look of pure, agonized relief passing over her features.
“Leonid,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question. It was a prayer.
That broke him.
He slid from the chair onto the floor with her. Their knees bumped. The world narrowed to the space between their bodies, to the heat radiating from her, to the frantic drum of his own heart. He looked at her, really looked, at the dark feline eyes, the full lips, the delicate, insane creature who had loved him with a terrifying constancy since they were kids.
His thumb brushed her lower lip.
“This is a bad idea,” he murmured, his voice so low it was almost a vibration.
“I know,” she breathed, leaning into his touch.
“It changes everything.”
“It changes nothing.” Her eyes opened, meeting his. “It just makes it true.”
He didn’t kiss her. Not yet. He just held her face, studying her, mapping the reality of her against the myth he’d built in his head. The joint smoldered forgotten in the tray. The game demo music played on a loop. Outside, a siren wailed in the distance, a reminder of a world that continued to spin, unconcerned with the silent collapse happening in a messy dorm room on the third floor.
Her hand came up, her fingers with their silver rings tracing the prominent veins on the back of the hand that held her. A touch of reverence. A touch of possession.
He was lost. He had been for years. He just hadn't admitted it until this moment, with the taste of whiskey and regret on his tongue, and her absolute devotion shining back at him in the dark.