Page 28 of Riot Rules
How dare he be this pleased with himself. Inmybedroom. He shows up here in the middle of the night, soaking wet, cocky as hell, makes himself comfortable, and then takes off his shirt? Seriously, what plane of reality am I living in? I rock my head back, staring at the ceiling as hard as physically possible. “Just put your clothes back on, Dash. I’m not kidding. You’re—Wait! What the hell are youdoing?”
I’ll tell you what he’s doing. He’s gotten to his feet; he’s standing a mere eighteen inches away from me, and he’s unfastening his jeans and shoving the denim down his legs.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You can’t just turn up on my doorstep, get naked and expect me to just…” I flap a little. I must look like a moron, opening and closing my mouth like this, but evidently I’m not coping very well with what’s going down.
Toned legs.
Tight black boxers.
We’re talkingskin-tight.
I can see the outline of his junk through the fabric and I can’t stop looking.Jesus, Carina, stop fucking looking!
“What?” Dash chuckles mercilessly, stepping on the wadded-up material at his feet and kicking his way out of his pants. “Expect you to just…what?”
“Sleep with you,” I hiss. “Just let youpenetrateme.”
At this, Dashiell collapses back onto the bed, stifling a hail of laughter. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning onpenetratingyou.”
Okaaaaaay. I rock on the balls of my feet, straining against my need to fling open my bedroom door and bolt out of the building and into the rain. My embarrassment levels are climbing by the second. They hitleave-me-here-to-dielevels when he regains enough composure to sit up and look at me, and says, “Bloody hell, girl. You’re killing me.”
Killing him. Like the prospect of him sleeping with me is so hilarious and unbelievable that the very mention of it makes him laugh to death.
Sorude!
In an attempt to mask my embarrassment, I step closer and jab him in the chest with my index finger. “Explain yourself then, or I’ll call the floor monitor.”
“Christy?” Dashiell wipes his eyes. “You’re gonna get Christy Deidrick in here? She’s the most religious person I’ve ever met, and I went to a Catholic school before I came here. Nuns and everything. She’ll havebothofusexpelled, believe me. I know from first-hand experience.” He has to be able to see my anger rising, though, because he holds out a hand, rolling his eyes. “Alright. Simmer down, sweetheart. I’m just showing you something. Look.” He turns his hands palm-up and sticks them out, jerking his head down at them. Specifically, at the crooks of his elbows. “No needle marks. None,” he says, giving me atold-you-solook.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Why do you think I’m standing here in my underwear? You won’t find track marks anywhere else on my body either, love. Try and find a single needle mark, I dare you.”
So…hedidlie. It shouldn’t make a difference to me. If he wants to kill himself with hardcore drugs, then that’s his business. So why, then, am I so relieved?
Dash flips his hands over. “Nothing in the backs of my hands. Nothing in between my fingers. Nothing in my legs, or my feet.” He shows me each limb, and like a suspicious, misguided fool, I look to make sure he’s telling me the truth. He doesn’t have a mark on him. Not one injection site.
“What do you hope to accomplish by coming here and showing me this?” I whisper. “What’s the point?”
He thinks. Or stays quiet, anyway, staring at the floor, pressing the tip of his tongue against the swell of his bottom lip. After a while, he says, “People like to believe all kinds of shit about me, Carina. I don’t give a fuck most of the time. But you believing that about me? I couldn’t handle you believingthat.”
He picks up his jeans and shakes them out. I watch him slowly put them on, biting the inside of my cheek. It’s not until he’s threading his arms into his wet t-shirt that I let myself speak. “So that’s it, then? You’ve convinced me that you’re not a drug addict. Now you leave? Now you’re free to go back to ignoring me and pretending I don’t exist?”
Dashiell runs his hands through his hair, which is slightly dryer than when he first entered my room but still wet enough for the strands to be clumped together. “What’s the alternative? Are we supposed to get to know each other? Share all of our deepest, darkest secrets? What, you wannadateme, Carina Mendoza?” He laughs coldly. “We’ve been through this. I’m not datable. I’mfuckable.I’mhate-able. I’m plenty of things…but you donotwant to date me, Carrie. I can promise you that.”
“And you knowmeso well?” I’m stewing, alive with anger, my blood churning in my veins, hating the fact that there’s this sick, miserable feeling of disappointment welling in the pit of my stomach. He’s rejecting me all over again. “Don’t tell me what I want and I don’t want, asshole. You don’t know shit about me. If you’re not interested in me, then have the balls to say that and be clear instead of all of this dancing around, and side-stepping, and…and being so godddamnEnglish.”
“Most people find my Englishness charming.”
“Well, I don’t. It’s annoying. You’re always skirting around whatever you want to say. You can never take a direct, straight line from point A to point B in a conversation—”
“Straight lines are boring. Where’s the fun in straight lines?”
“—You have to meander and take the longest, most obscure route possible. And on top of all that, then you’re so unclear about your motives or goals that no one can ever get their head straight—”
“I can’t be direct like you people. I’ve tried. It causes me physical pain to be so abrupt. But fine. If you insist, I’ll give it a go.” He straightens, standing up tall, cracking his fingers as he stares down at me, his eyes full of ice-cold flames. “I’d fuck you, love. I would. But I’d probably never speak to you again. And you’d hate me. And I wouldn’t care, which would only make you hate me even more. Graduation will eventually roll around, and I’ll make some kind of speech. You’ll sit there in your chair on the second to back row, and you’ll be filled with a burning hatred for me. And I…I won’t notice any of it. I won’t feel a fucking thing. I won’t care. It’ll be a miracle if I even remember you exist.
“So, like I said. You’re better off forgetting all about me, love. Once you’ve come on my dick, I’ll move onto the next pretty girl with a decent sized rack, and that’ll be that. You won’t hear from me. There won’t be any texts. We won’t go skipping, hand-in-hand, down the corridors of this dumpster fire. I’ll have ruined you. I’ll be this ugly sore of a memory that never goes away, festering in the back of your head, poisoning every future relationship you ever have because I made it impossible for you to trust all other men. And then I’ll be back in England, sitting on my spoiled ass, re-reading the classics and fucking the housekeepers ’cause I’ve got nothing better to do. Not thinking about you…” He steps closer, reaching up, taking a piece of my loose hair, winding it thoughtfully around his finger. “Not remembering you. Not caring that I hurt you.” He pauses, and this is when I finally reach my lowest and my most despicable. Because his words hurt more than the sharp edge of a razorblade—I’ve never felt as awful as I do in this moment—but I’mstillleaning into him. I’m still craving his touch. I’m still dizzy on his nearness, and the fact that I can smell the night and the rain on his warm skin, and no matter how hard I hate myself for it, Istillfucking want him.
