“Why?” she asked.
“I planned on spending most of it at the library, catching up on stuff.”
“You know you can always use my laptop—”
I nodded. “I know, but I’m sure you have stuff you need to work on too, and I don’t want to make you late on anything you have to do.” If someone was going to get shitty grades because they’d procrastinated, it’d be me.
“Kelsey, you know I always have my stuff done weeks ahead of time,” Mel said, telling me nothing but the truth. “I practically start my term papers the moment they’re assigned. If you need to use my laptop, go ahead. I really don’t mind.” This was the pushiest she’d gotten about it, and I wondered why.
Still, I didn’t want to overstep. “It’s okay,” I told her. “I’ll just borrow your raincoat instead.” And look like a total dweeb, but that was better than sitting in the library soaking wet while earning the side-eye from everyone else there because I looked like a drowned rat.
Mel managed a smile, though I didn’t believe it for a second. “If that’s what you want.”
I nodded, not saying anything else as I got out my phone. Mel went to turn the TV on, keeping the volume low. I scrolled through all the social media sites I was on; no updates on Ash, not that I was expecting much. I’d told her that I’d made it back here safely, and that was probably all I would get until winter break.
God, that felt like so far away.
The night passed, the minutes feeling like hours and the hours feeling like eternities. Time itself seemed to not care how miserable I was, dragging it out as long as it possibly could. By the time Mel and I were both ready for bed, I’d already ruminated so fucking much about the earlier encounter with Levi that I hated myself about ten times more than I did yesterday.
Whispering to his back that I loved him. What a stupid move. Those words…those words should never see the light of day again.
My head hit my pillow, my eyes slowly closing out the dark room around me. Mel had some weird superpower that she could fall asleep instantly—though she complained she was still tired all the time, which I totally did not understand—but me? I lay there, wide awake, locked in my head for what felt like hours, and then when I went to glance at my phone’s clock, I usually found it had only been some ridiculously short time, like thirty minutes or something.
Some days I really hated being me, if you couldn’t notice.
Sometime during the night, I turned on my side, about to internally whine—though I promptly forgot what exactly I was going to whine about—when I realized that I wasn’t where I thought I was. Not anymore, at least.
Where did I think I was? My dorm room, with Mel’s bed a few feet away.
You want to know where the hell I was? My freaking bed. As in, my bed at home. What the…
I abruptly sat up, looking all around me. I couldn’t remember exactly what I was doing before this moment, but I knew I shouldn’t be here. I should be at SCC or something, right? Yeah, yeah. I shouldn’t be here at all. Silly me. What was I thinking?
Flipping the covers off me, my bare feet hit the carpet below, and I tiptoed out of the dark bedroom I’d spent so many years growing up in. My hand reached for the knob, and the moment I pulled the door open, the world around me changed. I stepped from my childhood bedroom to the halls of a frat party.
It wasn’t even a frat house I wanted to be at. It was a vaguely familiar house, with people whose faces were all smeared and blurry. I didn’t recognize them, but I knew enough to go up the steps. My feet took two at a time, and I found only one door open upstairs; the rest were shut, the lights off. The light from the open door flooded the space, and I stepped around it to view an empty bathroom.
My stomach immediately dropped, and I wanted to be sick. I didn’t want to go in there, didn’t want to step a single foot into that bathroom, and yet a slurred voice behind me spoke, “I’m ready whenever you are.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as I turned around, spotting a tall, muscled guy in a black and red vampire cape. His hair was black, his eyes a vivid green. His face was the kind of face you’d die for, but it did nothing for me, because he wasn’t Levi.
“Excuse me?” I could barely hiss out the words.
The man grabbed me by the wrist and started dragging me to the bathroom, pushing my stomach against the vanity as I felt him fumble with my clothes. My fingers gripped the edges of the counter, and I wanted to stop this. I needed…I needed something I could never have.
I needed Levi.
“I don’t want this,” I whispered, but it was too late. The man already had his pants down; I could feel his hardness pressing against my backside. He was now trying to help me out of my own pants, and I was paralyzed, mortified, frozen in disgust of myself, of what I was going to do.
This…this was a nightmare. A nightmare of epic proportions.
It was the moment when his hands managed to pull my pants down that I pushed myself off the vanity, having enough. I grabbed the waistline of my pants, hiking them back up as I whirled on the guy. I opened my mouth to tell him off, to tell him
