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“I’ve got a skate tomorrow.”

“Right. Every day but Monday.”

“Yeah.”

I give him the cup back. He doesn’t put his hand anywhere, so I do. I turn around and put my back to the wall next to him with my shoulder against his arm, hook a finger in his pocket, and stand there while the music thumps through the wall. After a second, his hand comes over and rests on my hip, exactly where I’d expect it, and his thumb moves once.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” I say.

“Me neither.”

I watch Paige dance with Bianca. I don’t know what Nash is looking at, but it feels like his mind is a million miles away. Paige screams my name from the front room.

“That’s me,” I say, and go.

Aiden from my Monday-Wednesday lecture is here, and he yells “MIDTERM!” at me from four feet away as I pass.

“MIDTERM!” I yell back.

He has a lot of hair and is the kind of drunk where you narrate everything you’re doing while you do it. We’re in the front room, and he’s telling me he thinks the curve is going to save him, and it’s a stupid conversation, but he’s funny drunk. He dances. Then somebody comes past us with a full cup, and he puts his hand on my waist to move me out of the way, which is nothing. Everybody’s doing that in here, there’s no room. Except when the person’s gone, his hand is still there, and it slides a little toward my back. He leans in and pulls, like he wants me closer than I am. I take his wrist and put his hand back on him.

“Nope.”

“My bad.” He puts both hands up. “My bad, my bad.”

“It’s fine.” And it is. He’s just drunk, and two seconds later, he’s back to the curve like nothing happened.

But when I look up over his shoulder, Nash is in the doorway, off the wall, standing straight with his shoulders squared and his cup at his side, a step and a half into the room, with nothing on his face at all. He’s looking right at Aiden’s hands. It’s not a nice look. But he doesn’t come over or say anything, and after a second, he steps back against the doorframe and lifts his cup and drinks his water. I’m still looking at him. He’s still looking at me.

Aiden says, “Right?” about something I didn’t hear.

“Yeah,” I say, and when I look back, Nash is talking to somebody in the hall.

If Nash had marched over and done his thing, I’d have told him to relax and made fun of him for a week. So I don’t know why I’m standing here mad that he didn’t.

At two-fifteen, the house is thinning out. Kenzie has her shoes in her hand, and Paige has announced twice that she’s ready to go. I find Nash by the front door. “Are you coming home with me?”

He looks down at me. “You want me to?”

Which is such a stupid question that I actually laugh. “Obviously.”

He sets his cup on the shelf by the door, and we walk out. It’s so cold it’s almost funny. Kenzie and Bianca peel off toward the other side of campus, and Paige walks with us for one block, talking the entire time about how she doesn’t care that Koda stayed, and then Bianca doubles back for her, and it’s just us. He’s got his hands in his pockets. I put my hand in one of them.

“Your hands are freezing,” he says. “You didn’t bring a coat again.”

“No.”

I walk pressed against his arm, and then his arm comes out of his pocket and goes around my shoulders and pulls me into his side, and he doesn’t let go for the rest of the quad.

His door is barely shut before I’ve got his jacket off and he’s got me against it with his hand in my hair and his mouth on my neck. He bites the top of my shoulder hard enough that I make a sound I’d be embarrassed about if there were anybody else to hear it.

“Bed,” I say.

“Yeah.”

He picks me up straight off the floor, one arm under me, four steps, and drops me on the mattress so I bounce, and he’s over me before I stop bouncing. Whatever’s been in him all night comes out here. He isn’t rough with me. He’s intense. He’s everywhere at once. He has my wrists over my head and then he doesn’t. He has my jeans off in about four seconds, and he keeps stopping to look at my face like he’s checking something. I tell him how I want it, and he gives it to me. I tell him to slow down, and he slows down so completely that I take it back within a minute, and he laughs into my stomach and calls me a liar. His shirt stays on, which isn’t new. At some point, I’m on top of him with my hands flat on his chest and his hands on my hips, gripping so hard I’m going to have marks tomorrow, and he’s watching me with his jaw set. He says my name once, like it’s been sitting in his mouth for hours.

Afterward, I’m face down and sideways across his bed with my hair stuck to my face, breathing like I ran here.