Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1) (15 page)

“Hi,” Sebastian said. I couldn’t tell from his face if he got how unenthused I was about their arrival. He sat down in the chair next to Alex.

Ah, too bad—five people, four chairs. I guess some poor soul is going to have to stand.

But Elyas borrowed a chair from a neighboring table. He smiled at me, positioned the chair next to me, and sat.

“Well, darling?” he said, bending dangerously close to me, his lips on the verge of coming into contact with my cheek. I shoved my chair away from him with a loud squeak. My glare threatened him with the sufferings of a eunuch if he tried that again, but it bounced off him as though he were covered in Teflon. With a twinkle in his eye, he squeezed me between Domenic and himself.

All that was left was for him to put his cock out on the table to compare its length to Domenic’s. When he smirked at me while resting his arm on the back of my chair, I had had enough.

“Would you like to piss on me now to mark me as your territory?” I narrowed my eyes at him and shoved his arm off the chair.

Elyas laughed softly. “No, that wasn’t my plan, actually.” Now he kept his arm to himself.

“So, Domenic,” I said, turning a shoulder to Elyas. “Where were we?”

We had been talking about music and picked up our conversation where we had been forced to leave off. I think I came across as confident, chatting cheerfully with Domenic, although inside I was anything but. This situation was too constricting. I felt tense, and I hated it when Elyas’s leg grazed mine under the table. I couldn’t be sure he was doing it on purpose, since his legs were making normal little movements now and again, so I kept my accusations to myself.

Meanwhile, Alex and Sebastian seemed a bit inhibited at first, but they loosened up more and more over time. Elyas mostly listened in on my conversation with Domenic, but fortunately didn’t butt in.

“You play in a band?” I said.

“Yeah. I’m a drummer.”

“What kind of music?”

“Mainly rock, with some grunge, punk, and electronica influences,” he replied. “But it’s not a big thing. We’ve only played two small gigs; otherwise, we just perform in the rehearsal room.”

“I’d say two gigs are more than most garage bands have under their belts,” I said.

“We’re scheduled to do a third, actually,” he said with a promising smile. “But the date hasn’t been finalized yet.”

“When you find out more, you’ll have to let me know. I’d love to come.”

I was always up for rock, so I really was interested in coming, though I mostly wanted to irk Elyas.

“Sure, I’ll let you know. Although it may be a while,” he said with a wink.

“You do realize you’ll have to throw your drumsticks to me, right?”

He laughed and nodded. “I think you’ll be the only one who even wants them.”

“We’ll talk after the concert when I’ve gotten my requisite ten scratch marks on my face from the other groupies,” I joked, although after I said it I wondered what was wrong with me. A couple more comments like that, and he would definitely think I liked him—which was totally not the case.

“I don’t think you need to worry.” He grinned, sipped his drink again, and then stood. “Be right back,” he said, turning and walking toward the bathroom. Alex, who had been giving me withering glares, was deep in conversation with Sebastian, so my side of the table suddenly turned silent.

“That impresses you?” Elyas asked, breaking the quiet.

I crossed my arms in front of me. “What impresses me?”

“That he’s got a ‘band’?” he mimicked.

“You know I’m on the lookout for a boyfriend who I can brag about to all my little girlfriends,” I said, repeating what he had accused me of a few weeks ago.

He smirked. “I admit my opinion may have changed.”

“Congrats,” I snipped.

After Domenic returned, the separate conversations at the table gradually merged into one. Sebastian was really nice. There was a level-headed, low-key air about him that made him easy to talk to. He was pleasant and smart but not full of himself. Sebastian was the sort of person there were too few of.

I observed how he and Alex interacted, and caught the two of them stealing glances at each other. They were just so cute that I kept finding myself with a silly grin on my face.

Elyas and Domenic largely ignored each other, bearing out my original suspicion from the club that they didn’t think much of each other. I didn’t know what the deal was, but it evidently had nothing to do with me. They must have had some kind of falling-out a long time ago. Though this aroused my curiosity, I wasn’t brave enough to ask either of them about it.

Elyas, who unfortunately wasn’t ignoring me, managed to spoil my yummy strawberry margarita. Every time I took a sip, he stared at my mouth. You could read his thoughts on his face, imagining licking my lips off for me. Elyas wasn’t just looking at me—he was
eye-screwing
me. So I stopped sipping my drink. But why was it my job to get him to stop?

Sebastian started talking about majoring in psychology. I listened intently, but then heard a rustling sound.

“Have you been shopping?” Elyas asked as he lifted my bag, which I had set next to my chair. My hand popped over, but Elyas was faster. When he realized I didn’t want him to look inside, curiosity sparked in his eyes and an impudent smirk formed on his lips. I leaned over his lap for another desperate attempt to get my damned bag. Elyas took full advantage of the length of his arms and held the bag out farther. The physical proximity to him was extremely uncomfortable, but he seemed to enjoy it.

I sat up straight and rested my hands in my lap. “Please give me my bag, Elyas.”

He thought it over for a moment, and then he said, “No.” He turned away from the table with his back to me and snuck a peek inside. He apparently couldn’t tell what the contents were, so he put his hand in and felt around.

I had lost. I took a deep breath, waiting for the moment he would present my newly acquired lingerie to the table. This was going to go down on my Top Ten Most Embarrassing Moments list. And it wasn’t going to be one of those stories you laugh about ten years later. What Elyas was doing was mean.

Once he seemed to have figured out what was in the bag, he looked over his shoulder at me and suggestively raised an eyebrow.
Get it over with, jerk,
I thought, swearing I would never again utter another syllable to him.

As if in slow motion, Elyas grabbed hold of an object that he slowly pulled out into the light. I closed my eyes, wishing the earth would swallow me. I trembled for a few seconds.

“You’re making all this fuss about a book and a CD?”

I opened my eyes. He flashed me a brief, seductive smile before he looked at the CD in his hands. “I know this band. I recently picked up this CD myself,” he said before putting it back with the book and lingerie. “Emely, dear,” he said. “I had no idea you had such good taste in music.”

I avoided his eyes and grabbed the bag. He held it back one last time before finally handing it over, still smirking. He stroked my fingers as I took it, the jerk. I grumbled, pulling back my hand and crumpling the bag so I could hide it back under the table. To ensure another idiot couldn’t come up with the same bright idea, I squeezed the bag between my ankles and didn’t loosen up for the rest of the night.

Even though Elyas had spared me the worst, I was still annoyed that he
had rummaged through my purchases. His seductive looks at me became more intense after his little stunt, doing nothing to improve my mood. I ignored him and imagined erasing him from my reality with a gigantic rubber eraser. I’d been cool toward him before, but now I was positively Arctic. All the same—and this was driving me crazy—I suddenly noticed him leaning closer to me. Everyone was so packed in around the table that I couldn’t lean farther away. All I could do was tensely cross my arms as I felt his warm breath on my skin.

“I hope you realize,” he whispered softly into my ear, “that the very idea of you wearing underwear like that will keep me from ever closing my eyes again.”

His voice and words ran down my back like ice water, and I felt my ears start to glow red. I was annoyed I was reacting to him this way, and I was even more annoyed that Elyas was noticing.

“And
I
hope
you
realize,” I softly snarled back, “that you won’t live long enough to open your eyes again if you go nosing around in my bags again.”

He smirked at me with a twinkle in his turquoise-colored eyes as he slowly straightened.

God, how I hated this guy.

My attempt at erasing him from my brain was not working. Elyas wasn’t a thin line of graphite. He was a permanent marker that soaked through my life. A half hour later I still was feeling awkward, so I decided to call it a night and head home. Alex seemed sad, but since I would not be dissuaded, she relented. “Well, have a good night,” she said, “and be careful on your way home.” Elyas naturally imposed by offering to drive me home, but he could forget it. Ten Clydesdales wouldn’t have been strong enough to get me alone with him today.

Domenic also offered to take me home, but I turned him down, too. The bus would be fine.

After saying good-bye to everyone, apart from Elyas, I made my way to the bus stop.

The ride home was only fifteen minutes, and the first thing I did upon entering my dorm room was stuff my new lingerie into the backmost corner of my closet. Then I spent a while in the shower. The only reason I got out, in fact, was that Eva knocked, saying she also needed to take one. I opened the door in nothing but a nightshirt, and Eva said, “Finally!” I got out of her way and climbed into bed.

The aftermath from the incident at the bar swirled in my head. For the love of God, how could I have been so feeble-minded as to let that bag out my sight for even a second? I didn’t understand. I should have expected what happened to happen. It was sheer stupidity on my part.
“I hope you realize that the very idea of you wearing underwear like that will keep me from ever closing my eyes again.”

Every day he became an even bigger, pushier jerk. Would he never stop terrorizing me? Ugh!

What was he getting out of all this nonsense, anyway? What did he want from me? I wasn’t the beauty he had described, and I didn’t fit the profile of his usual prey.

What was his deal? Did he hate me? Or was he just out of other opportunities?

I didn’t have any of the answers, and I was upset to be thinking about it at all. To escape my thoughts, I pulled out my new CD, slid it into the player, and put on my headphones. An
d . . .
wow. The music wasn’t just good; it was great! It also achieved what I couldn’t seem to do by myself—pushing Elyas into the basement of my mind. I felt much more relaxed after listening to the album twice. I took off my headphones, got under the covers, and was able to drift off.

But before dreamland fully enveloped me, the buzz of my cell phone startled me. I fumbled in the dark for the phone and finally took it from the nightstand. A text message fro
m . . .
ugh, Don’t Answer.

Have I ever told you how much I miss you every night?

Please, I thought, go take a cold shower, Elyas.

Another one buzzed from Don’t Answer:
Dream something sweet, my angel.

I sighed and set the phone back down. I closed my eyes for the last time before slowly dozing off.
My angel
. . .

My ass.

C
HAPTER
10

B
REAKING THE
I
CE

M
y eyes scanned the lecture hall as the professor discussed the history of French literature. The hall was unremarkable—medium in size—and the farther back you were, the higher you sat. I was near the center, trying to focus on the lecture, but to no avail. My mind kept wandering, and I repeatedly caught myself daydreaming and doodling on my notepad. Luca’s last e-mail was the reason. I needed to consider how I was going to respond.

Dear Emely,

No, unfortunately, I haven’t been out and about in the world much yet. A few years ago I spent some time abroad, but it was more for learning than having fun. Something you and I have in common is a desire to travel the whole world. What’s holding me back, unlike you, isn’t just a lack of money. I’m also looking for the
right
person to travel with.

I used to go on trips with my friends, and we visited places throughout Germany and in neighboring countries. Of those trips, only two were real vacations; the others are best described as excursions, maybe even just outings. Although I have fond memories of those trips—how should I put it?—let’s just say that my friends and I had our share of fun and maybe got into some trouble, but that’s what you do with friends, and it doesn’t matter where you are. Apart from the scenery and the weather, it doesn’t make a huge difference if you’re playing beach volleyball next to a flooded gravel pit or on the Adriatic.

That used to be exactly how I wanted things. But on my last couple of trips, I started feeling like that wasn’t enough. I wanted another person at my side, someone I loved. Someone I could share new experiences with. The thing is, I don’t just want to see the world per se; I’d like to show the world to a woman who means the world to me.

I’m sure that sounds corny, but it’s how I feel, and I’m hoping you might have an inkling of what I mean. Notions like these are probably odd to you, though.

Be honest: Do you pity me now? Did I scare you off? (How is it, though, that I suspect the latter is close to impossible?)

Hope you have a great day.

See you soon,

      Luca

Luca was like sugar: just sweet.

His fear I might not understand him was unfounded. I could count all of my past vacations on one hand, and I had traveled outside Germany only once. A trip to Holland didn’t seem far enough to count. It’s not like crossing an ocean or anything.

I mulled over Luca’s idea: What would it be like to travel the world with someone I loved?

I sighed and doodled some more. Why did he think he might have scared me off? The only thing that concerned me was whether a
guy
had actually written the e-mail, because it sounded more like something I’d expect from a woman.

Maybe Alex was right and I should set up an in-person meeting. Luca and I had been writing for more than six weeks now. The longer I put it off, the greater my potential disappointment. Even if Luca wasn’t some computer nerd with greasy hair, who knew whether we’d feel as compatible with each other in person as in writing?

There was no guarantee.

As unrealistic as a soap-bubble world could be, it was still really nice. Meeting in person would change that. Once we met, the theoretical phase would be over, and only the applied phase would be left.

My shoulders slumped as the tip of my pen continued gliding over the paper, doodling a brick wall. Did Luca feel this way, too? He hadn’t raised the question of meeting, either. There might be a thousand reasons for that, and I’d run though a good number of them in my head. Luca somehow couldn’t bring himself to talk to me in person, so he e-mailed me instead. In other words, Luca was shy. But why did he lack self-confidence? He was eloquent, smart, and charming; he had a good sense of humor; and he had his own opinions that he stood behind. The only part I couldn’t assess was his looks. Was he afraid I wouldn’t like them?

Another theory, which I was starting to seriously consider, was that Luca was gay and in the closet. Nearly everything he wrote was atypical for a straight guy. It
would
fit perfectly into my series of pathetic, failed relationships. Gay male was one category I hadn’t been able to check off yet in my dating history.

The lecture hall’s rear door opened and someone quietly made their way down the center aisle. I didn’t turn my head; personally, there was nothing I found more awkward than having all the eyes in a room trained on me at the same time. I still didn’t turn around, even when I heard footsteps and whispered “sorry”s and “excuse me”s from the row behind me. Instead, my thoughts continued to focus on Luca. The mere idea of standing face-to-face with him, in the flesh, made my heart pound in my throat.

My daydreams were interrupted sooner than I wanted, because I suddenly felt someone’s breath in my hair from behind me. Before I knew what was going on, I heard a soft “boo.”

I winced and turned around to find that Elyas had taken a seat diagonally behind me and was smiling at me with a twinkle in his eyes.

I stared at him. What, oh what, had I done in my life to deserve this?

Elyas bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms. His head was cocked to the side so I was perfectly in the sights of his bioweapon eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed, turning to face forward again.

“I’m visiting you during your lecture.”

“What about going to your own lectures?”

“That was actually my plan,” he sighed, “but then I’d have missed you so terribly.”

I glared angrily at him over my shoulder, earning a charming smile in return. That jerk!

I faced forward again. “You’re like sugar, Elyas,” I grumbled.

“Sweet?” he said, sounding cheerfully surprised.

“No, sticky,” I hissed, putting an end to the conversation. Couldn’t I be safe from him even in my lectures anymore?

I tried to concentrate on the professor, but I felt Elyas’s finger on my shoulder. I turned as though struck by lightning.

“You had a loose hair there,” he explained.

“Even if there were a rattlesnake on my shoulder, that would give you no right to ever touch me!” I snapped, turning away from him again, although from the corner of my eye I saw him motioning with his hands for me to calm down, a smirk on his face.

The big clock over the lectern said I still had twenty minutes to go. Twenty minutes. Or 1,200 horrific, uninterrupted seconds during which I would feel his gaze burning the back of my neck.

Wow, what fun this’ll be
.

Why couldn’t he just leave me alone? Every signal I sent his way communicated my aversion to him, which even someone as dense as Elyas
must
have noticed. My signals just didn’t seem to interest him at all.

One thousand, one hundred twelve. One thousand, one hundred eleven. One thousand, one hundred ten. One thousand, one hundred nine
. . .

Although Elyas managed to keep his mouth shut, his presence was so distracting that I didn’t get anything out of the lecture at all. I kept fidgeting my right leg and clenching my teeth until the end of class.

The professor had hardly concluded his lecture when I quickly packed all my things into my messenger bag, slung it over my shoulder, stood, and forced my way down the row. I could tell Elyas was doing the same behind me. We met in the center aisle, and he stayed close on my heels, amused, as we walked up the steps to the door. I rolled my eyes.

I hadn’t been quick enough to beat the crush of students, so we proceeded slowly. Once everyone made it through the big doors into the hallway, the throng gradually dispersed.

“What should we do now?” Elyas asked pleasantly.

With him close behind, I turned at a quick pace into the nearly empty east wing of the building. “
I’m
going back to my dorm room,” I answered. “I couldn’t care less what
you
do.”

He flashed me a rakish smile. “Then that resolves the issue of whether we should head to your place or mine.”

That was the last straw. I balled my hands into fists, turned around, stopped in front of him—coming only up to his chest—and screamed in rage. “What the hell is your problem?”

He took a step backward and blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t get it!” I yelled, gesticulating wildly. “Why do you spend every freaking minute of your life trying to get me into bed? Do you know how creepy that is?”

He raised his hands defensively. “That was just a joke about going to your room—”

“Oh yeah? Well maybe it was just a joke, but look at my face and see how serious I am.
You showed up to bother me in my lecture!
What the hell is wrong with you?” He stared at me, eyes wide, silently opening and closing his jaw three times. “In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m
not
jumping into your arms!” I continued. “Not now. Not ever. What do I have to do to get you to leave me alone? Why won’t you give up? All you need to do is stroll through campus once and you’ll have ten girls’ phone numbers in no time.
So why are you stalking me?
Why won’t you just leave me alone?” My rage turned into pure incomprehension.

“I’m not even your type!” I yelled, and he cocked his head to the side. “What the hell is your problem?” I continued, and put my hands on my hips. “I asked you a question: Why won’t you leave me alone?”

He ran his hand through his hair and opened and closed his mouth like a fish. “I-I don’t know,” he stammered, looking around. Then a smile found its way onto his face. “I like stubborn cases?” he added.

I shook my head. “I don’t know why I even bothered asking,” I snorted, leaving him standing in the hallway.

I didn’t hear anything behind me at first, giving me hope I’d finally gotten through to him, but he caught up by the time I opened the door.

He followed as I scurried across the courtyard, my eyes fixed on the ground. I wished he would dissolve into thin air and vanish. But problems never do that, and this one was no exception. All I had left was the hope of quickly making it to my room, where I could slam the door in his face. Unfortunately, since I was too focused on the potential for future door slamming, I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings.

“Watch out!” Elyas called. As I raised my head, I felt something whack into my side with a loud rattle. The impact bowled me over. In the blink of an eye, I found myself on the ground feeling like something sharp had drilled through the palm of my hand. My knees were also throbbing, but the burning in my hand dominated everything.

Elyas dropped to his knees beside me and touched my shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

I looked into his wide eyes for a moment before trying to raise my head.
What happened?

“Does anything hurt?”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, scanning my surroundings until I noticed a guy staring at me in shock as he stood astride a bicycle whose front tire was bent out of shape.

I put my head back down and moaned. For Pete’s sake, why was this always happening to me?

I heard the guy flip down his kickstand and park his bike. “Oh my God,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Ma’am. I didn’t mean to—you just ran right in front of my bike. I’m so sorry!”

Elyas shot the guy a sharp look. “That’s not helping her right now.”

“B-but
. . . ,
” the bicyclist stammered. “I didn’t even have time to brake. It was totally an accident.”

“It’s fine,” I interjected. “It was my own fault.”

As more and more people started gawking, I grew increasingly embarrassed, so I tried to get up. Elyas put his hands under my back and supported me until I was sitting. I rolled my shoulders to get his arms off me and inspected my injured hand, which was full of splinters of glass. As if the rough landing wasn’t enough—with my special talent, I had
also
managed to land on the remains of a broken soda bottle.

“Let me take a look,” Elyas said, taking my hand gently into his. He examined it briefly. “Nothing looks very deep, but this is going to need to be irrigated well, in any case.” I nodded, squinting at the wound myself.

“Is there anything I can do?” the bicyclist asked.

“Yes, please steer around her next time,” Elyas said.

I glared at Elyas. “Stop being mean. It was my own fault. Actually, it was
yours
!”

“My fault?” he asked.

“Yes! If you hadn’t shown up in my lecture, then none of this would have happened.”

“No one told you to run away from me. Besides, that’s no reason to go picking fights with bicycles.”

I forced myself to endure the pain of getting up on my knees and standing because I was about to go ballistic on Elyas. When he tried to help me up, I snarled, “I can do it myself,” and pushed him away.

I finally got up onto my feet, still shaky, and took a deep breath.

“You have no idea how sorry I am, Ma’am,” the bicyclist said. “If there’s anything I can do for you, I’d be glad to help.”

“First, you can stop calling me ma’am—I’m not
that
old,” I said. “It’s not that bad. Really—don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine. It’s not even remotely your fault. Actually,
I
should be apologizing to you for stepping in front of you without looking. I’m sorry about that, and thankful I didn’t do that in front of a motorcycle or something.”

“B-but—” he started.

“Really,” I said, and he exhaled in relief and fell silent.

“Time for you to take your bike and move along. There were a couple of young women back there you missed running into, you were driving so fast. If you hurry, you can catch up and run them over, too.”

“Elyas!” I snapped. The exasperation on my face said it all. For once, he kept his mouth shut and let the bicyclist apologize twenty more times before wheeling his bike away.

“You should probably be on your way, too,” I said to Elyas.