Chapter 21 21
Harmony's POV
Seven days in my apartment had nearly broken me. I had done every assignment I could find, cleaned the kitchen twice, reorganized my bookshelf by subject and then by author, done everything else that one could do in a decrepit apartment.
Cooking had become its own particular misery without Quinn's pots, or spice rack that used to be on the counter. I had never once appreciated these things until it was gone. I had been surviving on microwave meals and takeout, spending money I didn't have on food I didn't particularly enjoy. The apartment had started to feel less and less like a home.
The only times I left were for food and for class, and even class had been an exercise in keeping my head down and my mouth shut, which did not come naturally to me.
I found the frat party flyer at the bottom of my bag on the last evening, crumpled from being shoved in there after someone pressed it into my hand outside the lecture building two days ago. Sigma Phi Alpha Mid-Semester Party, and the color code was white. The address was on the south side.
I had not given it a second thought when I first got it. But knowing that tomorrow I was going back to the clinic, I decided to go out and have at least one night of fun.
I found a white dress in my wardrobe, one of my best ones. It was armless, with a flared skirt that touched my mid-thigh. I had bought it on a whim two summers ago and worn it just once. I pulled it on, stood in front of the mirror and decided it wouls more than do. I put my hair up in a high ponytail, clipped two small white clips above my right ear, swiped on a nude lipstick and stepped into my white sneakers. Keys, phone, the lipstick, and then the flyer went into a white handbag.
I locked up and stood outside my door in the corridor, flyer in hand.
"Okay," I said to myself, turning it over. "South side. So that's the 55 bus, or possibly the 8, depending on which stop they mean. Get off at Halsted and walk two blocks." I paused. "Or is it three blocks? It's probably three."
It was two blocks, as it turned out, and I found the house by following the loud music that had been audible from the bus stop.
I stood on the pavement outside and looked at it. Every window was bright with flash red and blue lights. The front yard was packed with people in white, and it felt like I could feel the music in my back teeth.
Someone had strung even more lights across the porch that flashed in no particular rhythm. Two girls were sitting on the porch railing sharing a drink, and a guy was doing something with his arms on the front lawn that I think was supposed to be dancing.
With a sinking feeling in my chest, I started to reconsider going into that house. But I had taken two buses and walked three blocks just to be here. I might as well go in and gave a bit of fun.
"Here we go," I sighed, walking up the front steps.
Inside was worse. The first room I entered was packed to the very walls. The air was uncomfortably warm, and everywhere smelled like a combination of cologne and spilled drinks.
As the dress code instructed, everyone was in white, a whole sea of people moving, laughing and shouting over the music at each other. Someone had turned the living room into a dance floor. When I wandered into the kitchen, I saw that it had three different drink stations set up along the counter, and people were crowded around all of them.
I made my way to the nearest table, poured myself a safe cup of Coke from a two-litre bottle that someone had thoughtfully included among the alcohol. Then I found a spot near the wall where I could stand without being jostled every thirty seconds.
I tried to gaslight myself into believing that this was fine. I was having fun, college-student fun.
I sipped my Coke and watched the room, and that was when I noticed someone odd. Or I noticed his hoodie first, technically, because it was the only thing in the entire room that wasn't white.
The hoodie was dark grey, with a black smiley face printed on the front, standing out against the sea of white like a smudge on a clean page. Whoever it was had planted themselves in the far corner. Hadn't he read the flyer, or did he simply not care?
I was curious about the person. I kept looking, trying to decide if I should walk over, when another guy appeared beside the hoodie person and handed them a drink. I recognized him immediately from his dark hair and his easy grin: it was the same guy who had walked in on me and Roman Foster that day in the clinic room.
All of a sudden, it clicked to me. I glanced back at the guy in the hoodie, and Roman Foster looked back at me.
What the hell was he doing here? What about his knee?
For an agonizing second, we held eye contact, then I looked away hurriedly and started scanning the room for any viable exit route. There were none. The place was packed wall to wall and the only way out was through the crowd, which would take time that I clearly didn't have.
Because when I turned back to look at him, Roman was no longer in his corner. He was right beside me.
"FUCK!" I startled so badly that my cup tipped and Coke splashed down the front of my white dress in a cold, dark stripe.
"Oh, for the love of God!" I looked down at the stain spreading across the fabric, then up at Roman, who was standing there on his slightly uneven stance.hands in his hoodie pocket. "This is YOUR fault!"
"But I didn't touch your cup," he pointed out.
"No, bou appeared out of nowhere and scared me half to death!" I snapped, looking back down at my dress. "This is almost brand new!"
"Here." He pulled a small face towel from his hoodie pocket and held it out.
I snatched it angrily and pressed it against the stain, blotting hard. "Why do you even have a face towel in your pocket?"
"I always have one. You're welcome, by the way."
"I didn't say thank you."
"No, you didn't, very ungrateful." He looked at the dress. "And dor what it's worth, you look really good in white."
I kept blotting my dress to hide my blush. "Oh, shut up."
He looked around the room, then back at me with raised eyebrows. "Hold on, hold ob. Are you actually at a frat party right now? You? Here?"
"Clearly." I gave him a once-over of my own. "You shouldn't be here, either. How's your knee?"
"It's okay, though there's a limp." He explained. "I don't want to admit this, but the private nurse my mom got is actually helping.
"Yeah, I can see." I said. "And what about your Mom? Is she um... still giving you a hard time?"
I wasn't even sure why I asked that. What did I care?
"And you're drinking Coke," he added, nodding at my now half-empty, slightly ruined red plastic cup.
"I like Coke." I rolled my eyes.
"This is a party with four open bars." Roman pointed out. "There's probably more booze in here than most regular bars."
"I don't drink alcohol." I replied, which wasn't entirely true.
Roman stared down at me as I handed him his face towel, and the corner of his mouth pulled up.
"Also," he added, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his own phone to check something, then looking pointedly at the phone in my hand, "is that the phone I got for you?"
I looked down at the phone in my hand, and for some reason, I felt ashamed. "Uh, yeah."
"Hmm. I remember you told me you absolutely did not want it, and you were going to return it first chance you got."
"I tried to give it back. You had already left the clinic by the time I got there!"
"So, you kept it."
"Because my old one was falling apart and I had no other option, not because I wanted anything from you." I straightened up. "Please, don't read into it."
"I'm not reading into anything," he replied, but he was still looking at me with that piercing look that made me want to look somewhere else. I knew what was going through his mind was the same as mine: our kiss. Our mind-blowing, arousing kiss that I desperately wanted to recreate.
"I'm just glad it's useful." He finally added. "And you could have said thank you."
I finished the last of my Coke, set the cup down on the table behind me and turned back to face him.
"Thank you." I replied. "And I'm going to dance."