“Familiar how?” he questions with intrigue. “Because I don’t remember you at all and you don’t look familiar. I’m pretty sure I’d remember you with that weird eye color of yours.”
Irritated beyond belief, I shrug. “I’m not sure. There’s just something about your face… like I saw it in a dream.”
His eyes flicker to my lips and then a condescending look masks his face. “In your dreams?”
“Yeah, you know, things that you see when you shut your eyes at night,” I say cynically, still infuriated that he’s taken a jab at my eye color.
He rolls his eyes. “I know what dreams are, but what you’re saying sounds an awful lot like a pick up line a guy would use on a girl.”
I reach for my coffee cup balanced on the bench beside me. “I’m not coming on to you.”
“Sure you’re not,” he says smugly. “Just like you weren’t when you felt me up in the doorway.”
“I’m not now and I wasn’t then. I was just…” My temper shoots heat through my body that is almost as intense as the electric feeling. If he keeps it up, I’m probably going to explode and do God knows what. I haven’t yet reached that level of emotion, the kind where you lose control to the point that you do and say things that you regret. “You just look familiar to me. That’s all.”
“And you look like a love sick girl. Sorry to break it to you, but you’re not my type so you might as well get it out of your head that anything will ever happen between us.”
“You don’t know who I am or how I feel, so don’t make assumptions.”
Discounting me, he gets to his feet and dusts the snow off the back of his jeans as my jaw practically hits the snow on the ground. “See you in class Jenna.” He struts off across the campus yard with arrogance exuding from him.
“It’s Gemma!” I shout, like it actually matters to him.
He glances back with a smug smile on his lips and I wonder if he’s intentionally been trying to burrow his way underneath my skin. If so, it’s working. I jump to my feet and trample through the snow back to the car, my skin simmering against the wind. I’m not sure what I’m more furious about. That he called me a lovesick girl. Or, that he said he isn’t interested.
The only thing I do know is that I’ve never been this livid in my entire life.
***
On Friday, I have a study date with Alex and Aislin in the library so we can put the project together. I’ve seen a lot of them over the last few days. In fact, they seem to pop up everywhere. Aislin is polite and Alex is… well, I’m not sure if there’s a word for what he is. One minute he’s fine—quiet, in his own little world—and the next he’s making a smartass remark about me; from the color of my eyes, to my lustful fascination with him (his words, not mine). He is one of the most contradictory people I’ve ever met and that is saying a lot since I can barely contain my own, newly present, emotions.
When I show up to the library, they’re sitting at a table in the far back corner. Alex is messing with a compass and has a contemplative look on his face as he twists the knob on the top. Aislin sits next to him and is engulfed with whatever is on the screen of her phone.
“Hi, Mrs. Bakerly.” I wave at the elderly librarian behind the counter. I work part-time at the library, which is a nice job, since I love books, especially science-fiction novels. Give me a story with a witch, vampire, faerie, or anything that isn’t human and I am good to go.
She pushes her finger against the brim of her nose and nudges her overly large glasses up. Then she raises her hand to reciprocate my wave and looks back to the computer screen.
I drop down in the seat across from Alex and Aislin and let my bag fall to the floor. The wind has been blowing outside and my cheeks are anesthetized from the cold. I unwind my scarf from my neck and slip off my gloves, aware that Alex is watching me attentively.
“Am I particularly fascinating today?” I glance up at him with my lips pressed together.
He’s wearing another long sleeve grey Henley that shows the outline of his muscular arms and his hair is disheveled like it always is. I’ve learned over the last few days that it’s his trademark look and it is a nice one, but I always have the compulsion to run my fingers through it. He sets the gold-plated compass down on the table and for the briefest second it looks like it’s orbed by a golden light, but by the time I blink, it’s gone.
He folds his arms and leans over with a displeased expression, but amusement dances in his eyes. “Not really. Only that you have a candy wrapper stuck in your hair. How about you? Anything particularly fascinating about me today?”
“Nope.” I comb my fingers through my hair until I find the plastic wrapper. Balling it up, I stuff it into my pocket, and then drape my coat over the back of my chair.
“Yeah, right.” He smirks. “In fact, you look a little flushed by my presence.”
Just keep calm. Keep calm. “That’s from the cold outside.” I cup my hands onto my iced cheeks to defrost them.
“Sure it is.” He enjoys this—getting under my skin.
“Oh my God.” Aislin gasps. “Gemma, you’re frozen.”
“I got about halfway here and then had to go back to the car because I forgot my phone,” I explain, rubbing my hands together to thaw them. “I think it’s only like two degrees outside.”
Alex measures me up with his head cocked to the side. “You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago.”
“I drive slow when it’s snowing.” I reach inside my pocket to silence an incoming call as my phone begins to ring. “I don’t have four-wheel drive.”
He glances over his shoulder at the window where snowflakes flutter down from the clouded sky. “It’s not that bad out there.”
“It’s completely bad,” I retort, irritated that he’s wiggling his way under my skin again. It’s as if I have no power over my emotions when it comes to him and I’ve only known him for a week. How will things progress the longer I know him? “I could barely see.”
He scrutinizes me. “Then maybe, you should have stayed home.”
“I would love to have stayed home,” I quip. “In the warmth, reading a good book, but you guys insisted we had to do this here.”
His gaze bores into me as he nibbles on his lip. Last night, in my dreams, I’d bitten on that lip several times, along with the blonde stranger’s. “Actually, that was Aislin who insisted. I was perfectly content at the idea of everyone working on this on their own and that way we wouldn’t have to see each other.”
My lungs are twitching to release the scream building up inside them. “Are you always this much of an a**hole or do you just save it for me?”
He leans over the table more and our lips are so close they almost touch. His breath is hot against my skin and there is a challenge in his green eyes, as if he’s daring me to argue with him. “I save all of it just for you.”
Aislin snaps her cell phone shut. “Okay, I hate to break up your little moment, but I have to go.” She collects her coat and purse off the back of her chair as she stands up. “There’s an emergency at the… restaurant where I work and I need to go in.”
“What kind of emergency?” Alex questions as he slumps back in his chair.
“I don’t know.” She shrugs and slips her arms through the sleeves of a fur-trimmed coat. She flips her hair out from beneath the collar and hitches the handle of her purse over her shoulder. “I just got a text saying that they need me to come in as soon as possible.”
Alex looks unconvinced. “Bullshit. You’re bailing so you can go out with that dude you met last week.”
Aislin points her finger at him. “Be nice while I’m gone. I mean it. And get some stuff done. You’ve been slacking and letting Gemma and I pick up your workload.” She waves at me. “See you later, Gemma.”
I give her a small wave as she walks toward the exit, pressing buttons on her phone. Alex and I watch her until she disappears out the doors.
When he looks at me again, he seems nervous. His posture’s stiff and he keeps fidgeting with his sleeves; pushing them up and then tugging them back down. “So, I guess it’s just you and me.”
“I guess so,” I mutter as electricity caresses my skin.
Silence stacks around us and I begin to fidget. Each tick of the clock, thump of a book being put on the shelf and each whisper only add to the awkwardness.
Alex begins tapping his pen on the table as if he thinks he’s a drummer. He’s eyeballing the corner of the library where a tall, blond girl, wearing a short skirt is browsing through a row of books. As she bends over to search the bottom shelf, Alex slants his head to the side to get a better view of her ass.
So that’s his type.
The longer I contemplate her being Alex’s type, the more infuriated I grow. The cause behind the manifestation of these feelings is unknown, which makes the situation that much more frustrating. Every time he taps that damn pen, the potency of the sparks surges. They no longer feel like soft kisses, but like little bites from a thousand gnats.
“Can you cut the tapping out?” I ask him, releasing my death grip from the chair. I put my elbows on the desk and press my fingertips to my temples. “It’s hurting my head.”
He tears his gaze away from the blond and the corners of his lips quirk. “Probably not. In fact, it’s very important that I don’t.”
I slouch back in my chair and blow out a frustrated breath. “Why are you such an a**hole to me? Did I do something to you that I don’t know about, besides touching you without permission?”
“Kind of.”
“Can you tell me what, then? So I won’t do it again.”
“Nah, I’d rather not.”
I pierce my fingernails into my palms as the prickle jabs at my neck and blots my vision with red. “Why not?”