A Song for Julia

lot?”
    “I’ve got a guest pass in my car.”
    He nodded. “All right.”
    Very slowly, he turned into the lot. I could feel the car sliding again as he took the turn, but the wheels got a grip again, and we surged forward, into another slide.
    “Crap,” he muttered.
    “Stop,” I said.
    “Trying!” he said, his voice raised.
    “Stop!” I yelled.
    The car just kept going, sliding forward, the tail end of my car looming in front of us, bigger and bigger, a slow-motion slide.
    He yanked the wheel over to the side, trying to divert us, but it was too late. With a sickening crash that lurched us both forward against our seatbelts, he crashed into the rear end of my car.
    We stopped.
    I slumped back in my seat and closed my eyes. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.
    “I can’t look,” I said.
    “It’s bad,” he replied.
    “We’re still alive,” I said hopefully.
    I opened one eye. The back of my car and the front of Crank’s were hopelessly crumpled. Steam was rising in a great cloud from the front of his car. Radiator must have ruptured.
    “Oh, God,” I said.
    “You know,” he said, just a little bit of mischief in his voice. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
    I broke into laughter. Hysterical laughter, actually. With tears running down my cheeks. He grinned, apparently happy that I wasn’t screaming at him.
    We both opened our doors at the same time, and a blast of cold air hit me, freezing the tears onto my cheeks instantly. The temperature had dropped a lot since we’d left the beach. My laughter evaporated, and my heart sank, as I looked at the extent of the damage. The entire back end of my car was … crushed. The front of Crank’s was only marginally better.
    “That’s not good,” he said.
    “I guess I deserve it for wrecking your other car.”
    He snickered.
    “Stop laughing, it’s not funny,” I said. But his face was so bemused, that I couldn’t help but laugh myself. “Oh, God,” I said, groaning. “My parents are going to kill me.”
    For some reason, he thought that was even funnier, and he leaned on his car and let out a giant belly laugh. After a few moments, he got himself together. “Should we call anyone?”
    I shook my head. “Leave it … you’re not blocking the other spots. We’ll sort it out tomorrow. It’s too late, and wet and cold right now.”
    He nodded. “All right,” he said. “I guess I’d better get over to the T.”
    Impulsively, I said, “Come on. Not in this. I’m in Cabot Hall, right over there.”
    “Won’t you get in trouble having a guy in your room?”
    “Not really. Not that anyone would notice, anyway.”
    He shrugged, and we trudged through the snow toward Cabot. He stopped for a minute, turning away from the wind and cupping his hand at his mouth to shield his lighter from the wind and light a cigarette. Then he turned his face up toward the snow and ice, a grin on his face. “I love storms,” he said.
    “Come on,” I said. “I’m freezing. And … to be clear … this is not an invitation.”
    He grinned and said, “It sounded like you were asking me up to your room.”
    “I am. But I’m not … damn it.”
    He laughed. “I’ll be nice.”
    “Seriously.”
    He nodded. “I get it, all right? No touching, kissing, groping, snogging, shagging. None of it.”
    He was ridiculous.
    The Quad was covered in snow, and scattered with students playing and having snowball fights. It was getting late, but not late enough to put them to bed yet. I narrowly avoided a flying snowball.
    “Looks like fun,” Crank said, eyeing me.
    I shook my head. “I don’t like snow, I told you that.”
    He gave a dramatic sigh, and we kept walking toward the front steps, finally stopping at the door and kicking the snow off our feet. My feet felt like blocks of ice inside my boots, and I couldn’t stop shivering.
    “Raw out there,” he said.
    I nodded, still trying to get some blood circulation back into my feet. I scanned the large ground floor common room. There were a few students in here, people I knew, but not well. “Come on,” I said, leading him across the hall to the stairs. It’s not that I didn’t want people to see us going upstairs together.
    Okay, that’s not true. I didn’t want people to see us going upstairs together. I didn’t want to be the object of gossip or discussion. My life was nobody’s business. If I wanted to take Crank onto the roof and give him a blow job in the snow, that was my