Easy

cross. And then you didn’t show up the day of the midterm—or the next, or the next. I worried that something had happened to you. He was kind of reserved the first couple of days. By the end of the week, girls were flirting with him before class, and the way he responded told me what had happened.
    “I was sure you’d dropped the class, which made me selfishly ecstatic. Without even knowing I was doing it, I started looking for you on campus.” He stared into my eyes and lowered his voice even further. “And then, the Halloween party.”
    I couldn’t breathe. “You were there? At the party?”
    He nodded.
    “How? You aren’t Greek, are you?”
    He shook his head. “I’d fixed the house’s A/C the night before. Maintenance doesn’t do non-emergency stuff on evenings or weekends, but I’m contract labor, so I agreed to do it. When I wouldn’t take a tip, a couple of the guys invited me to the party. I only said yes because I was hoping you might be there. It had been two weeks, and this campus is so huge I was starting to think I’d never run into you.” He chuckled softly and rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “Wow, that sounds total stalker.”
    Or totally hot. God . “Why didn’t you talk to me that night? Before…”
    He shook his head. “You were so withdrawn and miserable. Almost every guy who approached you was rejected without a second glance. There was no way I was going to become one of them. You danced with a handful of guys you already knew—and he was one of those.”
    “Buck.”
    “Yes. When you left, he followed, and I thought maybe… maybe you two had decided to leave early together, without everyone knowing. Meet outside or something.”
    I watched a trio of my classmates enter the building. “He’s my roommate’s boyfriend’s best friend. Well, her ex’s best friend, now. He was a known entity. A friend, I thought. Boy, was I wrong.”
    He nodded, frowning. “I was about to leave—my bike was parked out front. Something didn’t feel right, but I was struggling with the same desire to take him out that I’d felt for half the semester with your boyfriend, so I questioned my own motives. I lost a minute arguing with myself, and I’m sorry about that. I finally decided if you two were hooking up, I’d just go around front, rev up the Harley, and be done with it. With you.”
    “But that’s not what happened.”
    “No.”
    Suddenly aware of the lack of people bustling around us, I pulled out my phone. It was two minutes past ten. “Crap. I’m late.”
    “Uh-oh. Isn’t this the professor who makes an example of you if you’re late?”
    Impressive. “You remembered.” Groaning, I pushed my phone into my bag. “I sorta feel like skipping now.”
    His mouth turned up on one side. “What kind of university employee would I be, to encourage you to skip class the last week of the semester?”
    “We’re just reviewing. I have an A. I don’t really need the review.”
    We stared at each other.
    I angled my head and looked directly into his clear eyes. “You don’t have a class?”
    “Not until eleven.” Not for the first time, the feel of his gaze drifting over my face was like a soft breeze, or the lightest possible touch. He stopped on my mouth.
    Lips parted, my breathing slowed as my heart rate sped. “You never did sketch me again.”
    His eyes darted to mine, but he didn’t answer, so I thought maybe he didn’t remember his texted request.
    “You said you were having a hard time doing it from memory. My jaw. My neck…”
    He nodded. “And your lips. I said I needed more time staring at them and less time tasting them.”
    I nodded. Good God, what did he not remember?
    “A very foolish thing for me to say, I think.” He was staring at my mouth again.
    My lips tingled from his focused perusal. I wanted to rub my fingers across them. Or graze them with my teeth to stop the tickling sensation. When I wet them with my tongue, he sucked in a breath. “Coffee. Let’s go get coffee.”
    I nodded, and without another word, we walked toward the student center, the busiest place on campus at this time of day.
    “So you wear glasses, huh?” We’d been sitting at a tiny table, sipping our coffees and enduring a decidedly uncomfortable silence, so I’d blurted the first viable thing that entered my brain.
    “Um. Yeah.”
    Great. I’d just brought up that night . But shouldn’t I bring up that night? Shouldn’t we talk about it? Shouldn’t I