Faster We Burn

want you to touch me.” She let me have my wrist back and I moved farther from her as she crossed her arms over her chest.
    “Do you want me to go?” I said.
    “Yes.” I sighed and sat up so I could climb over her, but she put her hand on my shoulder. “No.”
    “Which is it? Yes or no?”
    She took a shaky breath and stared at the ceiling again. As if she didn’t want to look at me anymore now that it was over. A tear slid down her cheek, followed by another. She tried to wipe them away so I wouldn’t see, but I did. It wasn’t the first time a girl had cried after sex with me, but this time hit me like a truck.
    “Hey,” I said reaching down to wipe one for her, but she moved her face. Fine. I tried to go again, but I couldn’t leave a crying girl. I pulled my boxers and pants back up, found a blanket on the end of the bed and covered her with it.
    “I’m sorry I called you an idiot. Even though you were being one,” I said. I knew that wasn’t the reason she was crying, but I still felt like a dick for adding insult to injury.
    “I’m not crying because you called me an idiot,” she said between sobs. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
    I grabbed a tissue from a box that was covered in fuzzy pink material. “Yeah, you do.”
    “Shut up,” she said, blowing her nose. “You’ve fucked me, now you can go. I just wanted to get laid, I didn’t want to have a heart-to-heart with a guy I don’t even know or like.”
    “Fine. If that’s what you want.” I pulled my pants up, climbed over her and found my shirt. I’d never even taken my shoes off.
    She sobbed again, but she’d asked me to leave and that was what I was going to do. You fuck a girl and she asks you to leave, you get your ass out the door.
    I looked back once at Katie curled up under the blanket, holding onto herself as if she was going to break apart. Her wide, wet eyes found mine and begged.
    “Just. Go.”
    I nodded and shut the door behind me as she tried to cry quietly. I fished in my pockets and found a receipt from the gas station. There was a little board on Katie’s door with a marker to leave messages for Lottie and vice versa. I scrawled my cell phone number and the words call me if you need anything on the receipt and shoved it under her door.
    I’d probably never hear from her, but I did it anyway. Call it one lost cause reaching out to another.

 
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
    Katie
     
    After Stryker left, I got myself up and dressed and to the shower. Trish and Audrey were coming over to babysit me and I would rather have burned the dorm down than tell them that I’d had sex with Stryker, or that I’d had a meltdown and cried afterwards.
    I cleaned up the evidence of our escapade, changed the sheets and sprayed the room with vanilla cinnamon room spray to get rid of his scent. He smelled like…something clean but spicy with hints of cigarettes and gasoline.
    My skin tingled as if it were remembering his touch. I shouldn’t have done that, but sometimes I made bad life decisions. Sleeping with Stryker was one of those on a looonnnngggg list. I found the receipt with his number on it that he’d shoved under the door. If I was going to call someone to talk about my feelings, it wasn’t going to be him. Still, I put the piece of paper in my desk drawer instead of throwing it away.
    I berated myself the entire time I showered and cleaned, so by the time Audrey and Trish showed up with movies and ice cream I had already lectured myself a hundred times.
    “You guys don’t have to stay with me, you know,” I said as Trish handed me a pint of Cherry Garcia and Audrey slipped off her shoes before flopping on my bed.
    “We’re not babysitting you. We’re concerned friends who want to hang out with you,” Audrey said, arranging some of the pillows. Stryker had thrown all of them on the floor when…
    “You okay?” Trish said as she popped in Bridesmaids . I knew my face was red, so I stared into the ice cream container to try to hide it as I sat next to Audrey.
    “Yeah, fine.” Trish looked at me suspiciously, but Audrey started tossing pillows at her so she could make a little couch of them on the floor.
    I didn’t pay attention to the movies and just laughed when Trish and Audrey did. My mind was occupied with remembering what I’d done with Stryker and trying to forget it at the same time.
    It didn’t matter how good it was, or how right it had felt at the time. It had been a bad idea that I’d