Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

slung his bag over his impossibly broad shoulder, and began to walk away.
    He was twenty feet away before I could even think again. Without thought, without regard for consequences, I shouted as loud as I could, “You can’t do that! That’s breaking the first rule! Do you hear me, Dylan?”
    I was attracting stares. He waved over his shoulder and kept walking.
    Bastard.
    I gathered my bag and turned to go in the other direction, back to the dorm. Oh God, I was a mess. I was a mess because of his impossibly blue eyes, because of how his arms and chest had become… so developed. He smelled the same as always, and being around him was impossible. Sometimes when he was close to me I couldn’t even breathe. How in hell was I supposed to stay detached and professional when he set off every single nerve in my body?
    Why did he have to say that?
    I still remembered. I remembered him asking me on the plane a million years ago, during our questions and answers game, “ Why do you smell like strawberries?”
    Damn it.
    It’s not like we even really knew each other. I was a different person in Israel. Free. At home, and here in college, I was … well, I was kind of a bitch. I focused, one hundred percent, on my studies, on success. I was driven. I didn’t have room for the crazy sensations and emotions I’d experienced during our trip.
    As I walked, I remembered. His smell. His touch.
    Three days after we arrived in Israel, we’d gone to our first set of host families, in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Somehow, because of a stupid mixup, I ended up being the only female student assigned to a male host. Ariel was nothing but a giant ball of hormones and glands, a hyper-masculine dickhead who was absolutely certain he was going to sleep with me some time during my ten-day stay in his home. By the end of the second day I was exhausted from fending off his advances, and went to our advisor. She got me placed with a different family, thank God. That night, our host families held a party for all of us.
    I remember watching Dylan at the party. All of the kids were drinking. Some, like me, kept it to a minimum, but some, like Rami, the host of the party, were really packing it away.
    Everyone except Dylan. He spent the night nursing a coke and relaxing in a corner. At one point he took out his guitar and played some songs, and had several of the drunken students singing along with him. I watched, and smiled, thinking to myself how beautiful his eyes were. When he played the guitar, his face went through exaggerated facial expressions, his lips pursing sometimes, his eyes closing. He kept looking at me.
    Later that night, he approached me and asked, “Can we talk for a minute?”
    I shifted a little. Oh. God. What was this? Was he going to ask me out? I wanted him to. So badly. We went to Rami’s room in the back of the apartment and sat next to each other on the bed.
    “Listen,” he said. “I know we’re only here for a few weeks. And that’s it. Nothing could ever work between us. But… I’m really, really attracted to you. And I’d like to know if you feel the same.”
    I was drawing in low, shallow breaths. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Finally, I nodded, quickly. “Yes. I do,” I replied.
    “Maybe… maybe we can just see what happens then?”
    I smiled. “Okay,” I said.
    The last two years would have been a lot less painful if I’d just told him, then and there, to go to hell. But maybe I was a little book-smart and not enough life-smart, because I fell for him. I fell off a cliff. And I still haven’t recovered.
    Two hours after Dylan walked away from me oh-so-casually at the coffee shop, Kelly gasped when I told her what he’d said.
    “He said what?”
    I sighed. “He told me he wanted to change my shampoo. Because the smell of strawberries was breaking his heart.”
    She looked at me, her eyes wide, and said, “That’s so romantic.”
    “Oh God, Kelly, that’s no help at all!”
    She nodded. “I know.”
    “I thought you hated him.”
    “Only because he hurt you. But it’s obvious you still have a huge thing for this guy. Maybe you should just jump his bones and get it out of your system.”
    “That is enough! The only thing I’m going to do with him is survive the year working for Forrester. He hurt me, Kelly. Worse than I could have imagined possible.”
    “I know,” she said, quietly. “But maybe there’s more to the story than you know. I mean… I’m just saying,