Walking Disaster

virgin?
    I laughed. A virgin in college was unheard of these days.
    A tube of toothpaste and her toothbrush, and a small tub of some sort of face cream was packed, too, so I took them with me down the hall, grabbing a clean towel from the hall linen closet on
the way.
    I knocked once, but she didn’t answer, so I just walked in. She was behind the curtain, anyway, and she didn’t have anything I hadn’t seen before.
    “Mare?”
    “No, it’s me,” I said, setting her stuff on the counter beside the sink.
    “What are you doing in here? Get out!” she squealed.
    I laughed once. What a baby. “You forgot a towel, and I brought your clothes, and your toothbrush, and some weird face cream I found in your bag.”
    “You went through my stuff?” Her voice went up an octave.
    The sudden laughter caught in my throat and I choked it back. I brought in Prudezilla’s things to be a nice guy, and she was freaking out. Not like I was going to find anything interesting
in her bag, anyway. She was about as naughty as a Sunday school teacher.
    I squeezed some of her toothpaste onto my toothbrush and turned on the faucet.
    Abby was strangely quiet until her forehead and eyes popped out from behind the curtain. I tried to ignore her, feeling her eyes burning a hole in the back of my head.
    Her irritation was a mystery. To me, the whole scenario was oddly relaxing. That thought caused me to pause; domesticity was not something I thought I’d enjoy.
    “Get out, Travis,” she growled.
    “I can’t go to bed without brushing my teeth.”
    “If you come within two feet of this curtain, I will poke out your eyes while you sleep.”
    “I won’t peek, Pidge.” Actually, the thought of her leaning over me, even with a knife in her hand, was kind of hot. More the leaning over part than the knife.
    I finished brushing my teeth and then made my way to the bedroom, smiling the whole way. Within minutes the pipes silenced, but it took forever for her to come out.
    Impatient, I poked my head through the bathroom door. “C’mon, Pidge! I’m gettin’ old, here!” Her appearance surprised me. I’d seen her without makeup on
before, but her skin was pink and shiny, and her long, wet hair was slicked back away from her face. I couldn’t help but stare.
    Abby reared back her arm and chucked her comb at me. I ducked, and then shut the door, chuckling all the way down the hall.
    I could hear her small feet padding down the hall to my room, and my heart began to pound in my chest.
    “Night, Abby,” America called from Shepley’s room.
    “Night, Mare.”
    I had to laugh. Nightmare was right. Shepley’s girlfriend had introduced me to my very own form of crack. I couldn’t get enough, and I didn’t want to quit. Even though I
couldn’t call it anything but an addiction, I didn’t dare sample even a crumb. I only kept her close, feeling better just knowing she was around. There was no hope for me.
    Two small knocks brought me back to reality.
    “Come in, Pidge. You don’t have to knock.”
    Abby slipped in, her hair dark and damp, in a gray T-shirt and plaid boxer shorts. Wide eyes wandered about the room as she decided different things about me based on the bareness of my walls.
It was the first time a woman had been in there. That moment wasn’t something I had thought about, but Abby changing the way the room felt was not something I expected.
    Before, it was just where I slept. A place where I’d never spent much time at all. Abby’s presence made the white, clutter-less walls obvious, to the point where I felt a lesser
version of embarrassment. Abby being in my room made it feel like home, and the emptiness no longer seemed right.
    “Nice pj’s,” I said finally, sitting on the bed. “Well, come on. I’m not going to bite you.”
    Her chin lowered and she raised her brows. “I’m not afraid of you.” Her biology book landed beside me with a
thud,
and then she stopped. “Do you have a
pen?”
    I nodded to the night table. “Top drawer.” The second I said the words, my blood turned cold. She was going to find my stash. I readied myself for the impending death match that
would quickly follow.
    She put one knee on the bed and reached over, pulling open the drawer and fishing around until her hand lurched back. In the next second, she grabbed the pen and then slammed the drawer
shut.
    “What?” I asked, pretending to scan over the words in the biology book.
    “Did you rob the health clinic?”
    How