“This might be an issue,” Locke said as we looked down at his motorcycle where he had last parked it in a parking garage. “We can’t very well carry your things while on a motorcycle, can we?”
He was decked out in his leather motor jacket again, yet underneath he dressed plainly in a t-shirt and jeans. His hands were in his front pockets as we stood in front of his only mode of transportation, realizing that this wasn’t going to work.
Meanwhile, I had my fingers laced in the now clean belt loops of my jeans, trying to occupy them so they wouldn’t reach out to touch him. To feel if the muscles I had felt at my back last night were as hard and sculpted as I thought they were.
“Any ideas?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me. I was quiet, which was probably making him suspicious. My face flushed a little and I felt like an innocent teenager with a petty, meaningless crush, but it didn’t make the facts any easier to swallow.
“Uh, no,” my voice cracked, and I forced myself to look away from him and look at the sleek, black motorcycle in front of us. “Oh, actually,” I started, glancing at him. “My roommate, Liz. She has a car. I can ask her if I can use it today. She should say yes, after all, she was the one who kicked me out.”
“She has a right to get some peace and quiet,” Locke answered, swinging one long, lean leg over the motorcycle to straddle it. He thrust a key into the ignition, and the large hunk of terrifying metal roared to life with a couple of sputters and then a smooth purr. “What are you waiting for, Rowan? Get on.”
“W-what?” I asked, clutching my hands around my hips tightly, not wanting to get on the death machine. “I’m not getting on that thing.”
“Why not?” Locke asked, shifting his body to face me while straddling his only mode of transportation. “I can assure you I’m a safe driver,” he whispered, reaching out a hand to me.
My hands stayed glued to my sides, not willing to risk my life. “I’d rather walk, to be honest.”
Locke sighed and looked down at the machine in front of him. “I swear, I won’t let anything happen to you, Rowan.”
“Where did you get this thing anyway?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him, even though he wouldn’t lift his head to look at my face. Locke didn’t seem like the guy who would save up to buy a motorcycle. He was more the type to buy something with good gas mileage and something safe… like a Prius.
“Just get on, Rowan. Please.”
“I won’t get on until you tell me,” I said firmly, and if my hands weren’t already on my hips, they’d be positioned there now to get my point across.
“Please, Rowan. I swear, it’s safe. I even have an extra helmet,” he said, offering a red helmet to me. “Since you’ll be riding back with your stuff, and Liz would be insane to let you drive alone, I’ll be forced to come back here myself. I don’t want to walk. And I don’t want you to walk alone by yourself back to your dorm.”
“I walked here last night, and I arrived safe and sound,” I retorted.
“It was my brother’s,” Locke finally said after a small period of silence. “The motorcycle was my brother’s.”
“Why do you—“ I started, but he cut me off.
“Please. Don’t ask, Rowan.” His face lifted to look me in the eye, and I saw nothing but pain in the swirling brown pools of his eyes. “Just get on. Please.”
“Okay,” I whispered, stepping closer and swinging my leg over the machine so I was not only straddling it, but I was also straddling Locke’s backside. “You promise to be careful?”
“I’m always careful,” he answered, having to raise his voice over the sound of the engine. “Put on the helmet.”
“I thought you were going to be careful?” I asked, yet grabbing the helmet and putting it on anyway, just as Locke did with his black helmet.
“I have a feeling you would have gotten off if you didn’t leave with one on your head,” he answered, placing his hands on the handlebars. “Now put your arms around my waist,” he commanded, and I immediately obeyed.
I shamefully took the opportunity to feel his muscles between the fabric of his thin t-shirt. They were just as hard and defined as I had imagined them to be. His entire body radiated heat, warming my chilled body with his own. His hard, broad torso pressed against mine, and I relished in the feel of him against me. His chest rumbled as he spoke one last time. “Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I called out to him, so he could hear me over the rumble of the engine and through his helmet.
I could tell he heard me, because in less than five seconds, he started moving, and I let out a piercing scream in fright as we zipped through the streets.
“You’re fine,” he said as we stopped at one of the stoplights. “I’m driving below the speed limit, just for your sake. But there’s a huge problem here,” he raised his voice so I could hear him. “I don’t know how to get to your dorm.”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU ASK BEFORE WE GOT ON THE MOTORCYCLE???” I screamed as we shot off again when the light turned green.
“I WASN’T THINKING!” he shouted as we continued making our way through the streets of Malibu. “I’M JUST HEADING TOWARD THE UNIVERSITY!”
“TAKE A LEFT!”
“LEFT?”
“LEFT!!” I screamed, clutching him so tightly so that I wouldn’t fall off. I knew that Locke wouldn’t endanger me, and I knew he probably was going below the speed limit, but that didn’t make me feel any better when we were moving that fast and there wasn’t a big metal cage surrounding us to protect us.
I continued to scream at him, yelling the directions at him, and miraculously, we made it to my dorm room in less than fifteen minutes.
“Were you scared?” he asked, helping me take off my helmet. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that we were moving as fast as other cars, but we had much less protection than they did,” I answered, referring to the safety a car provides compared to the open space of a motorcycle.
“I’m sorry you were so frightened,” Locke said solemnly. “I won’t ask you to ride with me again.”
And just like that, his sad, lonely face made me feel guilty, even though I would have wanted to ride with him again anyway. “Actually, somehow, along the way…” I started, wondering if it would really be smart to admit it, “I kind of enjoyed it.”
Locke’s face lit up, and his lips stretched out into a wide grin. “Really? I knew you would.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, “Egotistical much?”
“Fine, I didn’t know that you would, but I had a feeling you would like it.”
“Much better,” I answered as we walked through the dormitory and arrived at my own dorm. I twisted the door open with the key, and let ourselves in. “Liz?” I asked, checking the time. Usually at this time, she would be catching up on papers that would be due in the oncoming weeks. “Liz are you here?”
“Rowan?” I heard Liz ask sleepily from her room as the door creaked open. She stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes. “No offense, but what are you doing here?”
“We came to pick up my things,” I answered, moving towards my room.
“We?” she asked, removing her hands from her eyes and finally noticing that I hadn’t come alone. “Oh. Oh my,” she whispered, her eyes widening as she took him in. “H-Hello,” she stuttered, stiffly holding out a hand in Locke’s direction.
I could tell that Locke was trying not to grin as he returned her handshake, but evidently failed because Liz’s face turned beet red. She blatantly looked down at herself, noticing that she was dressed in only her panties and a white tank top and a man was currently occupying her living area. It took her less than two seconds to leave the room to recover from her embarrassment in her room.
Turning the doorknob of my own room, I opened it up. Locke moved behind me as we entered my room, taking in its appearance. Boxes were still stacked along one of the walls because I still hadn’t gotten around to unpacking them. My bed was decorated with messy, wrinkled sheets that I wanted to keep Locke away from, because surely they reeked of sex. My dirty clothes were strewn about the floor as though a storm had raged through, and the clean clothes were half-assed hung in the closet. I flinched as I took in how I lived, and even though I’d only been to Locke’s apartment for a short time, this room embarrassed me. It felt… wrong. Glancing at Locke, I could only hope that his expression wasn’t complete disgust.
I knew that he was what one might call a ‘neat freak’, and I hoped that he wouldn’t run away in fear once he realized how truly different we were.
Locke’s face was impassive as he glanced at the room. I was dying to know what he was thinking in that enigma mind of his, until he finally opened his mouth. “You weren’t comfortable here.”
I raised my eyebrows, questioning him, even though my face heated up in a blush. “What makes you say that?” Because you’re right.
What am I thinking? Of course I was comfortable here. Nobody really liked me. I dragged guys here to have sex all the time. In this very bed. Of course I was comfortable…
“You hadn’t bothered to unpack the boxes. Your walls are empty. Your bed may be used, and your clothes, but really, you only have the bare necessities unpacked in this room.” Locke stopped looking around the room to look into my eyes, freezing me on the spot so that I couldn’t deny that everything he was saying was true. “This is the room of someone who wasn’t planning to stay long.”
How could he say that? How could he… assume? How could he be right? Even though I didn’t really know I was doing it, his words made perfect sense. He was right. This wasn’t the room of a college student who was trying to bring her home to a place away from home, like normal college students. This was the room of a girl who didn’t know where or what she wanted to do. And she was waiting for the right time, the right place to finally relax and call someplace home.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a long pause. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You’re right,” I answered, shocked that he could deduce such a thing about me. Not wanting to delve further into what Locke could uncover about me, I started heading for the door, saying, “I’m going to go check with Liz about borrowing her car.”
“Okay,” Locke said, glancing around the room before sitting on my bed. I cringed inside, remembering that I hadn’t washed the sheets in the past week, and realizing that he was sitting on my sex-ridden sheets. I could only imagine that the stench of sex and musk filled the room, but I was so accustomed to it that I probably hadn’t noticed. I immediately wished I had never let him into my room.
I walked out of the room and shut it behind me, leaving Locke inside to uncover whatever else he wanted. I paused, my mind wandering to what he had said before. This is the room of someone who wasn’t planning to stay long. Is that really what I was thinking when I moved in?
I thought back to the day I moved in with Liz. She was already unpacking her boxes when I arrived, and I entered the dorm carrying boxes, flanked by my mother. I had told her that her presence wasn’t necessary, but she had insisted, like the caring, concerned mother she was.
She knew that after Cole died, I had given up on the thought of going to college. But she didn’t know I had dreamed of the two of us renting an apartment together, unpacking the boxes together, and christening each room of the apartment together. I had dreamed of a whole new life away from home, with Cole. And then he hung himself, leaving a note which raised more questions than answered, and destroying everything I had ever dared myself to dream. I thought we wanted the same thing. I thought he would have felt comfortable telling me if there was something he didn’t like or something he was uncomfortable with. I thought he loved me just as much as I loved him, even though he always told me he loved me more.
I thought wrong.
My decision to go to college was a spur of the moment idea, and I still didn’t know exactly what caused my mind to change. I didn’t have a particular reason, or a desire to do something with my life, but I felt compelled to go to college.
My decision, needless to say, shocked my mother, after I had been a closed off hermit for the remainder of my senior year. After I made the decision to go to college, I tried moving on. And I used sex as a method for coping and moving on.
After Cole's death, I couldn't stop seeing him everywhere we went. The small town we'd grown up in left painful memories and I couldn't even look in a safe direction without being reminded of him. So, my mother dragged me away from our small home in Michigan, and plopped me down in Malibu where the sunshine would heal me.
“Are you sure you want to do this, sweetie?” my mother had asked from behind as I set down three boxes that, when carried, came up over my short stature. “We can find you an apartment near here. We know that you—you don’t do well around people anymore, darling.”
She always called me by nicknames, like sweetie and honey and darling. She never used my real name.
“Mom, I want to move on,” I had said in a hushed tone, not wanting my new roommate, Liz, to overhear our ‘heart to heart’ chat. “This is my way of moving on.”
“Or you could commute, darling,” she had suggested, glancing around the small dorm as though it were an unfit living space. The rooms were fine, as far as I could tell. There weren’t any cracks in the walls or ceilings, no unidentified smells, nothing out of the ordinary. I was a freshman in college, and living in a dorm room was normal. “You can’t possibly tell me that you want to live here.”
“Yes, mother, I do.” I answered, walking back out of the room and making my way down the staircase to go to the parking lot, where a Chevy truck was parked and filled with more boxes that were begging to be unpacked.
My mother pursed her lips, but didn’t say another word. I think that she thought better of her words, not really wanting me to come back home and continue to walk around in sweats, all depressed and lazy.
I was determined to make a go of things, start over with a clean slate.
But I still hadn’t unpacked the boxes. How do you start over, if you can’t even take the first step and unpack boxes?
And now, I would just move those boxes to another location, making another ‘fresh’ start on my life, which would only end in more unpacked boxes.
Regardless, I couldn’t just tell Locke that I’d reconsidered. I knocked on Liz’s door, and after getting the keys, permission to drive her car, and a lecture on how she’ll sue me if it’s damaged, I returned to Locke. “Ready to get packing?” I asked, grabbing some empty boxes I’d kept and shoving the clothes in my closet inside.
“Aren’t you going to fold them? So they don’t get wrinkled?” Locke asked, his brown eyes wide with shock.
“I don’t really care about wrinkles… why?” I asked, wondering why he was freaking out about wrinkles.
Locke shrugged, but wouldn’t take his mind off the box. “Nothing. I just thought you might want to avoid wrinkles.”
“Locke, do wrinkles make you uncomfortable?” I asked with complete sincerity. By that point, I had figured out he had OCD tendencies, but I didn’t know if he was clinically diagnosed.
Locke’s face flushed, and he looked away. “Of course not. What kind of idiot gives a shit about wrinkles?”
Frowning, I started folding the clothes I had put in the box, replacing them neatly. “I don’t think it’s idiotic, Locke,” I murmured thoughtfully, loud enough that he could hear me. Honestly, I kind of liked the quirks about him that I’d seen so far. It was cute, but I could tell his quirks were more than quirks to him. “Don’t try to hide your feelings. Be honest with me, Locke. Don’t lie.”
Locke looked back at me, his deep brown eyes still wide with shock, but I assumed it was for a different reason. “You don’t think that’s weird? That I hate wrinkles?”
“No, Locke. I admit, it’s the opposite of me, but I don’t think it’s weird or stupid.”
“Opposite of you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m a slob,” I answered, unashamed. “I have a feeling you’re going to have a difficult time getting along with me.”
“And vice versa,” he answered, his lips cracking into a smile.
I continued to fold my laundry, but before long, Locke stood up and wiped his hands on the front of his pants before shoving them back into his pockets, their usual resting place. “Can I take anything out to the car?”
“You don’t even know what car it is,” I answered, smiling. “But yeah. The unpacked boxes, over there,” I pointed to the boxes that I had no idea what was inside. “Liz owns the red Ford Focus in the front, it’s the only one there. You can’t miss it.”
“Keys?” he asked, holding out his hand.
I sighed, reaching into the back pocket of my tiny jean shorts, pulling out the keys to Liz’s car. “Be careful. She already threatened to sue me if anything happens.”
Locke chuckled, winking at me and taking the keys from my hand. As he did so, his fingers brushed over my palm, sending a chill up my arm and shamefully making my nipples harden. My face heated, although he was oblivious to it, and he slipped the keys in his pocket and stacked three of the boxes before carrying them out the door.
I looked down at myself, ashamed that my nipples had hardened from one touch, one shiver Locke had given me. So… responsive. So inappropriate.
Trying to forget about the guilt and shame, I continued packing the boxes, until almost everything was packed up. Locke came back and continued making trips back to the car, being a gentleman and doing the heavy lifting and manly work.
Though he had his quirks, he was a genuinely nice guy, which only made me feel worse about myself. I couldn’t lie, he was bringing up unwanted memories of Cole, the ones I had tried to bury. They were so similar, yet so different.
Once we had gotten everything packed up, I was shocked that all of my things could fit into Liz’s tiny Focus with one trip.
“Are you sure about this?” Locke asked as he closed the trunk to the car once everything was inside.
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” I laughed, smiling genuinely at him.
Locke shrugged, opening up the car door for me and gesturing for me to get in. “Just making sure.” After I got in, he shut the door and got in on the other side. “I guess I really didn’t think things through. Once we unpack the car, we’ll take the car back to Liz, and then we’ll ride back on my motorcycle, okay?”
“Locke!” I exclaimed, thinking back to the fear I had felt while on the back of his motorcycle. Although, I didn’t mind the part where I was pressed up against him with no space in between. “I don’t want to ride that motorcycle!”
Locke looked at me with amusement, his lips turning up into a smile. “Yes you do. You just won’t admit it.”
Changing the subject, I started the car and we drove out of the parking lot, and I made sure I was extra careful handling Liz’s car. “What happened to your stutter?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows. There was no way I was going to admit that I actually wouldn’t mind riding the motorcycle again, smelling the scent of his worn, leather jacket.
“Don’t bring that up.”
“Why?”
“Because then it’ll come back.”
“It’s kind of cute,” I told him, my face heating up when I realized what I had just said. That wasn’t a friendly thing to say. That was a… flirty thing to say.
“Y-you th-think it’s c-cu-cute?” he started stuttering again, which caused me to quickly glance over at him.
“Don’t just do it for my amusement,” I answered, chuckling a bit.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Locke shake his head. “N-not doing it on p-purpose. D-d-dang it I told you n-not to br-bring it up.” His face was heated and flushed, and I saw his hands clench in his lap.
“You start stuttering when I mention your stutter?”
“I-It’s s-s-stupid. S-stop it.”
“It’s cute,” I continued, not knowing why I couldn’t stop torturing him. This was cruel, and after all that he had done for me today.
“You’re cute.”
My face heated up, my heart rate quickened, and my fingers turned white from clenching the steering wheel so hard. I so badly wanted to touch him in that moment. He had spoken the words without stuttering, small miracles. And after we had put our already rocky relationship in its place, here I was, thinking about jeopardizing this new friendship we were creating.
I didn’t want to have anything more than friendship with him, but I couldn’t deny that I wanted to touch him. I wanted him to tell me things that weren’t true, and I wanted to pretend that I wasn’t aching inside, and that I could still believe the things men told me. I wanted to pretend that he could tell me something, some things Cole only told me, and I wanted to believe them.
I was so messed up. And this man in the seat next to me, with his enigmatic personality, kind demeanor, and cigarette-scented leather made me wish I wasn’t.
***
“Welcome,” Locke called out in a TV announcer’s voice, “to your new bedroom!”
We had already unpacked the boxes from the car, returned it, and driven home on Locke’s motorcycle. My legs were freezing from the wind whipping around them, but my heart was warm. I was happy. Somehow, this apartment felt like the place where I could finally have my clean slate.
“Are you sure you want this?” I asked him, raising any eyebrow. “I still feel horrible, kicking you out of your own room.”
“It’s fine, Rowan. And if you say one more word about it, I’m going to tie you to this bed so you can never leave.”
My eyes widened and I felt my inner muscles tighten at the thought. Of course, leave it to my dirty mind to turn everything sexual.
As though he were reading my mind, his eyes widened to match mine. “N-Not that way. I-I-I didn’t mean i-it that way.”
He looked so panicked, so freaked out, that I just wanted to kiss him right there. I wanted to know why he never met the right girl, and I wanted to know if he had ever been kissed before. I wanted to know if I could be the one he could experience his firsts with. He was so innocent, not knowing that he was playing with fire. I was dangerous. I could never be the girl he wanted, the girl he was saving himself for.
With annoyance, my mind thought back to a stupid line from the string of Twilight movies we had watched the night before. The roles were reversed. He was now the lamb, and I was the big, scary lion who was going to eventually hurt him. Or he would end up hurting himself.
“Fine. I'll take the bedroom, and you can take the couch.”
“Good.” He answered simply, not offering any more to the conversation. He walked over to his dresser, where he kept his clothes. Pulling out a simple pair of lounge pants, he walked into the bathroom to change. I gingerly sat down on the bed, glancing around at the boxes of clothing that I would need to unpack.
Less than a minute later, Locke emerged from the bathroom, and my heart exploded into heart palpitations. He tossed his dirty clothing into the hamper in the corner, flexing his muscles with the throw. My face heated as I took in his appearance. The pale blue checkered lounge pants hung loose and low on his hips, and of course, he slept shirtless. His magnificently muscled chest was bare, hairless, and tanned. My eyes slowly trailed down the length his body, all the way down to the point where the V of his hips was covered by the thin material of his lounge pants.
I couldn't tear my eyes away from him, and he continued to stand there, nervous, because he didn't have anything to distract him from my gaze. He started playing with his hands, his muscles flexing with every movement he made. His muscles were never this prominent beneath his polo shirts and leather jacket.
“W-what's wrong?” He asked, still playing with his hands.
“Nothing,” I answered, my voice cracking and hoarse. That was a lie. There was something very wrong with a sexy man not sleeping in the same bed as me.
To my surprise, Locke didn't just blush and leave. He stepped forward and sat next to me on the bed, pulling me into his arms. I froze, stiff, unable to process his arms around me. “Relax, Rowan. Don't worry about anything.”
He thought I was worried about the living situation. And I was, but not in the way he thought. If he knew why I was so distressed, he would unleash me from his strong, warm arms.
Locke didn't let me go, though, and continued to hold me until I relaxed in his arms and melded into him. And, as soon as I did that, the tears welled up in my eyes and started flowing down my cheeks. “Oh, God, I'm sorry,” he apologized, releasing me when he felt my body start to shake with sobs.
I'd become a slut. I'd become a whore after Cole died. I'd slept with so many men, experiencing such close proximity and intimacy, yet I'd never been this close with a man since Cole. Simply having Locke’s understanding envelope me made me start crying. Memories of Cole started flooding my mind, and I continued sobbing, unable to stop.
“I'm sorry,” Locke apologized again, holding me close again to try and get my tears to subside.
“It's not you,” I tried to say, though I could barely understand myself through the sound of drowning in my own tears. “It's just memories,” I whispered.
“I know. It hurts,” he whispered, and I tightened my grip on him. “It gets better.”
“But it doesn't.”
“It will. It has to.”
After another fit of crying, I finally started to calm down, and exhaustion was setting in.
“Try to get some sleep,” Locke whispered carefully, helping me settle into bed.
He helped cover my body with blankets, tucking me in. It was intimate, making me feel like a child again. He cared.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered.
“Don't be,” he answered, standing over the bed. “Goodnight, Rowan.”
“’Night, Locke.”
“And Rowan,” he said, just before he closed the door behind him to leave, “Unpack the boxes.”
“I will.” I couldn’t promise when I would finally be able to muster up the courage, though.
***
“Have fun, darling,” my mother called after me as I slipped on a pair of comfortable boots and a jacket. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I laughed at her comment. “There isn’t anything you wouldn’t do, Mom.”
“Eh? Well, I suppose you’re right,” she answered, her cheeks flushing, even though she was rarely embarrassed. My mother was currently single, but she was never single for long. “But you know what I mean.”
“I know, Mom. But you like Cole,” I chuckled, grabbing the perfectly wrapped gift on the table, with a tag that read “To Cole, from Ro”. Lastly, I slipped on a hat in an attempt to keep myself warm in the cold winter weather. Cole always scolded me for not bundling up enough. After catching a wretched cold that lasted over a week, I decided to start listening to him.
“I do love that boy. And I love you,” she smiled as I opened the door and left, but not before telling her that I too, loved her very much.
I grinned all the way to Cole’s house as I drove through the snow, using the old Mustang my father had given me as a present, the same Mustang he had used when he was a young man. After I had wrecked the damn thing last winter, Cole was the one who helped me fix it up again. Or, rather, I was the one who handed Cole the tools and watched as his arms flexed while he worked on it.
When I arrived at Cole’s house, all of the lights were off. His parents were out of town, and Cole had texted me that morning asking if I could spend the night. I was eighteen, and my mother knew very well what we were going to do, but she knew that we were always safe. As Cole had assured her that past Thanksgiving as both of our families sat around a turkey.
Regardless, I wondered why all the lights were off, and decided that maybe Cole had planned a surprise for me. I quickly got out of the vehicle, and carefully made my way up to the house, watching out for any icy spots.
I didn’t bother ringing the doorbell. Cole had told me to quit a long time ago, and I was over at his house so often, it was my second home. I knew where their Tupperware was, and I knew the place like the back of my hand. I was comfortable.
Letting myself in, I grinned and flipped on the lights, looking around for Cole. “Cole?” I called, hearing my voice echo throughout the large, empty house. “Where are you?”
I took a left and searched the first floor, finding no trace of anything out of place. There was no trash, and everything in the home was immaculate, as per usual, as Cole’s mother was a neat freak. The house was eerily quiet as I went up the stairs, and my smile faded a little when I heard music. My music. The recording Cole had insisted that I make for him because he loved to hear me play piano. He wanted to be able to listen to me all the time, he had said, even when I’m not with him.
All of the doors in the hallway were closed, except for one, the bathroom, where the music was originating. I was becoming a little worried, because this was a creepy setting, and Cole knew that I hated scary things. When we watched scary movies, I spent more time with my face shoved in Cole’s chest rather than my eyes on the screen.
As I slowly walked toward the bathroom, I heard my music get louder, the big crescendo of the piece. The big finale. And then, I saw it. The coppery smell of blood tinged my senses, and all I saw was red.