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One
“N ew season, new comforter.”
Lucy lugged her newly laundered bedding up both flights of breezeway stairs and juggled her key ring until her apartment key found her palm. Blessed air conditioning hit her as she stepped inside. First day back at class, third night spent here, and already her soul had nudged her that certain possessions must go. The bed was a focal point of the studio, set against the wall farthest from the door. She needed her bed to be cute and comforting…and new. Maybe that was immature, but she did.
She’d stripped the old bedding and left it in a heap before darting out to the closest cheapest department store, then to the laundromat. Back home she dove into the task of making her bed, dancing around it to tug and tuck sheets, bouncing pillows up and down until they slid into pillowcases. At last, the comforter. She smoothed out the wrinkles and pictured herself smoothing wrinkles from her life too.
She had a lot to be thankful for. A studio apartment thanks to her parents. Survival of her sophomore year. A new season as a single woman. And a new white comforter patterned in oversized, splashy pink circles.
She flopped onto the bed, creating new wrinkles, then sprang back up and crossed the studio to her work area, which amounted to a desk and chair set close to the window. She’d painted both dusty-rose and chosen her new comforter to match. She snatched up a pad of sticky notes and her favorite purple gel pen and got to work.
First the bathroom mirror. Lucy penned, Welcome to singleness! Let’s rock it! and stuck it to one side of the mirror.
On the fridge, reinforced with a magnet, she left a second sticky note. Your worth depends on nobody’s opinion .
Her studio couldn’t fit a dresser, so the closet was at capacity for clothes and shoes. Harder to find a spot for a note in here. She taped one to the end of the rack of hangers. It waved freely when the AC vent overhead kicked on. This was perhaps the most important note of all. I pledge on my own sacred honor that I will never again 1. date a jerk 2. date a vampire
Lucy stared at this note a long time. One year ago she’d been sure of so many things. She was smart and capable. She knew her worth. She recognized crap when someone threw it at her and she didn’t stand for it. These days that last one wasn’t as clear, though she’d rediscovered the others.
Maybe the last item on the list wasn’t entirely fair. Not every vampire was a jerk, after all. But she couldn’t imagine finding one of them attractive ever again. She couldn’t imagine kissing him and not thinking of Liam. Watching him pour a glass from the stock in his fridge, sip it through a straw…and not thinking of Liam.
So no, she wasn’t unfair to include it on her list.
Graphic Communication, her one evening class this semester, started in twenty minutes. She’d have to admire her cute new bed later. She drove to campus and fast-walked past the assembly hall to her classroom. Not the first or last to arrive. Perfect. She claimed a desk at the back of the room.
From her book bag she pulled a brand-new plum-purple notebook. She’d chosen to dash out for new bedding rather than decorate it, and this wasn’t something to be rushed, so for now the cover remained plain. More students trickled in, taking seats, and Lucy watched them.
Tonya Beeler claimed the desk to her right and swiveled in the chair to point her knees in Lucy’s direction. “How’s the apartment?”
“So far, so good.”
She couldn’t explain how satisfying it was to have her own place, not without sounding as if she were escaping Jodi. It wasn’t that. Jodi had been a fine roommate. But she didn’t want to explain the real reason, either.
Directly in front of her, another desk was claimed, this time by a pair of mammoth shoulders and a head of curly brown hair. Good grief, the guy was enormous, barely fit into the chair. Six-foot-five, or close to it. Her mouth was open. She shut it.
Tonya tilted her head and smirked at Lucy. Lucy flipped open her notebook and scribbled a purple note; the guy was too close for whispering between her and Tonya. I’m not drooling. He’s just really big.
Tonya snatched up a black ballpoint from her backpack and tugged Lucy’s notebook over to her desk for a reply. Cute hair too.
Lucy shrugged. She’d decided on singleness. Cuteness did not factor into her world right now. Period.
Tonya wasn’t wrong though.
At the front of the room, Ms. Adamski began class with a friendly wave of recognition to her class of upper-level design majors. It was great to have her again. Awesome, low-key, clear about her expectations for quizzes and exams. A few of the seniors referred to her study tips as coddling , but Lucy appreciated the heck out of her.
As a first class, it was appropriately boring. Syllabus rundown, followed by a free-write response to a quote about (surprise, surprise) visual communication. Lucy did her best while glancing up a few times for no purpose—that is, for the purpose of watching the guy in front of her bent over his paper. Which was dumb, really. She couldn’t see his hand move over the page, couldn’t see his face at all, yet the breadth of those shoulders somehow compelled her to keep glancing up.
At the end of class she abandoned Tonya mid-sentence and managed to beat him to the front. She turned in her essay and turned to face the room, to face him .
Wow.
She stood not six feet in front of him, at eye level with his neck. He held one page in his hand, neat printed writing on both sides. Lucy’s gaze rose to his. Blue eyes, deep as a well, dark as sapphires.
“Hi,” she said stupidly.
“Hi,” he said.
He stepped to one side, and his long reach allowed him to set his sheet of paper on Ms. Adamski’s desk without moving closer to it. Then he took an additional step back and met Lucy’s eyes again.
“I’m Jeremy Freeman,” he said.
She was too stupid to tell him her name, but the blame wasn’t hers. His eyes were to blame, and oh my, his smile was too.