Promise Me This (Between Breaths 4)

“Nate, hi,” she said in a timid voice. “Long time no see.”

I remembered our encounter one night at a frat party. Both of us tipsy, we agreed to head upstairs to one of the empty bedrooms.

On our way up she passed her group of friends, one of whom had whispered something loud enough for me to hear. Twenty bucks if you get some tongue.

I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but now I remember that the sex had been fast and decent and that I’d used my hands to get her off. What Jessie had said about my reputation suddenly made perfect sense.

Sex with this Erin—any girl I’d been with—lacked the fire and the spark I had with Jessie. During my encounter with the girl standing in front of me, I had gotten off thinking of tying her up.

With Jessie? I got the real thing.

My dick already lengthening from thoughts of Jessie, I stood up, and began clearing my table. “Hey nice seeing you again. But I’ve got an appointment I need to get to.”

I rushed past her, taking the stairs two at a time to try to squash my urges, and found myself on the third floor.

The door to the Wellness and Counseling Center was directly in front of me and I noted how busy it looked inside. I pretended to study the fliers on the wall outside the entrance, which explained different disorders like depression and anxiety. Jessie had told me that her mother worked at a center that provided Reiki and chakra, but those words sounded foreign to my ears as well.

“Nate.” As if materializing from my very thoughts, Jessie stood at the counseling center door. The first thing I noticed was that her hair was different. It was auburn with some streaks of pink near the front, which made her hazel eyes stand out.

“You changed your hair,” I said. Jessie was always experimenting with different colors, so that was nothing new. But I liked her brunette locks best.

“Yeah.” She reached up and swept her fingers through it.

My gaze dipped to her red glossy lips and then to her loose-fitting jeans with their rolled bottoms and back up to her tight Rolling Stones T-shirt. I remembered her matching bra and panty set from our weekend and forced the thought from my brain.

She stepped into the hallway and the raw energy buzzing between us was nearly deafening. I wanted to reach out and pull her against me, except she wasn’t mine and I wasn’t hers. But fuck, right then, I wanted her to be. Never in my life had such a firm and unyielding thought about a girl ever entered my brain.

“What are you doing here?” She looked at the flier on the wall I had been studying.

“I could ask you the same question,” I said, stalling for time.

“I still see a counselor from time to time . . .” she said, stepping closer. “About my dad.”

“Oh, right,” I said. The way she had talked about it on the bridge, I got the impression that therapy was a thing of the past, not something she continued to seek out.

“And . . . last weekend . . . brought up some things for me,” she said. “So I made an appointment.”

I knew that what she wasn’t saying was that spending the weekend with me had stirred some memories up for her—badly enough that she needed to seek out a counselor. I didn’t know how to take that information. Had being with me been too heavy for her as well?

God, what a mess.

“I’m sorry—” I started to say.

“No Nate, it wasn’t anything you did,” she said, reaching for my arm but then dropping it at the last minute. “Don’t take that on, too.”

I just stared at her, marveling at how well she got me sometimes.

“Is that what brought you here?” she asked in a low voice. I didn’t feel like I had to hide anything from her. She knew plenty was brought up for me over the weekend. Both when I saw my childhood home and then when I had those physical experiences with her.

As she adjusted the strap of her messenger bag higher on her shoulder, I tried to formulate an answer to her question.

“It’s easy, really,” she said. “All you do is walk in, say you want to schedule an appointment and they give you a sheet to fill out with your name, student number, and reason for visit.”

“See that’s the thing . . .” I said. “I don’t really know—the reason for my visit.”

She shook her head. “It’s not like you need to know exactly. You’ll figure that out as you go. Just say you’re dealing with a family trauma.”

“Family trauma?”

“Sure, that’s really what it is, right?” she said, looking into my eyes. “You had some experiences growing up and it . . . left a bruise on your heart.”

As she said this, she tapped two fingers to her chest to stress her point. I briefly closed my eyes. Holy shit. This girl.

“More like a black hole,” I mumbled.

“A black hole indicates that you possess such strong magnetism that everything gravitates toward you.” Her lips tilted up in a mischievous grin. “Don’t be so full of yourself, Square.”

Her kidding tone snapped me out of her spell and a burst of laughter erupted from my lips. She cleared her throat and then nudged me with her shoulder. “Go fill out the form, I’ll wait out here.”

She positioned herself near the wall and pulled out her phone to check her messages like this experience was the simplest thing in the world. I turned toward the door and then looked back at her, but she paid me no mind. I stepped over the threshold and then walked to the large front desk.