I have to actually press my hands on my heated face to try to calm down before I can say anything.
“Are you kidding me?” I screech. “You’re kidding me, right? You were such an asshole to her.”
“Huh. And here I thought I was being nice,” he murmurs as if he’s genuinely surprised.
“You’ve gone crazy, haven’t you? That’s the only explanation. Or maybe I’m going crazy. I don’t know what just happened. You completely shattered her confidence. I don’t think she’ll be kissing anyone for the rest of her life.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
“Excuse me?”
He tips his chin at something over my shoulder. “I don’t think you need to worry about her confidence.”
I turn to look at what he’s talking about. Through the swaying bodies of people, I see the girl again.
And he’s right. I don’t need to worry about her confidence at all.
Because she’s kissing again.
Only…
“Is she…” I squint my eyes to make sure. “Is she kissing a girl?”
From where I am it certainly looks like it. The drunk blonde girl is kissing another blonde girl and she’s doing it in the exact same way as she was doing it to Arrow, all leaned into her body and neck tilted up.
I hear him shift behind my back. “And here I thought I was special.” Then, “Although, it makes me wonder…”
I spin on my heels to face him again. “Wonder what?”
He cocks his head to the side. “If she’s really that drunk or if I just drove her to lesbianism.”
“You can’t drive anyone to lesbianism. You can…”
“I can what?”
Bring them back.
That’s what I was going to say, that he can convert a lesbian because he’s so gorgeous in his leather jacket, his face bent down, his blue eyes shining. As if sexual orientation is a choice.
As if I’m not having a very surreal moment right now as I stare at him.
And my next words don’t help the matter. “Sexual orientation isn’t a choice. In case you didn’t know. You can’t drive people or convert them or change it on a whim. As if they don’t have enough problems to deal with and you come in with your ignorance and careless remarks and...”
I trail off because what the fuck am I doing, and I swear I see the lines around his eyes crinkle but I can’t be sure.
“Thanks for that. Very educating and enlightening,” he drawls.
I glare at him.
I can’t believe that I’m glaring at him but that’s not the point.
The point is that there are more important things at stake here. Far more important things.
Far more.
So I bring my hands down to my sides. I even take in a deep breath and try to rein in my agitation.
“Why,” I begin with what I think is a calm tone, “did I just catch you kissing a girl at a bar who’s not my sister?”
At this, his eyes go darker, even darker than before.
I think they’ve surpassed the shade of navy blue now and landed somewhere in the spectrum of black, making them look like bottomless pools.
An abyss.
“Because you are where you’re not supposed to be,” he replies with a ticking jaw.
“What does that mean?” I ask, trying to not look at it.
The jaw.
Trying not to count how many times he moves it back and forth or how sleek it looks, how much more beautiful and sharper than before, now that he’s using it to display his annoyance.
“It means that this establishment that you find yourself in, either by accident or on purpose, is called a bar.”
“And?”
“And in case you didn’t know, no one under twenty-one is allowed in here. It’s the law, unfortunately. So if I were you, I’d get out.”
My spine goes up. “I’m not afraid of the law. I’m not going anywhere. Not until –”
“It also means,” he cuts me off, “that you shouldn’t even be out of your bed, let alone off campus.”
And then he freezes me with that dark gaze of his, pins me down like a bird, letting my wings flutter and flap furiously now that I’ve been captured.
“Lights out at nine-thirty. Those are the rules, remember? So either you’re breaking them, in your first week no less, or you’re sleepwalking. For your sake, I hope it’s the latter. Makes you look more sympathetic if you happen to get caught.”
It takes me a moment to understand his meaning.
I don’t know why because he couldn’t be clearer. There are no more ways in which to explain the meaning of his words.
But still.
It takes me a few seconds to fully grasp it.
Maybe because I myself had forgotten that I go to St. Mary’s now.
I myself had forgotten that I don’t live in his house anymore, and that I’m not free to go wherever I want.
Does he know why I was sent to St. Mary’s though?
I mean, not the real reason. No one knows the real reason, and no one will. But the other reasons, the stealing and the running away.