Chapter 3
Inside my car, the girls sat in the backseat while I gripped the steering wheel hoping I wouldn’t have to clean up vomit before the night was over.
“Is she…” I started.
“Anya,” my girl said.
I was already thinking of her as “my girl” and I didn’t even know her name.
“Is Anya going to be okay?” I asked.
“She’s fine,” she replied.
“And are you…”
“Natalia,” she replied.
The name went perfectly with her. Natalia.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Building 8503,” she said while pointing at a two-story dormitory building.
When I pulled up to the curb, it dawned on me how different life was in her building compared to mine. At a picnic table outside, a couple studied while eating Chinese food out of Styrofoam containers. At another table, a girl sat by herself rocking out to whatever song was blasting her eardrums through her headphones. It had been years since I’d lived in a building like this one, and I’d forgotten how peaceful it could be.
“I can do the rest, thank you,” Natalia said.
Hopping out of the car and racing around to the rear door nearest the curb, I helped her lift her cousin up out of the car. As Anya rose to her feet and Natalia struggled to keep her there, our faces came to within a couple inches of each other’s and we paused there for only a second. Her green eyes stared at my neck and only lifted up to meet mine for a moment, but that was all I needed. She’d let down her guard long enough for a slight spark, a minor jolt of connectivity. She was mine.
“Let me help you get her to your room,” I said. “I just want to help.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and nodded.
“Quickly,” she said.
She was demanding but I kind of liked it. In my world, the younger classmen were always vying for the attention of the frat brothers. This girl…she didn’t give a shit about Delta Iota Kappa. She couldn’t care less about the frat or my role in it. Simply put…she didn’t give a fuck about me, but that turned me on in some odd sort of way.
Natalia was different. She wasn’t a game player. Did she find me attractive? I had no idea. Did she have any interest in getting to know me? Absolutely not. Yet, something was there when our eyes met. She wasn’t completely opposed to the idea of me. It had to be a cultural thing. As she put it so eloquently earlier when referring to her cousin, she was here to study not to let me put my dick in her.
As we hobbled through the living room with Anya in our arms, nobody paid us any attention. The other people living in Natalia’s building had probably seen it all by now. One drunk chick on her way home was nothing new. Getting her up the stairs was a pain in the ass.
Anya, at some point, had become convinced that I was her boyfriend and was leading her upstairs for a wild night.
“Do you love me?” Anya asked.
“It’s a bit early for that,” I replied, “But you could grow on me.”
Natalia laughed.
“Anya, please,” she said. “Be quiet.”
“You’re going to make love to me, aren’t you?” Anya asked.
“Anya!” Natalia said and tried to hold in her laughter but failed.
She chortled through pursed lips and I laughed along with her.
“I want you to lick my pussy,” Anya said.
This time Natalia gasped and put a hand over Anya’s mouth to silence her.
“Are you sure she’s here in this country to study?” I joked.
“She really is a good girl,” Natalia said. “She’s young. She’s passionate. But she is a good girl. She just loves hard and easily. I have another roommate and she has a big test tomorrow so we have to be quiet.”
When we made it to their room, we were both too exhausted to lay Anya down as gently as we’d hoped. Instead, we both tripped and fell, sending Anya crashing onto her mattress, the top half of her anyway.
Their roommate who had apparently fallen asleep mid-study session, evident by the textbooks still on her mattress, pulled her blanket over her head and whined in complaint. A muttered, “For fuck’s sake, be quiet,” slipped its way out from beneath her hiding spot.
“Sorry,” Natalia said.
Natalia lifted her cousin’s legs up and put them on the bed. I removed her shoes.
“The pants are all yours,” I whispered.
“Leave them on. She can sleep like that.”
“So this is you?” I asked.
Glancing around the room, I soaked up all I could about this woman. Anya’s piece of the room was more modern pop culture and the other roommate’s was a blend of indie art and music. Natalia’s third-of-a-wall mural was a sophisticated puzzle, like a Rubik’s cube that could explain everything about her if studied long enough.
A broken viola bow hung from the wall, half of its strings dangling to the side.
Posters played leap frog along the length of her bed. The two members of Dueling Cellos in the middle of a complicated piece, their hair mussed and sweaty, pure concentration on their faces. Then Amy Lee, the lead singer of Evanescence, belting out a high note on stage, followed by Mozart with his index finger against his bottom lip and musical notes floating around his head, and finally Nightwish on stage with a crowd of fans cheering them on from the front row.
“Nightwish,” I said. “Deep.”
“You like them?” she asked.
“I’ve heard a couple of songs and they were cool.”
She smiled.
“Thank you for your help,” she said, “but I have to go. I will be late for work.”
“Work?”
“Talk outside,” the roommate complained.
“Turn around,” Natalia told me. “Don’t look.”
Always the one to follow orders, I did as she said and could hear the sound of clothes being moved around behind me. She passed me and opened the door to her room, now in tight black jeans and a shirt to match. Complete with her black glasses, she was stunning and looked like she was about to go out clubbing.
“Come on,” she said.