Danielle Wesley stood in the hallway of her dorm floor in her robe, listening to the eerie silence. Usually, her friend Veronica was yelling at her Asian roommate, who only yelled back in furious Chinese. Or the sugar-bitch next door to her, the one who always pretended like Dani didn't exist, was having a loud fuck session that could be heard throughout the whole hall. And then there was Michael, the hot geek who liked to turn his game station up really loud on the weekends while he played.
Running her hands through her wavy hair, Dani walked down the hall to the bathroom. The last week of the school year was here, and the campus was a dead zone. She'd had her last final earlier that day; tomorrow she was finishing the rest of her packing and farewells, and Friday her father was coming with a U-Haul to pick her up.
Sophomore year of college and she still didn't have her own car.
Snorting, she climbed into the shower and soaped up. Small, tightly cramped, and no ventilation, the shower stall was one of the many things she would not be missing about her residence hall. She rinsed off and put on her robe, grabbing her shower bag. Brushing her teeth without the usual bustle of girls around her was odd, and slightly lonely. She sighed and shoved her toothbrush into her bag, and walked out the bathroom.
Immediately rounding the corner, she ran into someone, tripping over their leg. Dani went sprawling, her robe flying up and her shower bag toppling its contents.
"What the—?" someone—a male someone—began, then, "Whoah."
Dani knew precisely what they were 'whoahing' about. She sat up and hastily covered herself with her robe. Not being exactly skinny, there were a select number of men who didn't mind a size sixteen girl, and she had yet to find one. Wide hips, big breasts, and dark skin added to her voluptuous black woman appearance, one that had given her good days and bad days.
Apparently, today was a bad day.
"You okay, Dani?" her male acquaintance asked, and she looked up.
Ethan Floyd, one of the guys who lived on her floor, was gazing down at her with a neutral expression on his face. His tall physique, with a swimmer's slim, hard body, had many a woman bouncing at his feet, until someone heard a rumor that he was gay. When people found out that some poor girl he'd rejected had started it, his light green eyes and easy grin had female followers flocking back to him.
Stuffing her things back into her shower, Dani avoided his eyes. "Yeah, thanks," she muttered. Leave it to her to flash her goodies to the one guy who'd probably run screaming the other way.
Ethan knelt down and helped her. "I didn't know you were still here," he said casually, handing her a tampon and her toothpaste.
Dani snatched the things from his hand and stood up. "My last final was today," she answered stiffly, snapping her bag shut.
Ethan nodded. "Mine, too. I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon."
"I'll be heading out Friday."
He smiled at her, and Dani suddenly felt awkward. Ethan had a really sexy smile, the rougish, boy kind that made your heart skip a beat or six. And boy, she was throbbing, too, only in a lower, more interesting place. Taking a step backwards, she said, "Well, maybe I'll see you next year, then."
"Cool, I look forward to it. Are you staying in this dorm again?"
"Unfortunately; I'm hoping they'll upgrade the bathrooms a bit."
Nodding, he added softly, "Maybe they can round out those sharp corners, too."
She stared up into his eyes. He was actually teasing her! "Maybe you should watch where you're going."
"Oh, I was watching," Ethan replied, his voice lowered an octave.
Dani swallowed, feeling herself grow warm. Time to go. "Well, I still have some packing to do, so..."
"Have a good summer, Dani," Ethan offered, opening the door to his dorm room.
"You, too," she replied, and walked away. Fast.
Back in her room she turned on the TV while she dressed, trying to focus on the program instead of how bad her hormones were acting up.
Unfortunately, the ache in her lower stomach wasn't going to let that happen. She kept thinking of Ethan's eyes, of the way his lips moved, of what he said...
Sighing in frustration, she turned off her TV and decided to listen to music instead. Cranking up the volume since there was no one to tell her otherwise, she exchanged her robe for some cotton capris and a fitted Tree of Peace t-shirt, and then began to pack. She'd opted to pay an extra four-hundred dollars to have her own room, so she still had a lot to go. A shitload of her stuff went into the trash; Dani had an annoying habit of hoarding all her paperwork, broken pencils, and torn binders until the end of the year, and she'd lost count of the how many gum wrappers she'd found.
She rolled up her light blue carpet and taped it shut, then swept the room. The hall broom, usually kept in the kitchen, had a new, temporary home in her closet, because since she'd started packing she'd had to sweep four times to keep the dust and dirt levels at a minimum.
Singing along with the Janelle Monae's "Sincerely Jane" and wrestling a heavy comforter into its case, Dani barely heard the light knock on her door. She grabbed for her remote and paused the music, listening carefully. Someone knocked again.
Lunging for the door, she tripped on the blanket she was packing and nearly cracked her skull on the tile floor. Opening the door from her position on the ground, she nursed her sore ankle.
"What happened?" Ethan asked, peering into the room.
"I tripped," she answered, looking up at him.
"You seem unusually clumsy today."
Dani glared at him. "What do you want?" she snapped, standing.
Ethan put his hands up in surrender, a DVD in hand. "Do you like movies?" he asked, his amazing grin focused on her.
She averted her eyes. "Everyone likes movies," she said, picking bits of packing tape off the headboard of her bed.
"What about Dr. Pepper, chips, and company?"
Dani frowned at him. "I have to finish packing."
"You have all day tomorrow to pack," Ethan said. He looked at the half-empty room, his eyes focused on the chaotic, gum wrapper side. "I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to finish that," he said with a teasing grin.
She opened her mouth to counteract his words, but he cut her off.
"Dani, come on. The last few days of school should be shared with someone, not spent alone, surrounded by a depressing state of clutter." He lowered his voice and looked in her eyes. "We could make happy memories."
Wow, he was bold. Did he think Dani was stupid or something? She looked around the room. The last four hours she'd spent packing, and her muscles were tired from lifting those heavy boxes out of the way. She was hungry, and beginning to get irritated that she still had so much to do. "I'm in," she said suddenly. Like Ethan said, she had all of tomorrow to get finished. At least, that was the excuse she was telling herself.
Ethan smiled at her and waited while she grabbed her keys and a pair of slippers.
"What movie did you get?" she asked, following him to his dorm room.
"Some action one with a shit-load of guns. One of my exes let me borrow it before we broke up, and I never got the chance to give it back to her."
"Have you seen it before?"
"Half of it. The other half I was a bit...occupied."
He opened the door to his room, and Dani followed him. She could probably have guessed what had occupied him. "You only have one bed," Dani pointed out. Most of his stuff was already gone, except for some clothes, his back pack, his bed sheets, and a few boxes. A few lingering posters covered his walls, including one of a group of lingerie-clad women, their limbs draped over each other's bodies, their lips parted in fake lust as they stared at the camera.
"Yeah, I paid for a single," Ethan said. He threw the food and drinks onto the bed, then popped the DVD into the player. "If it bothers you, you can take the bed and I'll take the sofa."
Where the second bed stood in her room, Ethan's room had provided, a small, squashy, colorless couch. It was covered with piles of clothes and the boxes.
"No, that's fine. I just mentioned it because I paid for a single too, and got a double bed."
"Looks like I got the better deal," he replied.
Dani climbed onto his bed. "Apparently so," she muttered.
Skipping through the trailers, Ethan said, "Well, look at the bright side. Push the beds together and you have a bigger bed. Great for kinky sex, you know?"
When Dani just stared at him, he laughed at her expression. "You have to think outside the box, Dani."
"I don't think I like where this is going," she said back to him.
Ethan stared at her for a few seconds. "Shall I change tactics?" he asked quietly.
"Depends on what your goal is," Dani answered, meeting his gaze. Her eyes widened at the slow smile that spread across Ethan's face. She could not believe she'd just said that. "Er...that came out wrong."
