Into You Series: The Complete Collection

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

“ O h, it’s that guy?” Grace asks, squinting at the picture I’ve pulled up on my laptop of a social media profile I may or may not have weaseled my way into finding through friends of friends of friends. “Wow, he looks like he’s trouble with those tattoos.”

“Exciting, right?”

“Well, hang on, hang on …” Grace leans in more, narrowing her eyes and scanning the picture of Wes from the top of his black hair down to the curve of his shoulders. I know she’s admiring his toned arms because I’ve been admiring them for the past thirty minutes since I found his profile.

She nods. “Yeah, those hands scream they’ve done naughty things.”

“Right?!” I agree, practically shrieking. His fingers, large and spindly, are clean of tattoos save for the small one on his left middle finger—a single line across it. “I want them in my mouth.”

Grace laughs, rolling down from the lofted twin bed she had climbed up the second I found Wes’s profile. We gather together like two old ladies meeting for bingo or feeding the park pigeons. I imagine this routine will be the same fifty years down the road when we really do get excited about feeding birds from park benches—all while still talking about sexy men.

“So have you talked to him?” she asks.

I blink out of my inked man daydreaming daze. “What’s that again?”

“Have you talked to him? Like, actually texted him outside of class?”

I twist my lips, mulling it over. “Well, I’ve thought about it.”

I’ve absolutely thought about it every waking moment since the first day of class. In fact, it has crowded my thoughts hour by hour as the rest of the week passed.

I did attempt to talk to him again at the end of our class last Wednesday, but that was a dud.

“I’m working on your shirt,” I’d said. He smiled, looking off to the side and then back at me as if he had somewhere to go.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

And that was it. I almost dunked myself into the college’s community swimming pool right after that.

He was always surrounded by girls. Every day, by the time I got to class, it was like backstage VIP central. Like, dude, come on, you got a fanbase already?

Even with his number, I could never come up with a valid enough excuse to text him. This morning a squirrel ventured too close to me on the sidewalk and I wondered if maybe I could make some offhand joke about how I met a fellow student named Squirrel. But that seemed like a very obvious attempt to start a text conversation.

“He lives down the hall,” Grace says.

“ ‘He lives down the hall’ ,” I mock. “Think I don’t know that? Don’t play with my emotions.”

“Oh right,” she says, grinning. “That didn’t work out last time, did it?”

Oh right. OH RIGHT?!

She says it so cavalierly, but she knows what happened.

I did go down the hall.

I did knock on his door.

I did feign ignorance and ask if he knew the reading for class.

He told me it was on the syllabus, and then he handed me his copy.

I told him to have a great night.

He laughed.

Grace giggles and I know she’s reliving the memory just the same as I am. She sits cross-legged on the floor, bending over a megaphone she bought for her Art X class with a black ink pen. As an art major, she has the weirdest projects, but I revel in their weirdness.

“I think I made myself too available too early,” I muse. “He needs to want me, you know? I shouldn’t have been so … excitable.”

Grace snorts, petting Hank, who’s lying in his dog bed, before going back to the megaphone.

“But you’re always excitable.”

“You’re missing the point, Gracie!” I say, flopping back onto my bed. The impact pains my back. I forgot the dorm beds are hard as rocks. “Ow.”

Hank’s head pops up at the sound, and he gives me a small whine. Even as a puppy, this little guy seems attentive to us, like a guardian tending to his women.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Hank,” I mumble, closing my laptop and pulling out my phone instead. And there, to my surprise, on the tiny square screen, in big, bold, beautiful text, is Wes’s name and a message.

I fumble my fingers to flip open the phone, trying to click into the text, but instead only mash my thumb over the numbers like a Neanderthal who’s never seen a phone in her life.

Finally, there it is in all its glory: a fresh new text.

Wes: Hey stalker. Figured you could use this as inspiration.

Another text comes shortly after containing a pixelated image of a white T-shirt with a cartoony cow and the phrase “Don’t have a COW” written underneath.

It’s unique. It’s beautiful. It’s an absolute piece of art.

And wow. He texted me first. Imagine that.

The emotions flood me fast. I’m an erratic mess, trying to wade through the shock of getting a text, then the satisfactory calm of seeing how personalized it is, then right back to the spark of absolute disbelief. Is this what it’s like to be electrocuted? I’m sure Benjamin Franklin would disagree, but this phone may well be my kite and my heart the key. Eat your heart out, Benny boy.

“Oh my god. He texted me,” I finally say out loud. “He texted me .”

Grace’s head darts over to me, her eyebrows shooting up. “Whoa, what?!”

She runs the short distance from her side to mine, climbs up the lofted bed’s ladder again, and stumble-crawls next to me, nuzzling her head against my shoulder to get eye level with the phone’s screen.

“What are you going to say?” she asks after reading it.

I start typing.

Ray: Are you telling me you want a cow on your custom tee?

Grace instantly scoffs after I press send. “Come on, you can do better than that.”

I shake my head, my curls close to tangling with her red locks. “He’s too good-looking. I can’t think straight.”

She blows out a breath. “Tattooed guy shows up and you’re head over heels?”

“I don’t even wear heels yet,” I remind her. “I’m working on it.”

Her head turns toward me as she coos, “Oh, those cute purple ones?”

“Yeah! With the sparkles.” I point down to my open closet with said heels on display. I told myself I’d also learn how to wear heels once I got to college. It’s on the to-do list.

My phone buzzes on my chest and the tangential conversation is instantly hushed as I flip it open again. We both look on intently.

Wes: I want the best pun you can come up with.

“Bor-ing,” Grace says, breaking the word into two exaggerated syllables before elbowing me to the side and stretching.

“Well fine, you can get off my treehouse then,” I say, lightly pushing her closer to the edge, giving her enough leeway to twist and hop down. “No sourpusses allowed.”

I text him back.

Ray: Having sex on an elevator is wrong on so many levels.

My phone buzzes again. The response time is so quick, and my heart pounds like an addict that can’t get enough. It’s like I’m taking one hit after the other, devouring every single word he writes to me until I’m high off the sweetness that is Wes. Except I don’t think I could ever be satiated.

Wes: It’s alarming how bad that was.

A clip art picture of an alarm clock follows shortly.

I smile, unrestrained and joyful at this silly man and his puns.

Ray: Is it weird to change my answer now?

Wes: Weird would be pretty par for the course for you, I think.

“What’s he saying now?” Grace asks. “You’re so red.”

“Just more puns.”

“Wow, he really is a snoozefest,” she says, laughing. I laugh in return, but only because I need to relieve the excitement somehow.

Ray: Fine. Your shirt will have a corndog and corn on the cob.

Wes: Because I’m corny?

Ray: You ruined the eventual joke!

Wes: Hey, don’t make them so obvious then! :)

The smiley face. If I wasn’t a goner before, I am now. It’s not like I’ve never received a smiling emoticon before; Grace texts me smileys all the time. But when guys send a smiley or anything outside the normal keyboard, I know it hasn’t been sent lightly.

That boy is smiling over me. Little ol’ me.

Ray: I’ll come up with a better T-shirt idea.

Hank lets out a small whine from his dog bed and stretches his front paws forward in a downward dog pose, literally. We shouldn’t have gotten so excited. Hank is awake, and once the puppy is awake, we’re definitely not going to sleep anytime soon. This is fine by me. With smiley faces like these, I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon anyway.

“All right,” Grace says, ruffling his ears. “Walk time. Ray, you taking a break from mister sex muffin to join us?”

My phone buzzes and I can’t help but unlock it to see the next message.

Wes: What are you up to?

I sit there for a second, trying so hard to come up with the next clever line to keep him on his toes. The thrill almost makes me lightheaded.

“Yeah, I could use a break,” I mumble, climbing down from the loft and grabbing my slip-ons.

“From all that sexy pun talk?” Grace asks.

“Hardy-har.”

Ray: About to walk the dog with my roommate.

I look at my vibrating phone before it can even finish buzzing—like a phantom connection signaling me toward the incoming text. Is it our magnetic attraction or have phone signals ruined my brain? Am I just in tune with a cellular device?

Wes: Is that a euphemism?

Oh my god I will die now.

Ray: Could be.

Good one, Ramona .

Ray: What are you doing?

Grace gathers Hank’s leash.

“Hey, don’t forget to grab the keys!” she says. “Remember the door locks behind us.”

“Yeah, yeah, got ’em,” I mutter as my phone rings again. I think I reached for it even before the buzz started. I’m already like putty for this guy.

When I unlock it, I see a video instead of text. I press play and see an upside-down view of denim legs, a guitar, and the quick strumming of fingers. Very pixelated, but still very hot.

“Oh my god, please tell me he’s playing a guitar,” Grace says. I didn’t even realize she’d made it over to me. I was too entranced by the video on the screen.

Something about a man playing guitar … it does bad things to my stomach. And those hands, even the one with the tattooed finger—that really sends a bullet right to my gut. The strumming is deft and distractingly wonderful.

I blink once, then twice, glancing at Grace, who’s curled her bottom lip inward.

“You okay?” she asks.

“I think I might pass out.”

I close the phone, pocket it, and inhale deeply.

This man knows what he’s doing. He knows the way to a teen girl’s heart. Any smart man does. It’s guitars—always those damn guitars.

Jesus, I do need the cool night air.

“What happened to that walk, Grace?!”

Truthfully, I could have texted Wes all night, and I might have had he not turned in shortly after I got back from my walk. But whether he was texting me or not, that didn’t stop me from losing sleep. Because of my late night, I overslept and ended up running to class the next morning, sticky from having covered up the bags under my eyes with about a pound of concealer.

My heart somersaults when I walk through the double doors and see him at the same desk, now looking attentively at me instead of out the window.

He smiles. I smile.

Oh god, I’m going to hurl.

I take the stairs up to his corner of the auditorium—or maybe our corner—and plop my bag on the ground.

“You’re here late,” he says, already smiling at my arrival. God, those teeth are so white and so straight. My mouth starts to gape open before I even have the chance to stop it.

He laughs. “Do I have something on my face?”

Just lips where mine should be.

“Oh, god, sorry, no, I’m just out of it,” I say, shaking my head and widening my eyes to try and wake up.

The lecture starts before I can redeem myself from that mess of a conversation starter, and I stew over it the entire time.

This whole semester is going to be agonizing if I don’t get Wes out of my system.

I shut my laptop once the lecture ends and turn to speak to him only to find him surrounded by the usual suspects, the girls in the class who also can’t seem to get enough of him. But even as I pack my bag, I start to notice that he isn’t engaging with the giddy girls as he usually does. He’s only staring at me.

They disperse after he gives a few dull responses—notably turning down a private study session with some girl who might have flipped her hair into the stratosphere. And when they leave, it’s only me, packing up my laptop as slowly as possible because something in me says he wants to talk to me. Given how he continues to stare, a boyish smile lingering on his wonderfully bearded face, I might be right.

“Yes?” I ask with a small laugh, peering from the corner of my eye, trying not to linger on his veiny forearms and muscled biceps.

Oh yes, look at me: I’m cool. Cool as a cucumber. Not at all wanting your attention just as desperately as the rest of them.

“There’s a concert this Friday,” he says. “Some people I know from high school are playing.”

Oh god, it’s happening. It’s happening!

I will myself not to panic, but I don’t think it’s humanly possible to stop the rush of excitement rising up my chest and to my shoulders. My giddiness has a mind of its own.

“Would you like me to come?” I ask.

“Yes, I would like you to come,” he says.

My stomach drops, and I know for a fact there’s a sly smile in that man’s beard, but we don’t even address it. Just our secret. Ray and Wes, dynamic duo.