“Is everything okay?” I asked, my voice breaking a bit towards the
end. I took two more steps.
There were only two rooms down the short hallway, and some
shuffling gave his location away. The whole situation felt off, but I
couldn’t get past my desperate urge to fix things with him. It hit me
then that I might be in love. What else could explain things? I took the
remaining steps to the room with the door ajar.
I didn’t see him when I walked in, but that didn’t register at the
time. I was too busy staring at his bed. It was small—the size of my own
twin at home—and covered in a thick navy comforter. That’s where he
sleeps.
That’s when I looked at the walls, and the butterflies in my
stomach stopped fluttering. There were sketches—hundreds maybe—that
decorated the space, and they were all faceless women. None of them
looked the same, but they were all beautiful bodies captured in pencil,
in charcoal, in pen. I envied those women, admired those curves and
confident (yet unsettling) poses. I looked down at myself, embarrassed
and reminded of reality, and realized I still hadn’t found Dylan. The door
creaked behind me.
When I spun around, he stood in the doorway, watching me.
His hands rested on the frame above him, and his body leaned into the
room. I felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up as thoughts
of vultures passed my mind; I thought I should have stayed by the
bathroom.
“Did you need something?” I asked. My voice came out strangely
shrill. He smiled.
“Yes, actually. I do, Poppy.” He took a step forward and I took
one backwards, an awkward dance between distant partners. He took
another step, and another, and his body filled any remaining space in the
room. I felt claustrophobic.
I kept moving away from him, but eventually the smell of his
cologne saturated all of the air that surrounded us. When I bumped into
one of the ladies on his wall, full-blown panic set in, but I had never been
the type to run away or scream. Who would hear me, anyways?
When he was close enough that I could see the large pupils of his
eyes, he bent his face to my neck slowly, savoring the moment. I thought
that if Dylan had been a vampire he’d appreciate the accelerating speed of
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