Breathless by Claire Adams Read Free Book Online

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other post-graduation scenarios that would be just as wild. Giselle thought she
might want to go to Korea to teach English, Sam said she was going to go backpacking
through India. We started to get to know each other better, comparing notes on
what we had learned over the couple of days since we’d moved in. Apparently the
RA on our floor was pretty nice—though Annie had managed to embarrass herself
by knocking on the RA’s door in the middle of the night, locked out of her
dorm, and discovered that while our RA had strict rules for us against having
boys in our rooms, she had one of the other RAs over—and they were barely
dressed.
    I was relaxing, my mind off of Johnny for once,
talking to the girls on my floor and getting to know everyone. It was nice to
have a little bit of time when I wasn’t thinking about the incredibly hot guy
I’d only run into twice. I smiled and laughed, telling an edited story about
what had happened to me that morning, without mentioning Johnny—and
fortunately, Georgia had the presence of mind not to bring it up. We all joked
about how hard it was to get around on campus and how we were eventually going
to be the mistresses of the layout, how we were all going to end up being much
nicer than the upperclassmen who refused to help us freshmen when we were lost
or frazzled.
    As I was talking, though, I was looking around, just
taking in the scene around me and trying to get a feeling for the people in the
dining hall. I had eaten my dinner and got up to get some dessert—the brownies
actually looked decent, and I thought I had seen “Chinese donuts” among the
offerings. “I’m going to get something sweet, anyone want anything?” A few of
the girls said that they would come with, and I started back into the food
service area.
    I made my way over to the dessert area and looked
around as I grabbed a brownie and one of the sugared donuts. Off to the side,
my gaze stuttered to a stop as I caught sight of Johnny. He was talking to one
of the upperclassmen girls, smiling—not quite the way he had smiled at me, but
smiling at her nonetheless. For a moment I was frozen in place. The girl,
whoever she was, was obviously into Johnny; she kept touching him, moving her
hips, tilting her head, playing with her hair. I heard her cloyingly sweet
laugh and wanted to throw up.
    Georgia had come with the rest of us to grab a quick
dessert; she saw me staring and glanced in the direction I was looking in.
“Oh,” she said. She nudged me, shaking her head. “Snap out of it, girl,” she
told me quietly.
    I gave myself a shake and shrugged. “It’s a free
country, I guess,” I muttered, grabbing another brownie and piling it on top of
the one I’d already gotten. Georgia rolled her eyes.
    “Dude, he’s the hottest guy in the school,” she said
lowly. “Of course women are going to throw themselves at him. I mean, it’s no
big deal, right?” I shrugged again, taking a deep breath and trying to get
better control over my face.
    “Right, of course.” I turned and made myself walk away
without causing a scene, without trying to interrupt the two. I knew I was
being foolish; after all, how many times had I told Georgia that Johnny
probably hadn’t even taken any particular notice of me? But I felt a little
rattled, nonetheless. He’s just a nice
guy, and he probably flirts as easily as he breathes. It’s no big deal. Let it
go. I told myself I was getting depressed over nothing, and that probably
Johnny didn’t mean anything with the upperclassman girl any more than he had
meant anything with me. He probably invited every girl he ran into to the frat
parties. He had just been being nice to me when he’d helped me get to class. I
should take what I’d said to Georgia seriously and just pretend like nothing at
all had happened—because obviously, Johnny didn’t think anything at all had
happened.
    Georgia and the girls and I headed back to the dorms a
little while after that, and we