All My Heart

Chapter Four

An hour later I was alone in my dorm room when I heard a knock at the door. “Hello? Anyone there?” Another knock, I guess there is someone there.
“Oi! Open up the door. I need to get something from my side of the room,” an unfamiliar voice said from the other side of the door, sounding like a male voice around my age.
So I got up and opened the door. “Hi, sorry I forgot to introduce myself earlier. My name is Benedict Young, but my friends call me Ben. And my reasoning for not seeing you is that I had football practice and noticed I forgot my keys while I was on my break.”
“Nice to meet you Benedi-”
“Wait, just call me Ben. We will be sleeping in the same room.”
“Ok, Ben let me rephrase that. Nice to meet you, Ben. And I will be your new roommate from now on.”
“May I know your name?”
Sugar beans I forgot to tell him my name oh well here it goes. “Ah, yes. My name is Lynn Allen.”
“Well, Miss Allen, will you accompany me to lunch with my friends and me to meet more people?” Ben asked generously.
Wait what? He’s already inviting me of all people to meet his friends!? “Umm…I’ll get back to you on that one but do you want to grab your keys before you forget?”
“Sure, thank you for opening the door for me.”
God, why is he so sweet? He’s kinda cute, too.
“See you later then…I guess.” Great! Just great! You blew it Lynn, amazing.
“Somewhere beyond the sea. Somewhere waiting there for me.”
Wait, I know that voice! “Quinn?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Checking up on you, why do you ask?”
“I… never mind.”
Had he heard Ben and I talk? Was he suspecting in me what I suspected in myself? My thoughts were interrupted by a bang.
“Quinn, what are you doing?!” I looked at him with a straight face.
He was going through my suitcase and had dropped my bag on the floor. He must have snuck past me in my trance.
“I uhhhh…”
“Never mind. Just get out, NOW!”
I sat on my bed, alone with my thoughts and my music when I realized that it was twelve-fifteen and I had to let Ben know that I wanted to go to lunch with him.

***

Ben was a relatively funny person, and appropriate too. He made jokes that would have comprehended the wrong way in Bonnie’s head and did it without one dirty look or statement that Quinn would have come up with. His friends were the same way, but less charming. Probably because I had met Ben first. He had an exotic accent that I found extremely attractive and, at one point, he looked at me weirdly. It was a crooked smile out of the corner of his eye. I’m also pretty sure that he winked at me but it was so quick you would have thought a speck of dust had made its way into his eye and one single blink shook it off.
I scooted a little bit closer to him but no one noticed I was eating my sandwich so one would have thought that I was simply adjusting my position. Also, the way that he introduced me was different from any other introduction I had been involved in before.
When I went back to the college dorm room with Ben, I asked him if he had a number and the answer was yes. After that, it was easy. I didn’t even have to ask for the contact number. He asked me if I wanted it and I said yes.
I got dressed in the dorm bathroom and Ben got his PJs in the dorm itself. I know, I know, it's weird. You must be thinking, girls and boys in the same dorm room? That’s disgusting! Well, I like it just fine, thank you. And, anyway, we’re soul-mates. It doesn’t matter.
Well, it does. Never be in the same dorm room as a boy, ever!
I was done slipping into my bedtime clothes and accidentally (emphasis on accidentally) swung the door open at the wrong time. I swung the door closed almost as fast as I opened it but that couldn’t erase the image from my brain. I would never be the same again!
I stayed in the bathroom for at least an hour until Ben knocked on the door and asked if I was okay. I said I was fine (I was not!) and exited the bathroom to face the worst.
“It’s okay,” Ben said, reading my mind. “It’s not like it matters anyway. We can forget about that and move on with our lives.”
I still felt sick. If only I had knocked first! If only I had known he was so slow at getting dressed! I will never be able to move on with my life! Even if it did work out, I would never be able to wipe the embarrassment out of my mind. Even in one thousand years!
Again, reading my mind, he leaned forward and stopped six inches from my face. And then, breathing on my face (out of his nose) he backed away slowly, reconsidering his decision. Mildly disappointed, I trekked over to my mattress and lay facing the ceiling. Afraid of what could happen during the night, I stayed awake until my eyelids automatically closed and my brain shut down.