The Guy Next Door

"Bleh." I waved my hand in front of my nose, trying desperately to move the noxious cigarette fumes away from my face. "Do you really have to blow that in my direction?"

"It's not my fault that you're sitting on this side," came his lazy response, "so just move over here."

Grumbling a few profanities to myself, I slid off the trunk of his car and moved over to the other side of him. I hoisted myself up onto the car and laid down again, resting my head on his shoulder. He tensed up underneath me but didn't push me away. Instead, he used his free hand to reach up and run his hands through my hair, just like he did every time he was drunk.

I sighed at the contact, pushing myself closer into his body. I knew that moments like this never lasted for long. When the two of us were sober and ran into one another on campus or in the dorm that we both happened to live in, he would never say a single word to me. In fact, he barely even acknowledged that I was alive. He'd just stare at me for a moment and my heart would flutter while I hoped that he would say something… anything to me. But that never happened. He'd turn away and pretend that he didn't see me and that was what killed me.

The man that I was in love with only found me tolerable when he was drunk.

I still remembered the first moment I saw him; he had moved in across the hall at the same I did. As soon as I laid eyes on him, I knew I was done. I wasn't sure how long I had stared at him from our suite's common room, but I couldn't seem to pry my eyes away from him. He was wearing an Underarmour spandex shirt at the time, giving me an almost perfect view of just how toned his muscles were as he lifted the heavy boxes from the trolley onto the table in the common room with ease.

It wasn't until my suitemate came out of her room and smacked me on the head that I realized I might have been staring a little bit too intensely. As my best friend lectured me for checking out our new neighbors, I realized that he was now watching me the same way I had been gawking at him a few seconds ago. I immediately began blushing and slammed the door shut when I saw a small smirk slip on his face.

Over the next few days, I saw him everywhere I went. He always seemed to coming out of his room at the same time I was. In between class, I'd see him hanging out with a group of friends who were equally as attractive as him, garnering the attention of all the girls around him. I even had Financial Accounting with him, but he sat down next to a friend on the opposite side of the room I was on.

Not once did he come up to speak to me, even though I knew he recognized me as the girl who openly checked him out in his dorm room.

It wasn't until the very first Friday night of the semester that he finally approached me. I was clearly drunk and struggling immensely as I tried to shove my key into the lock. I heard someone chuckle from next to me through the blurry haze. I had turned around to start yelling at whoever it was, but I immediately froze when I saw it was him. The words I had wanted to scream were lost in my throat as I was rendered speechless by his gorgeous face.

"You're seem to be having a hard time with that; do you want to come in?" he had asked, holding open the door to his suite. Unsure of what to do or what to say, I stood there idly with my mouth open. He rolled his eyes at my frozen form and reached out to yank me inside. The moment he touched me, my breath stopped. I couldn't have imagined the spark as his fingers wrapped around my arm; I knew he had to have felt that same sensation. After he had gotten me into his suite, he quickly dropped my hand and headed to the mini fridge that sat next to their television. "Where did you go tonight?" he asked, tossing me a water bottle from the fridge.

"My friend was having a housewarming party. It got a little bit out of hand." I had sighed, opening the bottle he had given me. "What about you?"

"My frat had an event at Murphy's." He said, sitting down next to me on the couch. "PKA." He immediately answered before I could ask what frat he was in. "I'm Ryan Faulkner, by the way. And you are?" He asked, his dark brown eyes gazing down at me.