Watch Over You

Alone Together

“Mina, wake up.” A voice above me sang.  

“Go away.” I said, matching the tone of the annoying voice.

“Didn’t you miss me babe?” Hands began to slide up my shirt, passing over my breasts and squeezing them. That certainly jolted me awake. My eyes flew open to see Sam standing over me.

“Hi.” I tried to disguise the panic in my voice. I felt absolutely nothing when I saw him, no love, no affection. Just…numbness. That was very different from what I normally felt around him. “What are you doing here?”

“What, I can’t come to see my girlfriend?” He pulled me over to him by the hips and I winced. Myles had left them a little sore. Not to mention I was hungover and the jolt made my head swim. I’d definitely had one too many drinks on the flight to Santa Barbara.

“It’s kind of rude to wake people up.” His mouth dropped onto my neck, sucking and biting. I could only pray that I didn’t have any fresh hickeys from Myles, there was no way in hell I could explain that. “Where’s Lola?” If she was right above me, he’d have to stop.

“She’s in the kitchen.” I hadn’t even gotten a chance to talk to her yet. I landed late last night and went straight to bed. She must have come home this morning. He started to pull my shirt up over my head and I practically slapped his hands down.

“Jesus, will you give me time to wake up before you try to stick your dick in me?” I glanced over at the alarm clock. It was just after nine. I had class at ten, and a good excuse to get out of here before I had to pretend to enjoy having sex with him. “I have to get ready for class.”

“Lunch?” I suspected I wasn’t going to get out of today without some genital to genital contact. Sometime between class, I resolved, I would get my period. Sam was among those who believed period blood was icky. He wouldn’t even let me sleep in his bed when I was on it.

“Yeah, I’ll meet you at Silvergreens around noon?” If I was going to be uncomfortable, I might as well be eating some healthy food while I was at it.

“Sure. Were you sitting next to a smoker on the plane? You stink of cigarette smoke.”

“I must have been.” Telling him that I’d smoked a whole pack in a week was just asking for a lecture. He put up with my occasional smoking because I had maybe two cigarettes in a month. Even I was a little disgusted by how many I’d had this past week. “I gotta shower, I’ll see you later.” With that, I vanished into the tiny bathroom that the four of us shared. We all had different schedules so we weren’t all trying to get ready at once, but it still made for a pretty big traffic jam when we were playing shows in Santa Barbara.

I scrubbed the smell of airplane and smoke off me, wishing I could forgot how wrong Sam’s hands felt on me. My body had forgotten what Myles felt like and now that I’d had that refresher course, I didn’t think I could ever let Sam touch me again without my skin crawling.

I practically kissed my blowdryer when I plugged it in. I had missed being able to go out with dry hair. It was good to be home and back in a climate that didn’t make me want to hibernate. It was a solid 75 degrees here in sunny Santa Barbara with a gentle breeze coming in off the ocean. Sam was still lurking in the kitchen talking to Lola so I just blew past them on my way out the door. I had just enough time to stop by a coffee cart before going to my class.

I could see a bus coming towards me and I hurried to the stop. It would save me a lot of time to take the bus to the bus circle and then walk to my class. According to my schedule, my first class was in the Chemistry building, clear across campus from where I lived. Flashing my ID to the bus driver, I took a seat next to a twitchy looking freshman. Poor thing had probably had way too much caffeine this morning.