Wildfire

Chapter 2

2. Punch

Charlie was curled up in bed when I got back to our dorm room that evening. If there was one thing I liked about Charlie, it was the fact that she cleaned up after herself. In between stealing items of my clothing and throwing herself at life like there was no tomorrow, she still found time to plump her pillows and straighten the library textbooks I'd left strewn across my desk the night before.

But when I stumbled through the door, dripping snow and various other forms of precipitation, her jeans were strewn across the floor and there was a bundle of tissues tossed at the end of her bed.

"I'm sick," she sniffed.

I shrugged out of my coat and slung it haphazardly over the back of my desk chair, kicking off my boots as I went. I was still feeling slightly buzzed from the coffee I'd had at lunch, and as my body started to adapt to the warm temperature of the room, my mood slowly improved.

"That's what you get for stealing," I told her as I collapsed down on my bed.

She sighed pitifully and pulled the neck of her hoodie up over her mouth. It had to be sixty-five degrees in the room, but her whole body was quivering. "Borrowed," she mumbled.

"Where's Logan?" Logan was Charlie's on/off boyfriend. The few times that I'd met him, he'd seemed pretty distant and closed off, and I wasn't really sure what to make of him. He and Charlie fought a lot, which usually ended with her telling him that never wanted to see him again, but Charlie's temper frequently got the better of her and she would inevitably call him a few days later to apologize.

Charlie shot me a dark look and I deduced that they were going through one of their off periods. "He's out."

"Do you need me to go grab you some medicine?" I didn't really mind grabbing some Tylenol or something for her – there was a basic convenience store on the ground floor of the superblock that housed the residence halls, so it wasn't like I had to brave the elements again.

Charlie shook her head. "No, I got some earlier. Thanks, though."

I shrugged. "I guess this means you can't come to kickboxing with me."

She groaned and pulled her hoodie up, completely hiding her face. "I'm sorry, Paige," she mumbled. "I know I promised –"

"It's fine," I interrupted. "I can go on my own."

Charlie pulled her hood down and grimaced. "Won't Lexie go with you or something? I hate the thought of you walking home on your own." Her eyes brightened and a suggestive smile crossed her face. "Or you could ask Mr. Hottie-Instructor-Guy to walk you home. He totally would, Paige – he definitely likes you."

I rolled my eyes at her. "No, he doesn't."

"Yeah," Charlie said, "he does. I don't remember him rubbing my calf when I pulled a muscle last semester."

The memory of Ian Keller, the twenty-six year old kickboxing instructor, with his long, tapered fingers wrapped around my calf rose in my mind and I felt my cheeks heat before I quashed it down ruthlessly.

"I'll ask him," I lied.

Charlie narrowed her eyes, but she let it go. She grabbed the water bottle on her nightstand and waggled her eyebrows at me. "Did Lexie tell you about that Aiden guy?"

"The wannabe witch?" I rolled my eyes. "Seriously, where does she find these people?"

"I really don't know..."

-*-*-

Ian Keller's kickboxing gym was located above a newly renovated dance studio on Hennepin Avenue. It took me just under an hour to trudge through the snow, and the sky had faded to a dark, inky black by the time I heaved my gym bag up the steps.