Love Story by Jennifer Echols Page B

thought you might have one.” I didn’t add that thinking of him as “Wolf-boy” had called to mind the necessity of a knife in the wilderness. This connection made no sense anyway since he was from Brooklyn.
    Brian raised his hand and called out, “I have a really sharp knife.”
    “May I borrow it?” I asked.
    “My father gave it to me.”
    I squinted at him through the mist. “May I borrow it without telling your father?”
    “Why don’t we go get it from our room,” Hunter called across me to Brian. “Then we’ll take it down to Erin’s room and use it. It will never leave your sight.”
    I clamped my teeth together to keep from saying anything about Hunter’s presumptuous “we,” his decision that my use of Brian’s knife needed Hunter’s input. I could not forget his hands on that girl.
    Brian scowled behind his shades, but no one was immune to Hunter’s charm. He stood and nodded to Summer. “Save my seat, would ya?”
    “Kyle will save it, won’t you, Kyle?” Summer asked. “I’m comfortable here.” She winked at me.
    I assumed that was the signal to me that she felt comfortable with Manohar—more than comfortable. The mango daiquiri was probably helping. I felt uneasy about leaving her there. But after all, half the people crowding the bathroom were chicks, and home was three floors down.
    Carefully I crossed the slippery floor, assuming Hunter and Brian would follow. I reached for the handle on the bathroom door, but a man’s hand reached past me and opened it first—Hunter, I saw, glancing over my shoulder. I stepped into the hallway, the air dry and freezing in comparison, and told myself the temperature change was the reason I shivered.
    “This way.” He reached his arm around me and touched my shoulder. He walked ahead of Brian and me, three doors down. Brian fished his key from the pocket of his bathing suit. Hunter reached his own key first and turned it in the door.
    Their room was set up exactly like mine but looked completely different. As Brian opened a drawer in his dresser to retrieve the famed knife, I scanned his floor-to-ceiling collage of psychedelic posters. Hunter quietly sat on the opposite bed. His wall was blank, almost as if he and Brian were having an interior design standoff.
    I stood awkwardly between them. “Manohar got the small room? How did that happen? I’ve talked to a lot of people in this dorm and there’s always a story behind who gets the small room.”
    Hunter patted beside him on the bed, an invitation for me to sit.
    Blushing, I shook my head.
    He spoke without skipping a beat. “I didn’t want it. That room is claustrophobic.”
    “And I came out of the closet when I was thirteen.” Brian turned to us, brandishing a glinting dagger. “I’m not going back in.” He came toward me with the knife, handle first.
    “Brian!” Hunter jumped up from his bed. “Don’t give it to her when she’s never used one before.”
    “She asked to use it,” Brian said. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”
    “You’re going to use it for her. Or I will.” Hunter took the dagger by the handle. “Sometimes Erin doesn’t know what’s good for her.” Barebacked and blade down like a jungle man ready to stab the python that crossed his path, he led the way out of the room.
    Brian and I exchanged a glance and followed. “What do you need it for, anyway?” Brian asked me in the stairwell.
    “I’m almost out of face cream and I can’t afford another tube. If I cut it open and put it in a plastic bag, I think I can get another month out of it, maybe six weeks.”
    Hunter turned suddenly on the stair below us. Brian and I both jumped backward, but Hunter knew better than to turn with a knife point out. The knife was down by his side. “That’s what this is about? You don’t need face cream. You look fine.”
    “That’s because I’ve been using it,” I said at the same time Brian said, “That’s because she’s been using it,” and rolled his