A Chance At A Time

Chance XI: Own up to Your Feelings

Harper felt so comfortable on her bed. It had never been that warm and cozy before. She wanted to stay there forever because somehow, it was lulling her to sleep as it heaved lightly beneath her. A smile touched her lips as she cuddled deeper into it. It smelled enticing as well. She didn't remember using scented softener on her clothes that smelled like that but the dark spices made her insanely comfortable. 

She could hear someone calling her name from afar, almost like in a dream...or probably Clair forgot her keys again but she was too warm and safe to even get off. For one she had been too exhausted that weekend with so much work to do so this was much-needed sleep and also the tiles on their floor were too cold for her bare feet. Five more minutes and she was going to get up and open the door for Clair.

"...per." the muffled voice came through again. "Harper...wake up. Harper?" 

Harper frowned. The deep voice she was hearing was nothing like Clair's. It sounded like a guy's voice...Harper's eyes snapped open and for a moment she felt a rush of color go through her entire body. She was suddenly engulfed in darkness and couldn't see properly. That triggered the sensation of claustrophobia that she went through on rare cases especially when she was too exhausted and her body didn't respond the way she wanted it to. Her hands went up to her head and she felt the helmet around it.  She felt as if the helmet she had on was cutting off her air circulation. She felt as if she was trapped in a dark room where she couldn't move, see or breathe. Her heart hammered painfully in her chest and her throat was clogged with a ball of unshed tears.

She stiffly sat up and struggled to get off the helmet as a wretched sound left her lips. "I can't breathe...I can't breathe!" She cried out.

"Woah there, calm down, Harper." The soothing voice said again as a pair of hands reached under her chin and unbuckled the helmet, allowing Harper to pull it off her. She tossed it away from her and took a deep breath and turned her scared eyes towards Kristofer who looked very concerned for her. 

"Are you claustrophobic?" He asked her as he got up and went to pick up the helmet.

Harper couldn't speak and just trembled on the bike. Kristofer quickly placed the helmet on the bike handle then removed his jacket and hung it around her shoulders before he tried to warm her up by running his hands up and down her forearms. 

All the sounds around were drowned as if they were echoing from miles away. Her ears felt as if they were in a vacuum--

"Harper!" Kristofer called to her and she jumped in a startle.

"Yeah?" Her voice broke so she cleared her throat and looked down at his arms on hers then at the fact that she was still on his bike. 

"Do you have a medical condition that I should know about?" He asked her, his concern rising by the moment. 

Harper shook her head lightly. "No. I think I am just exhausted." 

"You shouldn't have overworked yourself this weekend." He helped her off the bike then pulled the jacket sides together in front of her. "Let's get you back to your room." He started forward but Harper stopped and looked up at him in puzzlement. Wasn't he afraid of adding fuel to the gossip fire that was already circulating around campus?

"Aren't you worried that people will start talking when they see us arriving together?" She asked him

"You honestly expect me to let you walk to your room after what happened just a few seconds ago?" He asked her incredulously. 

Harper nodded. "Yeah. I told you, I don't want whatever is going on between you and Melody to rub off on me too."

"Well, if you haven't noticed, it's a little too late for that." Kristofer assured her. "Do you think people didn't see us in town or didn't see us entering campus together? Do you think people are not watching us now?" 

Harper looked around on impulse then sighed. "Whatever. Thanks for the ride, Kris." She started removing the jacket from her shoulders but Kristofer moved forward and stopped her by holding her hands in place. 

"Keep it on. Give it to me tomorrow." He looked down at her.

Harper instinctively took a step back, trying to put space between them especially when everyone else was watching. She bit her lower lip and nodded.

Kristofer reached forward like back in town and teased her lip from her teeth with his thumb. "I thought I told you not to do that."

It was not as if she was doing it on purpose! It just happened. And what gave him the right to touch her like that? And why wasn't she moving away from this particular touch? His thumb was soft, the exact opposite of his appearance. His eyes darkened as he looked down at her and suddenly the air between them was too thick that it could be sliced by a knife. The intensity of that moment was enough to hotwire the atmosphere around them and cause an explosion that would engulf them with a fire that couldn't be extinguished. The hairs at the back of Harper's neck rose up and her skin crawled deliciously.  

"Get to your room, Harper." Kristofer drawled thickly but his eyes said something different. 

Harper's breath came out in short gasps because her heart was beating so hard against her chest that she was surprised Kris didn't hear it. She pursed her lips and nodded before turning away and walking off without looking back. 

She felt as if she were coming down with something because her skin was feverishly warm and a little sweat was glistening on her forehead. She still couldn't control her breathing as she rushed across the campus grounds towards the dormitory. When she got there she was glad that Clair was not around so she quickly shed her clothes and went to take a shower to cool down her raging body. 

Kristofer did nothing more than just touch her and her emotions were flaring all over the place. 

"No, Harper, don't waste your feelings for someone like Kris. You are only here for a year, he will make you cry at end of the day! Don't let him play around with your emotions." She told herself sternly in the bathroom, scrubbing her skin tightly as if it was going to help and scrub the feelings away.

Harper was caught between panic and regret. All this time she was judging Melody for her terrible choice in men yet she had found herself falling into the same trap. She didn't know what it was about him that was dragging her deep into the dark pool of damnation. She didn't know whether it was his dark eyes and the way they sparkled dangerously as they looked at her. They seem to be speaking volumes yet mysterious because those volumes were muted to her. 

Maybe it was in the way he spoke to her. It was as if he didn't have the patience to deal with her yet his words had sincerity as well as a pinch of concern. Maybe his soothing voice was actually the hypnotic hiss of a serpent that reared in its victim before giving it a deadly bite. And then there was a way he touched her. The warmth that radiated from his hands when he touched her was pure sin. Kristofer touched her that evening but that warmth managed to seep through the leather jacket and brand itself on her skin. As she stood under that shower, she still could feel the imprints of his palms on her upper hands. 

Harper needed to come up with a strategy to make sure that she didn't fall for him anymore. Avoiding him was out of the question because as he tried to do so, it only made things worse between them. She doubted he felt the same way for her and that was always the painful part but she could handle it. If she stayed quiet for years with her crush on Zander and another guy named Graham, she could do the same for this one. She was sure it was something that was going to pass. For one Kristofer was not her type. It was his attitude as well as the fact that when he graduated and went away, she was going to do the same. 

Harper stopped scrubbing her skin and looked down at herself. She was turning red because of the abuse she was giving her skin. She switched off the water and stepped out of the shower before she wrapped herself in a warm thick towel then went to get herself ready for bed. She was exhausted and all she needed at that point was some decent sleep. She tried to clear her head of her crazy thoughts because she knew if she didn't do so, they were going to keep her awake all night and she couldn't afford that especially when she had an early class tomorrow morning. She slipped into her bed, mewling like a content kitten, and tried to call on sleep and shut her busy mind down for a few hours...

"You look like s**t," Clair commented early that next morning when they woke up. "What were you doing all night?"

Harper groaned in frustration as she pulled her blanket over her face in an attempt to get even an ounce of sleep.

Clair moved to the side of Harper's bed and pulled the blanket away from her face. "Don't you have a class this morning? Hurry up and get ready." 

"I don't want to go to class today," Harper grumbled as she turned to the other side and pulled the blanket over her head again. It wasn't only because she was exhausted but she also didn't want to see Kristofer. Moreover, she wasn't in the mood to hear the new gossip after she returned from town on Kristofer's bike. 

Clair suddenly jumped on the bed, her body crushing her and pushing out all the air from Harper's lungs.

"What did you do last night?" She grinned as she wiggled her eyebrows at her. "Or better yet, who did you do last night?"

"Get off me, you raging psycho!" Harper tried to heft Clair off her but boy was she heavy!

"Not until you tell me what you were up to last night? It's not like you to wake up with bags under your eyes." Clair said the rolled off Harper and placed her hand under her chin tentatively. "I'm listening."

Harper rolled her eyes and kicked the blanket off before she rose from her bed like the dead. "Do you think everyone is doing someone like you with Max, Clair?" 

Harper was glad that Clair had the decency to blush. "Well, it is part of being human....are you a virgin, Harper?"

Harper scoffed and made her way to the bathroom without answering Clair...

                                                                    **********

Kristofer looked at the data for his experiment and yet again, the information was inconclusive. He ran his hands through his bed-kissed hair and groaned in frustration then tore the papers in front of him and crumpled them before he tossed them in the bin. He slumped back on his mobile chair and twirled around with it until he felt dizzy as he tried to figure out if all that he had been studying all this time was just impossible to achieve? Did it mean that his research was wrong from the beginning? How could it be so when his professor had proofread it and made sure it was okay before he proceeded with the experiment? He groaned loudly again then got up abruptly and walked out of the lab, leaving the other students watching him in apprehension as if he would harm himself. 

Kristofer walked to the pantry and got himself a mug of coffee then sat down at one of his tables and gulped down the bitter liquid. It seemed as if the very world he was used to was slowly closing up around him, threatening to suffocate him and all his achievements. He wasn't ready to give up but the challenge was too steep. A myriad of thoughts plagued every empty corner of his mind. If that continued, he had no choice but to ask for help outside the college. The company that wanted him to go and do his internship there was very interested in his work and there was a time where they offered for him to use their high tech facilities for his work but Kristofer refused because he was a little skeptical that they might think to steal his work but now that he thought of it...he was on his last breath.

He was drowning and maybe they were the only ones who could help him. They had better testing facilities with more accurate computers that could detect exactly where the errors took place. He needed to talk to his professor about it though because he was exposing the university experiment to a bunch of ICT specialists who only thought to make a profit before anything else. 

Kristofer looked down at his watch and saw that it was time for Dr. Adams' class. He had called him to tell him that he had an urgent matter to attend to. Of course, Dr. Adams was understanding because Kristofer was a senior so his timetable was a little more flexible and Dr. Adams' course was for extra credit, not a mandatory class for him. Every time he thought of that course, Harper's face showed up in his mind. 

Last night he was about to make a mistake that would have cost him more than he was ready to risk. If he didn't warn her to leave when she had the chance, Kristofer knew he would have kissed her. The urgency wasn't like anything he had experienced before. When she bit into her lip like that, the urgency kicked in and he was left under her spell. He didn't know what it was about her that attracted him like a moth to the night lamp. She did and said all the wrong things which should have angered him but he found himself making excuses for her actions and words even though they were aimed at him. 

Just a few weeks ago, he couldn't stand being exposed to her for long periods of time. He recalled how disappointed he was when he learned that she had applied for the 'Share A smile' program and how enraged he was when she became a member of his assignment group. But those moments felt like years ago. And what was worse was that he knew she didn't even like him. She kept on asking him to give Melody a chance and emphasized the point that they weren't even friends.

Kristofer groaned loudly as he placed his forehead on the table then banged his fist against the table. 

"Is it that bad this time around?" Malcolm asked as he went to the vending machine and got himself a cola then went to sit next to Kristofer and suggested. "Why don't you give me your equations and I'll try to run them in my machine to see if I can get any sort of good data?"

Kristofer turned to Malcolm and gave him a tortured smile. "If it were that simple then I would have done that weeks ago." 

"You shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Instead of trashing the data you got this time, you should have saved it and go over it with your professor again." Malcolm said as he opened his cola and took a large gulp of it. "I don't want to believe that your super brain has been defeated by some Artificial Intelligence research."

Kristofer ran his hand over his face and hummed lightly. He wished he could tell Malcolm that it wasn't just the experiment but something else along the lines of an attraction to a girl who would never look at him the way he looked at her. Jace, Cash, and the others weren't talking about her anymore but Kristofer was worried about Stefan because he was spot on, on Saturday. Kristofer wanted to deny what he felt because he thought it would be easy for the feelings to melt away if he didn't give them the attention but boy was he wrong!

Malcolm got up and patted Kristofer on his shoulder while saying. "You should go back to your room and have some rest. You will not do any good in the condition that you are." He walked out of the pantry.

Kristofer finished off his coffee and went out. When he got out of the building, the sun hit him hard on his face and his eyes reacted. He quickly covered them and stretched but stopped halfway when he noticed the glowering girl standing beside his bike with her arms crossed tightly on her chest.

"Clair." Kristofer acknowledged her.

She was a senior like him but a different major. He knew her from Highschool and in one course he had with her last year. She was always cheerful, always smiling Clair that everyone liked to be around with. Kristofer also knew she was Harper's roommate. 

"Kris." She hummed tightly and asked. "What did you do to Harper?"

Kristofer frowned in concern. Did something happen to her? Did her claustrophobic condition return overnight that she needed medical attention? "What do you mean?" 

"She hasn't been sleeping well and she's been working herself to the bone. When I asked her was she was working too hard she told me it was because she wanted to clear her mind. This morning, she almost missed her class because she barely slept last night--"

"And you think I am the cause of that?" Kristofer asked, a little surprised by the accusations Clair was throwing his way.

"Who else spends time with her apart from me and you? Are you two sleeping together? Clair is a good girl, she is very naïve and it is not fair for someone like you to take advantage of her--" She asked.

"Woah, Clair! Don't get ahead of yourself. There is nothing going on between me and Harper."

"Then why do you look as tired as her? Plus, someone saw you two arriving on campus together last night. Are you sure you want to lie to me about your extra-curricular activities, Kristofer?" Clair asked.

Kristofer knew that the gossip about him and Harper being together last night was going to circulate but he didn't care anymore. He was tired of trying to tell a bunch of people what the truth was when they actually wanted to be lied to. "You know what, Clair, think whatever your heart wants to think. I am done explaining my actions to everyone at every turn I take. Whatever you think is going on between me and Harper is true and you can add your own details to it, I don't give a fuck."

"Kris!" Clair exclaimed but Kristofer rose his hands up in surrender and he walked to his bike before getting on and riding off, leaving Clair confused behind him. 

He just hoped that Harper was alright. He hoped that what he wanted to do last night wasn't the reason why she couldn't sleep. Kristofer made his way out of campus towards the garage where he did his bike service and also his hangout spot back then when he was still finding his way around life. He needed a distraction.