I remembered the day my best friend's brother took my first kiss like it was yesterday.

His honey blonde hair just barely brushed the tops of his eyes that glittered like millions of fractals of light off the cerulean pond in his backyard that we used to dare each other to go skinny-dipping in long before we had grown out of the 'cooties' stage.

We were sitting on a particularly scratchy patch of fluffy grass on the bank of that very same pond, swatting at dragonflies and gnats in the sweltering humidity of sunset on a brilliant late-July evening when it happened.

Colby Hart reached out with deft fingers and wrapped them around my head, fulfilling my wish.

"I just want to know what it feels like, just once, before you move off to college. Please?"

He hadn't responded with words.

No—instead, his lips answered for him where his voice had failed.

The crickets chirped to the orchestral beat drumming in my chest as summer rain dropped in a sprinkling mist which then followed the lead of Colby's lips upon mine, transforming the drizzle into a proper rainstorm, but we didn't seem to notice.

Not as his skin was firm and slick like wet velvet sliding across my own, our hands tangling all up in each other like it would be the end of the world to ever part.

It was that scene playing on a loop in my mind as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing before me, standing at the threshold to Colby's door in the basketball house on campus where he'd told me to meet him before heading back to my dorm for orientation.

It was that very same kiss that was stuck on repeat in my head like a scratch on a movie disc, Colby's warm hands trailing up and down my flushed skin while rain pelted down on top of us while we smiled into each other's embrace of desire until he pulled back, the glistening droplets of water clinging to the charcoal length of his perfect eyelashes—

"Shit, Gracie, what are you doing here so early? You didn't knock?"

"I—I did knock."

Colby was too busy to hear my response.

"Uh, is this your little sister or something?"

I could barely make out the girl's features through the tears swimming in my eyes.

He'd told me to wait for him, right? I wasn't going crazy?

"I got a full ride to UCM, you should come too, it'll be fun to have you and Franny around like old times."

"Gracie? You okay? Shit, I'm sorry you had to see that."

Colby's voice of the past still floated in my ears, haunting me with the mockery of the promises he'd made me.

The girl had kissed him on the mouth in goodbye, just like he'd kissed me not thirteen months earlier.

"No, it's fine. I just came by early because you said you wanted to meet up and your friends pointed the way to your door. I didn't mean to interrupt. I actually really need to get to orientation, though. Good seeing you."

"Gracie, wait—"

I was already tearing out of the doorway to his room faster than the girl that had just vacated his bed.

It was official—I was nothing but an idiot.

It was only when I was halfway down the stairs and ran into an imposing figure that was a good foot taller than me even despite being on a lower step than me that I came to a screeching halt.

Basketball players.

Of course, and I'd just made myself into a complete fool in front of the entire lot of them.

"You gonna watch where you're going? Are you lost?"

I stared up into the hostile eyes of the man I'd just run into and could hardly make out any discerning features through my tears other than the slight tilt of angry, pale eyes.

"Sorry. I'm leaving."

I'd just barely made it to the landing and hooked a left that a steel arm tugged me back into a very hard chest.

"Ow."

"Exit's that way, Sweetheart. Sorry your boyfriend cheated on you, but save that drama for outside the house. Season hasn't even started yet, and no one needs jailbait around to make it any more distracting for us than it already is."

The man released me with a slight shove and I had barely huffed my dark brown hair out of my eyes before whirling on him and yanking myself out of his embarrassing embrace.

"Excuse me, but you have no right to manhandle me that way."

"Oh, I don't, is that right?"

"No, you don't! I told you I was leaving your stupid house and it's clear that I was lost. The least you could do is point me in the right direction without putting your hands on me."

A quick blink and the rest of my tears faded to the wayside, the turbulent emotions in me turning into something a bit like rage.

I liked that feeling—rage.

It was something I hadn't had the chance to fully examine before in my life.

Grief, though? That was an emotion I was all too familiar with, and I would've been damned to let Colby's betrayal sink me deep into the pit of despair that came with it.

"Right. Well, now that we've got that out of the way, there's the exit. Have at it."

"Has anyone told you that you're a complete asshole?"

I hadn't had a chance to thoroughly examine the man's features long enough before opening my mouth back up again to insult him, but as he remained silent I allowed my eyes to rove over his face to realize just why he seemed to think he could get away with his attitude problem.

Oh, so that was why.

He was the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen.

His eyes were so light I could hardly discern the color from our few feet of distance from each other, but the inky midnight black hair that fell in perfect cascading waves atop his head was much easier to distinguish.

"Never to my face, but it seems you're the only one brave enough to do it. And why haven't you left yet, exactly? Pretty sure you should dump your cheating boyfriend, but, hey you might be one of those pathetic girls who comes crawling back just because she's a ball chaser—"

The man in front of me was cut off, unfortunately for him, by the careening slap of my palm on his cheek that he hadn't prepared to come his way.

For a moment, I could only stare at my hand as if it had had a mind of its own and was working of it's own volition; as if it wasn't me behind the defining action of slapping someone almost an entire foot taller than me (which, mind you, made the dynamics of said slap fairly difficult to maneuver).

"Get. The fuck. Out of my house."

"Isn't this the school's property?  And just how exactly is it your house?"

It was that moment that Colby decided to grace the world with his presence, descending the stairs gleefully unaware of the power struggle standoff occurring at the landing of the stairs.

"Hey, Cap!  I see you've met Gracie here, she's—"

"Just leaving. And never fucking coming back."

"Well that's a little dramatic Gracie, it wasn't like you walked in on me fuck—"

"Ew, Colby. I don't need to hear specifics, please."

Colby's blue eyes scrunched up in amusement at my words but the apparent captain of Colby's basketball team could only watch in mocking realization as the dread settled in my bones.

"Don't be a stranger, Gracie."

I shivered at the man's use of my name on his tongue and shouldered my way past the two freakishly tall men to find the exit, scurrying away like the cowardly mice I had become in front of Colby.

I only turned back once, eyes bouncing off the golden tan on the skin of Colby's team captain—his large frame encased in tight black sweatpants and a fitted black t-shirt to match.

Drool practically dripped from my mouth down to the floor as he pulled a faded baseball cap from his back pocket and placed it on his head, backwards.

"I'll come see you and Franny at your dorm tomorrow, make sure you're all settled in."

"Sure.  See ya."

I didn't even glance back at Colby once as I responded and left their glorified frat house, vowing to myself that I would never return as the meek and naive girl who let a boy ruin her.

No, I wouldn't be returning to that house to see him ever again—because Colby Hart did not deserve my devotion; and I was going to make damn sure that he knew it by the time I was through.

***

Dunk is an enemies-to-lovers, New Adult College Stand-alone Romance, coming soon!!

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Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)