Page 1 of Fractured Ice

1

Sienna

It has been two months since I last had sex, and suddenly everyone looks attractive.

This is not something I would say out loud. I am a composed person. I have a strong sense of self and a healthy, well-organized interior life, and I am absolutely not the kind of woman who walks across campus on a Tuesday in January thinking about how badly she needs someone to do something about the dry spell she is currently experiencing.

Except that is exactly what I'm doing, so…

The thing is, I don't want a relationship. I want to be very clear about that, even to myself. A relationship sounds exhausting. A relationship involves feelings and communication and someone texting you at inconvenient times about things you have to care about, and I have a swim team feature due, a recording to edit, and three interview questions to finalize before Friday. What I want is a man. Specifically a convenient, attractive person with low expectations and good follow-through. Is that so much to ask? This is a university. There are thousands of people here. Statistically, one of them should be able to handle this assignment.

Speaking of assignments, I have to focus on my own. Sophomore year is a hell of a lot more intense than freshman year ever was, and I’m sure junior year will be even harder. My next class starts in twenty minutes.

Interview questions need to be written, I remind myself. Swim team feature needs to be completed. I need to charge my recorder. I have a whole list of things that need doing that are infinitely more important than my current predicament, and I’m an adult with functional priorities and I’m going to focus on them right now starting immediately. I do not have time to look at every man at Ridgehaven university that’s walking by, silently auditioning them to be my person.

The fraternity quad comes into view and I spare it exactly one glance before deciding it has nothing to offer me. Water cannons, mud, an alarming quantity of bare skin for January, the Delta Theta versus Delta Rho kickball event that the entire campus apparently treats as a national holiday. I keep walking. I am not stopping to watch people throw themselves at a kickball in the name of charity. I have things to do, places to go, and people to see.

The sidewalk clips close to the edge of the quad, bad design, and I pull my coat tighter, focusing on the path ahead as I try very hard to think about literally anything other than the fact that two months without sex is an objectively unreasonable amount of time and the guy in my Stats class has been looking at me in a way that suggests he'd be willing to do something about that…

This is not a productive line of thinking.

I redirect.

Swim team feature. Captain's name is Jade Morrison, two individual freestyle titles, transferred from Arizona for the coaching program. She is interesting and accomplished and there is a real story there about the decision to leave a powerhouse program for a mid-major, and I am going to write the hell out of it if I can get my head in the game, which I could do right now if I were a better, more focused person.

I am working on it.

The quad is doing its thing to my left, music and shouting and a water cannon catching someone else completely off guard, and I'm almost past the worst of the event when I see him.

He's standing at the edge of the grass about twenty feet off the path, facing away from me. Tall. Broad across the shoulders in the specific way that means he actually uses them for something, not just for filling out a shirt. Blond hair gone wet and slightly curling at the back of his neck. Gray boxers hanging exactly right on his hips, which, as an objective matter of physics and proportion, are doing everything they're supposed to do.

I slow down by approximately half a step.

I'm a journalist. Noticing things is a professional reflex. It means absolutely nothing.

He's got his arms crossed, watching the kickball game. From this angle I can see the line of his back and the way he's standing with his weight on one foot, easy and loose, and I conduct a brief, thorough, entirely academic assessment of the situation, finally concluding that whoever this person is, someone out there is very lucky.

That’s a human being I would have a conversation with. That’s a human being I would let buy me a drink. That’s a human being who could potentially solve the problem I am currently having, if approached correctly, which I am good at when I decide to be. Which I wouldn’t even be thinking about if I wasn’t so sex starved.

I should keep walking.

I keep walking.

Sort of. I'm definitely still moving. I'm just moving slightly more slowly than I was, and glancing over every few seconds in a way I'd describe as casual if anyone asked, which they won't because I’m a woman on a sidewalk and I’m allowed to look at whatever I want.

He shifts his weight and I get a better angle of his rather strong jaw. I'm in the middle of upgrading my overall assessment when the crowd noise does something that snaps my attention away because I have been around enough athletics to know when something is about to go wrong.

I look up.

A red kickball is arcing through the air toward the sidewalk.

Toward me.

The gorgeous man breaks from the edge of the grass after it, fast, and I register two things in the half second I have: one, he is not going to catch that ball, and two, he is very much going to run directly into me instead.

I open my mouth to warn him.

He doesn't see me.