“Here, hold my beer while I get the punch.” He pressed the cup of beer into her hand, and turned around.

  She watched him, or rather his broad back, as he grabbed a fresh cup and poured punch into it. Well, maybe this party wasn’t so bad after all.

  10 – Animal House Rescue

  Carter charged into the fraternity house on Gayley Avenue. It was loud, packed, and smelled of alcohol and marijuana. He knew the smell of marijuana well. It reminded him of visits to the doctor’s office. In 2085, marijuana wasn’t used as a recreational drug anymore. It was too valuable for that. Instead, more than three dozen different medications had been formulated from the versatile plant, and many more were in the research and development stage. He couldn’t understand why marijuana was still considered an illegal drug in many countries, including half the states in the US. To him it was equivalent to an aspirin being considered illegal.

  Nobody in the house cast him a second look. Just as well. He made his way through the foyer into the crowded living room, frantically searching for Julie. What he would say to her, he had no idea. All that mattered was to get her away from this place. He didn’t care if she thought he was an idiot or some drunk jerk.

  He wished he could have used his holocom to help him scan the room. It would have been faster, but he couldn’t allow anybody to see his little toy from the future. Fuck! He was perspiring now, not from the run, but from the fact that he was afraid for Julie’s safety.

  She wasn’t in the living room. He pushed through the crowd and entered another room. He saw the bar that the students had set up. There, he spotted Todd Stirling. He recognized him from the picture in the police report. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome. Figured.

  He was scooping a reddish liquid into a cup, then put the ladle back in the large bowl, and reached into his front pants pocket, halfway pulling out a little plastic bag. From it, he fished a small white pill and dropped it into the drink. A moment later he turned. In doing so, he revealed Julie, who was standing a few feet behind him, a drink in her hand.

  Carter pushed through the people crowding around the bar, not caring whom he pissed off. Todd had already reached Julie and handed her the drink with the roofie, while he took the other drink from her.

  Todd lifted his cup and touched it to Julie’s.

  Another second, and Carter reached them. He snatched Julie’s drink from her hand and tossed the liquid into Todd’s face before either of them could react.

  Julie gasped in shock, while Todd jumped back a step, arms wide, trying to avoid being doused. In the process, he seemed to have forgotten the beer in his hand, and spilled it over a girl a few feet to his right.

  “Fucking asshole!” Todd yelled at Carter. “You’re messing with the wrong guy.”

  “Bastard!” the girl Todd had spilled his beer on cursed.

  “Tell him that!” Todd growled back, pointing at Carter. “That asshole started it! What the fuck’s your problem, man?” He drove his finger into Carter’s chest.

  But Carter didn’t back away, instead, he went toe-to-toe with the jerk. “My problem is that you put a roofie in that drink.” He motioned to Julie. “You tried to drug her.”

  There was a flicker of dread in Todd’s eyes, but it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared.

  Julie’s chin dropped. She gaped at Carter and then at Todd, shock registering on her face.

  “That’s a fucking lie!” Todd claimed, his voice loud so everybody in the room could hear him. “I did nothing of the sort. You’re just some troublemaker crashing a party. My brothers and I are gonna kick your ass out of this house!”

  Meanwhile, it had gotten rather quiet in the room, and everybody was staring at them. Only the people in the living room were unaware of the incident, and the music kept blaring in that part of the house.

  Carter looked at Julie. “He put a roofie in your drink. I can prove it. He’s got a small plastic bag with more pills in the left front pocket of his jeans.”

  “I don’t! That’s another fucking lie! Get the fuck out of here! You don’t belong here. Nobody invited you!”

  While that was technically true, Carter wasn’t budging. “If I’m such a liar, then why don’t you empty out your pockets and show everybody what you’re hiding?”

  By now, everybody in the bar area had stopped talking and was watching the altercation.

  “This is my place. You can’t tell me what to do here. I’m not emptying my pockets.”

  Julie took a step closer. “You won’t have to empty your pockets.”

  “See!” Todd said, pointing at Julie. “Julie believes me.”

  But Julie shook her head. “I didn’t say that. I just said that you won’t have to empty your pockets.” She reached for Todd’s breast pocket. “Because you’re wearing the evidence.”

  Carter followed her hand as she picked a partially dissolved white pill from the corner of Todd’s breast pocket, where it had gotten caught when Carter had tossed the drink at him.

  Julie’s lips quivered, but she didn’t scream, nor did she cry. Outraged gasps came from the crowd around them.

  “You’re the most despicable human being I’ve ever met,” Julie said, then shoved what was left of the pill into Todd’s mouth with her left hand, and followed it up with her right fist.

  Todd’s head snapped back. He hadn’t seen this coming. Neither had Carter. Julie had guts. He liked that in a girl.

  “I think I’m done with this party,” Julie said.

  “Did you come with somebody who can walk you home?” Carter asked.

  Julie glanced around. “My roommates.”

  Carter took her elbow and steered her out of the room. “Let’s find them.”

  In the living room, the party was continuing. Nobody here had noticed the incident in the bar area. But Carter didn’t doubt that within fifteen minutes the entire university would know what had occurred. He wanted to get Julie out of there before that happened.

  Julie turned to him. “Thank you. I don’t even know what to say. If you hadn’t been there, seen him… I don’t know what would have happened.”

  Carter knew, but he wasn’t going to tell her. She didn’t need any more trauma. “I was glad I was there at the right time.”

  “I’m Julie.”

  She offered her hand, and he shook it.

  “I’m Carter.”

  She smiled at him now. “Thank you, Carter.” Then she glanced around the room. “You know, it looks like my roommates are all having too much fun. I’ll just go home on my own. It’s not far.”

  She was already heading to the foyer, and Carter accompanied her.

  “I don’t want you to walk alone,” he said. “Please let me walk you to your door to make sure that jerk and his friends don’t follow you.”

  She looked at him for a moment, contemplating the offer. Did she see him as a threat now? He was a man, he was a stranger. Why should she trust him?

  “Don’t you want to stay at the party?”

  He shook his head. He’d only come to save her. But he couldn’t tell her that either.

  “I’d love it if you could walk me home. I’d feel a lot better.”

  He smiled, and they left the house.

  11 – Walking in the Moonlight

  Outside, Julie could finally acknowledge the pain in her right hand. She let out a groan and shook her hand as if she could shake the pain away.

  “Damn, that hurt.”

  “Let me have a look,” Carter said and reached for her hand.

  She let him. His touch was gentle and careful, his hand warm and soothing. But what was even more important was that she liked it. She trusted him although she didn’t know why. Was it because he’d saved her from a potentially life-altering situation? And it would have been life-altering because there was only one reason why a guy would slip a girl a roofie. But she didn’t want to think of that now. Carter had acted, and she was grateful for it.

  “Doesn’t look like anything is broken,” Carter said. “But I know how punching a guy can hurt. You might want to ice it down.”

  “It felt good though.”

  He chuckled. “Punching him? I would have liked to do that myself. But hey, ladies first.”

  Julie looked at her rescuer. Carter was the quintessential heartthrob: tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair, a classical face, and piercing green eyes. She’d always had a thing for guys with green eyes. To say that she was attracted to him was an understatement. Normally, when she was attracted to a man, she became all flustered and nervous. Not so with Carter. She felt at ease with him. While he looked like he was either a Junior or a Senior in college, something about the way he carried himself made him appear more grown up than an ordinary college student. Besides, nothing about him felt ordinary.

  “I needed to do it,” she said into the brief silence between them.

  Carter nodded, and she saw in his eyes that he understood her. “Worth the pain in your hand, right?”

  “Totally worth it.”

  Julie motioned in the direction of her home, and they started walking side by side.

  “I’ve never seen you on campus,” Julie said. If she had, she would have noticed him.

  “I just arrived here. You’re studying here at UCLA, right?” When she nodded, he added, “What’s your major?”

  Did he really want to know, or was he just making conversation like Todd? Oh God, how had she become so cynical in such a short time? It wasn’t fair to measure Carter with the same yardstick as Todd.

  “Engineering.”

  “What kind?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Actually, nanotechnology.”

  “That’s a great field. It’ll change the world. Everything really comes down to improving nanotechnology and advancing the research. It has a big future. An amazing future, you’ll see.”

  She looked at him from the side, and he met her gaze. “You sound so confident. Is that your field too?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Only the brightest minds work on nanotechnology. I don’t have the grades for that.”

  Hearing him admit that she was smarter than he, was refreshing. Most guys would never admit it. Or was he just acting humble?

  “So what are you studying?”

  “It’s a little hard to explain,” Carter said. “Uhm…”

  “Why?”

  He sighed. “’Cause I’m not attending UCLA.”

  “Oh, you’re taking a gap year? I wish I could do that, but I need to keep pushing and get my Bachelors as quickly as I can, and then do my Masters. Perhaps a PhD…” She shrugged. Did she sound like a total nerd?

  “I admire that. You have great goals.”

  “You must have goals too,” she fished.

  She’d never met a guy who didn’t talk endlessly about himself whenever given the chance. Carter seemed different, more reserved, more private.

  “Oh, I do. But they’re nothing like yours. I just want to help my family. Sometimes that means you have to make sacrifices. Or whatever you thought would be a sacrifice. Sometimes doing something that’s good for your family, can also be good for yourself.”

  This was a much more intimate confession than she’d expected from a guy like Carter. She guessed that his family didn’t have the money to send him to a prestigious university like UCLA. Not wanting to make him feel embarrassed, she didn’t probe any further. She’d been lucky in a way: her mother had left a small life insurance that made it possible for her to continue her studies without drowning in student loans.

  “Everything in life should be like that, shouldn’t it? To want to do something that’s good for everybody,” Julie said. “I hope that once I’ve finished my studies, I can apply my skills for the greater good, you know, like inventing something that helps eradicate suffering or illness. So that it all means something.”

  “You will, Julie. You will do something great with your life. No matter how. Even if it’s not how you envisioned it to be.”

  She realized that they’d arrived at the house, and she motioned him to walk with her to the entrance door.

  “This is me. This is where I live.”

  “Looks like a nice place.”

  They stood there in front of the door, the distance of a couple feet between them. The lamp over the door wasn’t working, but moonlight fell on Carter’s face. He made no attempt to move any closer. He’d done what he said he’d do: walk her home. Could she expect anything else? No. But it didn’t stop her from hoping for something else, though she didn’t know how to initiate it.

  For a few seconds, there was silence between them.

  She was searching for the right words.

  “Do you think I could…” he said hesitantly.

  “…come in?”

  “…see you again tomorrow?” he finished his sentence overlapping with her invitation.

  Suddenly flustered at having misread him, Julie felt her cheeks flush. “I mean…”

  “Yes, I’d love to come in,” Carter said.

  “…tomorrow will be great,” she said over his words.

  They both laughed.

  “Okay, you first,” Carter now said, grinning.

  “Would you like to come inside?”

  “If that’s what you want. You don’t have to, you know.”

  “I want to. That is if you want to. I don’t want you to think you now have to take care of me, just because you saved me. I mean, you don’t know me… you probably have a girlfriend.”

  Carter took a step toward her, put his fingers under her chin and tipped her head up so she had to look into his eyes. “I don’t have a girlfriend. And I’d like to spend more time with you. But you might not be ready for this. Not after what happened tonight. I’m not like that guy. I don’t push or force a woman into something she doesn’t want, or at least, doesn’t want yet.”

  His words gave her more confidence than she’d ever had before. She took his hand and turned her face into his palm, kissing it. Then she eliminated the remaining distance between them. “It feels right to be with you. You make me feel good.”

  Slowly, giving her time to withdraw if she didn’t want this, Carter dipped his head and slanted his lips over hers. His warm lips were gentle, hesitant at first, then firmer. He smelled good. Everything suddenly felt right. She knew now why she’d waited so long, why she’d not wanted to have sex with anybody before. Not because of religious or moral reasons like her fellow students suspected, but because she wanted to share this experience with the right guy.

  And the right guy was Carter, the stranger who’d saved her.

  She put her hand on his nape and parted her lips to show him that she was ready for his kiss, and for so much more.

  12 – Close Encounter

  Carter hadn’t expected this turn of events, not after what had happened at the fraternity party. Julie should be circumspect of any man right now, particularly of a stranger. Yet she was still so trusting.

  He hadn’t lied to her: he wanted to help his family, carry on the family’s genes, not just for them but for the greater good. But the sacrifice he’d expected to make for humanity’s future wasn’t a sacrifice at all. He liked Julie. She was bright, sweet, and unpretentious. And apparently totally unaware of the effect she had on him.

  It was a surprise to him too. After all, Julie was a virgin and inexperienced, yet her inviting kiss sent heat charging through his veins, making him want to press her against the door and make love to her right there.

  Fuck, he cursed himself, slow down. That’s not how you treat a virgin. Not if you want her to invite you back.

  Julie’s lips tasted sweet, and the way she pressed her body to his, was more of a temptation than any experienced woman’s wiles. Experience meant nothing. True desire even in the absence of experience was more of a turn-on than any practiced lap dance, striptease, or seduction.

  Julie moaned softly into his mouth, and he intensified the kiss, feeling how the virgin in his arms was awakening and blooming into a woman with desires and needs. He was glad that he was the one who would fulfill those needs for her—if only he managed to suppress his own need until he could show her that her pleasure mattered. That she mattered, more than she knew.

  Carter ripped his mouth from Julie’s, but kept his arms around her, not wanting her to think he’d had enough. He couldn’t help but notice that he was breathless. From just a kiss? He gazed at her lips. They looked almost swollen. Instinctively, he stroked his thumb over them.

  “Was I too rough?”

  Her cheeks flushed in a pretty red. She shook her head, then moved her face closer to his, offering her mouth once more. But he didn’t respond to her invitation this time.

  “Julie, I think we should get off the porch, or people will start talking about some stranger mauling you.”

  She chuckled. “We can’t have that happening.”

  “The mauling?”

  With a giggle, she said, “The talking.”

  She dug into her handbag and found her house key. But when she tried to put it into the lock, the door creaked open.

  Carter realized immediately that he’d neglected to make sure the door had snapped in behind him in his haste to get to Julie.

  Julie cast a fearful look back at him. “Break-in?”

  “Let me check.” He opened the door fully and stepped into the foyer, Julie right behind him. “Stay here. I’ll check all rooms.”

  Julie nodded.

  Carter did a sweep of the first floor rooms, the living area, dining room, kitchen and storage area, and the powder room. As expected, there was nobody. However, since anybody could have entered after he’d raced out of the house, he took his job seriously. Motioning to the staircase, he indicated to Julie that he would look upstairs too. A sweep of the second and third floor bedrooms and bathrooms revealed no intruder either.

  He went back downstairs.

  Julie still stood in the foyer, a can of mace in her hand.

  “You won’t need that,” Carter said, glad to see that she was prepared to defend herself. “The house is empty. Maybe one of your roommates forgot to lock the door on her way out.”

 

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