Adam: Are you okay? Just let me know you’re at the dorm and that all is well and I’ll leave you alone.

Me: Yes, I’m safe and sound in my dorm.

He doesn’t respond right away, and I toss my phone back onto the bed. Holding it reminds me I haven’t talked to Heath. “Well, should we watch Notting Hill?”

We’re just cueing up the movie when there’s noise outside of my window. My window faces a parking lot, so it isn’t unusual that it’s noisy, but this noise is… well, it’s different.

“Do you hear that?” I ask.

“Sounds like a bunch of drunk guys heading out to party. It’s too early to be so obnoxious, must be freshmen. No offense.” She stands and goes to look. “Uh, Ginny, I think you need to see this.”

I scramble from the bed to look. There’s shrubbery along the edge of the building, so the aforementioned obnoxious guys aren’t directly under my window, but they’re as close as they can get.

Adam and Rhett are on all fours on the ground and Maverick is on top of them on his hands and knees and then Heath stands on his back. They’ve built a freaking pyramid. Reagan and Dakota laugh. We open my window as far as it goes, which is only a couple of inches.

Heath holds his cell phone over his head and sings along with the music.

“What in the world is he doing?” Dakota asks.

“Shh! He’s serenading her,” Reagan says.

“Why Mariah Carey?” Dakota asks in a whisper.

A few other residents have opened their windows and call out or sing along. People walking by in the parking lot are stopping. Some have their phones out videoing it, no doubt.

Heath wears a shy expression, one I wasn’t sure he possessed, but he belts out the song confidently. When he’s through the chorus for a second time, he stops.

Rhett calls, “Did she hear us? What’s going on? I can’t see shit down here.”

“The whole dorm heard you, asshole,” someone calls.

“What are you doing?” I ask through the crack. My heart hammers in my chest. Hope and excitement claw at the hurt and anger.

“I didn’t think this all the way through. I don’t know what to do now,” he admits with a sheepish grin.

“Tell her how you feel,” Mav urges. He looks up to me and lifts a hand to wave, which makes Heath wobble on his back.

“Maybe you should get down first,” Adam prompts.

Heath jumps down and the rest of the guys get up. Heath walks closer and stares up at me. “I miss you.”

“You could have said that over the phone.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t answer.”

“Trying to watch a movie in here!” someone else calls out a window not far from mine.