“Yeah, about that . . .”—she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear—“I’m really sorry. I was having a bad day and used you as my personal frustration outlet. I’ve never even talked to my obnoxious brothers like that, let alone a total stranger.”
I felt my smile dropping. The only reason she’d sat next to me was so she could apologize.
“If I offered a heartfelt apology, would you accept it?” she asked, dead serious, like she’d been agonizing over the stranger she’d given a hard time to yesterday and wouldn’t rest until she’d extended an apology. Incredible. I’d managed to irritate the Mother Teresa of college girls. I had a gift.
“I don’t know about that,” I said, rubbing my chin, noting the perfect amount of stubble I had on display. “It was a grievous offense that has permanently scarred me. I think I can one day forgive you, but I’m afraid I’ll never be able to forget.”
Her expression fell flat and color actually drained from her face. She swallowed. “I am so, so—”
I would normally ride this kind of reaction to its end, but I couldn’t with her for some reason. Something about knowing she was tortured, mild as it was, went against everything I’d ever known before. “Emma,” I said, gripping her arm, looking for any reason to touch her again. “I’m giving you a hard time. No worries, you’re forgiven.”
Her expression said
phew
before she forced her forehead to line. “So you not only delight in skipping classes that, if you were to calculate based on the exorbitant annual tuition we pay in exchange for a piece of paper at four years end, cost nearly two hundred dollars per class,”—the number didn’t hit me like it hit her. I had a dresser drawer full of boxer briefs that cost that much apiece and they were far sexier and more practical than a college education. Obviously—“you also have a sick addiction to driving the dagger of guilt deeper in a girl’s back when she feels absolutely awful already?”
“Wow,” I said, keeping my hand planted over her arm. She didn’t seem uncomfortable with it, although I was as uncomfortable as I’d been in awhile.
This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the guy that went all googly-eyes over a girl. I’d always thought head over heels was for chumps, but here I was . . . the newest member of the chump club. “Either you’re a psychic or my reputation precedes me.”
She laughed again, pulling the pencil holding her hair into a bun free. An avalanche of more brown than red auburn hair tumbled midway down her back. As she wrote down the date on the right margin of her notebook, I noticed that, other than me, she was the only student who didn’t have a shiny new laptop. Old school—I liked it.
“But since you already have me pegged, you better be careful. Daddy will take away your black credit card and enroll you in an all girls’ school if you fraternize with bad influences like me,” I said, nudging my shoulder into hers, purposefully jolting her arm and, along with it, her pencil.
She shot me the sweetest scowl I’d ever seen as she scribbled her eraser over the pencil mark streaking across the page.
“Emma’s dad bailed on them when she was five,” a male voice that was three shades of pissed announced, taking the seat on the other side of her. I didn’t know his name, didn’t care if he’d won a Nobel Prize, didn’t care if he was going to find a cure for cancer. I didn’t like him. “I’ve filled the role of douchebag and jackass detection for the past six years. Along with her four brothers.” I knew he was eyeing me with that male testosterone kind of intensity, but I wasn’t interested in him and his bloated ego. This room wasn’t large enough to hold two male egos the size of ours. “Her four older brothers who could squash a little pissant like you with their thumbs.”
Okay, frat boy on a head trip was starting to irritate me. Especially since Emma had pulled her arm away from my hand the moment he’d arrived like I was electrocuting her.
“That’s beautiful,” I said, looking at him for the first time. Looked just like he sounded. A bulky meathead with a buzz cut and a cleft chin who thought fitted tees and loose-fit jeans were the height of fashion. “Shakespeare, is it?”
“Excuse me?” he sneered, his face wrinkling.
“You’re excused.” I waved my hand in the direction of the door, looking back at Emma.
But she wasn’t the same Emma I’d met two minutes ago. The smile had vanished from her face, her eyes were forward, the irises bouncing from side to side, and she was so tense I could have broken her if I grazed her with my hand.
“Is this your personal body guard or something?” I asked her, trying to lighten the mood because that’s one of the few things I did best.
When she stiffened further, her eyes growing wider, I knew I’d only done the opposite of lightening.
“Try her boyfriend, metro,” he said, and while I guessed he meant the name-calling to be an insult, I took it as a compliment coming from someone like him. Whatever he was, I wanted to be the opposite. “Also known as Ty Steel. Ask around. You don’t want to mess with me.”
I gave him a salute and would have given him much more had the professor not decided to get class rolling. “Eager young minds, time to end your captivating conversations and open your gray matter to something even more captivating,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “Pavlov’s Law.”
There was a communal groan, giving me my window. “Boyfriend?” I whispered over at her, scanning Ty head to toe as he logged onto his laptop. “Desperate much?”
She choked back the snicker surfacing, covering her mouth with both hands. I swear I would have cut off my right arm to watch her eclipse from the dark to light in the frame of a few seconds, but her face gained all its former composure back when Ty glanced over at her. This guy had territorial boyfriend written all over his unibrow topped forehead.
The moment the professor started going off, something about a bell and dogs salivating, she began scribbling down notes furiously. Like she was writing down every last word of his bore-fest. She was a lefty, and I took full advantage of her recessive gene trait.
I folded my arms over my desk area, scooting them over far enough so her elbow was continually rubbing against mine as she continued on her note taking warpath. I’d never enjoyed being elbowed by someone more.
“Do you mind, lefty?” I whispered, grinning at her from the side when Ty was distracted by his malfunctioning computer. He looked like a caveman trying to beat it into submission. I didn’t care if he caught me conversing with his girlfriend, but it obviously made her uncomfortable. “I’d appreciate it if you’d respect my personal bubble and keep your elbows to yourself”—one of the biggest lies I’d told to date—“I’m not that kind of guy.”
Her eyes rolled to the sky and, taking a sideways glance at the caveman beating his laptop and scratching his head, scribbled something down in the margin of her notebook. Moving her arm aside, I read,
That’s not what I hear
. Every word was underlined.
So Emma had a sense of humor. I felt the smitten setting in so deep it would take some serious digging to weed it out. So I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. Flirting was like white blood cells—I couldn’t survive without it.
Since I didn’t have a notebook to scroll flirty little notes in, I leaned in closer, having to restrain myself from brushing the hair covering her ear to the side. “Would you like to find out for yourself?” I whispered in my lady killer voice.
Before I could gauge her response, a crumpled piece of paper hit me dead in the nose, bouncing onto my desktop. I didn’t need twenty guesses to know who it’d come from. I flicked it off my desk, plastering on my most unimpressed face. If the best effort Ty could muster up was rebounding paper off my face, he was a more immature boy than I’d taken him for.
Another forty-five minutes, or hour, or something must have passed because before I’d nearly gotten enough of watching Emma absorbed in her note-taking, the professor was excusing us. Unlike everyone else, I wasn’t in a hurry to get up and out the door.
It felt like Emma was stalling as she concentrated on putting her notebook away and twisting her pencil back in her hair. I was definitely stalling, and Ty was glowering.
“I’m on the volleyball team and we’re playing a big game tonight,” Emma announced suddenly, looking at me. “You should come. I’m sure you’re the kind of guy that loves a girls’ volleyball game.”
I grinned, not able to keep it in check or adjust it. She was going out of her way to invite me to something with her boyfriend sitting a seat away.
“Emma,” Ty hissed his warning, throwing me a look of challenge.
Too bad the boy didn’t know I never backed down from a challenge. “Now that sounds like my kind of Friday night. What time?”
“Seven,” she answered, crossing her arms nonchalantly when Ty reached out for her elbow. The movement inched her sleeves up, revealing a smattering of bruises on one of her arms.
“Whoa there, killer,” I said, letting out a low whistle. “You moonlight as a mixed martial arts fighter or something?” I trailed my fingers over her forearm, ignoring the further clenching of Ty’s jaw.
Tugging at her sleeves, she pulled them back into place and laughed a few notes. “Volleyball isn’t exactly a sissy sport,” she said, shouldering her bag. “It keeps me freshly bruised the majority of the year. I look like a purple spotted Dalmatian whenever I go to the beach.”
A flash of heat ran through me when my mind went there. “Now that’s a sight I wouldn’t mind beholding.”
“All right, if you’re done shamelessly hitting on my girlfriend, I’ve got to get Emma to her next class,” Ty said, pulling on her elbow.
“I wasn’t, but I guess I’ll be able to pick up where I left off tonight,” I replied, grinning like the smitten fool I’d become as I watched Emma and her soon to be ex climbing the stairs out of the auditorium.
Volleyball night at Stanford was like fight night in Vegas, minus the glitter and plastic, light-up heels. The campus was packed, nowhere to park, barely anywhere to walk, so I entrusted my first baby—my cherry red, vintage Mustang—to a valet at a swanky hotel nearby. I gave the attendant a bill to ensure nothing happened to one of the few loves of my life and used this handy dandy mode of transportation, known as teleportation, to land just outside of the auditorium.
I couldn’t have timed it better. I had the cover of twilight to shield me and I was ten minutes late, so other than the inebriated frat boys staggering into the auditorium, no one was around to witness my space bending gift.
Jogging up to the doors, I narrowly missed the worst of the staggering frat boys folding over and heaving violently. Had I been two steps farther, my designer shoes would have been a lost cause, but no harm, no foul.
“Keep up the good work, soldier,” I said, saluting as I weaved around him, making sure to give him a wide berth.
My attempts at humor were lost on Drunk of the Night Award guy, as they had been more often than not here. I wasn’t sure if it was the California or the college student in them, but this place didn’t find my staggering humor as
humorous
as the whole world had before. Not a good thing for a guy who eats sarcasm for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“Ugggghh,” a voice that screamed its owner had her nose curled called out. “You’re him, aren’t you? She said you were a hottie-patottie. However, she failed to mention you were fully aware of that genetic superiority.”
Hottie-patottie?
Who talked like that? Unable to resist, I turned to find out.
The girl tapping her fingers over crossed arms inspired a discreet lunge backwards and then another one when her eyes narrowed as she took a step in my direction. She looked like a thrift store had thrown up on her, had that emo, black cracked nail polish look that screamed femininity at its finest, and to top it off, a look in her eyes that was so neurotic I couldn’t tell if she wanted to kill me or just bite my head off after mating with me.
I suppose eccentric was a nicer way of putting it.
“I moonlight as a hottie-patottie, but by day I’m an ogre named Sven,” I said, fighting instinct and crossing the space between me and the bra-burning, man-hating president of the women’s lib movement.
A tugging on one side of her mouth erupted. “You too? I thought I was the only one with the fairy tale curse. I’m a princess in pink by day and a black wearing bitch every night,” she said, rolling her eyes over princess or pink, I wasn’t sure. It was probably both. I could tell from ten seconds with this girl she’d never been a Cinderella wannabe.
“And here I was under the impression that, in addition to genetic superiority, I also had fairy tale exclusivity going for me here at Stanford,” I tossed her way, shaking my head. “Damn it, anyways.”
“Charming too,” she said, dropping her head back. “This is not a good thing.” She continued to carry on a conversation with herself for a few more seconds before dropping her head back into place and appraising me with those nutty eyes again.
I was rarely uncomfortable around a woman, or at a loss for words, but this one had the gift. Not in the good way though, not in the way Emma had inspired it.
“Julia,” she offered, softening some. “Julia Grey. I’m Emma’s roommate, and I come bearing the gift of a coveted ticket to society’s way of cementing women as sex objects bouncing, twirling, and on display in a scrap of lycra for the whole of the perverted male world.”
Wow, this girl’s got issues. Anger, daddy, or boyfriend issues I wasn’t sure, but I guessed it was an impressive mix of all three.
“Pat—”
“I know who you are,” she said, cutting me off as she held out the ticket curled between her fingertips like it was painful to have skin to paper contact with it. “Emma said you would be the ‘adorable’ one dressed for a photo shoot ten minutes late.”
“Emma said I was adorable?”
“Maybe,” she said, chipping away at the remains of her black nail polish. “But if you ever repeat that I repeated that, I’ll use my jedi knight skills on you and light saber your fine little butt.”
It was a funny thing to say and I normally would have laughed, but this girl was tipping the crazy scale just enough that I didn’t doubt she was serious. “My lips are sealed.”
“Sure, they’re not,” she said, continuing her masochistic manicure.
I never had any issues cutting to the point, so now was as good a time as any. “What’s the deal with Emma and Terminator?”
She smiled the opposite of the happy kind. “You seem like a decent guy,” she began. “Wait, I take that back. I don’t know you enough to make that assertion, but I like looking at you. A lot.” To prove it, she took a full body inventory where we stood. A lesser man would have squirmed in his size elevens. “So it’s in my best interest to keep you alive and in one fine piece, so I’m going to offer you a piece of advice.” She looked me square in the eye. Even the green of her eyes was unusual, like it was radioactive. “Stay away from Emma.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. “You’re a fan of Ty’s,” I stated.
“You mean chump-butt?” she said. “No way, Jose, but I am a fan of Emma’s, and you in her life is not a good thing while Ty’s—”
“Still her boyfriend,” I interrupted.
Her eyes drilled into mine harder. “Alive,” she finished.
This girl was putting a serious damper on my Friday night. Enough with the mood stifling already. “Thanks for the tip, but I can handle myself against your stereotypical, college meathead.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure, you can’t.”
This conversation was going nowhere. Fast. “Thanks for the ticket. It was nice . . .”—what was the right word?—“
chatting
with you.”
She laughed one hard note that rocked her body. “Hey, Top Gun? One more pointer before you head in there,” she called out as I headed towards the gymnasium. “Since I doubt you’ll be flying the friendly skies in an F-14 while Kenny Loggins plays on a loop in the background anytime soon,”—she smirked at me, scanning me head to toe—“might want to loose the aviators. They’ll eat you alive if you go in there looking like a pretty boy version of Ice Man.”
I’m sure to her that was a way of showing her concern for someone she liked, but what she didn’t expect from me was that I loved me a little roshambo.
I kept the glasses firmly in place, grinning my response. “Aren’t you coming?” I asked as she stayed planted by the doors.
She did an exaggerated shudder. “No. I have a strict no mixing it with the jocks policy ever since a pack of them made my life hell in high school. Enjoy,” she said, kicking open the door behind her with her shiny purple military boot. “Try to stay alive. I’d like to undress you with my eyes at least a few thousand more times.”
Objectification. If this is the way I made the women I did it on (with the purest of intentions, of course) feel, I was going to have to ease up.
The crowd exploded to a roar suddenly, as I guessed the teams were making their appearance on the court. Which meant Emma was just a room away.
Putting resolutions on hold, I jogged into the gymnasium, handing my ticket to the attendant while I craned my neck, searching for her. I couldn’t tell you if the ticket taker was male or female, I was so absorbed, but they did rattle off directions to my seat. Sounded like Emma had scored me a sweet ticket. Center court and a few rows back.
I all but pranced down the bleachers, simultaneously searching for my seat and Emma. Since I was more interested in finding one over the other, when I found it, I put on the brakes.
She’d found me at almost the same time I’d found her. She was sitting in a metal chair on the sidelines, her cheeks flushed and her hair pulled back into a high ponytail. She smiled. I beamed.
Even when she turned her attention away to retie her shoes, I stood smitten like I’d just been injected with a potent poison of love potion. I was oblivious to everything and everyone. At least until a wad of paper aimed at my head neared its destination.
I let my body do what it did, snatching the threat—small and insignificant as it was—from the air before it had a chance to serve its intended purpose of humiliating me in front of hundreds. The temptation to fire it back at the owner was overwhelming in so many ways, but a handful of spectators were already looking at me like I had mad ninja skills. If I unleashed my speed ball with dead on accuracy, the questions in their heads of what I’d just done might flicker over to conclusions I didn’t need them to draw. Especially now that I’d found a reason to stay firmly planted in the land of Mortals.
So instead, I finished my journey to my seat which, lucky for me, was right next to the paper wad’s owner.
“I think you lost something,” I said, like I was as happy I could reunite a couple pieces of trash back together as I would have been bringing a little boy’s lost puppy home.
“Keep it,” Ty said, his eyes already in full glare mode. “As a reminder of the only thing I’ll ever lose to you.”
So we weren’t going to waste anytime picking up where we left off. “If there’s only one thing you’ll lose to me, how about I return this to you,” I said, stuffing it into the pocket of his jacket, “and I’ll keep my eyes open for something else I’d rather take.” Sliding my glasses off, I let my eyes scan the room first before they fell on the prettiest back of a head I’d seen.
Ty’s fists balled as he began to rise. Were we going to do this here? Right in the middle of hundreds of smashed together bodies? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have worn my nice jacket. The person sitting next to him clamped a hand over his shoulder and shoved him back down into his seat. It was a fellow meathead, who glowered at me at the same time he shook his head.
“You’ve got some serious balls showing your face here,” Ty seethed, “and then disrespecting me in front of my boys.” He tilted his head to the side, where not one, but three similar looking, green eyed pit bulls sat glaring at me. Super, Emma’s brothers. I was scoring impressive points with all the people in her life.
I gave them all my most unimpressed look before glancing back to the gym floor. “I’m not comfortable talking about my anatomical manhood with another man, but I hear there are a bunch of wonderful clubs and support groups where you can do just that.”
Ty’s arm barely had time to flinch my direction before the guy next to him pinned it back.
“Ty, enough,” he ordered. “He isn’t worth it. And Emma would be pissed.”
“I don’t care,” Ty said, grinding his jaw.
“You start a brawl in here, it could threaten your spot on the football team,” his friend said, sweeping in front of Ty and pushing him over into his former seat.
“Patrick Hayward,” I said, extending my hand and acting like the meathead quartet didn’t loathe me. “And trust me, of all the potential dangers out there in the big bad world, I’m the last one you should be worrying about for your sister,”—he was ignoring me, so I glanced down to the court where my eyes targeted on a pair of bare, insanely hot legs—“especially when your sister’s running around in her underwear,” I said, well . . . I screeched
.
A surge of conflicting interests attacked me. In one corner I had virtue wanting to search for a blanket to cover her up in, and in the other corner I had hunger. The kind that still had me thinking about blankets, but disheveled with sheets and pillows on a bed.
Imaginary face slap.
“I know who you are, douchebag, and before I put you in a headlock for mentioning my little sister and underwear in the same sentence, I’m trying to figure out if you’re talking about her uniform or if you’re actually visualizing her in her underwear right now. Either way,” he said, making slow work of popping his knuckles, “it’s not looking good for you.”
I watched her throw her windbreaker top over her head, revealing a numbered jersey. I couldn’t decide if I was more relieved or disappointed. “You’re telling me those black, next-to-non-existent boyshorts are part of her uniform?” It was too good to be true. Especially as I watched with unblinking interest as she loped onto the court to finish her warm-up with the rest of the team.
“Is this your first volleyball game or something?”
“Well, yeah. It kind of is,” I answered, incapable of anything more intelligent as I watched Emma. “But I can tell you I’m planning on making up for my lapse in attendance at women’s volleyball games by becoming Stanford’s most recent season ticket holder. How much do you think it would cost for a lifetime membership?” I laughed at my private joke, finding no company in it.
“I bet they’ll strike you a great deal since your lifetime membership will expire in two minutes if you keep looking at my sister like that, Rapunzel.” His voice wasn’t quite murderous, but it was close enough to gather he was serious about facing a life sentence to end mine.
“So, the nicknames are inspiring. True masterpieces,” I said, not sure if I was trying to diffuse or exacerbate the situation. “You boys have a study hour where you get together and come up with these labels that showcase your bigoted intelligence?”
He grinned, just barely, but it still qualified. “No. It just comes naturally when someone like you tries to weasel his way into my sister’s, who’s too sweet and innocent for her own good, underwear.”
Great. He said it, so immediately I was thinking it again. I didn’t want to think about her that way, like I had so many of the masses before her, she was better than that and better than me, but I didn’t exactly
not
want to think about her underwear either. It was the trickiest kind of situation to be in.
Imaginary face slap.
“So you’re all right with Ty doing much more with her underwear than thinking about them why? Because he’s your football buddy or something? Some sort of bros before hoes thing?”