Laurel
“I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t bore me to death,” my roommate Lana announces, popping a pretzel in her mouth.
It’s movie night at our house—Wednesday—one of the few days of the week none of us has a class, and as luck would have it, tonight, none of us have to work either.
Well, my roommates don’t have to work tonight, and I don’t have my job at the coffee shop anymore because as my parents put it, my new job is to “study and get good grades with the intention of graduating in four years.”
I have no break in my academic schedule, taking four extra credits and still two classes behind my goal to graduate on time. Playing catch-up with summer classes is going to suck.
“Tell me about it,” Donovan says, sticking his giant hand into the popcorn bucket perched on my lap, the three of us side by side on the couch, binging on butter popcorn, gossip, and chick flicks. All three of us are single and looking for a serious relationship.
I’m a junior now.
I’m done messing around with frat boys and one-night stands. After dating man-children who care only about two things—sex and themselves—I’m ready to find something more meaningful.
Don’t get me wrong—I love sex, I do, and I love guys; I just haven’t met one who’s wanted more from me. At the end of the day, they’re all just boys, really.
I’m tired of being used.
“The guys out there are nothing but fuckboys,” Donovan muses with a pout, popping a kernel and chewing. “You think you girls have it rough? Girl, please, the gay dating struggle is real.”
I snuggle deeper into his large body. “You’re all the man we need, Donnie.”
“Donnie.” He snorts, shoving me off him. “God I hate when you call me that. It makes me sound so suburban.”
I grin knowingly. “I know.”
We hunker down for the next few minutes, quietly watching the movie, a silly romantic comedy about a girl who writes a how-to column for a magazine and spends the entire movie trying to get the guy she’s fake dating to dump her.
It’s old, but one of my favorites.
Lane peels her eyes from the TV. “What’s that cousin of yours up to? Haven’t seen her around lately.”
I shrug, hug the popcorn bucket, and reach in for a buttery handful. “You know Alex.”
Lana twists her torso to study my face. “Why are you saying it like that?” Narrows her eyes. “Did she do something?”
Lana, Donovan, and I met our freshman year, when Alexandra was my roommate and I hid in their dorms as a means of escape when she had guys over, or any of her ridiculously catty friends.
Over the past few years, through honest late-night life chats and plenty more drunken ones, Lana and I have formed an unbreakable bond. An only child, Donovan and I are the siblings she’s always wanted, and for her part, Lana sometimes knows me better than I know myself. She knows what’s best for me, and I should be listening to her more often, not my damn cousin.
“She hasn’t done anything.” Not technically.
“Did you?”
Shrug. “In a roundabout way.”
“Stop vaguebooking and spit it out.”
“Can you actually use that term if you’re not online?” I ask skeptically, evading the subject, tapping my chin because I know it’s cute.
“Stop stalling and just tell us.”
I take the braid hanging over my shoulder and pick at the ends, avoiding both their curious glances. “Have either of you seen that flyer around campus? It’s green and has a guy’s face printed on it?”
“A guy’s face?”
“Yeah. His face, and his phone number.”
“Is this going to be a long story? Like, should I pause the movie?” Donovan asks, already pointing the remote at the television. “Tell me now or forever hold your peace.”
I nod. “Okay, so, there are these athletes playing a prank on one of their teammates. They hung these horrible posters around campus—I’m not sure how many, but there’s a huge caption above the photocopied face that says, Get Rett Laid.” I cringe. “They’re so bad.”
Lana furrows her brow, repulsed. “It doesn’t surprise me that someone would do that. People are so freaking rude.”
I ignore the dig. “Like I said, the posters have his phone number on it…” My voice trails off, gets small. I bury my face in the blanket that’s on my lap. “So I texted him.”
They both stare at me. Blink.
“What did you just say?” Donovan pokes me. “You’re mumbling.”
“What do you mean you texted him?” Lana narrows her eyes. Out of the three of us, she’s the only one with a strong moral compass. “Why would you do that, Laurel? It’s mean.”
I lift my head, continue picking at my braid.
“What was the point of the posters?”
Do I seriously have to explain it to her? “To get him laid, just like it says.”
“You’re not having sex with a stranger! Or did you become a prostitute overnight and didn’t tell us?” Lana fires off without taking a breath. “Why would you do that, Laurel? Why?”
Donovan holds up his hand to stop us both from talking. “No, no, don’t tell us, let us guess—Alex made you do it. Your cousin and that stupid-ass voodoo ball dared you to text the poor guy.”
“Something like that.” I laugh into my shoulder. They know her too well.
Lana nudges me with her pointy elbow. “So? Aren’t you going to tell us what happened?”
“So I texted him and it was fun.”
They look disappointed. “That’s it?”
I shrug.
“Bullshit!” Lana shouts. “That is such bullshit. You can’t tell me you sent some poor guy a sleazy text message and not give any details. What kind of an asshole are you?”
“Bore-ring! Boring, that’s what kind of an asshole she is,” Donovan adds, a singsong lilt in his voice. “That story was fucking boring, sorry.”
“And a total lie—you didn’t bring this up for no reason, Laurel. There’s obviously more to this story, so spill, or I’m going to be horribly disappointed in you.”
I pull a split end out of my red hair. “Donovan, remember that guy from the parking lot at the Pancake House?”
“Dine and dash guy?”
“Yeah.” I lean forward and grab my water bottle, twist the top off and take a swig. “That’s the guy. That’s who I was texting.”
“Are you fucking with me right now?” Donovan scoots forward on the couch, turning to face me. “Seriously? No bullshitting?”
I set the water back on the coffee table we all have our feet on. “Nope, no bullshit. His name is Rhett, and his friends hung the posters—the ones who stuck him with the tab.”
Donovan lets out a puff of air. “Damn, I figured they were hazing him but I was hoping they weren’t. Hot guys are such assholes.” He sighs. “I wish I was dating one.”
“No you don’t,” Lana scoffs. “God, listen to the two of you. When are you going to learn not to settle for the first selfish dick who pays attention to you?”
“After I’ve been sexed a few times.” Our big gay roommate leans his head back on the couch. “I wish I was kidding.”
“I don’t settle.” My face is scrunched up. “I can’t help it if every guy I date ends up being a wanker.”
Lana sighs. “I love it when you use British slang.”
Sly grin. “Thanks. So do I.”
The three of us rest our heads on the back of the couch, eyes focused on the ceiling.
“So what’s he like?” Lana whispers without turning her head to look at me.
“Well,” I begin slowly. “It’s hard to tell. Obviously he’s defensive about the whole thing since every skank on campus has texted him, so when I sent him a message, he told me to fuck off—but he’s warmed up a little.” Kind of.
“Is he cute?”
I frown. “He’s slightly below average, but fun to talk to.”
I can hear her eyebrows rise. “And his name is Rhett?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of sexy.” Lana’s voice is wistful. “Like, Gone with the Wind southern plantation shit.”
“Fiddle dee dee, I do declare,” Donovan sits up, fanning himself and not sounding one bit like Scarlet O’Hara. “I’d like to fuck y’all on the veranda.”
“Frankly my dear, you can suck my dick,” Lana says in a false baritone.
Donovan scowls. “Hey, you stole my line!”
“Shut up you guys.” I laugh. “You’re the worst.”
Lana crosses her ankles on the coffee table. “So what do the two of you talk about?”
“Well, it’s only been a few times. Mostly we spent our time arguing because I wouldn’t leave him alone.”
“You’re such a clingy bitch,” Donovan snarks.
“Shut up, Donovan, I am not!” I smack him on the thigh, pout. “I hate being ignored, that’s all.”
Lana scoots forward, sucking on her diet soda with a noisy slurp. “The guy would jizz his pants if he laid eyes on you.”
I do a mental hair flip but just shrug; I know I’m pretty—beautiful if we’re being honest. I’ve been hearing it since I was young, flattery from strangers, my parents, family and friends.
And, of course, guys.
Guys love me.
My red silky hair. My slender waist and pouty lips. My fantastic boobs.
Vanity is one of my flaws, but I’m not going to pretend to be modest, either. That would be worse.
“Here’s what I want to know,” Lana says slowly, arm on the back of the couch, leaning into me. “Why did you text him…when you can call?”
I bite my lip. “You think I should call him?”
Her brows go up. “Why not?”
Why not indeed.
Rhett’s phone rings four times before he answers, the rich quality of his voice reminding me of a lumberjack, a rugged outdoorsman. Masculine and heavy.
Smoky.
Far deeper and sexier than I was expecting when I dialed his number.
“Hello?”
“Rhett?”
Pause. “Who is this?”
“It’s Lau—” I stop short, remembering I gave him a fake name. “It’s Alex.”
Silence.
“Hello?” I ask because the connection is so quiet. “Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m tryin’ to figure out why you’re callin’.”
He’s southern?
Stop it.
I don’t know what I thought his voice would sound like, but I sure as heck wasn’t anticipating a slow, lazy drawl with a rich tone. His deep timbre sends a startling shiver running down my spine.
Tryin’. Callin’.
“I…” I can’t tell him my roommates told me to call him, or that I thought it would be fun and wanted to know what his voice sounded like. “I called on a whim.”
“Why?”
“I felt like talking.”
“Can I be honest with you, Alex, so we can stop wastin’ each other’s time? I’m sure you’re really nice, but you seem a little too aggressive, and that’s not really my style, so maybe you should call someone else.”
Wastin’ each other’s tiehm…
Oh God, so southern. I wonder what state he’s from and how he ended up at Iowa—and why he hasn’t told me to fuck off by now. He sounds like a really nice guy, much different than the hypersensitive asshole texting me back the other day.
“What is your style?”
Rhett is quiet again. I hear him thinking about his next words. “Look Alex, I’m not trying to be rude, but…” He leaves the sentence open-ended, voice trailing off into dead air.
“But you don’t want to talk?”
When he doesn’t answer, I pull the cell away from my face to check that the call hasn’t been disconnected. The timer at the top of the screen shows the seconds ticking away, so I know he’s still there.
“Can you just tell me one thing?”
Reluctance. “Shoot.”
“Where are you from?”
“Louisiana.”
That makes me smile. “I thought I detected an accent.”
The line goes quiet again, and I wonder what the hell I’m doing. This whole conversation is like pulling teeth, and the last time I forced a man into a conversation was never. Why start with him?
But then, “I was raised in Mississippi, but my parents moved back to Louisiana my sophomore year of high school.”
“Near New Orleans?”
“No, Baton Rouge.”
“Near all the plantations?” A low, amused chuckle greets my ears, making my girly parts get a little bit damp. Jeez, what is wrong with me? “What’s so funny?”
“That’s usually one of the first things people ask when they hear where I’m from.”
“What’s the second thing people ask?”
“If I’ve ever wrestled an alligator.”
“Have you?”
Another laugh. “No ma’am.”
Ma’am.
His accent is doing funny things to my lower belly, so I shift in my desk chair, rest my elbows on my desk, prop my chin in my hand. “Are you always this polite?”
A low chuckle into the receiver. “No.”
“I mean, you did tell me to fuck off when I first texted you. I guess that isn’t exactly polite, is it?”
“Don’t feel bad. I told every single girl who texted me to fuck off.” The curse rolls off his tongue, sweet and sour. Fuck awe-ff.
“Well that makes me feel a tad bit better,” I admit.
“Did it offend you?”
“Not really.”
He laughs into the phone again, and if I wasn’t sitting down, my knees would be a little weak. Jesus his voice is sexy; it suddenly has me wishing he was a tad better looking.
“So, Alex, where are you from?”
A knot of guilt prickles at the mention of my cousin’s name.
“Illinois. Not nearly as exciting as Baton Rouge.”
“No alligators?”
“Only at the fraternity house,” I joke.
The line goes quiet. “Spend a lot of time there?” he asks quietly, his voice gruff.
“Not really.” Not anymore. “That place is a cesspool of bad decisions.”
“So if I said, ‘Alex, meet me at a frat party Saturday night,’ you wouldn’t go?”
“If you said meet me there, I’d think about it.”
“Only think about it? Ah, I see how it is.”
“What do you see?”
“I think you’re tryin’ to flirt with me. Am I wrong?”
I want to deny it but can’t get the words off my tongue. “Are you flirting with me?”
“I’m terrible at it, but I think it would be obvious if I was. Besides, I don’t even know you.”
“You don’t have to know someone to flirt with them, Rhett.”
“I know that, but it’s just not the same, is it?”
“I’m not so sure about that. For example, if I told you the sound of your voice makes my imagination run wild, what would you say to that?”
“I’d say…I’d say…” He stumbles over his words—adorable.
“Shit, I don’t know what I’d say.”
“I can hear you smiling, so I’ll take that as a good sign.”
I’m smiling too—grinning actually, wide and goofy. I picked up a pen a few minutes ago and have been doodling a cartoon crocodile aimlessly on a notebook, surrounded by little black hearts.
When I look down at the paper, there are dozens of those tiny ink hearts scattered like confetti across the flat surface. “That’s good, right? Smiling is good.”
“It’s very good.”
“What do you look like?” I can’t help asking, though I already know the answer. I want to see if he’ll tell me, want to see what he’ll say. “I’ve seen the poster, obviously, but is that really what you look like?”
“Yes.” He forces out a strangled laugh.
“You sound hot,” I blurt out, because he does. The sound of that raspy voice is doing a wild, reckless dance in my stomach, down my pelvis. “What color is your hair?”
“Brown.”
“Just brown?”
“What kind of question is that?” he wants to know. “How many browns are there? Is that question a chick thing?”
“A chick thing? Yeah, I suppose it is. Are your eyes brown, too?” I wasn’t close enough to see those in the parking lot of the diner, and the photocopy of his face on the flyer obviously didn’t translate colors.
“Yeah. Dark brown.”
I hum, thinking. “Do you play sports?”
“I wrestle.”
“How tall are you?”
“Six one.” Rhett pauses. “How tall are you?”
“Five-seven. Kind of tall for a girl, I guess.”
“What color is your hair?”
“Black,” I lie—again, because I can’t tell him my long, straight hair is the color of flaming hot cinders. I’m a natural redhead, and he would see me on campus and know me on sight. “My hair is black.”
Like Alex’s.
“Black,” Rhett repeats, mulling it over. “Huh.”
“What’s the ‘huh’ for?”
“You don’t sound like you have black hair, that’s all.”
Awll.
“What color hair does it sound like I have?”
“I don’t know, blonde? Brown? Definitely not black.”
“Interesting theory. Got any other interesting thoughts?”
He stops to think for a second, and I hear him rustling around. Picture him climbing onto a bed and leaning against the wall, legs hanging over a twin-sized mattress.
“I do actually.”
“Let’s hear them.”
“All right.” Hesitation. “Since I’m never going to meet you in person, I can safely say this without anyone findin’ out: I’m beginning to regret comin’ to school here.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just not what I was expecting, that’s all. The people I’ve met are…” His voice tapers off and I finish the sentence for him in my mind.
The people I’ve met are assholes.
The people I’ve met fuck me over.
The people I’ve met lie.
The people I’ve met can go to hell.
“The people I’ve met aren’t who I thought they would be when I decided to enroll here. I’ll leave it at that.”
I don’t reply because I feel like a jerk, like one of his teammates that’s yanked him around, left him hanging, humiliated him publicly.
I contributed to that.
I’m doing it right now.
In the background, I hear banging, muffled shouting. Rhett covers the mouthpiece of his phone and demands, “Hold on one fuckin’ minute, will you?”
He returns. “I should get goin’. Team meeting in twenty.”
“This time of night?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, well…” Why do I feel like I’m standing outside on a first date, waiting for my date to make a move? To ask me out again or try to kiss me? Weird.
“Thanks for callin’.” That smile is back in his voice.
“You’re welcome.”
“Alex?”
I cringe. “Yeah?”
“Want to go to a frat party Saturday night?”
My heartbeat hitches and shockingly, I find myself a little breathless.
“I’d love to.”
Me: What are you up to?
Rhett: Just walked in from practice. Eating dinner with my dickhead roommates.
Me: How many of them are there?
Rhett: Two, but it might as well be ten, they’re such pains in my ass.
Me: Who do you live with?
Rhett: Assholes from the wrestling team. The team manager and a senior named Eric. What about you?
Me: I live with my two best friends, a guy and a girl. How did you end up living with your roomies if you can’t stand them?
Rhett: When I first transferred, I obviously didn’t know anyone. Coach set it up.
Me: So you’re a transfer…I don’t think we talked about that.
Rhett: Yeah.
Me: So you don’t get along with your roommates? Doesn’t that make it hard being on the same team?
Rhett: They’re total assholes. They won’t stop hazing me and I’m getting tired of it. Jesus, now I sound like I’m whining.
Me: No you don’t. Everyone knows hazing is against school policy and I’m sure it’s against your athletic policies, too.
Rhett: Absolutely it is.
Me: I never understood why people—guys, especially—put up with that crap. Fraternities and sororities are the worst…
Rhett: Maybe, maybe not. Athletes are really bad, but no one ever hears about it.
Me: Should you be telling me this?
Rhett: Honestly? Probably not. I almost did the other day on the phone, but since I don’t know you, figured it was a horrible idea.
Rhett: So what about you. You get along with your roommates?
Me: Yes. I live with a guy named Donovan, and my best friend Lana.
Rhett: Donovan is the guy?
Me: Yes, lol. Does that bother you?
Rhett: Why would that bother me?
Me: I don’t know; sometimes when a girl has a male roommate, the guy she’s talking to gets all weird about it.
Rhett: Is that what we’re doing?
Me: I mean…I think we’ve slipped into the weird beginning of something. Don’t you?
Me: Hello? Why did you go radio silent on me?
Rhett: Sorry. I guess I don’t know what to say.
Me: I didn’t mean anything by it.
Rhett: I know; I’m a fucking idiot. Ignore me.
Me: Impossible
Me: Did you have practice today?
Rhett: Always.
Me: Always? As in, every day?
Rhett: Some form of practice, every day, yeah. Sometimes we just work out.
Me: How much can you bench press?
Rhett: Three hundred plus, easy.
Me: What else can you do?
Rhett: What do you mean?
Me: What else can you DO, wink wink. LOL. Sorry. I was trying to be flirty, but I guess that didn’t translate via text message.
Rhett: Yeah, I missed the flirting part. I was about to tell you my workout routine LOL
Me: Well, if I close my eyes, I can almost picture it.
Rhett: Speaking of which, you do know that you could have looked me up on the university’s website by now for all my info, right? You know my face from the poster, and you have my name.
Me: How do you know I haven’t already?
Rhett: Have you?
Me: No. This way is more fun, don’t you think?
Rhett: It is.
Me: Are you smiling?
Rhett: LOL, yes. Are you?
Me: Of course.