Kara
I’d never been wooed, or courted upon.
I didn’t know what it was called nowadays, but whatever its equivalent was, it had never been done to me.
Until now.
From the time Bishop had known I was single, thanks to my BFF, he’d showed me that he was pursuing me, and the way he was doing it was completely riveting.
Every day, I received a delivery of random items to my dorm room. Flowers of different varieties – roses, daisies, lilies, chrysanthemums, alstroemerias, peonies, hyacinths, and some of which I couldn’t name. Thank goodness my roommate and I didn’t have any allergies or we’d both have a hard time breathing inside our dorm. He also sent chocolates – white, dark, milk, the fruity kind, the chewy kind, every kind I could think of. And he sent food – chips, granola, European biscuits, Asian pears, and fruits I’d never heard of.
They always came with a note. “Hope you enjoy these – B.”
Anissa and I had a guessing game going on about what he was going to send every day.
I’d confided to her that Scott and I had broken up. She just listened and said that I had to do what I felt was best for me. No judgment there. Just plain understanding.
Scott and I hadn’t talked face-to-face for over three weeks. He would text every now and then and I responded like a friend would.
The last time I saw him was after the Continentals’ won against Miami. It was the night Hanna had accompanied me to the game. I only saw him briefly, but he’d greeted Hanna and I by the bleachers and I knew he wanted to hug me, but I stayed a considerable distance away from him.
Bishop was there, too.
Throughout the football game, I’d been aware of Bishop’s half-naked body mere inches away from me. And boy, what a body he had.
The guy packed on the muscles and I could see why he had no shame in taking his shirt off (which was I guess, a frat tradition). I’d been around athletes my whole life – from my brother, then to my boyfriend and their friends. Athletes had the hottest (except for Rikko because ewww) bodies because you knew that they pushed themselves to their physical limits and it showed.
It was undeniable that Bishop had a great body. I couldn’t even speak when he’d tossed his shirt to the side. I wasn’t an anatomy buff, but I knew that pecs and biceps weren’t supposed to look like that. His chest was so well-defined that you could make out all the major muscle groups, knowing that there wasn’t a hint of fat covering it.
And his abs, darn his abs, they were layered in lean muscle and when he’d bent down to talk to Cody, the guy who’d accompanied me to the bathroom per Bishop’s order to which I didn’t even object to because I knew he was second in command to Rikko, I couldn’t tell if he was a liar or he was just blessed with great genes.
If I ate the amount of carbs that Bishop had told Sicily, the College Sports’ announcer, I would definitely have a kangaroo pouch growing on my tummy.
I’d seen hot bodies all of my life, but I never reacted to them the way my hormones did to Bishop.
He’d been half-naked, but I wanted to strip him down so I could see the rest of the amazing sculpture that he was.
I’d been replaying his Game Day interview to gain more insight about the man who had my feelings in the mixer. Bishop knew how to work the camera; he knew the politically correct way to avoid answering questions without the audience knowing it. His well-defined jaw and angled look made him a camera darling and the way he spoke with eloquence made you think that you were talking to a guy who could have been doing interviews for a long time even though when I’d searched the mighty library of the world wide web, only two ten-minute interviews were brought to the top results.
Aside from his interview with Sicily, the only other interview he had was when he’d made a press appearance a few years back, when he committed to SDU instead of other top colleges and universities. I saw the presser and even back then, Bishop’s good looks were evident. He was younger, but he held the same assessing eyes, solid stance, and dignified resolve. When asked why he was going to play rugby instead of hockey which he’d played all throughout high school, he’d shrugged his shoulders and replied with a, “I want to try something new.”
The reporters tried to finagle answers from him, but Bishop never relented. He held the composure of a seasoned athlete rather than a newbie to the sport of rugby. Well, at least that’s what everyone in the sports arena thought. But even then, I could tell from his answers that he was confident that he was going to be fine as a rugby player.
I could not stop myself from digging more about his past because he was an enigma. He was called Boy Genius by his father, hockey legend Beau Cordello, because of his ability to predict plays and to evade the defense. From the video footages of Bishop playing for the all-boys boarding school, St. Ignatius, he looked like he ruled the ice.
It reminded me of the way Bishop moved on the grass when he was running during rugby games.
He could’ve easily been NHL’s newest sensation, but he chose to play a sport that before him, had hardly been covered by television networks.
And as great of an athlete as he was, no one really talked about how smart he was, academically.
He’s had two away games since he’d started wooing me, so I hadn’t seen him much. But he texted me and sometimes I fell asleep with us texting each other.
At Quantum, he’d started sitting behind me since I always sat in the front row. I felt his stare the whole time during class, and after class he either walked with me to my study group for Econ or drove me to my dorm. He only had an hour to spare before his rugby practice so we couldn’t really do much.
And as much wooing as he was doing, he had not done anything physical to me, other than a few brushes of his hand on my hand and an accidental graze of my shoulder on his chest when he helped me get into his truck.
I’d never been the one to initiate physical contact.
But Bishop was driving me crazy.
As far as I could tell, the boy wanted to be intimate with me, judging from the way his eyes turned darker every time he stared at my lips. I knew he was giving me time, especially since I was coming off a breakup but it had been a month since he’d compared me to Euler’s equation, which by the way, was the hottest thing anyone could have ever said to me, and I was dying, parched, ready for him to kiss me and my other girlie parts.
Which was why I spent half a day over the weekend visiting my newfound favorite bikini waxing place by the beach and today, I was hoping that Cody, the sophomore student who was following me wherever I went, obviously per Bishop’s orders, could help me execute my plan.
“Cody,” I said as I got out of my Econ class.
“Yes ma’am.” He stood up from the lazy way he was sitting on the floor of the hallway.
“Hey Cody!” Tara waved and blew him a kiss as she passed us by.
Cody gave her a quick smile and nodded his head, “Hey beautiful. See you next week.”
I rolled my eyes because Cody was a flirt. He called every girl beautiful, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but he also got their numbers as quickly.
Tara had just started dating a guy she really liked so Cody was a little too late on that conquest, but it wasn’t like he was hurting.
He’d been my constant companion for the past three weeks, a fact that I had grown accustomed to.
The first time Cody started following me to class, I’d texted Bishop that he was going overboard.
Bishop had texted back, “Either he follows you around and makes sure you’re safe when I’m not there or he can have bathroom duties for six months.”
Cody had literally begged to be my quasi-bodyguard and I couldn’t find myself to be cruel to the light green-eyed, six-foot hound, so I went along with it. He’s actually become a big help since he knew his way around campus and if it weren’t for him, I’d have been late a few times talking to my advisors who never held office hours in their actual offices because of the construction happening all over campus.
“Where’s Bishop today?” I asked. Bishop had texted me late last night that the team bus had just arrived on campus. He wanted to see me, but I was already asleep.
I’d responded with an early picture text this morning, making sure that my side boob was showing with the pink tank top that I wore for sleeping and I may have lifted my sleep shorts higher than where they were before I’d taken the picture.
He didn’t text back, but within five minutes my phone was ringing.
“You could wake up the dead with your sexiness.” He’d groaned over the phone and I’d smiled to myself and moved around my room to get ready for the day.
“Good morning to you too, handsome.” The morning was good and it was even better because he was on campus.
He laughed huskily, making my lady parts tingle and I thought of how much I wanted to be close to him.
“I miss you.” It was the first time he said it and it cooled my overheated body. “Facetiming doesn’t cut it.”
We’d been Facetiming every day for the past four days and it’s what we’d been doing when he was out of town to play.
“I know what you mean, I miss you, too,” I admitted. Ever since I said it out loud that I broke up with Scott because I wanted to be with Bishop, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of me. It would have been wrong for me to stay with Scott even when I was hugely attracted to Bishop. It would have been a mistake to pursue something with Bishop when I was committed to another man.
Another woman might have been able to go through with it and at the end of the day, her stomach contents would remain inside her abdomen, but I couldn’t find it in me to do so.
I respected myself.
I respected Scott and what we had.
“What do you miss about me?” He asked, his voice sounding muffled, as if he was covering the phone’s speakers with his pillow.
“Hmm…” I said, willing myself to remain calm and not run outside and go to his place. A place that housed my brother. A house where a lot of other guys lived, including my ex-boyfriend.
“Are you fishing for compliments?” I teased. Bishop’s confidence wasn’t in short supply. He had that in spades. It was in the way he stood, and moved, and spoke, as if he knew that the world would wait for him to be heard. But he never paired it with arrogance.
I found that the most self-assured men didn’t have the inkling to be arrogant because they didn’t need to. Because they knew that they were enough. That what they brought to the table was something that no one else had.
“Yeah…” He sounded gruff and maybe because they lost in a close game against Syracuse yesterday and he needed some stroking.
I’d be stroking him everywhere if he only gave me a hint that he wanted me to.
I took a breath in and with a calm voice, I said, “I miss the way you stand so close to me that I smell you – the scent of bergamot and pineapple and lavender and whatever you use for your aftershave, and I find myself looking for it when you’re not around. I miss the way you joke around and you shrug your shoulders when you’re bored. I miss the way your eyes crinkle at the sides letting me know that you’re about to challenge whatever I said. I miss the way your lips move when you talk, and God, I miss the way you look at me with those gorgeous eyes.”
The other end was quiet for a few seconds, but I could hear the sounds of him breathing.
“Kara…” His voice sounded like he was on the verge of losing control. “Are you ready?”
“For what?” I just told him I missed him and he’s asking me something else? What a way to change the subject, Bishop.
“For me?” I’d never heard this from him. We talked about a lot of things and we logged a lot of hours on the phone. I knew all of his interests; hiking, ATV’s, and going on expeditions; and least favorite things; fried food and pistachio ice cream.
But he hadn’t asked this one.
“I’ve been ready Bishop,” I affirmed, tying my long hair in the back to give it a semblance of order. I didn’t have much time this morning to accomplish everything on my plate. “I’ve been ready for you for a long time.”
“Good,” he said, relief in his voice. “Good. I’ll see you tonight. I’ll pick you up around six.”
“I can’t wait,” I replied, knowing that tonight was going to be a game-changer.
I was still smiling thinking of my early morning conversation with Bishop when Cody nudged my shoulder.
“Hey, are you off to dreamland again?” His eyes were laughing as he raised his left hand to my other classmates. It was really funny how he now knew all of them, he’d even hung out with a few of them.
“No –“ I denied, clutching the small Bottega Venneta clutch that I used for school. My mother preferred Hermes and Prada, but I loved this clutch that went with everything I wore. It was one of the two purses I brought from Texas.
“I think he’s at practice right now,” Cody responded while checking his phone. He’d often talked about how busy his life was and I believed it – frat duties, work, school, and family obligations could take up a lot of time.
“Cool,” I said, my brain already thinking about what I could do to surprise Bishop.
He wanted to meet tonight, but I wanted to do something else.
He was always trying to surprise me, trying to woo me for the longest time, even though he knew I was way more-than-it-was-legal-to-be attracted to him already.
Now it was time for me to show him just how much he meant to me.