My advisor looks across from his desk at me, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. "This is … not what I expect from you, Cassie."

I swallow hard. I'm supposed to be further along on my thesis than this, a fact that Professor Richards keeps reminding me of via email after nagging email. And now I just gave him a lame proposed thesis topic. "I know. It's the topic. I'm not sure –"

"It's not interesting," he says. "Toss it."

"Excuse me?"

"I can tell you're not interested in it." He pulls off his reading glasses and sets them on the desk. "This is my research area, not yours. Give me something better. It's your thesis, Cassie. It's not mine. You're supposed to roll this into your dissertation, so it had better be something you're interested in doing for the next few years."

"Right," I say absently. Why can’t I get that stupid jock out of my head?

"Did you hear anything I just said, Cassie?"

"Yeah," I reply, pausing to look down at my notepad. There's nothing written, no notes detailing what we’ve even been talking about during this meeting. Just a doodle of my initials and a couple of flowers. Like I'm a sixth grader. At least it's not a doodle of Colton's initials. "Totally. That's a good idea."

"You need a new thesis topic," he insists. "Preferably something you're interested in. And something publishable. At least if you still want to pursue a career in academia."

"I do," I say firmly.

"Are you sure everything's okay?" he asks, his expression concerned. Professor Richards is a great advisor. He's basically the professorial version of Santa Claus, kind and good-natured, except in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops most of the year.

"Absolutely. I was just distracted by finding a teaching position and… it has a slightly steeper learning curve than I expected."

"I forgot about that. You're teaching at…"

"I'm tutoring at the athletic center," I finish for him. "One of the football players."

Professor Richards leans back in his chair. "That's interesting. Have you thought about going in that direction?"

"For my thesis?" I ask.

"Football teams are an interesting in-group,” he points out. “Or there’s –“

“Masculine identity in college football players." It pops into my head, just like that, and I blurt it out.

“You should run with that."

I shake my head, reconsidering my impulsive idea. “I can’t use anything I learn while tutoring,” I say. “I signed a non-disclosure agreement.”

“You don’t need specifics,” he assures me. “It’s a proposed study. Propose it and then for your dissertation, you’ll see if you can get permission to run it through the athletic center.”

Professor Richards is right. I wouldn’t be using anything I learned while tutoring in my thesis, and maybe my sessions Colton King will give me insight I wouldn’t otherwise have.

Masculine identity in college football players. I wonder if winding up underneath one of them counts as "research".

---

“So?” Sable yells over the excessively loud music in the bar. We’re at one of the cheapest happy hours in town, which makes it the favorite hangout for poor college students everywhere. Cheap drinks and tacos – the perfect combination.

Coupled with an interrogation by my roommate.

“So what?” I ask, scooping up a glob of queso on a tortilla chip. I pop it into my mouth and crunch so that I have an excuse not to answer her questions.

“You know what I’m asking, so don’t play coy,” Sable yells. “How did it go?”

“I signed a confidentiality thing, Sable."

She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh, please. I’m not asking for specifics. I don’t give a shit about the academic bullshit. I want to know if Colt –“

I interrupt her, clearing my throat loudly. “No names,” I say, looking around.

“A code name, then,” she suggests. “I want to know if Horse –“

I roll my eyes. “Do I need to ask why you picked that as a code name?”

“I was trying not to be subtle." She runs her finger along the rim of her margarita glass and licks salt off her fingertip. “Because he’s hung like a horse, obviously.”

“Yes. I got the joke.”

“Yeah, you should have, especially given the fact that you’ve seen all of the goods."

“I’m not referring to him as Horse,” I protest. “Donkey would be more appropriate, since he’s a jackass.”

“Oh, that fits, too,” she says, laughing. “Donkeys have huge dicks.”

“Conversation with you is always so classy, Sable. It’s really a testament to how you were raised. Those classes in etiquette must have taught you a lot.”

I don’t know if Sable ever had to take etiquette classes, but that’s the type of family she was raised in. Her family is the Pierce family, one of those old money families, like the Carnegies. She had a butler. An actual, real-life butler. I’ve never seen a butler, except for on television.

“Oh honey." Sable laughs. “Rich people talk about cock just as much as poor people do. They just do it while they’re wearing designer dresses and drinking from crystal glasses.”

“Clearly, since you’re so focused on donkey dick.”

“Sure,” she says, sipping her margarita. “It’s me who’s focused on that.”

“I’m certainly not,” I protest. “I haven’t said a word about you-know-who.”

“Mmm-hmm. You can’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.”

“I haven’t!” I lie. “Not even a little bit.”

“Sure you haven’t, doll,” she says. “That’s why your cheeks get all pink when I mention donkey dick.”

“My cheeks get pink when you say that phrase because it’s crude and disgusting,” I say.

“Oh, don’t be such a prude,” she scoffs at me. “You really do need to get laid. Donkey might be the guy for the job.”

“Not nearly,” I say. “He’s about as far from my type as someone can get. He’s more your type.”

“I’m not sure whether or not to be offended by that. Are you saying that jackasses are my type?”

I cock my head to the side as I look at her. “Are we really having this conversation? You’re the Queen of dating jackasses.”

“I beg your pardon! I haven’t dated all jackasses.”

“Name a nice one,” I challenge.

Sable purses her lips and looks into the distance, tapping her finger on the side of the glass. “David –“

I raise my eyebrows. “The one who said he really preferred thinner girls than you?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Oh yeah,” she says, remembering. “He had that weird model fetish. I forgot that’s why I dumped him. Okay, then. Cooper. He wasn’t bad.”

“The drummer in the band?” I shake my head. “No. Just no.”

“He wasn’t a jackass,” she insists.

I roll my eyes. “He brought his band over to play in our living room until three in the morning. And they brought groupies.”

“The groupies are par for the course."

“He borrowed money from you so he didn’t have to get a job,” I remind her. “And his band sucked.”

“He was an artist!"

“Oh!” I point at her, recalling another one. “The artist. Remember him? The guy who thought he was French?”

“Okay, he was kind of horrible,” she agrees with a wince. “I’ll own that.”

I giggle, recalling him. “He was insufferable,” I say. “He thought everything was superior in France. And wasn’t he from Miami or something? He wasn’t even French.”

“His French was not good, either,” Sable points out. “Oh God, I’ve dated some terrible people.”

“Yet you keep trying to get me to get into the dating game!”

“No, no. I’m not trying to get you into the dating game. I’m trying to get you laid. There’s a huge difference between the two.”

“It’s basically the same thing."

“Hardly! Some of those guys were great in bed, despite being total jackasses. In fact, sometimes the sex is better with someone you can’t stand.”

“That is not true,” I protest. “I’m not going to have sex with someone I can’t stand just to have sex.”

“I just find it unbelievable that you’ve made it twenty-three years without losing it,” she says. “I mean, how many twenty-three-year-old virgins are there in the world? Do you think there’s anyone else on campus who hasn’t lost it at your age? You’re like a freaking unicorn.”

“Are you purposely trying to make me feel bad?” I ask. “And how am I a unicorn?”

“You know,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “You’re like a rare, exotic, fictional creature. Unicorn and Donkey Dick. You're a perfect combination.”

I reach for her margarita. “You’re cut off.”

“Just because you don’t appreciate creative literary metaphors doesn’t mean that I’ve had too many margaritas.”

“Neither of those are creative metaphors,” I point out. “And Donkey Dick is more your type. He’s a jock and you were a high school cheerleader. In fact, you two should go out.”

As soon as I speak the words, I feel annoyed at the very prospect of Colton King and Sable Pierce hooking up. I shrug it off because I’m not stupid enough to think that someone like Colton King goes out with someone like me.

And besides, he's an undergrad. That makes him practically a high school student.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be great in the sack.

I silently curse my increasing libido and it’s obviously poor taste in men.

Sable narrows her eyes at me. “Well, if you’re not going to take him, maybe I should go out with him,” she says.

“You should,” I say, my voice tight.

“Mmm-hmm.” She sips her margarita, still looking at me. “It wouldn’t bother you, though, because you totally can’t stand him.”

“Can’t stand him at all.”

“And you don’t have the hots for him, either."

“He’s completely repulsive,” I lie.

“You never told me about the tutoring session,” she notes.

“Because you went off on a drunken tangent about horses and donkeys and unicorns!”

“Horses, and donkeys, and unicorns?” comes a voice.

I turn around to see one of the girls from our program, Dana, and her boyfriend Paul standing behind me. Oh God. That’s exactly what I need. Another embarrassing conversation overheard by someone.

At least I didn’t loudly proclaim I was a virgin this time.

“We’re talking about the size of cocks,” Sable explains.

I choke on my tortilla chip. “We are not.”

“Sounds interesting,” Dana says, sliding into one of the high-top seats at our small table. “You don’t care if we join you, do you?”

“No,” I say, shooting Sable a stop-talking-about-this glare. “We were just talking about Sable’s dating life.”

“Oh, that’s why you’re talking about horse and donkey dicks?” Dana asks.

Her boyfriend Paul groans. “I think I walked into the wrong conversation. I’m going to go grab a beer from the bar. Does anyone want one?”

“I’m good, honey,” Dana says, patting his arm. “I get the horse and donkey thing, but what’s a unicorn dick?”