CHAPTER TWO
INDY
I close the door and press myself against it, breathing hard.
What the hell just happened?
“Everything okay?”
My roommate, Naomi, looks up from her cell, her face neon blue. She seems too old to be a college student, but I’d far rather rooming with someone who’s here to study as opposed to body-shotting their way through the Greek alphabet.
I push off the door and take a seat on the edge of my bed, reaching to scratch my shoulder, as has become my habit. “I was accosted by some jock at the bar.”
Naomi sits up and places her cell down, suddenly serious. Her dark goddess braids are still in place, her mocha skin blemish-free. “Did he hurt you?” The way she says it implies she’s about to go Terminator 2 on his ass.
I shake my head, reaching up to pull out my hairband and raking through my hair with my fingers. It’s my best feature—honey blonde in one light, copper in another, silver by night. My aunty used to call the color ‘pearl’. “No. Another guy wearing the same football jersey pushed him off. The Trojans. Do you know them?”
Naomi looks at me curiously. “You don’t know the Abbotsleigh football team? Last year’s NCAA national champions?”
I shrug. “I’m not big on sports, sorry.”
I am finding it hard to forget the guy who stepped in, though, with his inky hair and ice-blue eyes. He was on a mission, alright. I should have hung around, thanked him, but my flight instinct is strong since New York.
“What were you even doing down at the bar?” says Naomi. “I may be wrong, but you don’t strike me as the drink-until-horizontal type.”
“I was handing in my resume, actually. Sadly, college isn’t going to pay for itself.”
Naomi nods in understanding. “Truer words were never spoken. I’ll be in adult diapers and still paying my loans off.”
I smile back. “There are plenty of guys out there who love that adult-baby stuff… or so I hear.”
“Ew, and ew.”
Naomi’s side of the room is bare save for a poster from the movie Warrior. “Do you like Tom Hardy?” I ask.
She looks up at the poster, running her hand down Tom’s abs. “You might say I’ve got a hard-on for Hardy, yes. You don’t?”
“Have a penis?” I retort.
She laughs, eyes rolling. “A thing for bad boys.”
“I don’t have time for ‘a thing,’ penis or not.”
“You’re in college, girl. This is penis central.”
“And testosterone,” I add. “I felt like I was going to suffocate in it at the bar.”
“And yet you want to work there.”
“I need a job.”
Naomi nods. “Fair enough,” looking to my Pop! Vinyl collection she adds, “geek girl.”
“You can call me Scully,” I wink.
Naomi points to herself. “Does that make me Mulder?”
I take off my jacket. “No, but it does make you X-citing.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Okay,” I laugh, “so that was bad.”
“Bad?” she scoffs. “Putting salt instead of sugar into your coffee is bad. Prank-calling your ex is bad. That? That was terrible.”
I smile wider. I had worried about having a roommate. I had my own place in New York not far from NYU. I even had a pot plant. The last thing I wanted to do this year was transfer to a brand-new college on the other side of the country, but it’s not like I had a choice.
But Naomi doesn’t seem so bad.
Maybe this isn’t going to work out after all.
I switch off my light. “I’m going to bed. Clearly, I need to work on my material.”
Naomi swivels until she’s sitting on the edge of her bed. “Sure thing, Scully. Sweet, penis dreams.”
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes.
I pull off my pants and top, folding them neatly on top of the quilt before sliding below.
I should be thinking about classes tomorrow, about civil litigation and contract formation, but all I’m getting is Mr. Blue Eyes. Tall, sexy, and dangerous. Yep, definite double-down on the dangerous, and god knows I’ve had enough of ‘dangerous’ to last me a lifetime lately.
*
I take a seat up the back of the lecture hall. This one’s a lot smaller than those at NYU, but it’s also far grander in an Ivy League way. History itself is in the cherry-wood walls. You can smell it. There’s an air of nobility about the place I quite like, absent of the hum of traffic outside.
I’m not great with new anything. I try my best to meld into my seat and avoid attention, busying myself with my notes as students continue to pour down from the stairs above.
Someone sits beside me. “Angel,” they say, voice low and gravelly.
Oh, hell.
I turn, and screw me, it’s him. Mr. Blue Eyes Big Arms from the bar last night, and boy are those eyes in full panty-melting mode today.
“Sorry?” I stumble out.
He leans closer. “I didn’t catch your name last night. You know, when I saved your ass from Dwayne.”
So, you’re one of those guys, huh? The football jersey, which seems like his one wardrobe item, should have given it away. “Saved my ass? I was fine, thank you.”
Blue Eyes Big Arms shakes his head. “Come on. He was half way to impregnating you. I’d hardly call that ‘fine.’ What were you going to do? Glass him? Snap a pool cue in half? Dial up your posse?”
I wrap my arms around myself, because under those eyes it sure as hell feels like I’m completely naked right now. “What makes you think I don’t have a posse?”
His gorgeous face scrunches up, the lightest smattering of five o’clock shadow upon it. “Please, I know your type.”
Now he’s just being offensive. I lean back. “My ‘type’? Do enlighten me O master of womankind, what my type is?”
He smiles. It’s a half inch from ‘You’re Mine.’ “The quiet transfer.”
My heart quickens in alarm. “How did you know I was a transfer?”
He nods down at the Abbotsleigh sloppy joe I’m wearing. “They only hand those sweaters out to transfers. Come on. Do you see anyone else wearing one?”
He’s right. By trying to blend in I’ve inadvertently turned myself into the sore thumb of the room.
Blue Eyes Big Arms tugs at his football jersey. “You should have worn one of these. It’s the ‘in’ thing.”
The way he says ‘in’ kicks some dormant part of me into life—a naughty part.
He’s right, though. Half the room is wearing Trojan jerseys.
“There’s a pep rally tonight,” he continues. “Bonfire… and other things. You should come.”
“Come?” I question, taken aback.
He leans over further, whispering into my ear, his breath hot on the open shell of it. “I can make it a certainty, if you like.”
It takes me a second to lock onto what he’s saying. I look around for a free seat, but the lecture hall is full. I’m stuck here. I swallow down a sudden lump that’s worked its way into my throat, conscious of the way I’m squeezing my legs together harder and harder the longer this conversation goes on. “I thought you said I needed a jersey?”
He smiles, a practiced move. “Right you are.” He stands, right there in the lecture hall, and strips off his jersey, pulling it over his head, the tank he’s wearing underneath almost coming away with it, rocky abs revealed momentarily. People start to whoop and shout.
He’s got a great body. There’s no doubt about that—a diamond-cut chest that leads down, down, down to God only knows what. He’s got tatts, too, which is unexpected but not entirely unwelcome. His entire demeanor screams ‘I am man. I am alpha.’
Do not fall for it.
He sits and hands over his still-warm jersey, sitting there in his tank, arms bulging, and eyes lit. “Looks like you’re out of excuses.”
He winks. He actually winks as if to drive this point home. Sadly, a quick quip fails to pop into my head, but I’m saved by the lecturer, who calls up from the lectern. “Mr. Beckett. Thank you for the pre-show, but if we could all settle down, we’ll get right into the thrilling world that is taxation law.”
A collective groan follows from those in attendance.
“Think about it,” whispers Blue Eyes Big Arms, before settling back into his seat and watching on.
He doesn’t speak during the following hour, thank god, but I’m very conscious that he’s sitting right beside me, his hard body right. Freakin’. There. Even the slouchy way he sits says ‘I own this place,’ and maybe he does, but he’s not going to own me.
He can’t.
I don’t need this attention, nor is it what I’m here for. Still, I cannot help thinking about him as the lecturer rattles on about ethical responsibility and fringe benefits.
You signed up for this, remember? I remind myself.
Well, yes and no, but I’m here now and I have to work with it. I will buckle down and I will study. That’s really all there is to it. Blue Eyes Big Arms can try all he wants to court me with this ‘Bro Bible’ pick-up routine, and I am thankful he came to my aid last night, but it doesn’t buy him a free pass into my pants.
I know he’s turning to me from time to time, eyes running up and down my body, that cheeky grin on his face like he owns the world, but I keep my eyes front and center.
When the lecture finishes, I am out of there, swallowed up into the crowd before he even has a chance to stand.
Not today, my friend. Not today.
Not ever.
*
Naomi’s at her desk when I enter our dorm room. She shuffles a stack of papers aside and swivels in her chair. “First class, huh? How was it?”
I place my bag down, tossing Blue Eyes Big Arm’s jersey on top. “Interesting.”
Naomi jerks her eyebrows at the jersey. “Going to the rally tonight, are we?”
I turn and hold up the jersey. It reads ‘Beckett’ with the numeral one below it. Why does that not surprise me? “No. This was a… gift.”
“Your butt,” says Naomi.
I drop the jersey and face her. “Sorry?”
She points to the back of my jeans. “You’ve got something stuck to your butt.”
I twist and look down my back, notice with mortification I have a Post-It stuck to my left ass cheek. I yank it free. ‘Property of Cayden Beckett’ is scrawled on it, followed by a cell number.
I scrunch it up and toss it into the bin. “Motherfucker.”
Naomi’s certainly amused. “Making friends already?”
I shake my head. “Definitely not.”
Naomi smiles, thinking it’s all a grand joke, but I am not laughing. To think, that he, this ‘Cayden’ would mark me as ‘his,’ that we are somehow connected, together, drives me absolutely insane. I pick up his jersey again, the one that reads ‘Beckett’ in giant collegiate letters across the back. The only property of mine you’re going to be getting, my friend, is my foot up your ass.
*
Via some small mercy, the footballers are absent tonight at The Lab for my first shift. Lucy, the manager, gives me a blazing run-down of the bar, noting the busted tap and the corner that smells like bong water. The crowd tonight is mixed, though mostly girls looking to get wild and guys looking to get laid.
My fees are sorted as far as I know, but I still have expenses. Besides, I want this job. I wanted something to take my mind off New York.
It’s busy, but I don’t mind. I settle quickly into the routine.
Naomi enters and approaches the bar. She’s wearing a low-cut top, but somehow she still seems out of place here, like she’s arrived a decade late.
I span my hands out on the bar. “What’ll it be, partner?”
“Just a Cosmo, thanks.”
Definitely ten years too late.
I had a job in a bar back in New York near Wall St. Things used to get crazy there come Friday night. Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be the same here.
I look past her as I prepare her drink. “Are you here with anyone?”
“No, but I thought I better check it out.”
“So you’re spying on me?”
For a moment she seems taken aback. “No, that’s not—”
“I’m kidding.” I smile, reaching for the vodka.
“So, you’ve worked at bars before?”
I nod, adding the cranberry juice. “Back in…” I trail off. “Back home.”
Naomi nods in return. “Cool.”
I push the drink across, knock over a salt shaker and automatically scoop up a pinch of it, tossing it over my shoulder. “That will be ten dollars.”
She hands over a twenty, eyeing me suspiciously. “Keep the change, but what the hell was that?”
“What?”
“With the salt just now.”
I shrug. “I’m rather superstitious. Don’t hold it against me.”
She taps on the bar. “I won’t.”
I watch her head off into the corner. Weird.
Lucy comes up beside me. There’s more metal in her ear than a cutlery drawer, but I like her hair with its one, defiant streak of fuchsia. “You ready to help close up then?” she says.
I look at the Petri dish clock behind the bar. “But it’s only eight o’clock?”
Lucy leans back against the bar. She’s got a really pretty tattoo of a wren running down her arm, far too adventurous for me, but beautiful nonetheless.
Tattoo. And there I go day-dreaming about Blue Eyes Big Arms again and his model body.
“Everyone will be at the pep rally, and I mean everyone,” she says.
She sees the look on my face. “Don’t tell me you’re not going.”
“I had a run-in with this football guy in class earlier. I don’t really want to bump into him again.”
Or do you? my inner voice suggests, thinking only about it’s stupid, selfish need for sexual satisfaction.
Lucy looks interested. “Who was he, this mystery footballer?”
I almost reply ‘Blue Eyes Big Arms’ before remembering his name. “Cayden. Cayden Beckett or something.”
Lucy crosses her arms, nodding with knowing. “Ah, so you’ve met ‘The Damage’ then?”
“The what?”
Lucy’s smiling wide now. “He’s one of the infamous Beckett brothers, the one they call ‘The Damage’ because of the trail of destruction he leaves on the field… and off.”
“Seems like an odd nickname.”
Lucy laughs. “If you saw the size of his cock, you’d understand.”
I lower my voice. “You’ve seen it? His…” I can’t even say it.
Lucy laughs again, waving her hand around the room. “Honey, everyone has seen it. He’s not exactly shy about showing it off. I would too if I had a dick the size of the Empire State.”
For no particular reason I swallow hard.
Hard. Hard for you.
Shut up, stupid, horny, head.
Lucy takes my arm. “Don’t worry. I don’t swing that way, and neither will you if you know what’s good for you. Now,” she says, looking over me. “Lose that bar towel and I’ll take you myself, find you a guy who isn’t going to give your vagina a concussion”.