Page 20 of Study Games

After a moment’s deliberation that he was doing fine on his own, I offered awkward support as we headed for his car once we hit the ground floor to a background chatter of snickers and catcalls.

Trying to keep the poor girl decent, we managed to get her laid out in the backseat.

“Where do you think she lives?” I frowned, pushing back bottle blonde hair to expose a pretty face.

“Chi Beta Pi.” Crush looked at me and laughed. “Sorority across campus. I’ll take her back,” He offered the words casually.

“You sure?” I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“What, like coming home to a random in my bed? Sure, man.” He shook his head, turning the key in the ignition. “Besides, I got my own girl to worry about. JUst want to make sure she wasn’t hurt on the way to your bed, or someone’s going to have his head shoved up his ass and a police record for assault.”

“Fuck off.” I grinned at the barb, but inside I was relieved he took the alpha stance on protecting the poor girl who was in over her head with the frat boys.

Crush waved as I tapped the top of his car and I backed off to let him pull away. Knowing he’d get her home safe with no chance of being accosted helped, but the fact it happened at all still annoyed the shit out of me.

Slipping my hand into my pocket, I extracted Waverly’s phone, flipped it over in my hand, and headed back across campus to the dodgy little apartment in town she mentioned once in passing, and imagined a hundred ways to tease her on the way there.

Because her honeydew scent wasn’t the only thing addictive about her–but it was a damn fine start.

8

WAVERLY

“He’s just so…frustrating.” I slammed the pot with its ramen noodles onto our two-burner stove top. Water sloshed over the side onto the back of my hand in a way that really summed up my day. Week. Month. I stared at it in disgust. “Gah.”

“Sounds like you need a break. Come out with me.” Celia folded her arms, leaning on the counter just out of my reach. She sighed, flicking perfect, natural, bombshell blonde fifties-esque curls over her shoulder. “Please. Your stress levels are super high.”

As always.

She didn’t say it. Neither of us had to.

“That’s what happens when you’re paired with the most arrogant, assholic,” I flicked the burner on and threw two extra packets of cheap noodles into the pot, “and mother frustrating person on the planet. I swear he has a brain. He just doesn't use it. Lazy ass,” I added, because lazy was on my hell no list of anyone to socialize with.

Ever.

If I socialized at all beyond my bee hives. Mind, they were a whole lot easier to deal with.

“Come. Out,” Celia repeated. She pried my fingers from the pot handle. “Don’t use all our noodle rations on comfort eating. We can spend our allowance on something fun, like overproof rum, instead. Please?” She gave me puppy eyes.

I shook my head. “Not. Working. Bishy.”

She sighed. “Can’t you see how upset you are?”

Upset? I was seething. I’d ranted in my head the entire way home, hosting full blown conversations that never happened to anyone, even with the one person I shouldn’t have been thinking about on the way to, during and after my final class of the day. What were bees and a thesis again? All over absolutely nothing, and for no reason, which made it twice as bad. Ruminations were apparently my current jam, and I was living the full blown anxiety dream.

And if I was frustrated, I couldn't work. The amount of that piling up, considering there was a few more weeks before my first assignments were due, my outline for my major…tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I blinked, horrified and refused to look at Celia. Instead, my head tipped back and I let out a truly horrendous, heartfelt sound that rattled something in the ceiling above us.

“This place is so not safe,” Celia whispered.

“Nope, but it’s all we can afford.”

“Fine. But answer the last question,” she begged, pulling me back on track.

I blew out a loong breath that refused to quit. “Yes.” One word answers were all I had left after my imaginary conversations with Jax all the way across campus and back. “We need more noodles.”

“No, we don’t,” she corrected gently,” catching the extra packs and placing the back in the small cupboard we used as a pantry. “That sort of stress is so bad for you,” she cooed. “Let off some steam, Wavy.”

I shook my head, adamant on my noodles. “I hate parties.”

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