Page 198 of Well Played

CAMILLE AND THE BEAST

BY J.T. SILVER

When CJ Bazzi finds herself at odds with a vindictive professor, her dreams of graduating Trinity College and moving to New York become a nightmare. Enter William, Black Beast of Trinity College, the brooding, superstar ice hockey goalie with a reputation for losing his temper. William is determined to help CJ, and as they team up to face her academic troubles, sparks fly. But with graduation—and Beast’s NHL future—on the line, can they overcome a professor with megalomaniac tendencies and find a happily ever after, or will their love story end before it even begins?

Acknowledgements:

For Lily, Nansi, and Emma. The future is yours.

*

CJ

“Why are we here again?I’m guessing it’s not because it’s meatloaf night.” I make a face, picking at the matrix of “beef” sitting in congealed brown mushroom gravy on my tray. I know it tastes better than it looks, but I really wish we could come to the dining hall on a better night. Like pizza night.

“Oh stop.” Toa, the best friend a girl could ask for—with the exception of his questionable taste in food—holds his hand up to my face. “You know you could’ve ordered a burger likemoi. You’re just being dramatic.” He points at his own plate, where two double cheeseburgers lounge like kings, complete with grilled onion clouds, on a mountain of golden steak fries, practically surrounded by a ketchup moat.

I hold a hand to my chest as if he’s affronted my gentle sensibilities. “As if. And if that’s not the pot calling the kettle bl?—”

“Children,” my roommate Mina intones drolly, “would you both pipe down so I may enjoy this lame-ass meal in peace?”She emphasizes her statement with a bite of roasted Brussels sprouts.

Toa and I both turn to her. I’m ready to lambast her for her bad attitude, but Toa beats me to the punch. “You say lame-ass now. But don’t think I missed you checking out the women’s volleyball team when you wandered over to the drink machines.” He spins toward me and continues, “And you, missy. We’re here because this is our last chance to live a little with no consequences. One month from now, we’ll be scattered to the winds, eking out a living asreal adults.” He holds a hand over his heart. “We owe it to ourselves to take this time and eat everything this dining hall has to offer on our pre-paid meal plan, while gazing in delight at the D1 college athletes that share the space with us. Once we leave these hallowed halls, there will be no other time in our adult lives where hotties and cheeseburgers will come together in blissful union like this.”

I cover my eyes. “So dramatic. Can you at least sit down? People are starting to stare.” I’m not even exaggerating. Toa’s a solid wall of Samoan energy clad in the preppiest of preppy clothes: his pants are pink and have gray whales on them, while his pristinely pressed baby blue oxford shirt peeks over the neck of his gray sweater. People watch him wherever we go, whether it's in rapt fascination with his fashion sense, or to listen to his mellifluous voice. I’ve personally watched him busk on a New York street corner after a night of partying and make enough to pay for the Uber back to campus, and it’s almost a five-hour ride. This is how I know he’ll end a smash Broadway sensation: he’s got that star vibe.

He holds his arms wide and makes a deep bow to the room. There’s even a smattering of applause.

Mina stops chewing long enough to side-eye me while he completes his curtain call. “Totally your fault on this: you know he lives to embarrass you. And he’s not wrong about living alittle. When was the last time you did something completely out of character?”

I shrug at her while taking a bite of a button mushroom. “Why does it need to be out of character? What’s wrong with me doing somethingin character? Besides, you could be a little more supportive after four years together.”

Her dark-eyed stare pins me in place while she gestures with her fork, clearly trying to skewer me. “Supportive?I’m here after four years with you two clowns.” Mina’s not the type to mince words, so she continues eviscerating me with her dry commentary. “You work, you go to class. You work some more, that’s why. Dickens would have written you into something for sure. When was the last time you partied with or without us?”

“Why do you have to bring clowns into it? Now I’m going to have nightmares. And I go to every cast party?—”

“—As the designated driver.” Toa interjects. “You make it sound like such a chore. Besides, that’s over now that the final production for the year is done. And what do you have now, a final, two papers, and a thesis for theater? You could be ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’. We exist right now in the glorious twilight of our educational journey where almost nothing we do matters.” He gives a little shimmy to accentuate his point.

I roll my eyes at him, though he’s not wrong. “Look, I’m focused on getting a job after graduation and finding a place to live so I don’t have to crash on your apartment floor. You know, so I don’t have to move back in with my parents.” I give an exaggerated shudder, which earns a smile of commiseration from Mina, whose parents are begging her to move home despite her constant refusal. “I need to be in the ‘City. And New York is expensive.”

She puts down her fork. “I get it. I do. No one wants to couch surf, and we can’t all be Toa, who’s already got a paying role lined up for the summer and an apartment sublet with threefellow castmates. Total overachiever.” She rolls her eyes. “But we have a month left to live a little. You need to cut loose, especially with the crap you’re going through in Watts’s class.” She reaches over and pats me gently, like I’m a feral cat she’s trying to calm.

Toa picks up what she’s laying down. “Remember at the beginning of this year when we vowed that we wouldn’t have any regrets? Let’s leave Trinity on a high note. And that’s going to require you to do a little something extra.” He waggles his eyebrows and performs a visual sweep of the dining hall. “Maybe a DM to kick off a night of luscious debauchery with a hottie you’ll never see again. Do you see something you like in this veritable Bacchanalian feast? Because I’m daring you. Right now.”

I can’t help but laugh, especially because I know they mean well. “Bacchanalian feast? How very Shakespearean of you. I guess I’d better get right on it.” I rummage in the deep pockets of my black cargo joggers for my phone and fire up the Trinity College social media app. “Who should I pick, do you think?” I tap my chin innocently, making a show of looking around the room, as if I really need an evening of lasciviousness instead of some solid job leads and an apartment situation that doesn’t require fifteen roommates. I’m so stressed that even if debauchery landed in my lap right this second, I wouldn’t know what to do with him.

I’m almost ready to make some quip worthy of Oscar Wilde about the whole room being full of fools when my eyes land on the ice hockey table. Of their own volition, my gaze moves to the Black Beast of Trinity: a guy sitting slightly apart from the others, seated casually, but with dark eyes that seem to focus with such intensity that no one can hold his gaze for longer than a second or two. He’s short for a goalie, only slightly taller than six feet, all long legs and arms, sinewy muscle and big hands. His ass is the stuff of legend. Like, someone wrote an actual sonnetabout it last year. His black waves are longer on top than on the sides, probably to help keep sweat out of his eyes under his helmet. And don’t ask me how I know that he’s got the best save percentage in NCAA play two years running. He’s also vicious. Social media says that he beat up one of his own teammates for looking at him wrong after Trinity’s playoff season ended in defeat to Boston last week. If the bruise around the eye of his teammate sitting a little further down the table is anything to go by, that rumor may have some truth to it.

He doesn’t hang out. I’ve never seen him party, at least not since freshman year, nor have there been rumors about him with any of the girls on campus, despite aforementioned sonnet. He materializes before games, kicks some hockey ass, then disappears. He doesn’t speak in any of the classes we’ve had together. Granted, there aren’t many. But where his teammates joke and tease each other, there’s…nothing. Nothing but an intensity and focus that makes my palms sweat and other parts of me tingle.

“OOOOH. Doth the lady see something she liketh?” Toa cranes his neck to find where my gaze has landed. “Oh, yes—the god of the gray sweatpants himself, and yourUnattainable. He’s the only person on campus who can simultaneously wreck a pair of panties and make you shiver in your boots. Get it, girl!”

As if my fingers have a mind of their own, they fly over my phone screen. I hit send before I can lose my nerve. I mean, he probably has gaggles of women throwing themselves at him and he’s never so much as met my eyes across a crowded lecture hall. Even if he sees it, he won’t respond, right?

Right?

William

I hate this class.It takes all of my willpower to focus on the droning professor at the front of the small lecture hall. For the umpteenth time, I wish I could get my advisor alone in a parking lot for two minutes for inflicting this asshole on me during the last semester of my last year here. He said it was an easy elective.

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