Page 4 of Christmas Cheer

He anchors his hands on his hips.

My eyes are drawn straight down.

He’s not even hard. What the hell?

“It’s just us here. If someone shows up, I’ll be here to protect you. If no one does, then no one will know we were in there together.”

I know I’m going to regret this, but if he’s flaccid, he’s probably too drunk to do anything. “Fine, okay. Let’s just get this over with.”

Scratch that.

Evan’s had an erection ever since the solid fifteen seconds he spent talking about his econ final while staring me dead in the eye and scrubbing his testicles.

And I can’t stop looking at it. Every single time my brain drifts, my eyes drop right back down to see if he’s still hard.

It has a ring through the ridge. Just a little one. Small enough that every time, I stare even harder to make sure it’s not the lighting playing the worst trick imaginable.

It’s a battle of wills to keep that normalcy and professionalism going against all odds, like the middle school gym showers all over again but at the next level — this time with thick, pierced dicks — and I’m losing. I turn away from him to wash my hair, but then he pushes my hands away and takes over.

“Let me help,” he says calmly, like this is just a normal Tuesday in the co-ed showers in Nowhere University and the whole football team gets in a circle to scrub each other’s backs.

“I’m capable of washing my own hair,” I point out.

“Of course you are. But I want to help. I feel bad about rushing you.”

No you don’t,I almost say, but his fingers go right to my scalp, massaging away like he knows this is my favorite thing in the world and he’s caught me at my weakest possible moment. If he pulled this stunt any other time, I’d have kneed him in the balls right now.

But it’s Christmas, and as awful as it sounds, he’s the closest thing I have to home.

He’s playing me like the sluttiest fiddle, and it’s when he’s got me so loosey goosey that if he attempted a grope, I wouldn’t stop him, that he says, “Why do you hate me, Hughes?”

“I don’t.”

“You always reject me.”

I open one eye and tilt my head back to give him the most peevish glare I can muster, but he digs his fingers in just enough to force my head forward again. “Evan,” I say to the tiles in front of me. “I’ve never dated a football player. Ever. Considering you’re buddies with every player I could have dated, you know this already. Also, I couldn’t have rejected you, as you never asked me out. Except that time you lured me into Seven Minutes in Heaven at Trini Wilcox’s Sweet 16 by getting me drunk on Rumple Minze and Kahlua. Which you swore was peppermint chocolate milk, and I was stupid enough to believe you until you grabbed my boobs.”

Evan bends down to get close enough to my ear that his nose brushes it. “That was great. We should do that again.”

“That was disgusting, and I’m not just talking about the drink.”

“See there, you’re rejecting me again.”

I spin around in frustration, a terrible move when I’m in his arms and his dick is right there. He doesn’t bother to back up, and I have to stand my ground. It bobs against my stomach as I screech, “I told you it didn’t count! When have I ever rejected you? You never asked me out!”

He rubs a soaped-up loofah over my collar bone. “Would you have said yes if I did?”

“No. But don’t accuse me of things I didn’t do.”

He crosses his left hand between us to lift my left arm up over my head. He delicately traces the line from my wrist to my forearm and on all the way to my hip and then back up. “Eight years, I requested you as my rally girl. Eight years, you rejected me.”

“You’re mad at me for not being your rally girl?” I ask, refusing to let my eyes waver from his even though I swear he’s actually upset about this. “I wasn’tanyone’srally girl, Evan. It’s the most offensive thing ever. It’s sexist. It’s pathetic that you need a dedicated girl to fawn over you and fluff your ego, and it’s not even a real thing. It’s from a stupid TV show.”

He lifts my other arm, repeats the slow, terribly sensual scrub, and grumbles, “That TV show was great. And I didn’t needarally girl. I neededyou.”

“You’re just drunk,” I murmur, but I feel like I’m going through the motions at this point, saying what I think I need to say because I’m not usually someone so easily seduced.

But it’s Christmas Eve, and I’ve spent this week deciding what I should and shouldn’t take with me when I leave campus for good after the bowl trip. The keep pile is pathetic. I’m feeling . . . invisible. Non-existent. I’m lonely, and gym time is only fixing so much when I really just need some human contact.

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