Page 32 of The Fake Date Agreement

“Hi, Lisa,” I call out.

Her eyes slide from Caleb to me and back again. Without a word, she opens her door and walks inside after another long look at Caleb. Seconds later, I hear muffled voices from behind her door.

I turn to Caleb. “Do you usually have this effect on girls?”

“Yes,” he says, perfectly serious. “You ready to go?”

The same thing keeps happening on our walk across campus toward the arena. Girls stare at him, then at me, then at him again like they’re working out an equation, and it doesn’t make sense, so they have to recheck their work.

I get it.

They’re wondering what he sees in me.

Maybe the staring will stop when Javier has turned me into the sort of girl a guy would want.

“Is something wrong?” Caleb asks.

I snap my head toward him. “Why would something be wrong?”

“You’re tense.” He studies me for a beat. “As tense as you were watching Javier with that book he picked up.”

I have to hide that book the next time those guys come to my room. They cannot know about page 179. I’d never be able to look them in the eye.

“You’re blushing,” he says, his eyes sharpening. “Why?”

I immediately look away. “No reason. I thought the doctor was in another building.”

After a probing look, he says, “He’s just our doc, so he has a small clinic in the arena.”

Lamont University wasn’t my first choice, but Marc and I were high school sweethearts from Lawrenceburg, our tiny Nebraska hometown. We spent years mapping out our future together.

After grad school, he was going to be an attorney at his dad’s practice, and I was going to be the town librarian. By the end of my first year of majoring in library science, I realized I’d made a mistake.

Meeting the professors, seeing them teach, and remembering how rewarding tutoring had been in high school was all I could think about. Even now, I still think about it.

I didn’t want to teach in my old school. I wanted to be somewhere I could decide who I wanted to be instead of October Myers, the quiet and studious girl everyone called Tobie, whose mom died when she was in the eighth grade and whose dad never remarried.

I might regret my major, but I don’t regret coming to Lamont.

There’s a direct flight to Nebraska, so going home is relatively straightforward, and the campus isn’t overwhelmingly massive. Gravel tracks weave around pretty gray stone buildings, and there is enough greenery that it’s soothing and calm, even though we’re in a city.

I glance up at a building I swore I would never set foot in ever again. It looks closed, which I guess makes sense with most of the team’s games happening on a Friday or Saturday night. “And you’re sure he’s still here?”

“It’s Division 1. Everyone always works late.”

He holds the arena door open for me after swiping a card he pulls from a lanyard around his neck. I thought jocks were all hard, partying womanizers, but Caleb seems nice. A little gruff but nice. I trail him inside, and he leads the way to a door that requires another swipe of his card to enter.

After a short walk down a white hallway with corkboards jampacked with notices, he knocks on a door with a silver sign on it—Dr. Douglas Andersen (Team Doctor).

“Doc, you got a minute?”

“Come on in, Caleb. Tight muscles again?” An older man asks as Caleb twists the handle and opens the door.

“Not for me. It’s for…” Caleb looks at me like he’s struggling to find a word to describe me. “Tobie. Tobie Myers. She fell the other night and has a bump on the back of her head. It could be a concussion.”

“Does she have a headache?”

Caleb glances at me.

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