Page 52 of Under Pressure

“A what?”

“You know, a place you keep the details of all the girls you’ve hooked up with. For when you want a repeat.”

“I don’t do repeats.” That’s what I keep telling myself at least. “I’m not as obsessed with sex as you are.” Except for with Mia. What will it be like to finally sink into her? Have that pretty, pink pussy clenched tight around me, milking me for all she’s worth. Watch her face transform, every emotion one that I put there. Wonder. Passion. Need. Ecstasy.

“That’s because you can get it any time you want,” Oscar claims, interrupting my train of thought. “Some of us are struggling over here.”

“Yeah, I feel real sorry for you,” I mutter. All this conversation is doing is making me think about Mia. Turning me on. What I need to be doing is studying.

“What do you do, man? How do you get the girls to come to you?”

“Not all girls are like that.” Some won’t jump in bed with you right away, but the reward is all the more sweeter for waiting.

I pause, that thought coming out of nowhere. But maybe that’s what’s different. Mia’s only on my mind because we haven’t actually had sex yet. I’ve never been interested in any other girl because I’ve slept with them right away.

I breathe a sigh of relief. That’s all it is. The thrill of the chase. The mystery. There’s nothing wrong with me, nothing different about her.

It doesn’t mean anything if I think about her, look forward to seeing her, seek out ways to spend time with her. Once we sleep together, things will return to normal. I’ll lose interest and we’ll go back to just being friends and coworkers.

It’s the only reasonable explanation. Anything else is… too much.

Chapter Fifteen

Mia

I unlockmy apartment door and immediately shed my jacket. It’s like I opened an oven instead of my front door.

“Mia,” Kelsey calls out from the couch. “Where have you been?”

I take a moment to contain a sigh, knowing I’ve told her plenty of times I have a three-hour lecture tonight. It’s literally every week. “I had class.” I bend down and unzip my boots, flexing my toes in their warm, wool socks. Oh, that feels good.

“Well, you missed the beginning of the movie I had planned.”

Planned? Well, why didn’t she ask me beforehand if I’d actually be here, then? Or maybe just pay attention to my schedule to begin with?

“What’s the movie?” I ask instead of voicing any of that.

“The Princess Bride. Do you remember it?”

“Yeah, it’s an eighties classic.”

“I remember going over to your house once and it was on. But I never knew what it was.”

I wander into the living room, perching on a couch cushion. “It’s my dad’s favorite movie. He always had it on.”

“So what’s the deal with this masked guy?” She grabs a handful of popcorn out of the bowl next to her, sticking her feet up on the coffee table.

I seriously can’t believe she hasn’t seen this in its entirety. “You don’t recognize him?” It’s at the scene where he’s facing off in the battle of wits against Vizzini, pouring the iocaine powder into the goblets.

She moves closer to the TV, squinting. “Am I supposed to?”

“Just keep watching.”

She scoots back again and pats the spot in front of her for me to sit. I move and she extracts the clip holding everything together from the depths of my hair, finger combing it as best she can, then begins to French-braid it. The action, along with such a nostalgic film, immediately brings me back to my childhood. “I feel like I’m back in middle school. How many weekends did we do this same exact thing?”

“Yeah, but it was usually watching a Zac Efron movie. God, I was sooo into him.”

“I remember,” I murmur, wincing as she tugs my hair into place.

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