Page 44 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
I purposely arrive at the conference room a few minutes early so I can get my bearings, but instead of the solitude I was hoping for, I find Kendrick sitting in one of the six chairs that surround the oval table.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him.
His left brow arches. Of course, it draws my attention to his dark brown eyes that are rimmed in a lighter hazel color. And, of course, noticing his eyes makes my stomach flip-flop.
Why can I not control my body’s reactions when I’m around him? It issoannoying.
“We have a meeting, don’t we?” he asks. He looks down at his phone, swipes across it, then holds it up to face me. I recognize the meeting notice in his phone’s calendar.
I roll my eyes.
“Yes, we have a meeting, but it doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes. Don’t you have other things you can be doing?”
A slow smile draws across his face, tilting up the corner of his mouth.
I hold up a hand. “Don’t answer that.”
His smile broadens. “Please let me answer.”
I roll my eyes again and barely resist the urge to growl. I practically turn feral when I’m around him. But then something else happens, something I try to resist, but can never quite manage.My body warms and my stomach tightens. My pulse races and my limbs grow weak. It’s maddening, yet undeniable.
Kendrick spins his chair around and jumps out of it. He walks over to where I stand, stopping a few feet away from me.
“Please, let’s talk about all the thingswecould be doing right now instead of being stuck in this conference room,” he says. He holds his hands up. “Now, before that brain of yours goes to inappropriate places, understand that I’m not that kind of guy. I like walks in the park, feeding the squirrels, finding animal shapes in the clouds.”
I do everything I can to stop my lips from twitching because I know that will only encourage him.
Clasping his hands behind his back, he begins to pace like Dr.Benson, the philosophy professor who wears a light blue button-down with a dark blue tie every single day.
“Another thing we could be doing right now is roller-skating,” he says. He even sounds like Professor Benson. “Or, if we’re feeling adventurous, we could rent dirt bikes and ride around the French Quarter.”
“Oh, would you please shut up,” I say, unable to hold in my laugh.
He stops pacing and walks up alongside me. “What, you don’t like the French Quarter?”
“Get away from me,” I tell him.
His eyes gleam. “I would, if I thought you really meant it.”
“I do.” I nod emphatically. “I absolutely mean it.”
“Lies.”
“Jerk,” I say, but then another laugh escapes.
“You can just admit you like me, you know? It won’t hurt anything.”
Except my pride.
It’s not that Kendrick is my enemy, just my nemesis. It began freshman year, when our paths crossed at a cringe “getting to know your classmates” activity during orientation weekend. He tried to show me up—correcting an answer I’d gotten wrong—and I didn’t like it. We ended up in the same math class that year and the one-upmanship continued.
I wish I could say he was a dumb jock, but you won’t find those at Xavier University of Louisiana. Being a jock comes second to academics.
Still, I will never admit to liking my nemesis, no matter how difficult it is to deny it.
The two additional committee members enter the room, and I quickly step away from Kendrick. It’s time to get down to business.
I retrieve my iPad from my backpack and pull up the agenda I’d drafted for today’s meeting. Then I attach it to the Listserv I’d created for the committee.
