Page 191 of Call the Shots
In the middle of a meeting with Cleo, Coach Sémajuste, and his new interns, Bear’s texts came through.
forty
i realized your right
want to work on the hookup profile stuff tonight?
The words made me taste ash. I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, tapping my fingers against my thigh. Great. That was what I wanted, for Bear to feel comfortable enough to branch out to other people. “This is good,” I repeated to myself. Maybe if I said it a thousand times, I’d actually believe it.
I opened the door to our dorm to see Bear fresh out of the shower. I faltered walking in. His muscles glistened from the water, and he dried his dark hair, looking so damn good in a pair of sweats. Unfairly gorgeous.
“Hi.” I plastered together a smile. “You’re making headway?”
He grunted.
“That’s great news,” I lied. “Happy for you.”
“I want to talk about, I guess, the new rules of the dorm.”
“New rules?”
“If I’m bringing girls over, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
For long seconds, I stared. When I pictured sprucing up his dating profile, I was thinking he’d go searching first and work up towards someone by the time I moved out. I didn’t think he’d be immediately inviting someone to our bed—his bed.
This was good, goddammit. If I saw him with somebody else, that’d cut the ties once and for all. This was the best possible option.
“Sure,” I managed.
“Do you want me to text you when someone’s coming over?”
“Mm.”
“We have thin walls.” He relaxed against the counter, watching me. “I can pick you up a pair of noise-canceling headphones.”
“Won’t be necessary.”
“Before you and I go back to condoms, I have a sex thing I want to try,” he said nonchalantly. “I was thinking we could do it tonight before we work on the hook-up app stuff.”
Oh, so I was supposed to bend over before we swiped through girls’ profiles? “You want freshly-fucked hair for your pictures or something?”
I tried to smooth the end of the sentence—haha, just joking!—but Bear’s eyebrows lifted and a smile played on his lips. “Ooo,baby. You want to try a different tone?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re so jealous, I can hear you grinding your teeth.’
“Jealous? I’m not—no—” I quickly said while Bear’s grin widened with each passing second. “I shouldn’t be—I mean I’m not jealous?—”
“When you're mad, your hands ball up,” he remarked. “It’s adorable.”
“I’m notjealous.”
“You’re not jealous, okay, sure, so you’re fine with us having sex? Because I have this position I want but you won’t be able to handle it, so we need to try it a couple of times to work you up to it.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’d like it, but it’ll be too much for you.”
