Page 47 of Fostering Chemistry
But that didn’t stop her. She raised her phone up in the air and snapped a picture. Then she examined it and frowned. “Get closer to the wall,” she said. Jayden obliged and Tori was able to take a picture that she was satisfied with, somehow without dropping her phone over the wall.
Jayden knelt down and she hopped off, uploading the picture. Then he turned to Mia. “Want a boost?”
Before she could answer, I was at her side. “I’ve got it.” Jayden needed to focus on his own partner, not mine.
Mia gaped at me for a moment, but she put her hands on my shoulders when I crouched down. Then she swung her legs over, her hands on my head for balance.
I straightened up easily—she was light for a woman her height. Her thighs were warm against my neck, and I grasped her shins to make sure she didn’t fall. It took a heroic effort not to stroke her legs as Jayden had done with Tori.
“Got it,” she said, and I lowered her down. She hopped off the first second she could. “Thanks.” Her voice was somewhere between awkward and neutral, and I didn’t blame her. Neither of us could’ve predicted that any part of me would be between her legs today. Even if it was just my neck.
We set off again, with Jayden in the lead, until we reached the next checkpoint. This was starting to feel like a double date—although not a particularly good one. Tori and Mia walked sideby side, their heads tilted together as they chatted and snapped selfies for the contest. Jayden and I watched them, making awkward small talk.
So much for Mia getting more comfortable with me. The only one she was getting to know better was Tori. And possibly Jayden as well.
So yeah, that plan was going nowhere. Maybe the new plan should be to win the damn race. That would knock Jayden down a peg or two. Though I had no concrete reason for it, the guy was bugging me. Every chance he got, he touched or played with Tori’s hair. It made me long to squeeze a handful of Mia’s waves, though they were currently confined in a ballerina-esque bun.
Another team flew past, nearly barreling into Mia, and I grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. She stared at the departing figures. “Maybe we should run, too.”
No one objected, and we progressed quickly through a half-dozen more checkpoints near the social sciences and history buildings. At one point, Mia and I posed on a bench next to a bronze statue of the university founder, smoking a pipe and reading a book. And then next to a scale replica of Pompeii.
We were sprinting across the quad, Mia just a step ahead of me, when a soccer ball rolled across the sidewalk and into my path. Without thinking, I slowed and trapped it.
I bounced it lightly from foot to foot, then once off my knee before giving it a good kick back.
“Nice,” one of the guys said as the ball rolled right to him.
Another called out, “Hey ref! We’re down a man—you in?”
Mia had slowed down to watch, so I waved them off and caught up with her.
“So… I guess that really is a uniform, not a costume.” The way her eyes swept up and down my body affected me more than it should have. “You look like you know what you’re doing.”
With a soccer ball, yes. With her? Not so much.
It wasn’t high praise, but I’d take it from the woman who’d done her best to pretend I didn’t exist since the day she moved in. “Right now, what I’m doing—we’re doing—is wiping the floor with our competition.”
She grinned, and we broke into a run to catch up with Tori and Jayden, but they’d slowed, too, and were talking to a couple of guys sitting on a low concrete wall. Jayden jogged backward until Tori gave the guys a final wave and continued onward.
“Who are they?” I asked, since it was clear at least Tori knew them.
Mia hesitated. “Those are Tori’s… other two friends.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is she only allowed three, or something?”
“It seems like more than enough to me.”
That seemed like a strange take.
But there was no time to focus on it, because for once, Jayden was stumped. He peered over Tori’s shoulder and read the next clue aloud. “’Strike a pose like Jack and Rose,’” he read. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Titanic,” I said instantly. My foster mom loved that movie.
“So are we supposed to head to the bottom of the ocean?” That was from Tori.
Mia flipped through her phone and pulled up the classic image of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio standing at the bow of the ship. “There’s a white railing in front of them. Is there anything like that on campus where we can get the shot?”
“Yes,” Jayden said, already taking off. What the fuck was he majoring in, obscure corners of campus?
