Page 30 of Touchdown, Tennessee
“It’s going to be fun. I’m making a pumpkin spice cake. What did you decide on?”
I pulled in a lungful of air as we walked out onto the quad. “I didn’t decide. Because, again, I forgot.”
“Brownies are easy,” Luke said. “You know what? Apple cobbler is even easier. Do that.”
“No clue how.”
“There’s this invention called the internet that has a whole lot of recipes on it.”
“And Gray’s pompous ass is going to be there.”
“Hmm?”
“He told me he’d be there tonight. Because he has to get his hands into everything.”
“Was he talking to you? On record oroff the record?”
“He texted me, because I was dumb enough to give him my number. He said he could help tutor me in my history class, and I desperately need that.”
“Wonder if he’ll get drunk this time.”
My veins went cold.
I lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Luke couldn’t know about what I did with Gray… right?
He had a shit-eating grin on his face. “You transferred in. You didn’t see him in freshman year.”
I pulled out my bottle of electrolyte water from my duffel bag and took a sip.
Even better.
Tell me the gossip about him.
“What did he do in freshman year?”
“Parents Weekend, that year. Carter was in the same dorm as Gray Gilman. He always kept to himself, doing that sort of mysterious bullshit he was doing at practice the other day. But on Parents Weekend he got super whiskey-wasted, and later on when Carter asked him where his parents were, he talked more than he’d talked all semester.”
“Telling stories about his parents?”
“Bro, he told us someshit.”
I glanced over at Luke, who was shaking his head and looking off into the distance on the quad.
“His mom forced him to be, like, a kid thief or something. Used to get thrown into juvenile detention a lot for fucking with people. He said he saw a man get shot once.”
“What the fuck?”
“Seemed like whatever he told us was the short version, too. I don’t know what kind of things he’s been through, but it isn’t pretty. He doesn’t play sports but he could probably kill any of us.”
“And now he’s one of the smartest students here,” I said.
Gray hadn’t told me anything about his mom the other night, other than the fact that he didn’t have a relationship with her anymore.
He was athief?
And what did he do to “fuck with people,” anyway?
