Page 14 of Heartbreak Kings
Nathaniel nodded slowly. “Perhaps someone else should try with her. Someone with a warmer approach.” His polite smile didn’t reach his eyes, and Blake’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. Nathaniel could be ridiculously pompous. It was one of his only real flaws.
“I’ve only managed all of three, five-minute conversations,” Blake protested, voice gone sharp.
“I’m not saying to stop trying,” Nathaniel soothed in an amused tone. “I say that either Marcus or Daniel should try approaching her. She may find you a bit overwhelming.”
That was a kind way of putting it. “I’ll do it, Blake. I have an excuse for poking around. You’re a frat brother and family, and she’s an outsider here.”
Blake considered it while we watched him, then grunted and nodded. “All right, then. But if she doesn’t show any actual interest in any of us in another week, we must come up with some other way of drawing her in.”
“Perhaps we should invite her over,” Nathaniel proposed, quirking an eyebrow. “That way, we can all have a look at her, while impressing upon her our lack of sinister motive.”
“If the pledges see her here, though…” Blake frowned. “Maybe. We would have to be creative about it.”
I let out a laugh, imagining the look on Carmody’s face if he saw the five of us seducing her over roast beef and wine. “Creativity is one of my specialties,” I declared. “Leave it to me.”
Unlike Blake, who had expected to coast into our target’s interest with money, good looks, and charisma alone, I was a realist. I knew you had to change your game plan depending on the woman, her preferences, her needs. A lot of guys seemed to view “women” as some kind of monolith, with little difference between individual females. Worse, they assumed women’s viewpoints and needs instead of discovering them, which left them even more lost.
Oh well. More failures for them meant more success for guys like me, who had sorted out this simple fact. Brains and empathy were what won over women, not looks or money alone. Hell, Carmody had money, even if he only changed clothes every few days and never seemed to bathe. He just didn’t want to be anything but a troll at a computer desk for the rest of his days.
I set out to discover everything I could about Sabine before I even approached her. I had a short timeline to work within, so I pushed myself to get it all done in one night. I started by reading her news and views blog, top to bottom.
I lost two hours to it before looking up and realizing I was already a fan. She was clever, funny, made brilliant points on many topics, even when I didn’t one hundred percent agree with her, and didn’t lose her cool no matter how abusive the worst men on campus got with her.
“Well, damn.” I quickly typed an email to the other Gentlemen with my basic observations:
Sabine’s blog is interesting.
She has a well-informed, practical, progressive view, there’s nothing inflammatory in her presentation of her political views, and she only becomes controversial when the controversy is brought to her door.
Initially, the intention of her series on the campus was supposed to be positive and optimistic. Apparently, the negative reaction shown in her later posts was exposure of what was being done to her, no more or less.
She’s very prolific, with multiple short posts throughout the week and a vlog post every weekend. I’ve only gotten through about half of what she has online, including looking at her interactions in the comments. If you haven’t looked at all of this yet, really do so.
Blake was correct. There is a lot more to this woman than we thought.
I ended my email with several thoughts whirling around in my mind.
Was it her presence that bothered me? Or the way other guys were going nuts over it?I doubted it. I didn’t really care if some students around were chicks. It was the way the school had shoved it down our throats, the way it was causing some of us to freak out and become disruptive, and how she was caught in the middle of all this that bothered me.
Apparently, it was bothering Blake too. But I suspected, in his case, the feeling was a lot more personal. I was willing to bet Blake was falling for Sabine.
I went back to reading the blog comments. It embarrassed me how nasty so many of my fellow students were being toward her.
How had we gotten so many immature, emotionally compromised men among our student body?
She never seemed to lose her cool, no matter how hard it got.
I scrolled through the discussions, amazed by the combination of deep-rooted knowledge and emotional control she showed at every turn.Is this girl only eighteen?But some people just grew up faster than others. That was one thing I understood very well. She was no little rich girl with no focus to her life and no real obstacles to push against. Sabine was, for lack of a better word, admirable. And here we were, about to mess with her sweet little head, which was going to be difficult because she was a lot smarter than I thought.
I wanted to drop this bullshit entirely and just ask her out. I liked her. I didn’t mind that she was around, and I thought Jude and the younger guys were being ridiculous. Besides, the lack of ethics was making me lose more sleep than I wanted to admit.
It was the first time in a long time my cousin had made a call I had trouble backing. Usually when that happened, it meant that one or the other of us wasn’t thinking straight. Last time, it had been me, back when I had thought about harming my girlfriend’s abusive ex. This time, he was being irrational.Or rather, he was caving to irrational people to maintain his position. I couldn’t respect that. Not in a million years. That wasn’t the cousin I had grown up around, confided in, backed up in fights. I didn’t know if the power and responsibility had gone to his head, or if he had been operating on worthless information. But it was bad all around, and now we were stuck with the consequences.
There’s what I have to do for the fraternity, and there’s what I want to do.And I honestly wished they matched up with each other. They usually did, but not this time.
I noticed a donation button at the bottom of her blog page and stared at it for a while before shrugging and setting up an anonymous donation. If we were going to ruin her, I didn’t want her to walk away without options for paying for school. I just didn’t want her to be broke on top of everything else.
The next day, I went searching for her at mealtimes, as we didn’t have any classes in common. She seemed perpetually busy anyway, only nipping in for a meal an average of twice a day. I wondered when she slept. I wondered when she had time for all the stuff she did.Did she have a team of friends who were helping her?The blog didn’t mention anyone but her and an “assistant editor,” who went unnamed.
