Page 43 of Cheater and the Saint
He didn’t see me as a sex object, but as someone who used sex as a way to cope with internal shit that’d emotionally fucked me up.
Freaking poetry, I rolled my eyes. It made me think too much. And damn Saint, too, for doing the same. I’d never thought about someone as much as I thought of him.
It’s only because I want to fuck him, though, I told myself. There couldn’t be any other reason.
“Hey, Leo?” Jacob said once class was dismissed.
After shoving the British lit anthology into my bag, I looked at him. Where I used to have trouble seeing his eyes due to the long, shaggy style of his bangs, I now could see them perfectly. His hair still swooped in that emo way, but it was shorter.
“What’s up?”
He walked beside me as we left the classroom and went out into the hallway. “So, you know I’m in theater.” I had a sarcastic comment ready to unload on him, but I bit it back because he looked a bit nervous, and I didn’t want to make him even more so. “Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the flyers around campus, but this weekend is opening night of our play.”
No, I hadn’t seen any flyers. If I had, I’d ignored them as I pretty much did with everything else on campus, unless it pertained to a party.
“I guess I was wondering if maybe you’d come Friday night?” Jacob’s stance was rigid, and his eyes were apprehensive. “I’m the lead in it. It’s the first time I’ve ever been the lead, and I’m freaking out a little.”
Ah, so that explained his nervous behavior.
“What’s the play?”
“The Cripple of Inishmaan,” he answered. “It’s a dark comedy. I understand if plays aren’t your thing, so you don’t have to come. I just…” His gaze dropped to his wrist where he had a rubber band, one he proceeded to snap against his skin a few times before looking back up at me. “I just wanted to have someone there for me.”
“Your family isn’t coming?” I asked, and the sadness in his eyes after I’d asked the question gave me my answer. “Friends?”
Jacob adjusted his backpack before looking down the hall. “I get it, Leo. You don’t have to go. I gotta get to the auditorium.”
He walked off after that, not giving me a chance to respond.
Fuck. My chest kind of hurt, as if a large weight was sitting right over my heart.
Jacob was a cool guy. Yeah, he was weird, but I’d enjoyed talking to him in class the past month. After class, we usually walked together before going our separate ways. We’d done quite a bit of talking, and it never occurred to me that, maybe, those walks and talks with me meant much more to him than I thought.
I sympathized with him about the family thing. If I didn’t have Heath, I didn’t know what I’d do. He’d been my rock after our parents disowned me. If Jacob had no family—and by the way he acted when I’d asked—no friends, either, it was upsetting, because I knew how lonely he must’ve felt.
He asked me to go, because he didn’t have anyone else.
Fuck.
***
“How do you feel about plays?” I asked Saint before taking a huge bite of my burger. It was Wednesday afternoon, and both of our classes for the day had ended. I was stuffing my face, and he was doing homework at the table.
He used to only do his homework in his bedroom, so I liked the change.
Saint looked up from his laptop. “Like theater plays?”
“No, football ones,” I replied in a smartass tone. “Yeah, theater ones, doofus.”
“I love the theater,” he said with a small smile. The sight made my stomach flip. “I saw our theater program is putting on a production ofThe Cripple of Inishmaan, and I thought about going. Why do you ask?”
There he goes again with his smarty-pants way of talking. And thereIgo again with liking it.
“I, uh, was gonna see if you wanted to go with me,” I admitted, a bit uncertainly, which was so unlike me. I’d done a lot of thinking the past few days, and I wanted to support Jacob. Because hewasmy friend. Maybe not one that I saw outside of class, but I cared about him. Inviting Saint along was a win-win in my book, because it might help Sir Frosty open up to me more. “An official first date.”
The last part was said with my cockiness back in full-swing.
“A date,” he repeated, watching me with cautious eyes. “And should I expect to end the date in bed?”
