Page 31 of The Fake
I disagree. It’s totally necessary. Plus, we have the class project to work on anyway.
She stares at the paper a moment, pen between her teeth, before she begins to write and write and write… a freaking novel from the looks of it. I can’t read it because her hand is in the way. My surfer princess is a leftie. When she’s done, she sits back, expels a breath, and focuses entirely too hard on Professor Sanchez.
We should come up with some terms. Duration: one month. Times we need to hang out per week: 2–we can use those to work on the project. We can split those hangouts between our places, although I’d prefer that my teammates are included as much as possible since they’re the whole reason for this. Should probably keep the hanging out to public places so people see us together and we use the most of our time. We’ve already said, no sex. PDA is okay when it feels appropriate to the situation. Anything you want to add?
Jesus. A list of dos and don’ts is a real mood killer. Seems like she needs this, though, so I roll with it. Mostly.
A month is too short. How about two? And I want at least one night a week that isn’t spent studying.
Maybe I’m crazy for wanting to extend this out longer, but I don’t exactly think it’s going to be a burden.
Two months is overkill. If they don’t like me in a month, I doubt another month is going to make a difference.
Right, I keep forgetting this is about her teammates.
Six weeks and all bets are off on PDA.
I move up to the list above where she started to list things she knows about me and add a third.
3. Likes PDA.
To emphasize my point, I drop the pen and lace our fingers together. Her hand fits perfectly in mine, and we both sit back and listen to Professor Sanchez for the rest of the class. When he finishes, I realize I have no idea what we discussed in class, but I had a damn good time while he yapped for an hour.
“What time you wanna hang?”
“Oh.” She busies herself with her backpack as she searches for words… probably to blow me off.
“We can do whatever you want,” I offer.
She straightens. “Whatever I want?”
12
Nathan
Chloe toldme to meet her at Ray Fieldhouse at eight. It’s Friday night, so the place is quiet as a morgue. She’s waiting for me just inside the side entrance for athletes. Leaning on the wall with her phone in hand, she’s slow to raise her head from the screen, which gives me a couple seconds to take her in.
Tight black shorts that are… well, they can hardly be called shorts they’re so short—and I’m in no way complaining about that—and a white off-the-shoulder t-shirt that comes just to the top of her not-shorts.
“Hey.” She pushes off the wall. Her eyes do a slow perusal of me and she smirks. “Ready?”
“Depends. Gotta say, I’m intrigued. I’ve never had a chick tell me to meet her at the gym on a Friday night.”
We head down the hall toward the weight rooms. She stops outside of the basketball team’s private gym. After last year’s national championship win, they did some renovations on an unused indoor tennis court area to give us our own workout room. The other teams share so it’s a definite perk.
“I see. I’m just the key to the good weight room. We’re working out, for real?”
She nods and flashes an innocent smile. “Well, we could go to the other workout room if you want to slum it with me.”
A rough chuckle fills my chest, and I press my thumb to the keypad entry.
“Fancy,” she mocks when it beeps us in.
No one else is here, as I expected, but I doubt they’d balk at Chloe being here anyway.
“Wow,” she says as she walks into the center of the room.
“Don’t walk over Ray,” I tell her as her feet get dangerously close to stepping on our beloved mascot in the center of the floor. “It’s four years of bad luck.”
