Page 43 of Sassy Bennett Doesn't Do Romance

Chapter19

Colt

The next morning I’m walking towards Sassy’s dorm to pick her up for school. Now that the weather is warming up, I’ve been choosing to walk with her in the sun instead of driving. As I get closer to her building, I spot Sassy standing outside talking on the phone. Even from this distance, I can tell she’s agitated. She’s pacing and her hand is animated. She hangs up, and by the time I get to her, she’s inspecting her fingernails with a frown etched on her face.

“Hey,” I greet her. She looks up and smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Chase.” Sassy answers with a wave of her hand, as though dismissing the conversation. My stomach drops a bit.

“Chase? What did he want?”

She looks at me. She can hear the edge in my voice. I’m not usually a jealous person, but I don’t love that this dude is intent on filling Sassy’s head with lies presumably because he wants to sleep with her.

“He was just checking on me. He’s seen the memes and was worried.”

Oh. That’s nice that he was checking in on her. I relax a bit.

“Did you clear up the misunderstanding about my fake girlfriend?”

“Ah damn, I forgot to ask him about that.” Sassy scrunches her nose. “I was focused on finding out if he told anyone where I work. He swears he didn’t. Dani must have called The Nest to ask about me or something. Such a psycho.”

Sassy must really trust Chase to take him at his word like that. I hope her instincts are right with him.

“Are you okay?” I ask, noticing the frown still hasn’t left her face.

“Yeah,” Sassy looks at the ground and kicks at a stone with her foot. “I’m sick of all this drama.”

I glance over at the wall of her building. There’s fresh graffiti on it–the word ‘whore’ scrawled against the red brick in huge, white letters. This started days ago and hasn’t slowed down. In fact, it seems like it’s getting worse. I’ve had random people giving me shit over it, so I hate to imagine how much Sassy is copping and not letting on. I agree that it’s all getting tiring.

“I’ll be fine.” She smiles up at me, but the hurt shows in her eyes. “We should get going.”

“Let’s skip classes today.” I decide on the spot. “We can do something fun instead of putting up with all this lame shit.”

“Like what?” She tilts her head to the side, smiling again. This time it reaches her eyes.

“Hmmmmm,” I think quickly. “How good are you at ten-pin bowling?”

“I could easily kick your ass, if that’s what you’re asking?”

“I doubt that.” I challenge.

“Let’s go find out.” She grabs my hand, and we walk back toward my house so we can grab my car.

Sassy wasn’t kidding when she said she could kick my ass. She’s leading the score by over thirty points and I’m not even bad at bowling. The milkshakes we ordered have arrived, so we take a quick break.

“You’ve done this before,” I observe as I pick up my shake and take a drink.

“Couple of times.” She smirks and picks her shake up as well.

A text message lights up my phone screen and I read it.

“That’s a happy smile.” Sassy says. I was unaware that I was smiling.

“It’s my sister.” I tell her, pushing my phone into the pocket of my jeans. We walk back towards our lane and Sassy picks up her ball for her turn.

“You guys are close?” She asks as she lines up the ball with the pins. She swings her arm back and lets fly, clearing all but one pin. I chuckle as she growls and walks back to the ball return. I’d have been happy with that score.

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