True Blue (Imperium Coast #1)

Chapter 8

8

I pluck my favorite plum tee shirt out of the second drawer in my dresser and pull it over my head. It feels like I should wear it today, like there’s something coming that I need good luck for. Lacing up my grey sneakers, I grab my bag and walk out to the living room. Bentley stands near the door, typing something on his phone and I watch his fingers glide over the screen and his soft green and brown eyes track their movement. His dimples show as he smiles down at the device. The veins on the backs of his hands strain as he types, and my mouth dries a little. Being attracted to my roommate would have been a lot easier if he was more of a dick. But I’ve yet to find something not to like about Bentley.

“Ready?” Bentley asks, looking up from his phone. His hair catches the light, revealing strands of gold intermingling in the coffee-colored waves. “No pattern today?” he jokes, nodding toward my shirt.

“Nope, it’s a purple kind of day,” I say, falling back into my practiced jovial demeanor.

We head out for our Wednesday history class, walking side by side along the familiar route. People fill the sidewalk, as per usual at this time in the morning, but I notice one in particular, weaving her way through the throng ahead of us.

I watch Janette walk, straightened hair spilling down around her shoulders and back, much longer than her usual curls. Blonde highlights catch in the sun, the color not quite as golden as the ones I noticed in Bentley’s earlier, but more like caramel dripping down from her crown.

“I don’t think she likes me much,” Bentley says, eyes watching Janette move ahead of us as well.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “I’m sure she’d like you fine if she got to know you.” Bentley squints a bit, thinking about it. “Maybe not as much as Cassie likes you...” Bentley shakes his head, side eyeing me as I chuckle. “But J is easy to get along with.”

Bentley adjusts his bag on his shoulder, right hand swinging in time with his gait in between us. “She’s my best friend’s roommate.”

“Mira?” Layla asked where she was while we were playing our fourth round of Uno, much to Christopher’s disdain, and Janette had said something about a birthday party in her hometown.

“Mmhmm.” Bentley watches Janette disappear into Riggs. “They’re butting heads a bit. Or, well,” he pauses, looking over at me with furrowed brows. “I guess they’re not butting heads so much as not really communicating at all. Mira tends to be nonconfrontational with strangers and I sort of stepped in on her behalf on move in day when she and her boyfriend were being rude.”

I snort. “Yeah, Chris is an ass. What’d you do?” I try to imagine Bentley yelling at Christopher or even Janette and can’t picture him starting a fight, though given his muscle mass, he could probably take Christopher if he needed to.

“I called her a snob,” he says, as we walk through the doors of the building Janette entered a few moments before.

My eyebrows raise, chest puffing a bit as I prepare Janette’s defense.

“They were both dismissive of Mira and then Janette made a comment about me not being her type.” His fist clenches at his side and all the air leaves my lungs. “She seemed relieved when her boyfriend left though.”

Taking a quick breath, I shake my head. “I don’t know why they’re together,” I mutter. “Lay and I hung out with them this weekend and he was the worst. She could do way better.” Bentley and I climb the stairs in silence but when we reach the top, I see a frown on his face. “Come on,” I say, leading the way down the hall and toward the seminar room. “You’ll like her once she puts down her defenses.”

Bentley follows me into the room, not really agreeing or disagreeing. Janette sits in the same spot she occupied in the two classes last week. I walk down the center aisle, hearing Bentley’s footsteps continuing behind me.

“Hey guys,” Cassie calls from her seat in the upper level as we pass. She waves us over to the empty seats around her.

“Hey, Cass. We’re gonna sit down here today.” I keep walking, feeling a little bit of guilt when her face falls at my words.

Bentley whispers, “Sorry,” but keeps walking behind me.

We get to the bottom of the steps, and I turn toward Janette. She has her head bent over her phone, a swathe of hair blocking her face from view as we walk up. I drop into the seat directly beside her, causing her to jump and blink rapidly as she looks around. Bentley slides into the seat next to me, pulling his stuff out of his bag.

“What are you doing?” Janette asks, looking between the two of us with panic in her eyes.

“Figured we’d sit with you today, Blue.” I pull out my notebook, clicking my multicolor pen to green for today. “You’ve already met Bentley, from what I’ve heard.” I nod toward my roommate, and he glances over at her and nods awkwardly.

“Janette,” he says.

“Bentley,” she responds icily. Looks like the snob comment stuck with her. “You don’t have to sit with me, Axe.” Her tone softens when she looks to me. “I’m fine on my own.”

“Of course, you are,” I say, leaning back and stretching out my legs in front of me. “But maybe I didn’t want to get left alone with this one in the back again.” I tap Bentley’s chest as I say it and he looks very unamused.

Janette snorts. “Fine, whatever. You’ll have to actually pay attention though. Howards can see you down here.” She goes back to scrolling through her phone and I smile at the side of her face.

I can feel Bentley staring and look over to see him glancing between the two of us before facing forward again. The noise of the doors closing comes from behind us and Dr. Howard passes to set up at the front of the room. Janette puts her phone away, uncapping a navy-blue pen and I smirk at the neat rows of notes already at the top of the page when she opens her notebook.

“Group assignment day!” Howards says with a clap of his hands. He looks over the room, and I sit up when his eyes rove over the three of us. Bentley tenses next to me. “Let's get started. You three up front can be our group of three and then the rest will be groups of four.” He waves over to us then starts splitting the rest of the room into teams of four.

I smile, looking at first Bentley then Janette, practically jumping up and down in my seat. But both of their wary expressions temper my excitement. Janette glances over at Bentley, who side eyes her across me.

“It’ll be fine,” I whisper while Howards continues directing the room. “You can both play nice for one semester.”

Janette sighs, pulling her hair up and fastening a high ponytail with a periwinkle scrunchie from her wrist. Bentley taps his pen against his notebook, leaning his chin in the palm of his hand.

“Okay, the rest of class can be used to pick your topics and start planning or researching. Use your time wisely. This will be the only class until December that you can use the time toward the research project. Topics are due by class on Friday, but no group can repeat topics. It’ll be first come first serve.” Dr. Howards sits down at the desk, pulling his laptop toward him and ignoring the room.

“I’m thinking something about the knights,” I say, getting out of my seat and sitting crisscross on the floor facing the two of them. The rest of the room regroups behind them, the noise of chatter ringing around us.

“Which knights?” Janette asks, flipping to a clean page in her notebook.

“Move closer, Bent,” I say, waving him to the seat I just vacated. “The knights in the shiny armor with the big swords.”

Janette’s face scrunches up. “What?”

“He wants to rent a suit of armor for the final presentation,” Bentley says, settling into the seat next to Janette, but leaning away from her to use the opposite arm as a rest for his notebook. Janette looks at him with furrowed brows before turning the look on me.

“I think we’d get points for style.” I shrug.

Janette closes her eyes and Bentley chuckles. “We could do The Crusades,” he says, sliding the syllabus out of the back of his notebook and pointing to the example list of topics. A few of them are circled and underlined and I watch Janette lean over and read the ones he’s marked.

“That’d be really broad, and another group will definitely try to take it,” she comments. I lean back, extending my arms out behind me and watching them. “Something like The Class Structure of the Middle Ages or Fashion of the Middle Class would be easier, but again, another group might choose it first.”

“We could do The Impact of Gutenberg’s Printing Press,” Bentley suggests, pointing to the one on the list he’s underlined twice and starred.

Janette pauses, looking over his shoulder at the list one more time, checking all the other topics. “Yeah, that would be a good one.”

They stare at each other for a moment, and I feel my blood heat before they both turn toward me, and the simmer ratchets up to a boil.

“That work for you?” Bentley asks with a quirked eyebrow.

“No suit of armor?” I ask, pouting.

“No suit of armor,” Janette replies sternly.

I sigh dramatically. “Fine, but you both have to make it up to me.” I grab Bentley’s syllabus and get to my feet, walking over to Howards.

“Do we just tell you the topic we’ve chosen?” I ask, scratching the back of my neck. He nods, grabbing a pen and looking up at me. “We want to do The Impact of Gutenberg’s Printing Press. Is that one still available?”

“Sure is,” Howards says, jotting down the topic and our names on a scrap piece of paper. “Good choice.” He smiles up at me and I walk back over to Janette and Bentley.

“Are you a history major?” Janette asks Bentley quietly.

“No, English. Pre-law track.”

She nods, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“But I don’t like getting bad grades, so I’ll take this project seriously,” he adds.

“We both will,” I say, plopping back down in front of them. “We got the Gutenberg one.”

“Okay,” Janette says, writing it down at the top of her page. “Do we want to make a loose schedule for researching, writing, and making the PowerPoint? I don’t mind presenting at the end if either of you are crowd shy?”

She looks up at each of us, and I lift an eyebrow at her. “Do you really think I get stage fright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine presenting as well, so we can all take turns talking when we get to that stage.” Bentley pulls up the calendar app on his phone. “We have twelve weeks till presentation time, not including the half week for Thanksgiving. So, we could do research for the first six, then start developing our paper after midterms.”

Janette nods, jotting down the timeframe he’s describing. “Making the PowerPoint and talking points should be easy after that so we could leave the last two weeks for that, giving us four weeks to finish the paper.” Bentley nods and they both look over at me again.

“Works for me,” I say, shrugging and continuing to enjoy watching the two of them nerd off in front of me.

We spend the rest of the class time talking about different thesis ideas, the two of them mostly going back and forth while I listen.

“So, we’ll meet up at the library on Friday?” Janette says, packing her stuff up and standing with us. We both tower over her, forcing her to have to tip her head back a bit to look up at us.

“Yup,” I say, placing my hands on the straps of my backpack to stop myself from reaching out to touch her. “We’ll see you there, Blue.”

Janette rolls her eyes. “That nickname doesn’t make sense anymore, Axel.”

“You're still Bluejay, Janette.” I lean forward when she freezes, eyes starting to mist. “So, you’ll always be Blue to me.” She shakes her head, mouth twisting into a frown before she moves around us to start heading out.

“I’ll see you guys on Friday,” she says, looking over at Bentley before rushing away.

“Told you you’d like her,” I say as we both watch her climb the steps of the center aisle and walk out the open doors at the top.

“She’s not that bad,” Bentley says. “Don’t tell Mira I said that.”

I cross my finger over my heart. “I’ll take your secret to the grave.”

Bentley rolls his eyes, heading toward the stairs. I follow behind him, suddenly wondering if Bentley checked out my ass when we came into the room the way I’m checking out his as we leave.