Chapter Thirty Keely
Chapter Thirty
Keely
“So.” Max fished another fry from his carton. “What are your plans for me?”
Keely nearly choked on her burger. “My plans for you?”
He probably didn’t mean it to be suggestive. Her mind must still be snagged in that thin loop of time when they’d been stripping linens, breaking down tables, and he’d worked up enough of a sweat to shed his suit jacket.
Roll his shirtsleeves to his elbows.
She was, after all, just a girl.
To Keely’s surprise, Max and a few of his teammates had stayed for teardown. She didn’t need more instances of Max being completely attractive and charming, but she’d gotten them anyway.
And now he sat beside her inside a regional burger chain, their friends mingling around them like this was something that happened all the time.
In the next booth over, Alex and Jeremy raced to see who could finish their milkshake first. Maya gagged, clutching her stomach, filming the whole thing on her phone.
Across from Keely, Zoey sat beside Nolan, discussing the parameters of the experiment Zoey needed help with.
It was another reminder of how far apart she and Zoey had grown this semester, that Keely hadn’t even been aware of the experiment, and she added a row to her mental checklist that read, simply, Zoey.
Keely bounced an eyebrow, hoping it would read as the white flag she intended. Zoey rolled her eyes, but bit her lip to hide a smile as she focused on Nolan again. They weren’t sitting any closer than Keely and Max but, on another couple, it looked intimate.
She and Max weren’t good at intimate.
They were better—safer—as enemies, when their destruction was mutually assured. Somewhere along the line, though, they’d become so entwined that when he’d kissed her neck that first time in the locker room, it felt like an inevitability. He did.
She didn’t know what their natural state was anymore. Enemies? She enjoyed fighting with Max almost as much as she enjoyed these softer moments.
Lovers?
She’d need to figure out how to do that with him, if it was something he even wanted. Keely wasn’t sure she could turn off her brain long enough to enjoy herself. If she’d be able to—
She shifted, and lightning shot up her thigh where it brushed Max’s.
That was promising.
“Since you so graciously saved me from the vultures at the auction—” he nudged her again with his knee under the table and, yes, that was also too intimate for a public place “—do you know what you want to do with me yet?”
Ignoring the explicit undertones in both his voice and his words, she dragged her strawberry milkshake closer, took a dainty sip, and turned to face him. “We’ll be doing an all-night essay-a-thon.”
He slow-blinked at her. “I think I missed a few of those words.”
“All-night essay-a-thon,” Keely repeated. “ANEAT for short.”
Max did a terrible job hiding his smile. “And what, exactly, does one do during an. . . ANEAT,” he said slowly, tasting it.
“Work on our essays, obviously.” Her lips curved around her straw as she took another drink, cheeks hollowing as a strawberry lodged at the bottom.
Max’s gaze darkened, his throat bobbing. “I thought Dr. Goff said your essay was in better shape.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought his knee pressed into hers a little harder.
She pressed back. “Better is subjective, and subjective doesn’t win scholarships.” And Keely did still plan to win.
At the reminder, they both went still, the air between them cooling a few degrees.
They had settled into an unspoken agreement not to talk about Pursue Your Passions except when absolutely necessary.
Keely tutored Max on his assignments (which he needed less and less; her study techniques were starting to rub off on him), and he’d read over the last draft of her essay.
Other times, like when they saw each other at the shelter, or studied at the library, they were friends.
Friends who found ample opportunities to brush hands, smile at each other, walk out to their cars together.
Friends who made out on the track in broad daylight.
A friend who Keely thought of more than was probably healthy. Definitely more than was conducive to her attention span.
Close friends, then.
Max nodded. “Fine. Yeah. Count me in.” He grabbed at one of her fries. “When?”
She pushed him away and her fingers skimmed the curve of his thumb. “Next weekend? I can do Friday or Saturday night, whichever works for you.”
“I’ve got a meet Saturday, but I’ll be home in the evening. I can start around nine that night?” His hand snuck back, and this time, when she pushed it away, he kept hold of her, setting it on his knee drawn up next to hers in the booth.
“Your place or mine?” she asked, then blushed. It sounded more sexual than it was, which was not at all, thank you very much.
He snorted. “Yours, obviously.”
“Why ‘obviously?’ ”
Max cocked his chin. She wanted to pull apart the look on his face. Dissect it, put it under a microscope until she understood it inside and out.
“For starters, my roommate is weird.” He shuddered, and Keely didn’t even think he was kidding. “And I thought you’d be more comfortable at your place as opposed to staying over at mine.”
“Bold of you to assume we’re spending the night together.”
He arched an eyebrow. That one, she could read as easily as the periodic table.
Is it, Keely? Is it that bold? “It’s an all-night essay-a-thon.
Spending the night is implied. Besides, if we do this at yours, you don’t need to pack a bag with your extraneous ten-step skincare routine and house slippers or whatever. ”
“I don’t like house slippers,” she said primly, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “They don’t have good air circulation.”
“So it’s a bring-your-own-slippers-all-night-essay-a-thon.”
A few booths over, a commotion broke out. Keely snapped her head over in time to see Alex covering his mouth, his shirt dripping with white-yellow goo.
“I think Alex might be lactose intolerant,” she mumbled, looking over her shoulder at Max, who was—
Right there, in her periphery, in all she could see and hear and smell. Her gaze dropped to his mouth.
“Jeremy’s gonna barf too,” someone shouted.
“He just did,” Maya bemoaned as Jeremy ducked under the table.
Keely and Max straightened, and her side was instantly chilled from his absence.
She was grateful for the easy out, even if it meant getting banned from the only restaurant in town open after midnight.
Otherwise, she’d have to think about how, in a little over a week, Max would be spending the night.
· · · · ·
Keely changed her shirt for the fifth time. She wanted one that said, “I have sleepovers with hot guys all the time” while also saying “I’m focused solely on my essay and not at all on whether said hot guy shows up in gray sweatpants.”
The Pursue Your Passions application deadline was just under a month away, and with every day marked off on her calendar, her anxiety ticked up another notch. Was she doing enough?
She’d started looking into alternatives, because Keely wasn’t Keely if she didn’t have a backup for her backup. Were some of the options a lot more appealing than others? Absolutely. Did one make her stomach flutter? Maybe.
Ideally, she’d get her essay in tip-top shape with Max’s help tonight, and spend the last several weeks of the semester studying for finals, all the while pretending she wasn’t absolutely terrified of what was happening between her and the guy who was—
Knocking on her door right now.
Max leaned on the frame with his forearm. He was freshly showered, hair damp and curled around his ears. He hiked his bag up his shoulder.
Thankfully, his joggers were black.
She ushered him inside, sliding the deadbolt closed behind him. Her heart thudded clumsily as he took in her apartment for the first time. His attention lingered on the women of science hanging above the TV. The study materials spread on what she’d decided was her half of the coffee table.
“You’ve got the essay-a-thon part down,” he said, slinging his backpack onto the counter, “but it looks like you’re missing the all-night portion.”
He pulled out a grocery bag and sorted his wares: energy and canned coffee drinks, protein bars, bright bags of sugary candy, and a box of something called Honey Stingers.
She spied a familiar package and laughed, chucking it at him. “You’re so unserious for these.”
He caught the pre-sliced apples. “What?” He grinned, holding them to his heart. “They’re my favorite snack. Matilda turned me onto them.”
As Keely stored the cold items in the fridge, he propped a hip against the counter beside her. “Zoey here?”
She shook her head. “I think she’s doing that experiment with Nolan tonight.” Not that Zoey had told Keely where she was going when she left.
“How convenient.” Maybe he’d picked up on the strange vibes between their friends, too. “Any other roommates?”
Her cheeks heated, and she debated sticking her head back in the fridge. “Just us.”
They each grabbed a drink and settled onto the sofa. Max kicked off his shoes like he’d been here a hundred times. Like he was already comfortable in Keely’s space.
And she couldn’t tell if she wanted to throw up or throw her books to the floor and have him on the table instead.
He cracked his canned coffee. “So. What’s the plan, boss lady?”
This was. . . weird. He was so casual about this. Like he wasn’t going to still be here when the sun came up. Like Keely wouldn’t know how raspy his voice was in the morning, what quirks might surface when he got tired or loopy.
Those doubts from the track crept back into Keely’s mind. Maybe she was reading into everything and he was just here to study.
As friends.
Which they’d both agreed they were.
Totally casual, platonic friends. Who did not kiss and certainly did not give into the tension stirring in Keely’s gut.
She tried to focus.
“Um, right.” She sat her own drink on the table and picked up her planner. “I made us checklists. But I didn’t know what to put on yours, so I took a guess. I left some space for you to add your own items. If you want.”
“You made me a checklist,” he mused. He scanned the page, his mouth quirking every so often.
She leaned over to see what was making it do that. “Of course I did. We have to stay on track.”
He nodded slowly, an unfamiliar expression lighting up his warm brown eyes. “Can I borrow a pen?”
He didn’t cross anything out like she expected. Instead, in one of the blank spaces, he added one single line.
Kiss Key.
Heat thundered between them, and she snatched her planner back, placing it safely on her side of the table. “Okay, enough joking around.”
His gaze seared into the side of her face. “I wouldn’t make a joke out of something I know you take seriously.”
Oh. Oh. So he was going to kiss her. Maybe they weren’t just friends, then. That was. . .
That was certainly something.
But when she looked over, he was pulling his laptop from his backpack, as nonplussed as ever as he got comfortable on her couch.
Keely tried to focus on her screen for close to a minute before she made sense of the words swimming on the page. Fine. She could pretend to focus for a few minutes until he snapped out of this. Until he quit pretending he didn’t want this as badly as she did.
Her nerves sparked whenever he shifted. Every time he reached for his drink, she wished he was reaching for her instead.
He stayed completely on his side of the sofa, consulting the list every so often. Once, he even scooped up the green pen and ticked something off.
Not the right box, though.
Dammit.
“Max,” she whispered, eyes burning from how hard she was trying to focus on her screen.
“Keely?” he stage-whispered back, a laugh right on the edge of her name. He was just sitting there, typing on his laptop, and she was going to melt into her couch.
She gave up and looked over. His ears were red tipped. “When are you going to. . .”
His head tilted. “Kiss you?”
She nodded, sinking her teeth into her lip so she didn’t say anything else incriminating.
Max watched her for a minute, arm splayed behind his head. It pulled his hoodie up his torso, revealing a strip of tight skin and patch of hair she remembered very well from the locker room. It was casual, but unpracticed, and she had a hunch he didn’t let himself relax like this often.
So what did it say that he’d done it around her twice now?
He ran his knuckles over his lips, and she licked hers.
“Kissing you is. . . a reward,” he murmured. “My reward. So I’ll work hard, and finish strong, the only way I know how. And when we’re done with all your checklists, there won’t be anything stopping us from what’s inevitable. What’s been building for months. I can wait a little longer for that.”
She could have caught fire. Likely would, if she so much as brushed against him. Her nerves sparked, burned, jumped toward his.
Do you know what you want to do with me yet? he’d asked.
She was starting to.
He leaned over and inhaled sharply.
Then he winked, tapped the pen against her screen, and dropped it onto her keyboard. “Better get to work.”