Chapter 17 The Study Date
Seventeen
The Study Date
Dad might be responsible for my insomnia, but I knew who was going to cure it. Dallas.
Mom dropped me off as close to Lund Hall as possible. As I walked, I made good use of my smartphone gloves and called Eric.
It went to voicemail.
At the beep, I said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about your AHL team contract!
At Christmas, you said you were working for a youth development program, nothing about this.
What gives? Call me…” I paused. “This is your sister, by the way, the only one you have, the one you obviously haven’t talked to in weeks. ”
I walked up the front steps into the building, took a left down the hall, and entered the study lounge, a large room with a vaulted ceiling.
There he was. At a corner table.
Dallas was so dang hot my heart danced in my chest.
Okay, Operation: Get Laid, here we go.
I made my way to him and sat in the opposite chair. Who knew last week that we’d be sitting here, he and I, face-to-face, about to study together?
“Hi,” Dallas said in a raspy voice.
My gaze dropped to his lips. Mm. I could almost taste them.
From my backpack I took out a three-ring binder with pocket folders, a notebook, my textbook, a calculator, and a pouch of pens and pencils.
He cleared his throat. “How do you fit all that in there?”
“Easily.” I arranged everything in a spot on the table.
He looked at me with a furrowed brow.
“What?” I asked.
“Is this some sort of study ritual you have?”
“No.” My ears heated, and I pushed everything to the side.
He slid a single sheet of paper across the table to me. “Is this the same physics problem your class has?”
I glanced at it. A magnetic-field question. “Yes.”
He took his sheet back, and I pulled out my own from my binder. But I didn’t pick up my pencil to begin. Not yet.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Actually, I wanted us to go over some ground rules first.”
He did that trick I couldn’t do, spinning his pencil around his thumb with his index finger. “What kind of rules?”
“Rules so we’re both on the same page.”
He lifted his piece of paper in the air and smiled with the corners of his mouth. “I thought we were?”
“No, I’m referring to my text message earlier—the one you didn’t answer.”
He wrinkled his nose. “The ignore-you-in-public one?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry. I got it. Loud and clear.” His gaze remained focused on me. “I have some damage control to take care of on the reputation front, but I don’t see it lasting. I’ll fix it.”
“And, of course, there are other rules.”
“Like?” He lifted his brows.
At that moment, I decided that it was time to begin the Priya-induced-cleavage experiment. I took off my jacket, slung it over the back of the chair, and turned back to him. I didn’t have to wait. He was already staring, his bold look branding me.
Finally, he slid his unabashed gaze up to mine, and his eyes glittered. “Nice shirt.”
I warmed like an infrared space heater. I was sure my neck and face had turned the same orangish-red color as the heating coils. I needed no further experimental evidence. Dallas was a bad boy who thought I had nice tits.
Progress. Definitely progress happening here.
“So what kind of rules are you talking about?” he asked.
I looked down at my physics problem, unable to look him in the eye. “I think we should keep things between us…well…you know…like how you normally do things.”
“Which is?”
“You know.” Okay. Now I had to look at him again. Right into those bottomless brown eyes of his. “Just sex.”
He froze.
“We keep things light, easy, fun.”
He touched the base of his neck, not saying a word.
“Like this.” I laid my palms flat on the table. “This is fine. We can still meet to study or whatever.”
“Let me get this straight.” His gaze was clouded. His face was blank. “Are you asking me to be your fuck buddy?”
My leg bounced. It wouldn’t stop. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“Adriana.” He sounded like a parent scolding a child.
“Call me Ade. Remember? Light, easy, fun.”
He leaned back. “Ade, I’m not sure what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything more than yes.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What makes you think fuck buddies is what I do?”
“Well, there’s your reputation—”
“Which I’m going to fix.”
“And you’re a guy. I didn’t think single guys wanted relationships?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Valid observation.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Okay.” He laid down his pencil. “Let’s just say, as a hypothetical, we did what you want. No strings. No emotional commitment. What happens if one of us gets attached?”
“Then it's over.”
“Just like that?”
I should probably tell him the real reason for all of this—I needed sleep—but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to scare him off.
“This isn’t rocket science, it’s called chemical attraction.” I rested my chin on my hand. “If the forces between us become uneven, there’s nothing we can do to prevent the bond from breaking.”
He grew quiet—really quiet. I couldn’t read him. He seemed to be processing, but even my solid-state laptop was louder than him.
Finally, he spoke. “Do you want to go ice-skating tomorrow?”
I glared at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t change the subject on me.”
“Did I?” He smirked.
“Yes. Now stay on track. You’re supposed to be considering my proposal.”
“How about I think about it, and in the meantime, we go ice-skating?”
“Going ice-skating sounds relationship-y.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
I was fuming now. This should be easy. A girl asks a guy to have sex, and he accepts.
I mean, if it was him putting forward the same thing to me, then it would be a totally different situation.
But we both knew he had sex—probably plenty of sex—with girls.
And I knew he was attracted to me. So why wasn’t he just saying yes?
I scanned the lounge. All males, of course. This was the main engineering classroom building. “I bet if I went up to any guy in here and asked him to have sex with me with no strings attached, he’d jump at it.”
Dallas folded his arms and looked around. “Go ask that guy in the Jedi Knight T-shirt. I know that you like Star Wars. You’d have something in common.”
I glanced over. The student he’d referred to was holding a pen in the shape of a lightsaber. His fingernails were bitten down so far they were raw, and his neck hair needed shaving. He might be a perfectly nice person, but I’d never be able to get over my other hang-ups.
“Seriously?” I looked back at Dallas.
“Yeah.” He shrugged.
My neck steamed with scorching heat. “I’m not going to prove it to you when you know I’m right.”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I’m trying to make my own point. If all you wanted was sex, you could ask any Tom, Dick, or Harry.”
The muscles in my face turned to stone. “That’s not true. Picking the right person is a very important part of the process, even when there are no strings.”
“So you have a method for this—a scientific method. Because if you do, we should also discuss STDs.”
I froze.
“Are you clear?” he asked.
“Clear?”
“Have you been tested for STDs lately?”
I could feel my face go hot. I hadn’t even thought about getting tested. Probably because no doctor had ever suggested it. Not when I’d never had sex before.
“I’m negative, and always use condoms,” he said.
“Me too.” I swallowed hard.
His eyes gleamed. “STD test results weren’t part of your selection process, were they?”
“Yes. No.” I covered my face with my hands and then dragged them down until the tips of my fingers were just below my eyes.
“STDs are an important topic. I’m glad you brought it up.
But also, and to get less procedural, I’m attracted to you.
I think you’re attracted to me. It can also just be that simple. ”
He tilted his head. “You know I’m not going to be able to say no to you.”
A rush of adrenaline shot straight to my heart. Then he’s saying yes. Omigod, I think he’s saying yes.
“But I can’t exactly say, ‘Okay, let’s have sex,’ right now either.”
Suddenly, I was an airplane signaling Mayday. My engines had died, and I was spiraling back to earth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Having sex should be…” A corner of his mouth tucked in, showing off his dimple. “Well, it should be spontaneous. But more importantly, I think my reputation will have a better chance of getting fixed if we don’t hook up right away, don’t you?”
“I was planning on making sure no one finds out what we’re doing.”
“So we’d just be good friends who like to sleep over in each other’s room?”
“No.” I rolled my eyes. “We would be so secretive that no one would ever see us together.”
“We’re together here.”
“This is different. We’re outside of the dorm. You don’t have that same reputation in engineering classes. It’s inside the dorm that’s the problem.”
I reached into my bag for my phone and woke it up. “How about next weekend?”
“That sounds like the complete opposite of spontaneous.”
I resisted entering my password so I could schedule him into my calendar. “Oh.”
“Besides,” he said, “I’m busy next weekend.”
“With what?” I asked.
“I thought you wanted no-strings sex?”
My throat went dry. God, Ade. Get a grip.
“Sorry.” I put my phone back in my bag.
“No need to apologize.” He shrugged. “I’m just taking your stipulations seriously.”
“Fine,” I said. “I get it. Impulsive. Impromptu. But what if this elusive moment never happens?”
“Don’t worry.” He spun his paper in a circle, his gaze slowly moving from my cleavage to my eyes, and he smiled. “It will happen.”