Chapter 34
Benson
The session is winding down. We’ve done forty minutes of real Stats and Lucy is, with her pencil cap between her teeth, marking my last problem correct.
My pencil has, somewhere in the last two minutes, drifted off my own page and onto the corner of her notebook page, where I am drawing a small heart.
She catches me but doesn’t say anything.
She marks the problem correct and slides the page back over to me. My pencil pulls back to the edge of the table.
“So, dinner tonight?”
Her face falls. “I told Gianna I would eat dinner with her. And — oh my god — I told Rowan last night I would come to dinner tonight.” Her eyes widen in horror.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Rowan will get it.”
She starts turning red. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say so that she stops worrying. “What’re you doing after this?”
She sighs. “Moving my things back into the apartment.”
“Want help with your bags?” I offer.
She looks at me.
I smirk. “Only if you want me to.”
She takes a moment to think. “Yeah. That sounds nice.”
“Okay.”
I close my notebook. I am, somewhere under the okay, pretending that I’m not beaming on the inside.
We pack up.
She zips her tote and slings it over her left shoulder. I shoulder my backpack. We are out of 3B at three minutes past five, and I take her hand on the way down the hallway. Before we make it to the elevator, I pull her in between the shelves and press her against the library books.
She giggles against my mouth. “Bens, what are you doing?”
I answer her with a kiss. I press myself against her and groan. This girl drives me wild. I grab her face and let my tongue slip in her mouth. Someone walks by and clears their throat. Lucy and I look at each other and laugh as I pull her through the library.
On the way out, a girl looks at our hands, then at me. A guy at one of the tables looks up from his laptop and registers Lucy and then me and then the hands. Karen looks over and stares for a moment too long. Lucy squirms a little with her pink cheeks, but she doesn’t pull her hand away.
We walk in the direction of her apartment, and then we stop at her car. She unlocks it, and I get her bags out of the trunk. She unlocks the front door of the building with the key on the ring. She walks up the stairs in front of me.
I watch her ass on the way up. She’s in a pair of jeans I haven’t seen on her before.
She unlocks the apartment door and pushes it open. The apartment is empty. The lights are off. The koala mug is in the dish rack. I kick the door shut behind me with my foot and carry the bags to her bedroom.
She follows me in and looks around her room. The closet door is open, and some of her shirts fell off the hangers. There’s a pile of laundry on the desk chair. Papers cover her desk. It’s somehow still not that messy in here.
“Happy to be back?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah.” She smiles.
“Want help unpacking?”
“Oh.”
I cross the room and stop in front of her. “Or I can just watch.”
“You don’t have to be anywhere?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No, I leave tomorrow morning. I’m gone until Sunday morning.”
“How often do you travel?” she asks.
I look at her. Her eyes are wide. I think it’s finally registered that she’s dating a varsity athlete on a Division I roster, and I have a busy schedule.
“A lot.” I add, “Which is why it’s good you have my sister.”
She looks around. “Yeah.”
“Want to come over on Sunday?”
“Sunday?”
“Yeah. I’ll be wrecked, so I’ll be at the house all day. Come over and do homework or something.”
She smiles. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Okay.”
She unpacks, and I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her.
She pulls clothes out of the duffel, folds them, and puts them in the dresser.
She pulls the laptop case out and sets it on the desk.
She pulls out the small bag of toiletries and walks them to the bathroom across the hall.
She comes back. She pulls out the long-sleeve she has not folded yet and folds it.
She starts a load of laundry mid-unpack.
She walks the small basket down the hall to the laundry closet. She comes back and keeps unpacking.
I watch her.
The Hawthorne House boys’ voices are in my head as I watch her, and the boys are right.
I cannot ask her to be my girlfriend yet.
Not when she has just gotten her life back.
She needs the night. She needs Saturday with Gianna to reconcile and not have to explain that I dove in headfirst and asked her to be my girlfriend.
Maybe I should even ask for Gianna’s blessing, since she’s the one who didn’t want this to happen in the first place. Yeah, I’ll do that.
She puts her school stuff away in her desk, and then she pulls a small paper bag out of the drawer. “Bens.”
“Yeah,” I answer.
“I still have the candy bars you gave me.”
“What? You didn’t eat them?”
She shakes the bag and says, “There’s only one left. Wanna split it?”
“Which one is it?”
She looks in and grabs it. “Milky Way. I’ve never had one before.”
I scoff. “Open it and take a bite before you offer me half.”
She smirks and opens the wrapper. She takes a bite of the end. She chews. She nods.
“Yeah?”
She nods and holds it out to me. “You can have it.”
“No, that’s for you.”
She looks at me carefully. “You don’t want to eat chocolate because you have a game this weekend?” She steps towards me. I look down at the chocolate bar and then at her.
“What’re you doing?”
She smiles. “Open your mouth.”
She’s holding the Milky Way out toward my mouth. My mind runs blank at her demand. I look down at the Milky Way and open my mouth. I take a bite, and she smiles. Then she sits down next to me on the bed.
She takes another bite and asks, “Is this weird for you?”
“What?”
She shrugs. “Sleeping with your sister’s roommate.”
I laugh once. “No.”
She takes another bite. I steal another.
“Me and Gianna like similar things,” I say.
She laughs at that.
“I’m serious. My only rule is that she can’t date Stan.”
“Your only rule is Stanley?” she questions.
I think about it and shake my head. “No. My rule is she doesn’t touch anyone on the team. She’s known that since she came here.” I grin.
She looks at me like that’s interesting. I get uncomfortable under her glare.
“She’s not, right?” I ask, starting to worry why she’s looking at me like that.
She shrugs. “She is not.” She smiles like she’s messing with me.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. You, Reeves, are protective of each other.”
“Yeah. Well. I know my guys. I can’t have her messing things up.”
She is grinning at me with her cheek full of the Milky Way, and she looks at me sideways with the small grin she does when she is about to give me a thing. “Sounds familiar.”
I put my hands up. “Okay. Okay. If she dates anyone on the team, I will not say a word.”
She nods. “Okay. Now, you’re being fair.”
“Do not tell her that I said that, though. I don’t need her to get any ideas.”
“Oh, I am going to tell her.”
“Lucy,” I warn.
She nods. “I’m definitely going to tell her.”
I reach over, grab her ribs, and start tickling her.
She yelps and falls back onto the bed. Her hair splays on the comforter behind her.
She’s holding the wrapper of the Milky Way in her right hand and laughing at the ceiling.
My head spins as I watch her. I don’t know how the hell I can keep these feelings in my chest any longer.
If I can’t voice them, I have to get them out somehow.
I lean over her jerky body and plant a kiss on her face.
I meant to kiss her on the temple, but my lips land on her mouth instead because she turned her head to me a half-second before my mouth lands.
Her hand comes up to the back of my neck.
The Milky Way wrapper crinkles in her right hand.
She kisses me back. I shift my weight over her.
My hand finds her waist over the t-shirt.
My mouth slides down to the side of her neck.
“Benson,” she giggles. “Not here.”
“Why not?”
She lets out a Camdenth.
“I love your tiny bed.” I kiss her. “We have the entire place to ourselves.” I kiss her again. “I’m leaving tomorrow.” I kiss her.
Then my phone rings in my back pocket. We both freeze.
Lucy looks up at me. “You can get that.”
I reach into my back pocket and pull the phone out. The screen says Blue. I sit up. Blue doesn’t call. Blue calling means something’s wrong.
Lucy sees the screen over my shoulder. She sits up too. Her face has dropped the small smile it had thirty seconds ago and gone to the small careful version.
I swipe to answer.
“Bluey.”
“Hey, Reeve.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I need you to come to the house right now.”
I sit up the rest of the way. “What’s going on?”
He whispers, “Melly’s here.”
My brain takes a half-second to catch up. “Melly?” I question, and remember Stan brought her up last night. “Is there.”
“Yeah. I thought you’d be home by now, but I need help. It’s May Day. May Day.”
Shit. I stay quiet because I know nothing, and I mean nothing about this girl. I try to think about the girl that Blue has mentioned in the past. Is there a way it’s been Melly this whole time?
“How did she end up there?”
Silence.
“Blue?”
“Yeah,” he says, distracted.
I look at Lucy. She continues to unpack, leaving me to the phone call.
“Alright. I’ll be there in seven minutes.”
“Be faster.” The call ends.
I turn to Lucy. “I have to go.”
She nods. “Okay.”
“Blue is — Blue is having a thing. I’m captain, and they rely on me way too much. The more you’re around, the more you’ll see it.”
She pokes my side. “See, told you.”
I smirk, feeling like she loves me for it. “Okay. I will see you on Sunday?” I hold my Camdenth as I look at her. Please say yes. Please say you’ll come. I want to ask you to be my girlfriend and make love to you all day.
“We’ll see,” she teases.
Shit. I’m done for.