12. Lenni
TWELVE
lenni
Tuesday. My first class with Reeve since the incident-that-shall-not-be-named, and I’m praying he won’t try to talk to me.
He sent me an apology text on Saturday that was brief and may or may not have been sincere. I didn’t bother answering. Not because I hate him but because I don’t care anymore. I acted like a complete idiot, and I paid the price. I pretended to be someone I’m not, pretended that trust meant nothing to me when really, it means everything. All I’m taking away is gratitude that I figured it out before I developed any real feelings for him.
My comfort today is my clothes. With dread sitting heavy in the pit of my stomach this morning, pulling on my old baggy jeans and the XL T-shirt worn thin by hundreds of washings felt like crawling into bed at the end of a long day. Maybe I did look good in those tight tops and maybe I was even a decent enough flirt to get invited to parties by Shafer’s star quarterback, but I was painfully uncomfortable. It wasn’t me. I led myself so far from who I want to be.
When I open the door to the lecture hall, Cam is in his usual seat without Reeve by his side. I quickly avert my eyes. I can feel him watching me as I climb the steps toward the back, where I’ve decided I’ll sit for the rest of the semester. The weight of his gaze stirs up a hundred tiny sparks of emotion, but I push them away. Jade and I already talked about this: don’t chastise yourself, don’t play the what-if game, and don’t analyze his actions. And while Jade was talking about Reeve, I was talking about Cam.
Despite my promise not to chastise myself, I spent the weekend awash in humiliation and regret, and it had little to do with Reeve. What I kept replaying was Cam’s face when he walked in and saw me. What must he think of me? Desperate. Easy. Predictable.
For two years, he remembered me as someone who could hold a conversation, who he could open up to and share secrets with. Now I’ve obliterated that. Now I’m the girl who gets naked and offers herself to guys who don’t want her.
I indulge these thoughts until Professor Richards starts the lecture, and then I try to forget the last four days. I take good notes. I share what I wrote with the girl two seats away who missed one of Richards’s wordy explanations. But I keep looking down at where I used to sit. Reeve hasn’t shown up. And Cam looks good enough to eat.
His dark-brown hair is just long enough to hint at the waves I remember from the night we met. I thought he had the best hair, all thick and wavy and hanging over his eyes. His face is perfect in profile: straight nose, curving lips, razor-sharp jawline. My stomach does a little flip. Some people are born with it all.
My eyes trace the line of his long, tanned arm stretched out on the armrest. I stare at his hand and his strong fingers. That’s the hand that held mine, the hand that made me feel, if only for a few seconds, that I was safe and I was strong. With every second that passes, a hollow, yearning feeling unfurls inside me until my whole body strains with the strength of it. I watch as his fingers curl slowly into a fist and then out again, a move I swear he designed just to torture me. Desire hits me like a stab. I picture his fingers curled around my waist, then my thigh. I can’t believe how much I want him.
Finally, I turn my eyes to the front of the classroom and shake off the confusion of lust and fondness I suddenly feel toward Cam. Just because he had the decency to take pity on a crying, pathetic girl doesn’t make him a hero. He’s a cocky, spoiled athlete like all of them, and if I need proof, it’s that he calls Reeve Dalton his best friend.
When class ends, I take my time packing up. I don’t want to risk running into Cam as we walk out. But as the seats around me clear, I look up and he’s coming up the steps toward me. A sick feeling takes root in the pit of my stomach.
“Hey,” he says when he reaches my row. “Nosebleed seats, huh?”
I shrug, useless for speech of any kind.
“So I don’t get a hello or anything?”
“Um, hello?”
“I just thought after what happened...you know?” His mouth lifts into a hint of a smile.
I swallow hard. “You think I should be thanking you, right?” Suddenly I’m angry. The truth is, I probably should be thanking him, but my humiliation is so overwhelming, I don’t even want to look at him. I want him to leave me alone. “Look, Cam, just because?—”
“No,” he cuts in. “I don’t mean you owe me anything. I just thought we’re...friends.”
I stare at him, caught in the earnest expression in his eyes. Friends. My anger melts away.
“Anyway, I wanted to tell you Reeve dropped the class. He’s missed too many.” He shifts his backpack on his wide shoulders. “So if you want your old seat back, you’re in the clear.”
He gives me a final nod and turns to go. I watch him until he disappears through the door, his words echoing in my head in time with my shallow breaths.
It’s a stretch to call it a kindness; he was really just stating facts, wasn’t he? But my heart doesn’t take it that way. Just at the moment I needed Cam to be the biggest asshole possible so I could once and for all turn my back on male arrogance and never look back, he had to go and invite me to sit next to him. And my fragile heart fucking eats it right up.
I walk into the newsroom on Wednesday and breathe in the mingled scents of new electronics and old wood. I thrive on the hurried atmosphere that’s baked into the walls of this place, especially when my mind is spinning.
Darren is on me as soon as he spots me. “Pretty nice write-up on the volleyball game this weekend,” he says, settling on the edge of the desk next to mine. “I want to go over a few things before the next one, but you’re getting the hang of it. Next question, how much do you know about football?”
“Can I dodge that question if I remind you I’m a quick learner?”
“That’s why I had you in mind. You know the game against Reynolds coming up?”
I nod. Everyone knows. Reynolds University is Shafer’s biggest rival, making the annual matchup the most hyped game of the regular season. But covering a football game for the paper is miles out of my wheelhouse.
Darren smiles at what I imagine is a look of sheer trepidation on my face. “Slow your roll, I’m not asking you to cover the game. What I want is more along the lines of a profile; a short one. A little fluffy, but fun, something that even students who aren’t big football fans will read.”
Sounds like a lot of pressure for a fluff piece. “A profile of who?”
“To be determined—Coach Haskins will pick someone—but I want a player who’s a local boy to reflect on what it’s like to grow up watching this big rivalry and now find himself playing in the game. Definitely an upperclassman, maybe even a captain if Coach is in a good mood.”
Great. Just great. I can think of two upperclassmen who happen to be locals, and they’ve both seen me naked in the last week. My fingers tap dance against my thigh. I have a “no saying no” personal policy in the newsroom. I love taking the assignments that no one else wants, being the person who always says yes. But this? Nay. Nope. No fucking way. “I wouldn’t even know what questions to ask,” I tell Darren.
He shakes his finger like he’s scolding me. “You figure out what questions to ask; that’s what journalists do.”
“It’s just a little out of my comfort zone.”
“Good! You’re bored with volleyball, and it shows in your writing.”
I tuck my hair behind my ear and force myself to keep eye contact with Darren. “Sorry. I knew my article could have been punchier, I got a little?—”
“It was fine, but I know you have bigger aspirations around this newsroom. I want to see you write something that sizzles.”
“You just called this interview a fluff piece.”
“Then make it more than fluff,” he dares me.
All the uncertainty brewing inside me hardens into resolve, and I remember why Darren was my favorite person on staff long before he became my editor. I can do this profile, and I can make it a hell of a lot more solid than a fluff piece.
Darren nods like he’s reading my mind. “I want to see you start pitching ideas. I know you think you don’t have the sports experience to come up with stories like you do for Arts and Lifestyle, but do it anyway.” Someone catches his eye across the room, and he stands up. “You’ve got a lot of competition for an editor position.”
“I think the writers would riot if I became sports editor.”
“It’s not about that. What you do in our little section of the paper reverberates all over the room.” He walks away but glances over his shoulder. “You know that by now.”
I spend two hours making edits and chatting with the other writers in a successful effort to forget the profile, but on the walk home, I finally confront it. I have to do it and I have to do it well, no matter who’s on the other end of the interview. Anyway, it might not be Reeve or Cam that Coach Haskins picks. Surely they’re not the only locals on the team.
But I happen to know Reeve ends up in a lot of football interviews. He’s the captain, he’s the star quarterback, and that charming, loudmouth personality of his makes for some great quotes. Cam? Seems to me, Cam speaks mostly with a closed mouth and gorgeous eyes, which doesn’t exactly translate well in print.
Instinctively, my cheeks flush with heat, a confusion of embarrassment, regret, and, well, let me just face it, my overwhelming attraction to him.
I’m stuck on what he did for me. He helped me when he didn’t have to, and instead of doing the normal thing and ignoring me in class so we could both pretend the awful incident never happened, he had to go and treat me like a human being. Everything I’ve learned about him in the last few days is tempting me to believe maybe he’s not just a stereotype.
But then...he is. He’s a rich, popular athlete with an exclusive taste for girls so pretty they make you want to smash your mirrors. Those are facts. And if I was writing a story on Cameron Forrester, that’s what I’d have to go on, not the hot, fluttery feeling I get when I think about him. I can’t let myself forget that.
“You’re looking grim,” Jade says when I walk into the apartment. She’s sitting on the counter, spooning ramen noodles into her mouth, her feet crossed in their white combat boots.
I sling my backpack on a kitchen chair and flop down. “I found out I have to interview a football player and he has to be a local guy. Darren’s hoping for a captain.” I give her a look.
“Shit. Talk about bad timing.” She shoots a healthy squeeze of sriracha into her noodles. “I don’t suppose you get to choose who to interview?”
“Apparently it’s up to the coach.” I stare down at my hands and pick at the last bit of blue nail polish on my thumb.
“Reeve always gets those interviews,” she says gloomily.
“Of course.”
She puts down her bowl and looks thoughtful. “Don’t forget, you’re the one in charge of the interview.” She smiles. “We could come up with questions that put him on the spot. Like, let’s see...‘Where do you see yourself in five years when you’ve been outed as an overhyped creep and no one wants you on their team?’”
“Jade,” I begin.
“The point is, you’re controlling the interview; you’ve got the power.”
“I don’t want the power. I just want to avoid him.”
“You know, Cam’s a captain too.” She raises an eyebrow.
I look at her. “He is? You sure?”
“How many games have I endured with Sam? I’m sure. They have three captains.” She watches me and when I don’t answer, a flicker ignites in her eyes. “Your silence is screaming at me. You like Cam, don’t you?”
“No.”
“You know he and the Russian broke up, right?”
This shouldn’t make me happy, but it does. And Jade can read me like a book, which is why she must have chosen this moment to drop that bit of gossip. Time for a diversion. “There’s something I haven’t told you about him,” I say.
She leans closer, almost drooling.
“Remember I told you about that guy I met at orientation? Forrest?”
“Uh, yeah, you didn’t stop talking about him the entire first semester of freshman year.”
“I just found out that was Cam.”
She pulls back, looking a little confused and a lot disappointed; this isn’t the secret sex-filled romp she was hoping to hear about. I make my explanation brief: the long hair, the different name, our heated exchange at the football house.
“So that’s why you were asking about him at brunch,” she concludes. “You’re into him.”
“No!” I say quickly. Met with her smile, I add, “If I am, it’s probably just because I associate him with that summer.”
“If? Give it up, girl, you’d bang him right here if he knocked on the door.”
I cross my arms. “I’m still trying to figure out whether he’s even worth liking. Or whatever—banging.”
She picks up her bowl and starts eating again, then looks up to find me watching her. “Wait, you actually want my opinion?”
“No, but we both know it’s coming, so just get it over with.”
She smiles down into her ramen. “You want my opinion.”
I grunt.
“Is he worth liking?” Her eyes flare dramatically at the word liking . “I guess that depends how you want to judge him, based on how he treats you or on the company he keeps.”
“You’re saying he’s Reeve’s best friend, and that about sums it up?” I don’t expect the jag of disappointment that hits me.
She frowns. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Jade has an opinion about everyone and everything, and she doesn’t need more than ten seconds of reflection to form said opinion. But even she doesn’t know where to land on Cam.
“What?” she demands when she catches me smiling.
“You think he might be a good guy, and it’s killing you.”
“You wish. When has a guy like that ever turned out not to be an asshole?”
I can’t deny she’s got a point.
“Rule of thumb: if a guy can be an asshole and still manage to get laid, he’ll be an asshole.”
“You really hold the male species in high regard, don’t you?” I tease.
Jade grins. “Fuck ’em all.”
That evening, I hit the university gym for a slow, heavy strength-training session. It’s where I do my best thinking. I try to calculate the odds that Coach Haskins chooses Cam for the interview, knowing the whole time it’ll be Reeve because my life is just like that.
The gym is dead and given the space and time to linger at the squat rack without having to accommodate impatient gym bros, I set a personal record for back squats. Nine months ago, I couldn’t have done one proper bodyweight squat. It feels incredible, and as I slide the heavy weight plates off the barbell, I have to hold back a smile, so I won’t look like a lunatic.
When I leave the gym, my mind is set. I’m doing the interview, no matter who’s on the other end of it. I can handle Reeve and whatever he thinks about me. I don’t even like the guy; I don’t think I ever did.