Chapter 5 Ava
“And then Leitch was like, you’ll thank me for this.” My hands waved as I talked, and I glared at Mia as she stifled her giggles. “And then, I was late for History of Writing class, and I sneak in, sit down second row from the back, and sit on a girl!” I screeched. “Go on, ask me why.”
Mia coughed back her laugh as she waited for more. “Why did you sit on her?”
“Because she was giving head to a stupid man child,” I grouched as I fell onto the couch in despair, my anger at Jett surfacing once more.
Mia laughed out loud before she followed me to the couch, her iced coffee dripping onto the wooden floor. “In the classroom?” she asked me in disbelief as she sat down.
“Yes! It was horrifying, and of course I yelped like a goddamn puppy, and the whole class stops and looks at me, and the professor turns the lights up, and everyone’s staring, and she’s crawling along the back row and . . . ugh.” I stopped as I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “It was humiliating.”
Mia laughed loudly, her head thrown back as she clutched her sides. “Why were you humiliated? You weren’t getting down and dirty in the class.” As she prodded me with her toe, I thought about Jett’s smug smirk again. Asshole. “Who was it?”
Mia knew I held a harboring resentment toward Jett Santo as it was. Before Friday, we had never actually met in person — and now I had a reason for my irrational dislike of Jett — but I was a football fan.
And he was a football star.
And I didn’t support the Cardinal Saints football team. Or their cocky, smirking quarterback.
I got into this college through sheer luck and, of course, academic credit, but this was a private university, and I was on the lower half of the food chain when it came to money.
Actually, I was so low down I was lucky I could see the chain at all.
However, I had been given one of only three English scholarships due to my submission entry, which was a thesis of twenty thousand words detailing why I was worthy of the scholarship. My 3.9 GPA helped, too.
My mom went to college in Alabama, and I was all set for their state college, but my chance to stay “local” arose when my guidance counselor recommended I apply for the scholarship to Cardinal Saints College.
I’d laughed at first and then thought, Why not?
Never in a million years thinking I would actually be successful.
The scholarship was a rarity in itself, but it was a full ticket; it even included a meal plan.
It was a godsend and meant neither mom nor I would need to worry about college debt.
However, despite our gratefulness for the scholarship, my mom’s football blood ran white and blue; therefore, my football blood ran white and blue. Not the silver and black of the Saints.
Dante Spence was the quarterback I followed.
Dante was the college football star whom I dreamed of.
Dante was the athlete whom I had imagined myself with in several positions in the bedroom with.
Not Jett Santo. With his stupid messy black hair and his stupid tattoos and his stupid low husky voice that made me want to listen to him all day.
“Ugh, no one really.” I shrugged it off, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her smile fade.
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?” She placed her cup down on the table without a coaster, and I hurriedly snatched it off the wood.
“Mia!” I protested. “There’s a coaster right there.”
“Gosh, you’re as bad as my mom,” Mia muttered as she pushed herself to her feet. “You’re such a worrywart, Ava.” She held her hand out to me, and I placed the cup back in it, watching her as she drank her coffee, and settled back onto the couch. “Now, tell me who it was.”
“Jett Santo.”
Mia was on her feet again, her coffee forgotten as the cup dangled in her hand. Her mouth was open, and I knew I was about to be asked a hundred questions. “Are you for real?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Oh my gosh, did you see it?” Her eyes were wide with excitement, and I was already shaking my head. “You had to have seen it. They say he’s not shy in that area, is it true?”
“He’s definitely not shy,” I grumbled. “I didn’t see anything,” I added as I headed to the kitchen to distance myself from her questions. I didn’t add that I could still feel him in my nether regions either.
“How?” Mia followed me, sliding onto the barstool at the breakfast counter. “How didn’t you see anything?”
“I guess he must have put it away when I screamed.”
Mia snorted as she started laughing again.
“Oh my!” She gasped between laughs. “You’re such a prude, I wish I’d seen your face!
” As she wiped her eyes, I remained silent.
Mia had no hang-ups about hooking up with guys, and truthfully, I envied her.
I just didn’t feel the need to sleep with the people I went on dates with.
Mia always went on about the chemistry. I think my pH level was neutral, as I had never encountered a chemical reaction yet.
You did today when you spoke to Jett.
Yeah, that was an aftereffect of Friday. Not him. Not after he had . . . parts . . . of him in someone’s mouth in a classroom. Pig.
“He probably needed consoling, poor thing.” As she poured her remaining drink down the sink, I stared in horror at the waste of coffee before her words penetrated.
“Why?”
Looking at me over her shoulder, my best friend shrugged. “I didn’t want any more.”
“No, doofus.” Swiping at her hair playfully, I giggled as she ducked out of the way. “Why would Mr-I’m-The-Best-Quarterback-Ever need consoling?”
“Oh, he’s injured. Didn’t you hear?”
“Injured?” I was already on my phone, looking at the team news. “He didn’t even take a tackle on Saturday.”
“You’re so weird.” Mia rinsed her cup before putting it in the trash. “He got injured in training.”
“When?”
“Dude, I am not his PA.” Mia crossed her arms as she watched me. “You seem very interested in him. You sure you saw nothing?”
Not that I can remember.
“I saw nothing,” I stressed. “I just had to put up with his shit-talking afterward.”
“He spoke to you?” Mia was excited again.
“Mia, I stopped him getting his finish,” I said, using the appropriate air quotes. “I told him he was disgusting.”
Mia was once again speechless. “Are you kidding me?” she squealed. “You told one of the hottest guys on this campus that he was disgusting?”
“Mia, he was getting a blow job in class!”
“Ava, Jett Santo could be in a threesome in the middle of a class, and people wouldn’t say a word.”
“Well, that’s a disturbing thought.” I picked up my book bag and headed to my room. “He’s a male chauvinist pig!” I yelled over my shoulder.
“You’re a prude, Ava Bryant. You need to get rid of that V-card and come join the rest of us in the dirt!” Mia’s words carried down the hall, and even though she was laughing and I knew she was only joking, her words still stung.
“I was in the dirt,” I said to my empty room. “I don’t want to go back down there.”
Mia and I had secured a two-bedroom suite with a shared kitchenette.
A small living room off the kitchenette and a shared shower room made up the rest of our tiny dorm suite.
The college housing actually marketed it as an off-campus apartment, which, even with a very artistic license, I thought, was pushing it.
Firstly, there was no off campus. The entire built-up area in the middle of lush forestry was the campus.
There were stores and restaurants, but the entire economy of the town of Cardinal was the college, administration, and student body.
If you drove about two hours from Knoxville and an hour north of Nashville, you’d find us.
Being a private college, the student population was smaller than most, but the fan base for the varsity teams was huge.
The football stadium sat over sixty thousand spectators, and at every home game, there wasn’t a seat to spare.
The actual town was a few miles west of the college campus, and that’s where some of the students came from. Like the Santo boys. Rumor was they had owned their high school as much as they now owned the student population in college.
In my opinion, they were arrogant boys who thought they were above everyone. I watched them play, and they were talented, but they ruined it because they knew it.
Privileged, entitled assholes.
And I slept with one of them.
Like so many before me, with many more to follow.
I wasn’t delusional. I knew having sex with Jett on Friday would make me no more than another girl in his long list of conquests, but I just struggled to understand how I was on the list. Why didn’t I remember meeting him?
Talking to him? Why was I only getting X-rated flashbacks of him having sex with me?
I’d read a book once where the girl hooks up with the guy in the bathroom in the very first chapter. Some random guy walks into the bathroom, and they have some sort of insane chemistry and end up going at it without a word spoken. I loved reading that sort of attraction in books.
But those books were fiction. Fantasy.
Hooking up with random people without saying anything, did that happen in real life? With no consequences? No guilt? No care for their health?
I needed another shower. I still felt dirty. Used. It wasn’t rational; I knew I had been drunk, I knew he wouldn’t have known how incredibly out of character it was for me, and I knew Jett wasn’t to blame for my recklessness on Friday.
Yet still . . . I hated him.
I hated him for what he unknowingly took, and I hated myself for not being able to remember.
Talking to him today merely emphasized how much of a dick he was. The best news I had heard since Friday was that he was injured. Reading the update on the team’s newsfeed, I grinned when I saw he was out for two games.
What a result! Mom’s hometown college team played here in a few weeks, and the Saints’ backup quarterback was nothing compared to Jett. Looks like the Blues would be winning.