Chapter 7 Ava
In the morning, I was cranky, and I knew exactly who I was pissed off at.
Jett Santo. Every single time I tried to get rid of him from my brain, he turned up, like some form of narcissistic junkie who sensed I was moving on from Friday, so he popped back into the forefront of my awareness in case I could forget him.
He was like a freaking whack-a-mole just waiting to be swatted.
I would quite happily swat the fucker with a baseball bat if I could.
Sleep had not come to visit me last night.
I had gotten up and done some coursework, hoping it would help me sleep.
Then I had merely lain in bed and watched my alarm clock move ever closer to getting up time.
An hour before I was due to wake up, I was using a washcloth to give myself a sink bath since the generator was still out, which meant no shower, and at the stroke of eight thirty, I was arriving at the housing administration building with a vengeance.
Much to my annoyance, there was already a line forming, and I was eyeing the guy in front of me’s coffee with rabid want.
Would it be assault if I tackled him to the ground for his coffee?
On top of theft? My crazy inner ramblings made me giggle and caused the carrier of the object of my desire to turn and look at me quizzically.
Lame hand wave later, and he had not only turned back, facing front, but also moved a step further away from me. It did not lessen the soft, sultry smell of caffeine, though, and I was almost salivating by the time he was called forward.
My horror as he casually tossed the three-quarter-full cup into the trash was only surmounted when Jett came out of the side office, looking impeccable and well-rested, wearing a white T-shirt and dark blue jeans with ripped out knees.
Hiding behind my hair so he wouldn’t see me, I studied my scuffed white Chucks. Even had I not known he was in the same room as me, I would have felt his presence as he came and stood casually beside me.
“Morning,” he greeted cheerfully.
I hate you.
Looking up and pretending I hadn’t seen him before he was beside me, I forced a carefree smile. When his head tilted slightly to the side and his beautiful blue eyes narrowed infinitesimally, I can only imagine what my face must have looked like.
“What?” I asked him rather forcibly, and my good Southern manners internally balked at me. “Sorry, morning.”
“Are you always this uptight?” Jett asked me with a casual sweep over me, and I remembered that I was practically unwashed, my hair probably looked like I’d been on the back of a hay cart, and I was pretty confident this was yesterday’s T-shirt.
“I’m not uptight, I’m just not a morning person,” I explained patiently.
“You were like this yesterday, and it was the afternoon. You were like this last night, or should I say earlier this morning.” He looked me over again critically. “I think you’re just uptight.”
“Well, thank goodness I don’t really care what you think.” Again, the tight smile, but this time I wasn’t forcing myself to be nice to him.
“I knew I’d regret doing this, but yeah, you can come out of the line. You’re holding everyone up.”
“Huh?”
Jett looked at me with that damn smirk on his face. “Your generator will be fixed this morning.”
“Huh?”
“How quickly you go from hostile to speechless.” His lip curled up in a smile at the corner, and I was torn between wanting to lick it or smack it off his face. “I think I like it.”
“You don’t even know my name.” I looked around as I stepped out of the line. “I was next, so you better not have been fucking with me.”
Again, the cool appraisal, and again I felt like an uncouth bug. “I’m not fucking with you. I don’t know your name, but I know the building.”
“Oh.” I glanced around again, and when Coffee Abuser left the counter at that very moment, I darted into the open space before the guy behind me could take my place. “Hi,” I greeted the lady behind the counter. “I live at the suites off of Blossom Parade, and our generator is down.”
The admin woman clicked on her computer.
All the while, he stood beside me, casually leaning his back on the counter, his elbows propping him up, with his head turned toward me.
I could feel his smugness, and I desperately didn’t want what he had said to me to be true, because I genuinely couldn’t cope with the thought that I would be indebted to him.
“Yes, this is already listed as a repair. We’ll have someone out there this morning, probably after ten,” she said as she looked at me, and I felt the weight of weary resignation hanging around my neck. Like a noose.
“Oh, um, thanks,” I mumbled as I went to turn away. “Do I need to be there?” I added as I half-turned back.
“No, it’s an old fault outside,” she told me with a firm but polite “move along” smile, and with heavy feet, I walked away from the counter.
I didn’t look at him until we were outside the admin building, and he seemed content to wait for it. Biting my tongue to keep any harsh words from escaping, I wrapped my arms across my chest, gripping my elbows as I stared over the quad. “Thanks.”
“Physically hurts you, doesn’t it,” Jett said, humor thick in his voice.
“No.” It really did. “Why?” I dared a glance at him, and when I saw that self-satisfied smirk, I knew I would punch him.
“Figured I owed you after yesterday,” he told me with a casual shrug. “Even though it’s a closed campus, girls shouldn’t be sitting out in their PJs at three in the morning to cool down because their housing facilities are screwed.”
I huffed out a laugh despite myself. “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity,” I uttered the well-known saying, and he gave a low rumble of laughter.
“Exactly.” Jett still sounded amused. “Call us even?”
“I wasn’t aware I owed you anything.” Why did my mouth have to speak without my brain intervening?
“I told you that you owed me a finish.” His slow smile was almost my undoing. No one, I mean no one, should be able to look like that before nine in the morning.
“Right, you did. I ignored you then too.” Too bad my tummy was fluttering like it was full of butterflies.
My body was not on my side when it came to Jett Santo.
Jett laughed out loud, causing a few people to turn and look at us, which made me tilt my head down so my hair covered my face, hiding me from curious eyes.
He noticed. “You ashamed to be seen with me?” he asked me curiously.
“No, I don’t know you to be ashamed of you.” Lie, I know you better than I should.
“You’re a smartass.”
“You’re a dick.”
“You enjoyed looking at my dick.” He leaned against the wall, completely at ease.
“When?” I gasped in horror as I finally made proper eye contact with him. Had he remembered who I was?
“Yesterday, in class?” Jett had lost his smile and was looking me over with more interest. “Or . . . do we already know each other?”
I did not like the way his eyes suddenly narrowed as if he was trying to place me. “Absolutely not,” I told him hurriedly. “We’ve never spoken.”
“You really are very uptight.”
“Yeah, you said.” Looking around at the grounds filling with students, all of whom knew exactly who he was, I knew I needed to get away from here.
“Look, it was kind of you to use your connections, I guess, in helping me. The suite is a shit place to be in the heat, so thanks. But if you wanted anything else . . .”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jett snapped to attention, and I took a hesitant step backward. The irritation was clear on his face, and this time when he looked me over, it was less complimentary.
“Wh . . . what?”
“I was messing with you earlier. I didn’t help you so I could fuck you.”
“Whoa, that is not cool to say out loud, dude!” My look around us now was more frantic, and I hoped to God the guy walking past within three feet of me hadn’t heard.
“Not cool to say out loud, but okay to think?”
“I didn’t know what you meant; if I thought wrong, well, can you blame me?”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Jett demanded.
“Well, you’re, you know . . . you.”
“No. I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
Could you die on the spot from mortification? I didn’t know if there were actual cases of it, but I was possibly close to being the first one recorded on campus.
“I didn’t mean to cause offense.” Tucking my hair behind my ears, I refused to look at him. “I said thanks, we’re even as you said. Can I go now?”
“I wasn’t aware I was keeping you.” Jett’s tone was no longer friendly. His look was hard, and I was more than ready to leave.
“Okay, um, have a nice day.” I turned and quickly left him standing there.
Have a nice day? Seriously, after telling him he was basically a manwhore?
Well done, Ava. I didn’t look back, but I could feel his heavy stare on me, and I had to stop myself from running, anything to put distance between us.
He didn’t remember me. He didn’t remember Friday.
Or I was just one of so many, he couldn’t remember me even if he wanted to.
If that wasn’t a slap in the face, I didn’t know what was.
I was grateful that he got the generator fixed, but I didn’t think we would ever be even.
Not by a long shot.
I made it to my first class by the skin of my teeth, and I heard nothing that the professor said in the fifty-minute lecture.
Not one word. I was the same in the next class, my attention focused inwards rather than outwards.
What I did hear was my conversation with Jett on a constant loop.
I told him I didn’t know him, and then I told him he was a slut. Wonderful.