Chapter 13 Camden
Camden
Oh hell yeah.
When I had a challenge, I was like a dog chasing a ball. I didn’t relax until I had it.
And Professor Hotty had given me a hell of a challenge.
I skipped my afternoon class and went straight back to the dorm to work.
It was easier to get things done there because I had a lot more screen real estate.
My laptop adapter connected to a pair of widescreen monitors that helped display enough IP information and server data to give me a full picture of the task ahead of me.
And it wasn’t an easy one.
I cracked open an energy drink, turned up some techno music in my headphones, and got to work.
My roommate came home with his girlfriend, a sorority girl with fake lips and even faker tits.
She loudly complained that I was always there, and that she and my roommate never had any time alone in the dorm, but I turned the volume up until I couldn’t hear her anymore.
I was locked in.
They left. The fire alarm in the dorm went off two hours later, but I ignored it until it was silent.
Probably another idiot freshman burning food in the community microwave.
I was twenty-one, which sometimes made me feel like a goddamn boomer compared to the eighteen-year-olds living in the dorm.
In addition to buying my roommate beer whenever he asked, I had to show him how to upload completed assignments to the University website.
And how to use a laundry machine. He’d grown up rich, and had obviously never had to take care of himself.
I didn’t resent that my life had been harder. It had turned me into the man I was today. But it pissed me off when he disrupted my flow, especially while I was trying to break into the cloud servers of a major corporation.
Eventually, I hit a roadblock that required some outside help.
I fired off an email—encrypted, of course—to a buddy of mine in Singapore who had access to all sorts of back-door tools and file system loopholes.
While I waited to hear back from him, I could get back to my work on Joshua Fucking Davenport, the Cunt Supreme of the basketball team.
But instead, I went back to the photo I’d seen on my professor’s Tinder account.
I wasn’t trying to snoop. She asked me not to, and I was a man of my word.
But I had to access her Tinder thread with Jace in order to see the unique chat number that was stored in the server, and it was impossible not to pause when a half-naked woman suddenly appeared on my screen while I was scrolling.
She was standing in the mirror, wearing a bra and panties. Only a bra and panties. The bra pushed her breasts up in the most beautiful display of cleavage I had ever seen in my life. Only the lower half of her face was visible.
I felt guilty for staring at it. But she had to have known I might see it since she logged me into her account and showed me which specific thread she wanted deleted. And now that I’d seen it, I could see why she wanted it gone.
“Okay, Cam,” I told myself. “You got an eyeful. That’s enough.”
Someone else’s voice suddenly sounded outside the music that was blaring, and I tore my headphones off and turned around. My roommate stood there looking over my shoulder.
“I said you should lock the door if you’re going to watch porn,” he said. “Damn, who’s she? I didn’t realize you had such strong Tinder game, my dude.”
“Don’t you have lacrosse practice?” I asked.
“It ended early. We won our scrimmage. I had three assists.”
“Wow, good for you,” I said sarcastically. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m busy.”
“Can you take us to the liquor store later?” he asked. “My girl wants some peppermint schnapps to mix with hot chocolate before the big basketball game this weekend.”
“Text me what you want and I’ll get it tomorrow,” I replied.
He left me alone, and I settled into my Joshua Davenport project. But I couldn’t get the image of Professor Carrington out of my head.
I shouldn’t have been doing this. Any of this, whether it was the Davenport stuff or the favor for my professor. If I got caught, I doubted the judge would be lenient with me again.
But I couldn’t let Davenport keep getting away with his bullshit. He was a menace. Without people like me to knock him down a peg or two, he would continue being a menace.
And as for Professor Carrington?
Well, I found myself wanting to do whatever she asked. Anything to see her smile at me again the way she did in her office today.
When my buddy from Singapore emailed me back, I tabbed over to that screen and grinned widely.
“Jackpot.”
Things were about to get a lot more fun around here.