Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Baywatch - Grace
Iturn around and look at Maddie, who has changed into a red halter bikini top and denim shorts. She picks up a whistle on a chain and loops it over her head, then smiles at me in triumph.
“There. I’m a Baywatch lifeguard now,” she declares.
“Obviously. The whistle makes it official,” I say dryly.
She laughs at that, and I turn back around and study my own reflection in the mirror.
I’m also wearing a red swimsuit, but mine mimics a rash guard, with long sleeves and a white zipper down the front.
I’ve pulled a short pair of denim shorts over the bottoms, and the look is sexy.
I decide to lower the zipper a bit, just enough to let a bit of my lacy black bra top peek through.
The sleeves of the rash guard say Baywatch on the sides, and the material is super fitted, so it shows off all my curves.
I’ve put waves in my hair for a beachy effect, and it tumbles past my shoulders.
Because we’re going to a frat, there’s no way I’m wearing flip-flops. Even though the event is outdoors so I don’t have to contend with sticky beer-splattered floors, I don’t trust that nobody will step on my feet.
Or worse, I’ll step in vomit. EW.
So I’m going with my sneakers tonight.
Maddie’s phone pings with a notification, and she drops everything to run over to it.
I bite my lip. I know she’s been waiting for Thad to message her back.
He’s at UNLV on a baseball scholarship. He was down at OCU visiting friends last spring, and he and Maddie hit it off.
They’ve been in a long-distance situationship ever since.
I know Maddie and her big heart and her desire to love. She wants a relationship, even if she says she’s happy in a situationship.
I watch as her face falls as soon as she reads her phone, and my stomach sinks. He’s terrible at communication, even a stupid snap. It’s not hard to send a snap. Which makes me wonder if Thad even considers himself in a situationship.
I bite my lip. I’m so glad my heart isn’t tangled up like this. I wouldn’t want the heartache or the emotional investment. Really, fake dating Wyatt is the best of everything. I get to have fun with a hot guy whose company I actually enjoy, with none of the complications.
Buzz!
Despite that wonderful “I don’t care” speech I just gave, my heart betrays me by fluttering excitedly at the sound of a notification. I ignore it and flip over my phone—I have a snap.
From Wyatt.
A tingle sweeps through me as I open it:
I’m leaving for Alpha Xi Pi now. I’ll text you when I’m there. Don’t come over before that. Let me know when you’re walking over, and I’ll meet you out front. No dickheads will bother you tonight.
Forget tingles. I can’t help but shiver as I hear Wyatt’s protective tone in his words.
It’s kinda hot, if I’m honest.
Okay, so I’m not being completely honest. It’s totally hot.
I know tonight will be a completely different experience than when I was there the last time.
Wyatt will look out for me. He told me that after class today, when we grabbed coffees and took our same seats by the fountain.
Our plan is to be together during the entire mixer—and to leave together, too.
To anyone watching, it’ll look like we’re hitting it off. Leaving to possibly hook up.
Tonight will mark the start of our fake relationship. And I get thirty days to be Wyatt Jacobs’s girlfriend.
I tell him I’m ready and will wait for him to arrive. He texts me back:
So you’re not the type to keep a guy waiting, are you?
I grin as my fingers fly across the keyboard on my phone:
Nope. And I’m not the type to wait on a guy, either.
Wyatt replies:
Then I better get going.
“Who has you smiling like that?”
I blink. Maddie is watching me with a curious expression on her face. I don’t like lying to my friends, but this fake-dating scheme has to remain strictly between me and Wyatt. We were both adamant about it. I told Maddie I had coffee with him, so what comes next shouldn’t be a surprise.
“That was Wyatt. He’s on his way over to the house, and he said if we wait for him, he’ll escort us inside so no assholes bother us.”
“That is so nice!”
“What’s nice?” McCall asks, popping her head into our doorway.
“A certain hockey player is going to escort us into the mixer,” Maddie says, her eyes sparkling.
“Wyatt Jacobs,” McCall says. She was there when I snapped him from Wilson Hall on Wednesday. “Is something happening between you and that gorgeous hockey player?”
My heart pings against my ribs. FAKE, FAKE, FAKE, THIS IS FAKE, GRACE.
Despite the factual message my brain is sending, my heart continues to zip around like a Ping-Pong ball.
I ignore it and clear my throat. “Maybe,” I say casually. “He’s not like a typical frat bro. He’s nice. We’ve grabbed coffee twice now and he’s interesting to talk to. And he listens.”
“I saw the way your face lit up when he messaged you back,” McCall says with a knowing smile. “You LIKE him.”
Maddie lets out an excited squeal. “This makes my heart so happy. You were so anti any kind of ’ship last year. It just shows everything can change for the right person!”
A wave of panic ripples through me. A burst of protest forms on the tip of my tongue—I don’t have time for any kind of ’ship, as Maddie says. I still don’t even know Wyatt.
But one of the few things I do know about him?
He doesn’t do any kind of ’ship. Wyatt is laser-focused on his hockey game and getting drafted next summer. He won’t even be here his senior year if everything goes the way he hopes.
What Wyatt does is hookups.
It’s something I will never do. And that’s something my head and my heart both agree on.
“Knock, knock!” a voice says, and a rapid, loud succession of knocks fall on the door frame.
We all turn to see General Kaitlyn standing there, dressed in a red one-piece swimsuit and shorts, whistle around her neck and a rescue buoy in her hand.
“I’m glad to see you all understood the assignment,” she says with approval.
Then her eyes narrow. “Now please make sure you mix during the mixer. If I go over there and see you hanging out only with each other, I’m going to be fucking pissed. So DO NOT be fucking lame.”
I resist the urge to salute her and yell, “Yes, ma’am!”
She turns on her flip-flopped feet and moves on to the next room. I hope a drunken frat boy throws up on her pink-pedicured toes. Is that too much to ask?
“Okay, now that we’ve been given our orders for the invasion of the frat across the street, I’ve got us covered,” I say to Maddie and McCall. “I would trust any guy Wyatt introduces us to. So we’ll mix with his friends. We’ll have fun and the general will be appeased.”
“I wonder how many times you’re going to say Wyatt’s name tonight,” Maddie teases.
A burning sensation pools in my cheeks.
“If we take a drink every time his name comes up, we might be shitfaced by ten fifteen,” McCall adds.
“Shut up,” I say. Then I glance across the hall. “Where’s Sofia?”
“Running a flat iron over her hair,” McCall says. “She’s nearly ready.”
I nod. Sofia tends to be about ten minutes late for everything.
It drives me crazy because I like to be about ten minutes early for everything.
So now we’re in a waiting game between Wyatt arriving at the frat house and Sofia straightening her hair.
It’s like a race. I’d put my money on Wyatt.
Outside of the first day of class, he’s always been early to lecture.
Crap. My friends are right. If we drank based on my mentions of Wyatt, we’d definitely get drunk.
Add in my thoughts about him? We’d be passed out before the mixer even started.
Good thing I don’t drink much, I muse.
“So do you know what articles you’re going to write?” I ask McCall, hoping to change the subject.
“I was going to ask you about this,” McCall says. “Would you be okay if I talked to Wyatt?”
So much for getting Wyatt out of my head. “You want to write about him?”
She lifts a perfectly tweezed eyebrow at me. “How much googling have you done on him?”
Maddie grins. “Ooh, I would love to see the Google search history on your phone!”
Now I feel a quick rush of heat not only flood my cheeks but go straight up to the roots of my hair. “I know he’s a forward.”
Whatever that means. And he’s one of the top scorers for the OCU Golden Sharks. He scored twenty-three goals last year.
I also know there’s a stupid amount of videos of him on TikTok, with girls raving about everything from his hair to his game-day fit. One particular fan called him a “precious BB,” and another said, “I’m totally in my Wyatt era.”
I don’t want to admit how long I stayed in that rabbit hole. Or that I might be entering my own Wyatt era.
GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
“Google will tell you he’s really good,” McCall says.
“There’s a reason why he’s got draft potential.
I would love to do a wide-ranging sit-down interview with him.
Not just about his hockey game, but to try to get at who he is off the ice and what makes him tick.
Would you … would you mind asking him if I could contact him?
Normally I’d just do it myself, but since you’re friends, you could help me out here. If you want to, I mean.”
“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” I say. “Again, I know you two don’t believe this, but I barely know him. What I do know of him? He’s nice and sincere and totally different from any guy I’ve ever met. Feel free to ask him, but I can’t guarantee what he’ll say or how good of an interview he would be.”
I did notice in my googling that his previous interviews were all hockey-based, not very personal, so if McCall could get him to talk, she’d definitely earn a spot on the magazine staff.
“Thank you. I know I have this connection to him through you, and you vouching for me is much easier than a blind contact through the sports-media department.”
“Absolutely,” I tell her.
We continue to chat, and finally, my phone vibrates on the top of my vanity. The game of Ping-Pong between my heart and my rib cage resumes, and I try to be casual as I walk over and pick it up. It’s a message from Wyatt:
On the front porch. Don’t keep me waiting.
Ooh!
NO. NOT OOH. BUSINESS, THIS IS ALL BUSINESS.
I move over to the window and part the curtains. HOLY SHIT.
Wyatt is indeed on the front porch, leaning against one of the tall white columns.
Wearing nothing but swim trunks.
Oh my God, Wyatt looks gorgeous from a distance, but what is that athletic body going to look like up close?
PING. PONG.
I text him back:
Leaving right now. See you in a few.
I slip my phone into my shorts and turn around to my friends. “Wyatt is out front. Let’s go.”
“I’ll grab Sofia,” McCall says, dashing across the hall.
“Are you okay going back into that house?” Maddie asks softly, her brown eyes brimming with concern. “I don’t care what Kaitlyn says. If you aren’t comfortable, we don’t have to go. I’ll stay with you.”
I don’t even need a moment to consider the question. “I’m fine with it,” I assure her. “I promise.”
And it’s all because of Wyatt Jacobs.