Chapter Twenty-One
Bryan
Is it strange that I can forget about the lopsided loss to Navy, but I can’t get the picture of Susie being hauled across the field by a couple of their mascots, with that panicked look on her face, out of my head?
She nudges me as she sits down next to me, wearing her usual unperturbed smile as if nothing ever happened between us. Professor Yardley walked into the room about ten seconds ago with a pile of papers, and I’m waiting for the bad news.
Susie’s scent tickles my nose and tension uncoils inside me with a snap, like she controls the spring, like her presence is responsible for my ability to relax, like she’s the reason and the target for my energy once it’s sprung. I breathe in the fresh air that surrounds her, mixed with her sweetness—and before I need to do more than breathe her in, I turn away and separate myself from the light touch of her elbow against my bicep.
With a monumental effort to ignore her pull, I coil my self-control back up into a tight ball and tuck it all away, leaving the surface comfort intact. Leaving me to anticipate the grade on my paper.
“You’re late again.”
I enjoy teasing her too much.
She elbows me again like it’s her version of batting her eyelashes, but I’m ready for it this time and I suppress a smile and everything else that flickers inside me with the contact. Even brooding about my grade is preferable to losing my cool with Susie.
Yardly starts class by handing our papers back, and I realize my heart is pumping like I care more about my grade than I do. Why should I care? Farmers don’t need to write essays, do they? Football players don’t need to write essays either, but Coach might really kick me off the team if I fail. I lean in Susie’s direction and take in a long whiff of her essence.
“What?” she says.
I shake my head, calmer, even though my heart hammers faster. The purpose of all the pulsing blood is different now, not the kind of rush that makes me want to run. It’s the kind of rush that makes me want to pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and then run.
Distinctly different.
Holding in the smile, I wonder how long I’ll be able to control my attraction, when she’ll figure out how much power she has if she hasn’t already. I’ve been bad about teasing her.
Best to keep my mouth shut and ignore her. But tell my dreams that, because she’s there every night, morphing from that little girl, the innocent angel, into the sexy princess she is today.
I take my paper from the TA and slap it down on my desk without looking at it. I’m watching Susie take her paper. There’s a big red A+ printed at the top like a brand, and some frantic writing scrawled under it. A whole paragraph full of comments, and I watch her scan the words impossibly fast.
When she looks up at me, she tries to squash her grin and turns her paper over as if to hide the fact that she’s a smart girl. She asks, “How did you do?”
I snort. “Not as well as you.”
Pink rises up her cheeks, and she looks away. I turn my paper over, but I’m watching her. Not because I’m avoiding my grade, but because I can’t help myself. Her eyes dart to my paper, and she emits a small gasp, then looks up at me, pleased and proud.
“You got a B-, Bryan.”
She touches my forearm with her hand, burning me with her pleasure and enthusiasm. I glance down at my paper, and the grade registers. It’s an impossible grade.
“You’re a miracle worker.”
I mean it, though I hide my confusing mixed emotions behind a careless tone. I should be proud and happy, but I feel like a fraud, like the grade belongs to her more than me.
Not that I didn’t write the paper, but she worked hard to help me improve it, to make sense of my jumbled words.
“Thank you for getting me the grade I need.”
Any sense of pride is buried beneath the debt I owe her, the leg up, the advantage she gave me.
“Why don’t you seem happy? Or are you hiding it?”
I snort because she’s too quick, already knows me.
“I’m happy I got the grade. I needed it.”
“But?”
“I’m not proud. I don’t have a sense of accomplishment because I didn’t earn it.”
“Of course you?—”
“You earned it. I leaned too heavily on you for this one.”
I don’t tell her that it won’t happen again, but she gets it.
She nods and Yardley gets our attention. “If you have any questions about your grades, set up an appointment.”
She looks around and her eyes drift to me. She doesn’t smile or acknowledge my improvement. Because she knows.
I’m a fucking cheater.
“Your next assignment will be a persuasive essay. Let’s talk about what that means.”
She drones on while I listen, stiff and uncomfortable sitting next to Susie, until the end of class. Yardley gives us five possible topics for our essay, and none of them are football or farming, so I’ll need to make a trip to the library to do some research.
Susie stands and smiles down at me. “I’m going to the library to work on this one. Want to come with me?”
“I’ll go later. On my own.”
Her brow furrows. “What’s the matter, Bryan? Something’s bothering you. Is it… about your question?”
I snort, and my heart beats overreacts to her question. Of course, it’s about my question. And it’s damn telling that that’s how she describes my flat-out statement that I want to sleep with her.
Unfolding myself from the chair because I’m still working out the kinks of sore muscles, I stand, and she follows me to the door. “I don’t think you tutoring me is a good idea. Feels like cheating.”
Fuck. Why am I telling her that, making up excuses? If I can’t be honest with her, I should just walk away. “I have to go?—”
The wind blows as we step outside. She reaches for my arm when I turn to go, and I feel like a fucking idiot, a coward.
She jumps in front of me. “You’re not cheating. Tutoring is not cheating.”
She rushes her words as if she expects me to bolt. Smart girl. “Okay, sure, I helped you revise your paper, but all the thoughts were yours. What I did is help you to learn.”
I lock eyes with her. “Don’t give me that shit. You rewrote my paper, and that’s why I got the grade. If I’d handed it in the way it was when I wrote it, I would have failed.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. Besides, Yardley wanted you to get a tutor. Next time you’ll do your own revision, looking for the same things I did?—”
“No. I won’t.”
“Does this mean you’re quitting? Giving up?”
Her voice is angry, and her free hand is on her hip like she’s talking to a belligerent child.
And that child would be me.
“Fuck.”
I swipe a hand through my hair, pushing it off my forehead. Fuck. She hit a bull’s-eye. “No. I’m not quitting. But I need to do it myself. No redlining my paper. You can tell me what needs improvement, and I’ll do it myself. Your pencil can’t come near my paper.”
She’s smiling, and I want more of it. “You’ll need to stay so far away from my paper that you’ll need to read it from across the room.”
She laughs. My chest constricts and my Adam’s apple scrapes up and down my throat like a jagged rock.
Her laugh stops abruptly because I’m not joining her. I’m not even smirking, and I’m aware that my gaze is too intense, too interested for all the wrong reasons. She looks away.
“Good. Our next paper will be more challenging. We’ll do more prep work so you can do a better first draft.”
I grunt in response.
When we get to the turnoff to the library, I walk faster in that direction, pulling ahead. She follows. I don’t try to stop her.
“Yardley is treating the class like a current events course as much as comp,”
she says as she catches up at the wide granite steps of the old library. I don’t reply. “She says it’s her way of keeping us in the real world, but I think it’s an excuse to influence us, to make a point.”
“If that’s true, she doesn’t respect us much.”
Susie stutter-steps as she looks up at me. “I didn’t think you were listening to me.”
“I always listen to you.”
Her lips slowly stretch wide, and her perfect brilliant teeth shine like a row of iridescent pearls. Why does it seem like everything about her is perfect?