15. Chapter 15
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lisa asks as we eat breakfast at our kitchen table.
I scoop up a spoonful of cereal. “No.”
“Then why are you going? Did something happen between you two that you’re not telling me about?”
“Ew. No way.” I shove the spoon into my mouth.
“So, you guys are friends, then?”
“Not exactly,” I mumble.
Lisa throws her hands in the air. “For crying out loud, Brynn. What are you doing with Sam?”
I swallow my food and sigh. “We’re not friends. After all the lies and shit he’s pulled, I don’t know if we ever will be.” Staring at my bowl, I stir my cereal. “But I want to do this study group thing right. I don’t want to disappoint Dr. St. James and have my internship on the line.”
“The same internship Sam’s vying for?” Lisa folds her arms, leaning back in her chair.
“Yes, but I’m her favorite student.” I stab my spoon into my bowl. “If I fuck up this study group thing, though, I might be taken down a peg. I don’t want to give Sam an advantage.”
“But doesn’t helping him succeed with the study group improve his chances too?”
“Of course it does, but it’s way better if I help. I’ll continue to be Professor St. James’ favorite student, I’ll get the internship spot, and then I can rub it in Sam’s stupid, handsome face.”
Lisa wiggles in her chair, biting down on her lip like she’s holding something back.
“What?”
“You still think he’s handsome?”
“Ugh.” I drop my face into my hands. “Why do I talk to you?”
“Because no one else will put up with your shit.”
I glare at her through my fingers. “Ditto.”
“Brat.” Lisa sticks her tongue out. “When are you going over there? Want a ride?”
“No. Thanks, though. I’m supposed to be there at one, and I’m looking forward to the walk. It’ll give me a chance to clear my head about the whole thing.”
The walk does the opposite. Instead of clearing my head, I simply clog it with more outrageous thoughts of Sam. Talk about overthinking.
My breath is so short and fast, I can’t enjoy the fresh air. It almost burns instead of cleansing like it should. I’m chugging my water to quench my dry throat, but I know it’s going to make me have to pee.
How could I think this is a good idea? If being alone with your enemy isn’t bad enough, being alone with your enemy, whom you not only think is handsome, but also slept with, has to be terrible. But it’s not like I’m going to act on anything. There’s nothing wrong with finding someone attractive.
At the stoplight, I close my eyes and try to regulate my breath. I’ve got to get my heart to stop pounding. It’s thumping so powerfully, I can hear it. By the time the chirping of the crosswalk signal sounds, I’m a bit more relaxed. I can at least hear myself think now.
This is going to be fine. We’re going to work on the presentation, that’s it. We don’t even have to talk about anything other than chemistry. I’ll get in, get the work done, and get out. Easy peasy.
The closer I get to his complex, the more my anxiety ebbs. That may be due to the fact that I can’t concentrate on anything except my full bladder. Every step gets harder to take. I want to run the rest of the way, but I can’t chance peeing my pants. I’ll have to distract myself.
What was I thinking a minute ago? Oh, right. Sam and I are classmates. We are adults. We are capable of lasting two hours to finish a presentation without killing each other. We’re two colleagues working together on a project that will solidify which one of us gets a coveted position integral to our respective futures?
Breathe, Brynn. Breathe.
So much for decreasing my anxiety. I suck in copious amounts of air as I lean onto the railing of his apartment building. The stairs in front of me seem like Mount Everest; an arduous trek into unknown territory that I’m grossly unprepared to enter. And at the top, who knows what I’ll find.
Taking the stairs slowly, I creep to Sam’s door and force myself to knock immediately. No sense in delaying the inevitable.
Sam whips open the door with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. “Hey,” he says through the mouthful of food. “Sorry. Come in.” He swallows and steps back to allow me to pass.
As I cross the threshold, I enter a total bachelor pad. There’s nothing on the walls aside from the 80-inch television, and the only pieces of furniture are a couch flanked by two mismatched side tables, and a coffee table in front. I crane my neck toward the small kitchen and find a breakfast table, but with two mismatched chairs.
“Nice place,” I lie, feigning cheerfulness.
Sam laughs. “Don’t mock me.” He shuts the door and rounds the couch, holding out his hand to invite me to sit. “I’d give you the tour, but you’ve seen eighty percent of it, and the last twenty is just as bad.”
“Well, I do have to pee.”
“Oh, um, that door.” He points across the living room. “I cleaned it,” he says as I scurry away.
He cleaned for me? The thought doesn’t linger long before it’s shoved away by the pure joy that comes from emptying one’s bladder. I can’t believe I made it all the way here.
As I sit through the longest pee ever, my gaze wanders around the small bathroom. It’s not much bigger than the one I share with my roommates, but it’s way more organized. On the counter rests one toothbrush, one tube of toothpaste, a can of shaving cream, and a razor. That’s it. Our counter at home has four times as many items, and that’s not including the toothbrushes.
And everything is clean. Like, actually clean. We try to keep ours tidy at home, but with four girls sharing one bathroom, it’s destroyed in a matter of minutes. One of the disadvantages of having only one bathroom with a shower.
When I’m finished, I step back into the living room, and Sam greets me with an eager expression. “Better?”
“Much,” I say, joining him on the couch. “And you did a good job cleaning, by the way.”
“It really wasn’t that hard. Doesn’t get too bad since I live alone.”
“Must be nice not to have roommates, though.”
“I guess.” He shrugs. “Gets kind of lonely sometimes.”
A pang shoots through my heart at how sad he sounds. “Well, you should come clean my bathroom sometime. When you share one with three other girls, things can get messy.”
He chuckles. “But you’ve always got someone to talk to.”
“True. I guess it was a weird adjustment for me. I’m an only child, so I never had to share.”
“Oh, so that’s what’s wrong with you.”
“Excuse me?” I shake my head. I’m not sure what he’s getting at.
“Only child syndrome.” Sam smirks. “See, I know how to share. I grew up with an older brother and a younger sister.”
A sly grin spreads across my face. “Is that why you are the way you are? Middle-child issues?”
He snorts, but doesn’t do anything except keep that stupid adorable smirk going.
“So...” I say, turning my focus toward the computer on the coffee table. “What kind of ideas do you have for the next study session?”
Something resembling disappointment flashes across his face before he flips open his laptop and presses the power button. “I was thinking we could do another game. That seemed to work really well.”
“Yeah, there was a lot of competitiveness going on last night.” Snippets of my classmates hollering at each other and high-fiving their teammates flash in my memory, making me smile. “What kind of game?”
“Similar to Jeopardy,” he says, opening the application. “But this would be a puzzle.” He clicks through a couple of screens and a picture pops up. It’s a jaguar lounging in a tree. “See, we cover this image with a blank page cut into puzzle piece shapes. Each one has a question on it, and if they get it right, the piece slides off.” He taps the keyboard, and a puzzle icon glides across the screen to reveal part of the image underneath. “They keep going until they get a question wrong, and the team that gets the last piece wins.”
“Huh, that’s cool.” I’m genuinely impressed. This is way more intricate than anything I’ve ever done. “How do we keep one team from dominating, though?”
“I figured we could do five puzzles. They don’t take that long to get through, and that way, everyone would get a chance to play.”
“That’s a really good idea.” I’m genuine in my statement. It is a good idea, and the fact that Sam can make such a seamless presentation for it piques my interest. If he can do it, why can’t I?
“I know.”
His arrogance makes me hesitate to ask my next question. “Would you… Would you show me how to put the presentation together?”
Sam’s lips spread into a beaming smile. “You want to learn something? From me?”
“You know what? Forget it.” I huff, grabbing my notebook.
Sam grabs my wrist, the tingle from his touch stopping me in my tracks. “I’ll teach you, if you really want to learn.” His heated stare burns into me.
“I do,” I whisper, swallowing roughly.
We spend the next few hours putting the puzzles together. Selecting the images to use is easy. The process of creating the puzzle isn’t. The questions and answers aren’t the problem; I know all that information backward and forward. The tech side of everything is what gets me.
I can read a textbook, take notes, fill out quizzes, or perform lab experiments without batting an eyelash, but put me in front of a computer and I freeze. It’s like my brain can’t wrap itself around what’s going on. If I can’t see the way it works, I can’t understand it.
Maybe that’s why I like chemistry so much. I can physically see the work happening in front of me instead of a computer doing all of it and showing me the results. It’s why I like the Mud Down. Seeing my obstacles and being able to map out my action plan makes things so much easier.
That doesn’t explain why I don’t know what to do about Sam, though. He’s right in front of me. I should be able to study him and make an informed decision on how to proceed, but I can’t. Ever. It’s like he inhibits my brain from functioning.
“Brynn?”
I whip my head up from the computer. “Hm?”
“You do the next one.”
My lower lip works its way between my teeth. I just watched him create a puzzle. He even talked through all the steps as he did it, but am I ready? “Can you do one more? I get too flustered when it comes to computers.”
A warmth appears in his eyes as he nods. “I’ll walk you through it, but you do all the clicking.”
“Okay, fine.” I frown, but let it fall quickly to show I’m joking.
“First thing’s first, pick which image you want for the puzzle.”
I pull up the internet browser with the online site we’ve been using for images. Thinking for a moment, a wicked idea pops into my mind and I type “imagine a radioactive dragon” into the search bar.
Sam groans. “Seriously? You’re never letting me live that down, are you?”
“Nope,” I say, emphasizing the p sound.
He narrows his eyes, but smirks. “Well, then I get some say in what image you pick. Move over.” Scooting closer, his hip bumps mine, and he playfully knocks my hand out of the way.
I hope he doesn’t hear my breath catch. Just the gentle brush of his knuckles on my own sends a thrill through me. And don’t even get me started on the burst of lavender and sage that blasts me in the face as he moves.
It’s all so heady, but too much, so I inch away.
When he approves an image of a green-glowing dragon with laser eyes, he leans back. “Okay, you take it from here,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder. His hand lingers a moment too long, and when he pulls it away, I miss the warmth.
Get it together, Brynn. Finish the damn slide and you can leave.
As if he senses my tension, Sam moves farther from me as he guides me through the rest of the process. Pointing to which icons to click or which commands on the keyboard to use, he’s surprisingly patient and understanding when I ask questions. And I ask a lot of them.
After he helps me add a few puzzle pieces, he sits back and lets me take the reins. I’m able to do one on my own, but I screw up the next one. I don’t even know how. I swear technology hates me.
I glance at Sam, an incredulous look on my face. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to say some smartass remark about me screwing that up?”
A sympathetic crinkle forms in his brow. “Brynn,” he says, leaning forward. “A lot of sarcastic, albeit witty, things may come out of my mouth, but I’m not going to berate someone who’s trying to learn. Even if that person is the most stubborn woman on the planet.” He nudges my hand out of the way to take over the keyboard, but when our fingers graze, it steals my breath again.
I need to get a grip on myself. Sam isn’t anything more than my enemy.
But even that doesn’t feel right, at the moment.
Sure, he knocked me out of my first place standing on the bull, infiltrated my study group, and is my competition for an internship that’s basically been mine for three years, but does that make him enemy material?
Maybe rival is a better word for what he is to me.
After what seems like a painstakingly long time, my puzzle is finished. Sam clicks through all the slides, showing me what buttons to press to reveal the questions and answers. Everything seems to be in place.
I stare at the screen in awe. “I can’t believe it works.”
“You see? You’re not completely hopeless.”
With a roll of my eyes, I give him a sideways look as I muster up the will to say, “Thank you for showing all that to me.”
“No problem.” He hikes a shoulder to his ear, a blush rising in his cheeks. “Well, we survived this together. Do you maybe want to do this every week?”
My spine stiffens. “You mean, me come here every week?”
Nodding, he rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. It’s nice to work with someone in person rather than communicating through email. And you can get some more practice with the apps.”
With pursed lips, I take in his offer. It’s not the worst idea, but it’s not the best.
“And, I don’t know, maybe you and I could work toward becoming friends?” The hope in his voice shines through as his deep brown eyes beg me to say yes.
I can’t, though. I want to, but I just can’t. Not after our muddy history and all the lies. “The best I can give you is frenemies.”
His mouth ticks up on one side, and he holds out his hand. “I’ll take what I can get.”