4. Rose #3
Rose eyed the mug, weighing her options.
This wasn’t a party, and St. James Sweets hadn’t let her down before, but she always watched them like a hawk when she came in.
No doubt the various baristas had called her a head case about it.
But this was truly the best coffee around campus, and she wasn’t good at making anything but boring-ass coffee.
“Tell me about whatever shit you got up to when you first turned eighteen. I’ll bet it was good,” she said, sipping from the mug.
“I was an idiot at eighteen, but I had enough knowledge about those hopeless, yet romantic men who women have spent hundreds of years reading about to be a real pain in my mom’s ass.
” He grinned, his body relaxing into the booth when she took a few sips from the mug and a little sigh slipped out.
It was far too sweet for her. She might need to try it with some sugar-free syrup next time.
Kirin was watching her. His head tilted the other way as his grin softened.
“The real story was two years before, though. I was finally getting my bearings after we moved. With that came some boundary testing over the summer. Paulie ratted me out after I used the same line on about four girls, and she caught me making out with a few of them. My punishment was reading an essay prompt from her Emotional Motives and Manipulations class. I wasn’t ungrounded until I gave her a passable paper. ”
“That’s a senior class.” Her eyebrows raised while sipping her mug again. “I tried to sign up for it, and they forced me into the prerequisites instead.”
Professor Bernadette Herondale built the entire program for historical literature. When she was looking at her transfer options, the historical literature program was one reason she chose Montgomery.
“Yeah, that didn’t matter.” Kirin rubbed a hand over his face, a wry smile tilting his lips even as he looked a little sheepish.
“She figured if I wanted to act like the shit, I better be prepared to back it up. I failed the first essay; she made me read it to her during dinner. My little brother was crying the entire time.”
Rose laughed, and his gaze snapped to hers just before she asked, “That bad, huh?”
“Awful. Truly the worst thing you will never read, but I kept this job all the way through high school and the summer before college. Leon claimed it was the best way to pick up chicks until we were on the team.” He glanced at her mug as she sipped from it.
“I invented the recipe for Whole Latte Heartbreak.”
Her gaze dropped to her mug, considering the fourth of a mug she had left, then lifted to his. “It’s delicious, if a little too sweet for me. Where’d the name come from?”
“One of the cheer captains got dumped the night before prom, and the girl loved chocolate, but Nutella was her weakness.” His eyes crinkled when he grinned.
“It made her night better. That’s all that mattered.
But she and her friends kept ordering it.
Eventually, Paulie added it to the menu.
She thought the name was hilarious, so it stayed, too. ”
“Sounds like Paulie,” she agreed. Her aunt had an odd sense of humor, one her mother only got about fifty percent of the time. Which worked out fine, since the misunderstandings led to more laughter. “We should talk about this project. I didn’t get much reading done, but I have some ideas.”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I think I have a solution for this project that would make both our lives a little easier.”
He didn’t look very happy about it, but then, maybe he just sucked at schoolwork. Though after a second, she realized he never confirmed whether he turned in a passable paper. For all she knew, his grounding could still be in effect.
“I think we should be the social experiment,” he rushed out, as if he was worried she was going to rip his head off, but she just blinked at him.
“Uh.” She furrowed her brow and glanced at the packet. “Isn’t that the point?”
“I mean, we should—” He rubbed his face again, then glanced down to where her hand was pressing against her ribs again. She dropped it at the reminder. “I know there is bad blood between you and the team, but showing you’re one of them can go a long way.”
Kenzie’s comment from the other night floated through her mind while she nodded like she had a clue what he was talking about. “How would you suggest I do that?”
“Date me.” He shrugged as if it were the obvious solution, and her brows shot up about as fast as his hand as he amended his statement. “Fake date me. We can post a photo or two on SnapSocial for the data aspect, track the likes and views, which we can drum up by being seen around campus together.”
“You realize that’s the dumbest plan in the world, right?” she hissed. “Your sister will murder me.”
“My sister is a romantic and fiercely loyal, so if I tell her we are dating, if she sees me dating you instead of screwing you, she will believe it.”
That had her lifting her brows again. “Does your sister see you screwing women in public often?”
“Or something like it, yeah. We run in the same circle. There is overlap.” He waved his hand. “The point is, if she sees us touching and hanging out consistently, sees me avoiding other girls, then she will believe we are dating and she won’t treat you like a punching bag.”
It had an appeal. Her body was definitely reaching its breaking point, and Coach told her she needed to fight back. Maybe this would be a way of doing it. It still seemed like a bad idea, one that could backfire like an atomic bomb.
“Tell me if I have this right,” she started, hoping Kirin would correct where she clearly misunderstood.
“You’re going to pretend to date me for the semester—no sex, just us hanging out, posting a few photos, and doing stupid couple shit around campus for some sort of data tracking on this project? ”
“That’s about the size of it, yeah.” He nodded, his face open and earnest.
She laughed, then continued laughing because, good Lord, this man is unhinged.
When she settled down a bit, he leaned forward.
“It’s not crazy. It’ll produce excellent results.
We can combine multiple strategies to get that extra credit, which will cover our bases if we decide we hate one another after a couple of weeks and it impacts the data. ”
Her mind raced while he shrugged indifferently, as if dumping a Montgomery University star wouldn’t bring harsh consequences. Make no mistake, this had an end date, and with that much attention, they would not ignore her when they broke up. Transferring again wasn’t an option.
“Dumping you is—”
Kirin held a hand up. “If you’re worried about the backlash ending our relationship will bring, I’ve already figured that out.”
“Do tell.” She crossed her arms and leaned back into the booth.
“I’m going to dump you. You’ll get sympathy from the team. I’ll be the bad guy, and since I’m graduating, it’ll be fine.” He smiled. “It’s perfect.”
“I don’t know,” she trailed off.
She knew far too well how much being linked to the right person on campus could change someone’s social standing.
When she was a freshman, she was little more than a promising newbie on the women’s soccer team, but a few games in and being dragged to a handful of parties had her crossing paths with Preston. And that hadn’t ended well.
But she wasn’t a na?ve freshman anymore, and although Kirin was confident, he didn’t exude the overwhelming energy she believed she was attracted to in Preston.
They were near opposites, Kirin the calm to the roiling storm that was Preston.
No part of her felt like she needed to make herself smaller to be around Kirin.
Getting the chance to analyze her reaction to this would make for an interesting social experiment all by itself. But a controlled environment where she had a definite end date was appealing. This gave her an out, granting her power, unlike the complicated mess she’d left behind at Westmont.
She stared at him, taking in his stupidly handsome face and the smile that had butterflies swarming her stomach. This was a bad idea, a terrible idea. Probably the worst one she’d ever heard.
Kenzie’s words kicked themselves through her mind again.
You’ve gotta trust someone sometime.
You’re one of them.
Make them.
Own it.
She heard her voice answering long before she realized she’d decided. “Okay, let’s do it.”