Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
ISA
By the next morning, I had learned three things.
One—Drew Travers took fake dating more seriously than most people took midterms.
Two—the internet was a parasite.
And three—I was apparently the parasite’s favorite host.
I woke up to eighty-seven notifications, four missed calls from my mother, three texts from girls I barely liked, and one Instagram tag from Drew that made me sit straight up in bed like somebody had fired a starter pistol beside my head.
It was a picture from dinner.
Not of my face. Thank goodness.
Just our hands across the table. His big, taped fingers wrapped around mine, my gold bracelet caught in the greasy diner light, two baskets of fries in the background, and the corner of his chocolate malted shake at the edge of the frame.
The caption read:
Rule one: feed her before she bites.
Under it, campus had lost its collective mind.
Comments. Emojis. Football players laughing. Soccer girls shrieking. Girls I knew from class posting eyes. Some random account had already reposted it with a zoomed-in circle around his thumb on my wrist like they were conducting a federal investigation.
I stared at the photo for way too long.
It was strategic.
A required post.
Rule compliance.
Nothing more.
Except my stomach was doing something weird and soft because he had chosen that picture. Not one where I looked pretty. Not one where he looked like the overgrown, broad-shouldered menace half the campus wanted to climb. Our hands. Dinner. His thumb on my pulse.
Like that was the part worth showing.
I threw my phone face down on the bed.
Absolutely not.
Across the room, Lana rolled over with one eye open, hair smashed against her cheek, face puffy with sleep. “Are you famous yet?”
“I hate everyone.”
“So yes.”
I got out of bed too fast and immediately regretted it when my hamstring gave one sharp, ugly tug.
“Careful,” Lana said, more awake now.
“I am careful.”
“You look like you’re about to fight your own leg.”
“It started it.”
She sat up slowly, phone already in her hand. “Oh my God. He posted you.”
“He posted our hands.”
“That is worse.”
“How is that worse?”
“Because face posts can be casual. Hand posts are intimate.” She turned her phone toward me. “Also, he pinned the comment from Jace that says, ‘Finally, someone mean enough for him.’”
I closed my eyes.
“Delete my life.”
“No. Your life is finally interesting.”
“My life was interesting before.”
“Your life was tragic before. This is different.”
I pointed at her. “You are enjoying this too much.”
“Of course I am. You went from sad- basketball- prince almost-girlfriend to secret- football- villain-girlfriend in twenty-four hours. This is premium campus television.”
“I am not his girlfriend.”
She looked at me.
I looked back.
“Fake girlfriend,” I corrected. “And I’ll cut you if you breathe a word of it to anyone.”
“Right,” she said slowly. “Because fake girlfriends wake up blushing at Instagram posts.”
“I’m not blushing.”
“You’re the color of a Texas sunset.”
“I hate you.”
“Love you, too.”
By the time I made it to class, I had already given myself three separate pep talks and one private threat.
No falling in love with the meathead neanderthal with hands the size of boxing gloves who thinks super market sushi is fine dining.
No getting attached.
No enjoying this more than necessary.
The lecture hall was half full when I walked in, and every head that turned toward me seemed to do it with new information.
Last week, I was still the injured freshman soccer player with the messy almost-romance and the mother everyone whispered about.
Yesterday, I was the girl Tristan Vale didn’t choose.
Today, I was Drew Travers’ girl.
Or at least that was what the room decided before I even sat down.
I slid into my usual seat, opened my laptop, and tried to look like a woman unaffected by public narrative, private confusion, or the memory of Drew’s thumb moving slowly against the inside of my wrist.
A girl two rows ahead twisted around and smiled at me.
Not nicely.
Curiously.
“So,” she said, dragging the word out like a fishing line. “You and Drew?”
I gave her my pageant smile. The one with teeth.
“So?”
Her friend giggled. “How did a gimp legged athlete almost lock down Vale and snag Travers?”
“She must have a magic—”
Before either of them could answer, the door opened behind us and the energy in the room shifted.
I hated that I knew it was him before I looked.
Drew came in wearing gray sweats, a black Stanford football hoodie with the sleeves hacked off because apparently cloth remained his mortal enemy, and a backwards cap that made him look casually hotter. He had two coffees in one hand and a paper bag in the other.
He moved down the aisle like he did not understand the concept of being watched because being watched had been his natural state since birth.
Girls noticed.
Of course they did.
A blonde near the aisle actually sat up straighter. Another girl whispered something to her friend and touched her hair. Someone behind me said, “He’s huge,” under her breath.
Drew ignored all of it.
His eyes found mine, and that ridiculous mouth curved.
My pulse made a deeply embarrassing choice.
He dropped into the seat beside me without asking.
“There’s no room,” I said.
He set one coffee in front of me. “That again?”
“This seat was taken.”
“By me.”
“I was reserving it for peace and my backpack.”
“Peace sounds boring.” He pushed the paper bag toward me. “Blueberry muffin. Don’t argue. You looked murdery in your story.”
“I didn’t post a story.”
“Lana did.”
I slowly turned my head toward him. “You follow my roommate?”
“She followed me first. I’m polite.”
“You are many things. Polite is not one of them.”
His smile widened. “Drink your coffee, Calloway.”
I looked down at the cup. My order was written on the side.
Correctly.
I did not like that.
I especially did not like that I liked it.
“You know my coffee order?”
“Baby, I’m gonna know everything about you.”
“Creepy.”
“Observant.”
“Same thing when men do it.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping just enough that the girls in front of us could still probably strain to hear. “Baby, if I were being creepy, you’d know.”
Warmth crawled up my neck.
I gave him a look. “Do not baby me before ten a.m.”
“Fine.” His knee bumped mine under the table. “Texas.”
“That is not better.”
“It is for me.”
The professor walked in, saving me from whatever my mouth might have done next.
For forty-six minutes, I tried to take notes.
Tried.
Drew did not make that easy.
He sat beside me like a furnace in human form, drinking black coffee like a psycho, stretching one arm over the back of my chair halfway through the lecture because he claimed his shoulder was tight.
His fingers did not touch me, technically.
They just rested near my hair, near my neck, near every nerve ending I had stupidly brought to class with me.
At one point, he leaned over and wrote in the corner of my notebook.
Smile. People are watching.
I wrote back:
Die.
He drew a heart around it.
I pressed my lips together so I would not laugh.
That was the first problem.
The second problem happened after class.
The second the professor dismissed us, the blonde from the aisle appeared beside Drew like she had been summoned by protein powder and desperation.
“Drew,” she said, all sugar and lip gloss. “You were so good last weekend.”
He looked up. “Thanks.”
She touched his arm.
Touched it.
Just put her little French-tipped fingers right on his bicep like Stanford was a petting zoo and Drew was the prize livestock.
My vision sharpened.
“I mean, that catch in the third quarter?” she went on, squeezing him lightly. “Insane. We were all screaming.”
We.
Of course there was a we.
Probably a whole herd of them. Sorority girls with perfect blowouts and tiny tops and football knowledge limited to which players looked best walking out of the tunnel.
Drew’s eyes flicked to me.
I looked down at my bag and pretended I was above murder.
I was not.
Somewhere deep in the ugliest, least evolved part of my soul, I wanted to grab her wrist, peel her hand off him, and leave five perfect crescent moons in her skin as a warning to future climbers.
Which was insane.
This was fake.
Drew was not mine.
Drew was campus property. Prime candy. Public hazard. Six-three of broad-shouldered, dimpled, football-famous trouble wrapped in sweatpants and bad decisions.
I was keeping him at arm’s length.
The blonde laughed at something he hadn’t even said yet and leaned closer.
My pen snapped.
Again.
Drew’s mouth twitched.
He stood slowly, unfolding to his full unfair height, and the blonde’s hand fell away because it had no choice unless she wanted to dangle from his arm.
“Appreciate it,” he said, friendly enough to be polite, distant enough to be clear. Then he reached over without looking and took my bag off the back of my chair. “Come on, babe. You’ve got rehab.”
Babe.
The blonde’s face changed.
Mine probably did too.
Drew held out his free hand.
I stared at it.
He lifted one brow.
Right. Performance.
I put my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine, warm and steady, and the weird green thing clawing at my ribs settled so fast I almost hated him for it.
We walked out together.
The second we hit the hallway, I hissed, “You enjoyed that.”
“Which part?”
“You know which part.”
“The part where you looked ready to commit sorority homicide?”
“I did not.”
“You snapped another pen.”
“It was cheaply made.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t care who touches your arm, Drew.”
He stopped in the hallway and turned to me, still holding my bag, still holding my hand, still looking much too pleased with himself.
“Good.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Good?”
“Yeah. Because if you cared, that would mean you were jealous.”
“I’m not.”
“Exactly.” He started walking again. “So we agree.”
I hated him.
I hated his shoulders.
I hated his confidence.
I hated that he smelled like soap and coffee and something clean underneath, and that my hand looked stupidly small inside his.
“You’re enjoying this too much,” I muttered.