True (True Believers #1)(11)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“So what should we wear on Saturday?” Kylie said, walking beside me in skinny jeans and fuzzy boots that looked like an acrylic sheep had died to produce them. She had an equally fuzzy cap on, yet half of her chest was exposed to show off her cle**age. It seemed like a meteorological oxymoron to me. Then she added, “I want Nathan to see me and jizz in his pants,” and I forgot all about her conflicting wardrobe pieces.

I laughed. “Eew. Why would you want that?”

“I don’t mean literally. I just want him to see me and instantly want to bone me.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem. He pretty much looks at you like that all the time.” Nathan was actually a really nice guy as far as I could tell. He had grown up with Tyler and Grant and shared an apartment with a guy named Bill who drove home to Columbus every weekend to visit his high school girlfriend, giving Nathan and Tyler the run of the place.

Sometimes I wondered if Nathan wanted to be more than just a hook-up for Kylie because he was always kissing the top of her head and trying to hold her hand. She brushed him off with teasing words and laughter most of the time, and he took it good-naturedly, but I felt kind of bad for him. Kylie wasn’t at the point in her life when she wanted to be committed—she was having too much fun snagging male attention everywhere she could, and I didn’t blame her. If I could pull it off without vomiting, I would love to flirt with more than one guy at a time.

“You think so? Well, I was trying to decide which costume I should wear. Last Halloween I was a sexy cop and I was thinking about being a sexy nurse this year, but that seems so expected.”

“It does,” I said quite honestly. The only options that seemed available to girls for Halloween were sexy fill-in-the-blank. You could be anything from a sexy zombie to a sexy schoolteacher, but if you wanted your tits and ass covered in any real capacity, you were out of luck. Of course, sexy anything suited Kylie. But I still felt like being creative was at least a little bit important. “Why don’t you be a sexy Roller Derby girl? You can wear skates, and it will set you apart from all the other girls at the party.” I knew that was important to her, to not just blend in with the sea of gorgeous and tanned blondes on campus.

“Hm. Maybe.”

“Plus, you can elbow Nathan just for fun. I bet he’ll actually think that’s hot. Guys like bitches.” Why was a mystery to me, but again, it was a logic issue. I pulled my coat tighter and sniffled. I felt like I was getting a cold, and I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to go to the party after the football game on Saturday. I certainly wasn’t going to wear a sexy anything if I did.

“I bet Tyler doesn’t like bitches.”

Ugh. I so did not want to talk to Kylie about Tyler. I didn’t even want to think about Tyler.

“You should go as a sexy scientist,” Kylie said. “And you can offer to experiment on him.”

I laughed. “You do know me, don’t you? There is no way those words would ever come out of my mouth.”

“I know,” she said cheerfully. “But I can only live in hope.” She hooked her arm through mine. “Shit, it’s cold.”

“It would probably help if you covered your br**sts.”

“God, so practical all the time. Prude.”

“Slut.” This was an affectionate exchange we had established early on in our freshman year when we had in fact realized we did like each other, for no discernible reason.

Kylie and Jessica had been friends in high school in Troy, and they had requested to room together. There had been a dorm-room shortage and so they had randomly placed me as the third in their room, and we’d been together ever since. I had only had a couple of friends in high school and they had been like me, quiet and studious. But I liked to think that the three of us balanced each other out a little, and I had certainly learned to respect differences.

“So if you could have sex with anyone on campus, who would you pick? Because we’re going to make this happen. You cannot go through life a virgin—it’s just too sad.”

“I don’t know.”

But I was lying.

A face had already popped up in front of me, though I would never have admitted it, even under threat of forcing me to become a literature major if I didn’t respond.

Chapter Four

“I think your problem is memorization,” I told Tyler as we sat in the back of a coffee shop, his cup of black coffee drained, my latte cooling quickly. His anatomy book was spread out in front of us, and I was going over his last exam with him—he’d gotten a 76. “You understand the principles of how the parts function, you just don’t have the terminology down.”

His head was propped on his chin, and he was sprawled across the table. His leg had been inching closer to mine over the past half hour, and I had repeatedly shifted to the left, wishing we weren’t sitting on the same side of the booth. “Has anyone ever told you that you have pretty hair?” he asked, completely ignoring what I’d just said. “Because you do.”

My hand had been on its way to my cup, and with his words, I jerked, shooting the cup across the table and onto the floor, coffee dribbling out. “You’re not even trying to study,” I accused, leaning over to pick up the cup, my palms sweating a little. Where the hell had that ridiculous line come from? I could see his legs under the table and he spread his feet even farther apart, his thigh brushing mine. I swallowed hard.

“Sure I am. I heard every word you said. I need to do more memorization. And it is anatomy.” He was watching me, intently, not smiling. “I’m studying your anatomy, so I’m still on task.”

For some reason, I felt like he was making fun of me. I couldn’t figure out how exactly, but it just felt too rehearsed, trite. “That’s the dumbest line I’ve ever heard,” I told him flatly.

The corner of his mouth tilted up. “You’re a tough one. I like that.”

“I’m not tough. I just don’t want to be here all night and you haven’t learned anything.” I sounded like his mother and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. He made me flustered, and I had no tools to deal with his odd, flirtatious behavior.

“I’ve learned that your hair is beautiful.” He reached over and lazily pulled a strand out, stretching it toward him.

The touch made me shiver. I considered my hair my best asset. It was long and thick and glossy, with a baby-soft fine texture. That he would choose to point it out confused me. Torn between wanting to be flattered and feeling that he was just avoiding studying, I yanked my hair away from him. “You need to stop lifting your lines from  p**n os. Not all girls are going to fall for that crap.”