I didn’t answer. Syd piped in with, “Well, I did. I wasn’t going to stay home just because you dragged Jane into your ghetto love fest.” She was teasing, even nudged me, but the words rang true. That area with the graffiti wall was about as ghetto as you could get.
“Hardly a love fest,” was my weak answer.
“Please. I didn’t turn around—who needs to see gorgeous people making out when I’m stuck with a troll loser—but I could feel the car rockin’,” Jane said.
Deflecting again, I said, “That’s the second time you’ve called Stick a troll. I think he’s kind of cute. In a scruffy kind of way.”
She shrugged. “Meanwhile, you were in the back seat with an Adonis.”
“Okay. Laundry for two months,” I said, verbally conceding to what I’d already conceded to in my head the night before.
Jane looked smug and turned her attention to her phone. Syd nudged me again. “Jane gave me most of the details on the way here. Just how far did it go on the trunk of the car?” It wasn’t a plea for juicy details—which we all normally shared after any kind of hookup. There was concern in Syd’s voice.
“Not very,” I said truthfully. But although it was true, we hadn’t gone very far, it wasn’t exactly thewholetruth. Which was…although it was just kissing, I felt a much deeper connection to Lucas in even this short time, than I’d ever felt with any other guy. “Just kissing. A tiny bit of grinding.” Syd nodded, waiting for me to go on. I shrugged. “That’s it. It was all pretty innocent.”
She gave me a cool look. “I don’t know. This guy seems out of your world, Lily. Definitely not what you’re used to in guys.”
“Isn’t that the whole point of college? To find new worlds?”
“You’re not freakin’ Columbus,” Jane muttered from my other side, but continued to keep her eyes glued to her phone, her fingers tapping furiously.
“Yes,” Syd said. “That is what college is about. Butgoodnew worlds. Challenging new worlds. Worlds that help you grow. This…” She waved her hand absently at me. “This is not the kind of new worlds you should be exploring. That world will only hold you back.” She said the last bit softly, and I knew she was speaking from experience.
I laid a hand on her arm, gave her a squeeze, then took it away. Neither Syd nor Jane were big on touching. “I’m not planning on immersing myself in Lucas’s world. Hell, I don’t even know what his world is. We did meet on campus.”
“Because he’s ajanitor,” Syd said, sounding more like Jane.
A snort from Jane confirmed that comparison.
“Actually, I think he’s more than that. I think he does…like…specialty tiling or something.”
Another snort from Jane. “And that’s supposed to make it better.”
Syd was opening her mouth, and I put my hand out to stop her. “Look. Both of you,” I said, and waited until Jane’s fingers stilled and she looked my way. “I appreciate the concern. But…and I say this with love…back the hell off.”
Jane smiled, returned to her phone, and said softly, “Well, well, Lilydoeshave a backbone.”
I should have been pissed at what she said, but I was, in a small way, kind of proud of it. And, in a larger way, I kind of agreed.
Syd looked like she wanted to say something, but just gave me a nod and turned to her laptop.
“Morning, all,” William Montrose said as he entered the small classroom. No explanation or apology for being late. And just barely under the wire of the time when we could have called “no class” and left.
“Nice of you to show up,” Jane muttered under her breath, as she put her phone away and pulled out her laptop.
“Always nice to see you too, Miss Winters,” he replied as he dumped a messenger bag on the desk next to the lectern, then sat on the front of the desk, facing the small class. “Always a pleasure,” he drawled in Jane’s direction, giving her a “yeah, I heard you, bitch,” look, which Jane laughed at.
I don’t know what she was like in other classes, but Jane liked to yank Montrose’s chain, and openly flirted with him. “I’d climb him like a tree in a second,” she’d said after our first day of the Monday-Wednesday-Friday class.
He gave it right back to Jane, but never reciprocated in the flirting. Which just made her try all the harder. He was a good-looking guy, probably in his late twenties. Apparently he’d been some kind of big deal a few years back when he’d published a book that was at the time considered his generation’sOn The Road. I don’t think he’d done much since. And if he was down to guest teaching Intro to Creative Writing at Bribury College, then my guess was his literary star had fallen hard.
“So. Let’s talk about omniscient point of view, shall we?” he said, launching into a discussion I barely heard. I’d have to look at Jane’s or Syd’s notes later, because as much as Montrose was older-man eye candy, my mind could not stay on him today.
No, my mind was firmly back in front of that tagged-up wall, with my hands in Lucas’s hair and his hips grinding into mine.
* * *
I googled him.Of course I googled him. But there wasn’t much. Apparently he’d been a big deal football player in high school (which explained the rockin’ bod and skyscraper height). He’d even gone to USC on a scholarship, but apparently had torn something in his shoulder, or elbow, and couldn’t catch the ball anymore. Which, as a wide receiver, was pretty much his entire job. Obviously he wasn’t still at USC. So he had come back east, back home. And was tiling Bribury’s steam room.
