“Why are you here?” I asked him again. I was already tired of this.
“Well, you know how Ava is,” he started. No, I really didn’t. “She’s like football mad.”
“She is?” Ash asked quietly.
“Yeah!” Derrick came into the room more, his eagerness to tell us something we didn’t know overriding his good sense.“You know, I heard that even the sports editor on the paper checks the stats with Ava after the game.”
My attention was fully on Derrick, but I knew both my brother and my cousin were exchanging looks. “She seems great,” I said to Derrick. “A true fan.”
“Oh no, she is really shy. Or you know . . . so I thought.” He was looking both excited and resentful at the same time, his feelings for Uptight not exactly hidden.
“You want a pass at the girl from Friday,” Gray said from his corner of the couch. “That’s why you’re here?” His contempt was easy to pick up on, and even though Derrick didn’t know him that well, it was plain that Gray wasn’t impressed.
“Yeah, she’s like my dream girl.”
“Your dream girl is the girl from Friday being fucked senseless and screaming to let the whole house know whose dick she was on the end of?” I asked him as I stood. Why was this even bothering me? I couldn’t explain it, but I wanted to punch him for knowing what Ava sounded like when she came on my dick.
“Yeah,” Derrick nodded eagerly.
“I don’t know who Ava is.”
“You chased her across the campus today,” Derrick told me with a little more firmness in his voice than I liked, the hard glint in his eye pissing me off even more.
“Her?” I asked him. “The blonde?”
“Yes,” he stressed.
“So? You think she’s from Friday?” I looked back at Gray and Ash and smirked. “Why the fuck would I chase someone I already had in my bed?”
“What? But . . . everyone’s saying that she was,” Derrick’s eyes were flicking between the three of us in confusion.
“What amIsaying?” My flat stare wouldn’t encourage any further questions.
“But—”
“If no one saw her, how do you know it was her?” Gray asked quietly. Too quietly for my brother.
Derrick looked completely confused now. “But everyone’s saying that it was her,” he repeated.
“Are you saying that Jett’s lying?” Ash asked with seemingly casual curiosity.
“Yeah, Derrick, you calling me a liar?” I raised an eyebrow as I looked down on him.
“No!”
“Sounds like it to me,” Gray said as he stood. “Weren’t you talking with Jett at the party?” he asked him. “Was your Ava there?”
“No. Just one of the band guys she hangs out with.” Derrick looked genuinely agitated about that, and I made a mental note to look into this further.
“So you didn’t see her with me, you didn’t see her here, and you didn’t see her leave . . .” I trailed off as I took a step closer. “Tell me again how she’s your screamer?”
“You chased her,” Derrick mumbled almost inaudibly.
“So?”
“Man!” He scratched his ear as he looked at me. “I was so eager for it to be her, know what I mean?”
No. I didn’t.
