Across the table Johnson tapped out a beat on the table and began singing “Another One Bites the Dust.”
I shook my head. “I can’t figure out what the hell either of them are thinking. They’re NFL prospects—why would they want to join the league while dragging a ball and chain?”
A picture of Chessly Clarke flitted through my mind, her eyes sparkling with sass and her sweet, compact body tantalizing me from beneath my hoodie, and I gulped half my beer down in one swig.
“They get to hang out with hot women on the regular—unlike, say, certain linemen I know.” Johnson slid me a sly grin.
Putting some drama behind the lift of his brow, Fitz said, “Hotness isn’t the only thing those women have going for them.” He drank some beer and ran his tongue over the foam on his lip. “They’re smart, funny”—he shot me a glare—“and they ain’t chasin’ anybody’s jersey.”
Now Johnson narrowed his eyes at me too. “Speaking of jersey chasers, what came out of your captains’ meeting with Coach before break?”
“He agreed to meet with Buzz Miller to thank him for his generosity to the football program over the years.” Fitz coughed into his hand. “And to tell him he’s welcome to keep contributing to it. But he won’t be allowed access to any player at any time for any reason. If he interferes with any of us again, the team will turn down his money.” I sat back against the booth. “That mess Tory Miller caused for ’Han and Jamaica at the end of last semester finally tipped it for Coach.”
Johnson shifted his narrow-eyed glare from me to his roommate. “I thought the plan was to shut down that particular gravy train now, not allow that asshole to have any more influence.”
Fitz patted him patronizingly on the shoulder. “Politics, man. You can’t cut the guy off at the knees without handing him an out to save face. He’s given the team too much cash.” He swigged back the rest of his beer and reached for the pitcher to refill his glass. “But once he has no say in anyone’s NIL opportunities, no VIP invitations to team events and whatnot, he’ll make up his mind to move on. When Daddy moves on, it’s a good bet Tory will move on too. That’ll be good for all of us—right, Finn?”
Though I tried not to, I squirmed a bit under Fitz’s stern stare.
“I might have had my own problem with her little group of jersey chasers,” I mumbled into my glass.
Johnson sat up tall, a wide grin splitting his face. “Oh, this oughta be good.”
Jeremiah leaned his forearms on the table. Even when he was teasing, our nose tackle was formidable. “Does it have anything to do with that cute blonde who hangs out with ’Han’s girlfriend? The one you get all tongue-tied around?”
I slid down a bit in the booth. “Fuck off, Fitz.”
“You can’t leave us hanging now, dude.” Johnson laughed.
The arrival of our monster-size basket of wings couldn’t have been timed better. I piled my plate and stuffed my face with barbecue chicken, pointing at my full mouth when Tarvi said “Well?” as he tried to imitate Fitz’s stern stare. Tarvarius was a nursing major, not pre-law like Jeremiah, so he hadn’t perfected that I-can-make-you-talk stare Fitz had down pat. When he raised his brow, I stuffed another wing into my mouth and kept chewing.
“You’ll tell us eventually, Finn,” Jeremiah intoned. “You always do.”
Chapter Thirteen
Chessly
Iarrived back oncampus a few days before the start of spring semester. Good thing I had dorm business, like making new door tags and setting up programming for my floor to keep me busy since my friends had abandoned me. For football players.
Texting Piper to meet up for drinks was a bust. When she came back to town a couple of days into the New Year, she started dating—dating—Wyatt Baxter. Stunning. After she texted him with our antics on New Year’s Eve, they’d apparently started talking all the time, and things between them were escalating into the realm of Callahan and Jamaica.
Jamaica made it to RA meetings. When I’d walked down her hall to see if she wanted to join me at Pickle Barrel for a sandwich for lunch on my second day back, I’d seen her cute new door tags with a cartoon theme, so she was keeping up her RA duties. The mystery was how she did that when she spent all her time with Callahan at the big old Victorian on Jock Street.
Thinking of that house brought back memories of the last time I’d been in it. I wanted to lie to myself and say those memories didn’t haunt me at least once a day, but that hadn’t worked all through break. On more than one occasion, I’d had to drag my thoughts away from that night on Finn’s couch and how much farther we’d have gone if not for the untimely arrival of that pack of freshmen.
How much farther I’dwantedto go.
Crap!What was wrong with me that I was hung up on a guy who couldn’t say no to any female attention, no matter how calculating it was? Either he was super naïve or super egotistical with neither characteristic flattering him.
As I tucked the half a hoagie I’d saved from lunch into my dorm fridge, a third possibility popped into my head. Maybe Finn was a genuinely nice guy—one who didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. That would explain why he struggled to extricate himself from social scrapes with women and never seemed able to make the right call.
After I hung up my jacket and kicked off my boots, I settled against the headboard of my narrow dorm bed and stared out at the snowflakes swirling beyond the window. That third possibility tripped me up, big-time. Because if Finn wasn’t clueless, I couldn’t write him off. If he wasn’t egotistical, I couldn’t put him down. I’d never been one of those girls who wanted to tame the bad boy, bring out his inner Boy Scout or some nonsense. I was a sucker for nice guys.
But if he truly was a nice guy, how did that explain his relationship with Tory Miller? When he dropped me off in front Hanover after the bonfire, I’d had the distinct impression he wanted to kiss me. Then Tory showed up, screeching in her most entitled voice, and he’d defended her. When her posse showed up at his house right as we were getting busy on the couch, he’d jumped right on their cookie offering. With his attention all caught up in those girls and their snacks, he’d made it disappointingly easy to call a ride, put on my coat, and leave.
Thunking my head back against the headboard, I ground my teeth at my own stupidity. As a scientist, observation came naturally to me. As a woman, I couldn’t help but notice Finn’s handsome face and powerful body. Until that night at the start of finals week, my interactions with him had always included other people, specifically other women who found him every bit as attractive as I did. He liked that attention. Of course he did. If he made himself exclusive with one woman, some of that attention would disappear.
Even nice guys liked to be admired. No wonder he couldn’t figure out how to straddle the line between pursuing one woman and maintaining the interest of several more. Yet he’d treated me like I was special, giving me his hoodie when he noticed I was cold, playing the perfect host with hot chocolate and conversation when I returned it. The look on his face when he stood in the open door of his house as I walked away—a look that implied I’d taken something else of his when I left—still had me second-guessing myself and my responses that night.
