“Does anyone study where you all live, or is it one big party on your street?” At Finn’s blink, I hastily added, “No judgment. But I’m majoring in engineering, and I’m probably going to have to work part-time to buy groceries no matter where I live, so I’m looking for a place that’s not wide-open twenty-four-seven.”
“We have an ongoing competition at our place. If you move in with us, you’ll have to agree to it.”
My brows went up.
“Anyone who drops below a 3.5 GPA has to do everyone else’s laundry for a semester.” He clapped a plate-size hand on my shoulder. “We party on Saturday nights after games. The rest of the time we go to class and take care of business on the field. After we were gaming the other day, the three of us talked it over. We think you’ll fit right in at our place. What do you think?”
“I think I need to go shopping for a bed.” I grinned.
He grinned back and offered his fist to bump. “Follow me after practice, and I’ll show you around your new place.”
“Thanks, man. It’ll be good to live in a house again.”
With a nod Finn stood and headed over to his locker. I stripped out of my sweaty shorts and T-shirt, grabbed a towel, and headed to the showers. As the week had worn on, I’d taken to standing under the hot water for as long as I could—the only way to deal with not-sleeping on that awful bed. Tamatoa had bailed out on me yesterday afternoon, so last night I’d tried his bed. By midnight, I’d tried stacking the mattresses. When my alarm went off this morning, I was sitting on one of the desk chairs scrolling through available rental listings.
Finn couldn’t have made his offer at a more opportune time. As the hot water rolled down my back, I stifled a chuckle. One more night in the dorm, and I probably would have offered to buy all the booze for their parties if that meant sleeping on a real bed in a space bigger than a closet. Not wanting to make my new roommate wait, I hustled out of the locker room and met him in the parking lot in front of the facility.
When the guys invited me over earlier in the week, I’d thought their place was pretty damn awesome. A wraparound porch with a couple of lawn chairs on one side took up the front. Trailing Finn up the wide steps, I walked through the ornate oak door into a foyer where hoodies and jackets hung neatly on hooks and a row of shoes was lined up on a rug beneath them.
Following Finn’s lead, I kicked off my tennis shoes when I walked in and met him in the spacious living room.
“You already saw this part and the half-bath down this hall.” He nodded in the direction of a short hallway off the living room.
I trailed behind him as Finn led the way down the hall and opened a door across from the half-bath.
“This was a den or something back in the day. We mostly use it for storage.”
A cursory glance into the room revealed boxes, a couple of suitcases, a set of golf clubs, a bunch of dining-room chairs, and whatever else no one apparently wanted in their room.
“In here is the kitchen,” he said as we made our way back down the hall and through a door off the living room. “Through there is a formal dining room.” He pointed to a door located along the same wall as the door we’d entered through. “We mainly use it for flip-cup tournaments during parties.”
When I checked it out, I saw a gorgeous room with fancy wallpaper and wainscoting. A long table stood pride of place in the middle with some kind of fancy freestanding wooden cupboard taking up the space underneath the windows at the far end of the room. Bottles of booze lined the top of it. The space looked more like something out of a PBS documentary on the Civil War than a room in a house where a bunch of college football players lived.
“I take it you all don’t eat in here.”
Finn smirked. “Did the lack of chairs around the table give it away?”
“Something like that.”
He led me to the stairs located between the front foyer and the short hallway. I couldn’t help but admire the craftmanship of the newel post at the bottom and the heavy wood of the banister that looked like someone had actually polished it recently.
At the top of the stairs, we walked down a carpeted hallway flanked by multiple doors. Opening one near the top of the stairs, Finn said, “This is my room.” Nodding to the door across the hall, he said, “That’s Bax’s room.”
We walked another few feet where an open door next to Bax’s room revealed the shared bathroom. In case I missed it, Finn said, “That’s the head.”
On the same side of the hall as Finn’s room, another door was open.
“This is your room.”
I stepped inside a space bigger than any bedroom I’d ever had in all the years the captain had dragged me around the country. I could easily fit a king-size bed and a small desk in it. The closet could hold every stitch of clothing I owned, plus a new wardrobe.
“This’ll do.” I grinned.
We stepped back out into the hall, and I nodded to the closed door at the end.
“Callahan’s room?”
“Yeah. Lucky bastard has the master suite with its own bathroom.”
