I shot him a grimace from beneath my brows. “I’ve seen you in action. You can BS your way through anything without taking a course on it.”
“It’s required for my major.” He chomped down on his cone and swallowed the bite. “Since it must have been a required class for you too, I figured you could help me with it.”
“Out of the lineup you described, that class is going to be your least challenging. I doubt you’ll need any help with it at all.” I nibbled around the edge of my cone. “Your schedule sounds pretty full, though, especially with a job and football.”
What I didn’t say was that I didn’t hear much time in his day for socializing. That knowledge should have relieved me, but instead a pang of regret stabbed me in the solar plexus.
He popped the bottom of his cone into his mouth, grinned at me as he chewed and swallowed and said, “Don’t worry, T. We’ll find time to study together in the evenings after I finish practice and you get off work.” After delivering his comment as a foregone conclusion, he leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “One of the best parts of going to school here is hanging out with you again.”
?Chapter Fourteen
?Taryn
Danny sat inhis car with the window down, the engine running. I thanked him again for hanging out, tapped on the roof, and turned to walk away. But he called meback.
“Hey, T.”
Stopping mid-step, I turned toward him. “What?”
“A secret. Comehere.”
When I leaned down, he slipped his hand around the nape of my neck beneath my ponytail and drew mecloser.
The kiss should have been awkward, strange. Instead, it was a soft, lingering touch that melted my insides like ice cream on a hot August afternoon. My body shifted, atoms rearranging themselves to align with his. Though it only lasted for a few seconds, the kiss spanned years of longing. His full lips pressed to mine, a dream come true. Danny Chambers was kissingme.
When he let me go, I was too dazed to move. “Wh-what—”
“Have a great year, T.”
His smile lit up the dark December night. Then he put his car in gear and droveaway.
Whether it was his invitation to get ice cream or driving around in his Mustang or maybe the promise of spending time together studying once classes started in the fall, something had triggered the dream again. I hadn’t had it in almost a year—not since I’d started dating Aaron last fall. Yet the night he introduced me to the best ice cream in town, it had filled my head again.
During Christmas of my sophomore year of college, Danny had come home on leave. We’d gone sledding, we’d gone to the theater to watch a couple of movies, and we’d played board games and card games with my family. He’d spent nearly all his time on leave at our house, which was understandable since the captain wasn’t big on celebrating holidays. Near the end of his time off, Danny went to North Carolina to visit his mom for a couple of days then returned for a day before reporting back for duty. On his way to the airport, he’d stopped by the house to say goodbye.
I’d thought he’d kissed me that day, but when he returned to duty and I returned to MSC, neither of us said anything about it whenever we texted or emailed or Facetimed. I didn’t ask why he’d kissed me, and he didn’t act like he’d kissed me at all. In fact, absolutely zero had changed in the way we talked to each other or treated each other. We were friends. Nothing more. Eventually, I came to the conclusion I’d made up the experience—had some kind of waking-fantasy version of that goodbye. It didn’t actually happen.
Yet whenever I dreamed this dream, I could feel Danny’s lips on mine—warm, soft, sure. The dream was inconvenient and a damned nuisance when I had a full load my senior year of college. It would have been so much better if he’d chosen a different school. Then the chance of seeing him regularly—or obsessing when I didn’t see him regularly—or seeing him with other women wouldn’t be messing with my head.
Throwing my covers off, I stomped into my en-suite bathroom and turned the shower on, determined to wash visions of Danny Chambers from my thoughts. As I stood beneath the spray, I forced myself to think about market trends and statistics and algorithms. By the time I’d slathered peanut butter on a toasted bagel and grabbed my backpack from its spot beside the front door, I’d managed to shift my focus to what mattered: my business class and setting myself up for success on my final.
Zoe slid in beside me in our usual spot in the far left corner of the second row in the lecture hall. We weren’t the nerdy kids sitting front and center, but we sat close enough to the dais to fit the profile. The heavenly aroma of Zoe’s Americano wafted past my nostrils, reminding me I had to wait until I’d clocked in at work to enjoy a coffee. Since I worked in a coffee shop, it would be ridiculous for me to stop somewhere on the way to class to pick up a morning brew. But I’d learned the hard way not to drop by the Coffee Kiosk for my “freebie” on the way to class—at least not if I didn’t want to work an extra twenty or thirty minutes to pay for it and earn the added bonus of being late to class.
Laughing at the way I mooned over her coffee, my friend said, “You poor thing. A desperate barista in search of her own coffee.”
Wrinkling my nose at her, I turned away and went to work unloading my iPad from my backpack.
“Don’t pout. Here.” She handed me her coffee. “Have a sip.” When I raised a brow at her generosity, she said, “It mellows you out so you’re bearable to sit with.”
I seriously contemplated shoving my elbow into her ribs, except I couldn’t chance spilling even a drop of the heavenly morning elixir. Instead, I tipped back a healthy swig of hot coffee and closed my eyes as the caffeine made contact with my nervous system. After taking a second—tiny—sip, I handed my friend’s drink back to her.
A mischievous grin tugged at the corner of her lips. “Better now?”
“Thanks. I needed that after the way I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Let me guess. Danny came around again.”
I shrugged.
