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“Nothing,” I replied with a sigh. “I didn’t even talk to him.”

“Okay, but you like him?”

I nodded.

“Does he go here?”

I nodded again, my eyes wide and pleading. Would he help me like he did with other people?

“What’s his name?” Chris asked, his voice growing a bit louder as a smile tugged on the left corner of his mouth. The left side always went up first. I didn’t know why, but it always did, and I thought it was rather adorable.

“Aaron Dodson.”

He blinked, then laughed. “Aaron Dodson? The goalie on the soccer team? My team?”

I nodded, feeling my cheeks heat—they were probably bright blue. I’d seen Aaron last year saving the smallest kitten ever from the river, and he had been so sweet taking care of it and finding a home for it. I’d been halfway smitten last year, but then I’d seen him a couple of times over the summer—his family lived near mine and Chris had invited him to hang out—and my smitten-ness (was that even a word?) had grown into a full-blown crush.

“Bud, you do realize he’s on my team and is a friend, right? I’m more than happy to help you get with him. I mean, the two of you would be so cute together.”

I beamed. “Thanks, Chris.”

“Of course. Why the hell didn’t you text me or tell me this summer? I could’ve been doing research, scoping him out. Or I could have been talking you up.” He maneuvered back onto his bed and snagged a notebook before jumping up and rooting through his desk. He yanked out a pencil case full of muti-colored highlighters. “These things take planning, you know? I can’t just throw you at him at the bonfire and hope for the best.”

“You can’t?” I’d be okay being thrown at Aaron. Mostly. As long as I didn’t have to talk to him.

“Nope. We need a plan. A good one. He’s popular with his pick of the crowd. Also, pretty sure he’s bi, so lots of options.”

I stared as Chris began to make a list. All the tension in my body fled as I watched him, his hair a mess around his face, his eyebrows scrunched, and his lips pursed. It was good he was on the case to help me. I might like everything organized for school and in my environment, and I’d dated a couple of guys in high school, as well as having a friends-with-benefits situation last year, but I didn’t have the ability to make a comprehensive list like this. Nope, Chris was good at this, and I was glad he was here.

Chapter Two

Christopher

Christ on a cracker. I hated this huge lie that hung over me and had followed me to college. It was like a damn rain cloud that I couldn’t quite escape.

Freshman year of high school had been brutal. I’d been short, and puberty had been smacking me around, not even mentioning that I’d been held back a year and was fucking older than everyone, so naturally I’d lied about having sex. I hadn’t even thought about it, just let it out at a party, and one of the popular girls acknowledged that we’d had sex—she later turned out to be a lesbian who dated my sister and made everything all kinds of awkward. The lie had spread like a wildfire.

Cue sophomore year, I’d been taller, joined the soccer team, and read so many romance books I’d probably broken some kind of record. Armed with my second-hand, fictional knowledge, I’d bragged about my hook-ups and proclaimed myself an expert. It had followed me all through high school.

When I’d started here last year, I’d planned to leave off the whole campus Casanova shtick and start fresh, but as my shitty luck would have it, two different friends—Dan and Penelope—had come to Creelin U (or Creepin U as the townspeople and I preferred to call it), and the lie continued. The lie was a bear trap on my ankle, and I wasn’t quite ready to chew my own leg off to be free of it.

Now, I was in my dorm room plotting how to get one of the most popular guys in the entire school to date my best friend with only fictional sources to guide me. Hopefully the monster god out there loved humans and was so incredibly generous… Yeah, I was fucked. But I couldn’t let Jaxon down. He was literally one of the best things in my life and I cared about him so much. He above all people deserved to be happy.

My head flopped to the notebook and I bashed it a couple of times for good measure. Stupid fucking lie. Look, I’d be more than happy to play intermediary between Jaxon and Aaron to see if Aaron would be interested in dating him. But no, as the “expert” I’d embarrassedly claimed, I had to actually get them together.

I didn’t even care that I was a gold star virgin at twenty-one. It wasn’t embarrassing. You had sex when you were ready, and everyone was different. In high school, I’d been mortified, but everything seemed so much more dire at fifteen. Also, I’d had to prove I’d been so much more mature or some shit.

It was now a massive thorn in my ass.

I didn’t care about people knowing about my virgin state. It was the lie that shamed me. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been lying for years. Nope. I was going to take this to my grave. Or to wherever I ran away to when I failed to help my best friend. Like the circus. Those were still things, right? Hmm, I wasn’t sure. I’d have to Boogle it later.

“Maybe you need coffee,” Jaxon said, and my head popped up.

“Coffee?” I nodded so rapidly it was a miracle my eyeballs didn’t pop out. “Yes. Coffee. I always need coffee.”

Jaxon laughed, and something inside of me squirmed at the deep, rough sound. He grinned, standing. “You always want coffee.”

That was true. Coffee and books were my kryptonite. Offer either and I was down to do pretty much anything. Like, you could literally kidnap me with either.