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I smiled. “You say that like they were choosing between us.”

“Fuck you.” He dropped his head against the couch. “You know what I mean. Every time one of us found a hot girl, Kincaid had to get there first.”

“I didn’t have to do anything.”

“Yeah, yeah. They just magically ended up in your bed.”

“Usually.”

Jerry laughed again. I watched him take another drink.

“What about Samantha?”

His smile immediately changed.

“Oh, Samantha.” He shook his head. “She’s just fucking impossible.”

“How so?”

“I’ve been trying to get somewhere with her forever. Dinner, drinks, whatever. She always gives me the same shit. She’s busy. She has class. She has something with Leanne. She wants to be friends.” He rolled his eyes. “I even started cozying up to her dad at work. Figured if Henry liked me, maybe he’d put in a good word.”

The thought of him trying to pursue Samantha irritated me.

“You’re using her father to get to her?”

Jerry laughed. “Relax. Henry already likes me. Hasn’t fucking helped, though.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want you.”

“She doesn’t want anybody.” He lifted his glass toward his mouth and missed slightly before correcting himself. “That’s the weird thing about her. Guys try. She turns them down. Half the fucking campus has probably tried at some point.”

“Why?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Jerry shrugged. “Maybe the rumor’s true.”

“What rumor?”

He looked at me as if I’d asked him something ridiculous.

“You haven’t heard?” Jerry smiled. “People say she’s a virgin.”

A virgin.

For a moment, everything else Jerry had said became irrelevant. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been with one. High school, probably. Certainly not a twenty-two-year-old woman. Not someone who looked like Samantha, who could walk through Preston surrounded by men trying to get her attention and apparently never give any of them what they wanted.

Untouched.

The thought settled somewhere pleasant in my mind. It made her rarer than I’d realized. More valuable. And suddenly Jerry’s months of hovering around her bothered me considerably more.

“How would you know?”

“I don’t. It’s a rumor.” He shrugged. “But I believe it. Nobody knows anybody she’s been with. Trust me, I’ve asked.”

“And you think you’re going to change that?”

Jerry grinned. “I’m persistent. She’ll give in eventually.”

I looked at him over my glass.