by Erica Hobbs
“Thanks, man,” he said as if I was doing him a favor. Damn polite idiot.
“I just have one thing,” I said before we joined the others. “I don’t want anyone to know. You know what they’ll say.”
Jake nodded. They would tell me I was a copycat; that I wanted to be just like Jake. They would tell me I was a loser. More than they already did.
“You got it,” Jake said. We walked into the locker room together.
It was a pity Jake was such a nice guy – it would almost make me feel bad to screw him over.
Almost.
Chapter 13
Alyssa
“Are you still sleeping?”
His voice yanked me out of a deep sleep, and I opened my eyes slowly, squinting against the bright light of day. Matt was sitting on the edge of my bed, with a smirk on his face.
“What time is it?” I asked and groped around on my nightstand for my phone.
“It’s eleven in the morning, and you have already missed breakfast. If you carry on like this, you’ll miss lunch, too.”
I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
“Why are you in my room?” I asked.
Matt shrugged. “I was bored. I got here early to hang out, and you were sleeping so I hung out with your parents. It wasn’t nearly as much fun, and they’re out now, so I figured I might as well check if you’re alive.”
I groaned and slid out of bed, padded across to my curtains, looking outside. The weather was great, but it was too hot for a run. I’d missed that one when I’d slept in. ‘Getting my beauty sleep,’ Jake had called it over the phone. The warmth of that stupid compliment caught me off guard. Ok, I was thinking about him first thing in the morning. That was a sign.
A sign I was already getting in too deep.
I turned around and sat back on my bed. God, I’d slept with him. I felt him between my legs, an echo of something delicious. And the worst of it was that a very big part of me didn’t even regret it. I didn’t feel like it was something I wanted to take back.
I didn’t mean to fall into his lap like that and I didn’t want to be the girl that slept with him after only the first date. But it wasn’t as if he’d been all about sex and nothing else. It was the fact that he’d cared about who I was, about my personality and my brain, that had me hot for him. How many guys care about a girl in ways other than their ass and boobs?
“So, where were you last night?” Matt asked, forcing me out of my thoughts.
I shrugged. “Out.”
“Out where?”
I shrugged again. What was I going to say? I didn’t know how to label Jake. That bothered me. The idea was to keep him as a fling, not to wonder if he could be more.
“Come on, you can’t keep secrets from me,” he said.
I glanced up at him and smiled.
“On a date,” I said. Maybe if I told Matt, he would give me some advice. He would talk some sense into me that this was a mistake and I would realize I was wasting my time.
Although, somehow I didn’t believe I was wasting my time at all. That made it so much worse. I wanted to think it was a mistake. I just… couldn’t.
“Ooh, on a date. With who?”
I blushed and shook my head, glancing up at him. Matt’s face was all curious now. His eyes bore into mine.
“Come on, you know you can’t hide it from me. I tell you everything about my life.”
I laughed. “Yeah, maybe that’s not always such a good thing. There is something called too much information, you know.”
Matt pulled a ‘don’t-change-the-topic’ face.
“You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
Matt folded his arms. “So it’s someone I know.”
“Sort of.”
I tried to hide a grin. It wasn’t just a thrill to know there was someone who wanted to call me, to follow up on our first date, but it was also fun to tease Matt with it.
“Try me.”
I nodded and looked toward the window when I spoke.
“Jake Nash.”
I glanced back at him immediately, waiting for a reaction. Matt frowned. “What?”
“The guy from the Football Team. You know?”
“Shut up, I know who Jake Nash is. And there’s no way.”
“Isn’t there?”
Matt nodded. “Positive. You’re great, but guys like him don’t mingle with mere mortals like us.”
I laughed. “I told you we met in the tunnel on the field. You didn’t want to believe me then, either. Remember?”
Matt nodded and propped himself up on his elbow. “Ok, let’s say for just for a second that all of this is true. After all you did, in fact, meet the star Football player of the Denver Broncos. How did he go from the idiot who treated you like dirt to someone you went on a date with?”
I shrugged. Matt had been paying attention to what I was saying at the football game, after all. I’d thought he was too caught up with his friends to notice me. He’d been too caught up to show me to the ladies’ room, which was why I’d ended up being insulted by Jake in the first place. Looking back now, it was hard to bring the guy in the tunnel with his condescending attitude and the man from last night together.
Suddenly the thought of him between my legs against the feel of his body pushed up against mine, popped into my head and I flushed.
“I ran into him at Lemon, and he managed to convince me.”
“It’s all that money, right? Any guy can be an asshole if he’s rich and famous.”
I feigned shock. “I thought you didn’t believe me.”
Matt rolled his eyes dramatically. “I’m humoring you. I’ll go back to not believing you, later.”
I chuckled and shoved Matt lightly, so he fell backward. He propped himself back up.
“So, a date with a superstar. What was it like? Was he an idiot last night, too?”
I shook my head and blushed again. Was I going to get flashbacks of our intimate moments and the way he looked at me, all day?
“Wait a minute! What’s that?” Matt said, and I looked at him. His face was incredulous, and his mouth curled into a mocking grin. “Could Alyssa be falling for someone after all?”
“Stop it,” I said, but I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not falling for him.”
Right. I’m just thinking about him all the time, and I’m blushing every single moment.
“It was just a date. No one even knows about it, and I doubt it will happen again.”
I hoped it would. I wanted to see him again. I was a bit irritated by that fact, but it was true. I shook my head, trying to get rid of the thoughts.
“Why don’t you want anyone to know about it?” Matt asked. “Is it the gossip columns?”
I shook my head. “Not really. I mean, yeah, that too. But I just want to play it safe. You know…”
Matt nodded. He knew all about it. If there was someone who understood exactly the hell I’d been through with James it was Matt. He was like a brother to me, and family always understood on a different level than friends did. They saw you when you didn’t put on a face for the crowd.
The same way he could see me now, again without a mask, showing interest this time rather than despair.
The interest I couldn’t help even when I wanted to. I’d only seen Jake three times, and I was already starting to think of him as more than just a fling. I was betraying myself. I’d told myself I would keep it simple. But I wasn’t doing simple and uncomplicated at all.
I cleared my throat and changed the topic.
“So, enough with me. What about you? Were you out last night?” I asked Matt.
He nodded. “I was. I came here to ask if you wanted to join me but no one was home. And this morning no one knew where you’d gone. You had just left a note you’d been out with some friends. A total lie, of course, as I now find out. Shame on you for lying to your parents.”
I pulled a face. “Like you’ve never lied to your parents? I don’t want them to know, okay? Not ye
t. I don’t want them to get excited about someone who’s probably not going to stick around.”
I didn’t have to add that the fall after James had been horrific because so many people had been involved. Matt had been a part of the picture, too. He knew just as well as my parents how bad it had been to be attached to someone we all thought would be forever.
It was safer for my parents not to know about my date with Jake. I didn’t want to have to explain them, where I met him, who he was, why I’d risked falling for someone again. I didn’t want to have to make excuses for why I’d crept in after three in the morning because we’d been up all night, not talking. It was easier to keep things quiet.
“Tell me about your date,” Matt said, bringing it up again. I groaned and fell back on my pillows. “Come on, Ali. You’ll tell Tanya and Grace all about it, you girls are all the same. Besides, you’ll finally end up telling me all about it anyway.”
I let out a sigh. “Fine. We went out to dinner. To the Grand Avenue.”
“Fancy,” Matt said. “What did you eat?”
Ok, that was safe. I elaborated on the food as it had been fantastic, of course; a five-star meal at a five-star restaurant.
“And what did you do afterward?”
I shook my head. “I came home.”
Matt looked at me long enough to make me think he didn’t believe me.
I didn’t want to go into detail about what happened after, though. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of it, per se. It was more along the lines of… not knowing how I felt about it. Or rather, not knowing how I felt about Jake. I had been so sure he was an asshole. I’d thought it would do him good to be played the way he played women, as I had read in tabloids. I had gone out to humor him more than to have an honest date with someone. Instead, I’d not only fallen for his raw charm and his sweet gallantry, but I’d also slept with him.
I swallowed hard, trying to make sense of the mess of emotions swirling around inside my chest.
Thinking about Jake gave me butterflies in a way that used to happen when I was a teenager. I wasn’t going to fall for him. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Jake Nash was trouble, and this had to stay casual. I had to remind myself of that. Again, and again.
“I’m happy for you,” Matt finally said.
“Really?”
He nodded. “You deserve someone, Ali. After James… I mean no one should be hurt like that. You should never be a side dish. You’re the main course.”
I laughed. “So, flattering.” But I understood what he was trying to say. I knew where he was coming from, too. It was just not always that easy to try again after you’d given your heart and soul to someone only to realize you were second best…and you always would be.
When I looked at him, he was distracted.
“What is it?” I asked.
He shrugged and lay back on the bed.
“You have it so much easier being a girl,” he said. His whole tone had changed from the annoying little brother vibe to something serious. Woman, please. “You just need to wait for prince charming to come and sweep you off your feet. Do you know how hard it is to be prince charming? Do you know how scary it is to think you might not be?”
I crawled over the bed so we could sit closer to each other.
“Matt… is there someone you like?”
Matt turned his head to me and nodded slowly. I grabbed at the topic change.
“Ok, tell me about her,” I said, eager to find out more. “What is she like? Does she study with you?”
He shook his head. “She’s not in college. I see her around a lot, though. She knows the same people I do.”
“Is she older than you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Yeah, a bit. But that doesn’t matter, right? We’re not kids anymore…
I nodded. It could work. It just wasn’t very common.
“Do you talk to her at all or is she a distance crush?”
He turned his head to me. “We’ve spoken now and then, but we don’t really talk a lot. It’s more like in passing when she meets up with her friends. Which happens every now and then. She’s so hot, though. I would really want to get to know her better.”
This made me sit up and notice. I liked the idea of playing matchmaker. I liked being involved with relationships, even if I was terrified of my own. The idea I could maybe help Matt made me want to get involved. If I could help him find someone he could be serious about… sure he was childlike sometimes, but Matt was a good guy, and he deserved a nice girl.
Besides, I knew from experience what college girls could be like.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” I asked. “You can’t just sit here drooling over her.”
Matt nodded. “I know. I’ am going to do something about it. I’m just waiting for the right time. Something like this… I need to do it right, you know?”
I nodded. I was starting to appreciate the right approach these days. Jake had done everything right. My stomach erupted in a million butterflies again. Geez, it was like I’d never had a crush before.
Wait, I don’t have a crush, I told myself. It would be a good thing to start believing myself, every once in a while.
“Tell me what she looks like, what you already know about her. Tell me why you want to be with her.”
I leaned back against my pillow and waited for Matt to start talking. This was way more fun. Someone else’s potential relationship was way less scary than my own. It let my thoughts wander away from Jake for a change. It let me focus on something else.
That was all I needed.
A break from my own thought and my own feelings. I needed a break from the scramble that had somehow happened to my head and my heart.
“Well, she’s tall, and she has brown hair and fair skin. She’s one of those girls you just can’t keep your eyes off when you see her. She’s quiet, though. It’s rare. There aren’t a lot of girls like that around.”
Right. That was because guys screwed us, nice girls, over and then we either turned to bitches or individuals who had no self-esteem left. I didn’t say it, though. Not everything had to be tainted by my past.
“Why do you like her?” I asked. It had better be about more than just looks. He’d mentioned her personality but did men know what that meant?
God, Jake knew. He knew exactly how to not make it about my body. And then how to make it all about my body, and how to bring the two together. Ok, that was really confusing.
My stomach rolled into a knot. I tried to push it away. This wasn’t something I wanted to think about right now. I had to distract myself until I had some time alone when I could think about it.
I tried to draw my attention back to Matt and what he was telling me.
“The way she carries herself, the way she thinks about everything she says before she says it. She’s not just full of air. She’s smart. Smart girls are rare to come by. And hot.”
“Guys who appreciate it are in equally short supply,” I pointed out. Maybe you two are made for each other.”
Matt grinned. It was nice to see him like this – all lit up about a girl somewhere who had managed to grab his attention. Was that what I looked like right now? I hoped so. I had so much darkness left from my past relationship that I hoped only a glow showed when I thought about Jake and when I was with him.
With Matt’s attitude, he could get what he wanted and be happy. I wanted that, too.
Chapter 14
Jake
I couldn’t get her out of my mind. When I woke up, I still had the taste of her on my lips – her lipstick, the sweet aftertaste of wine, something sweet I decided it had to be Alyssa.
She’d been everything I wanted in a woman. She was reserved, but she wasn’t dumb. Not even close. And she was careful with her affections. That was evident.
We’d still slept together, but I wasn’t sure at all what she had seen in me. She was the kind of girl with standards. But without my money, my arrogance and my obvious skill, who was I?
&
nbsp; Whatever it was, Alyssa liked it. At least, I hoped she did. She’d come on the date, and she hadn’t said no to me, even though I’d thought she might. She’d seemed reluctant to come up to the room, and she’d said no to the bed. Although we’d ended up having sex on the couch, half-dressed. However, it had been the most significant sex experience I had ever had. I had been with a lot of girls, but it had never meant anything. Nothing like this.