by Claire Adams
Okay, I wrote back. Let’s meet up. I’ll hear you out. I thought to myself that I was probably the world’s most naïve idiot for going along with it, but I was tired of wandering around aimlessly, my mind a spinning confusion. I needed to know if Devon really meant to be a better person, and if I should invest anything of myself into him. I needed to know if I should cut my losses.
Can you come to Greenway Park? I’ll meet you there. The park was within walking distance from campus; it was dark out, but it wasn’t so far that I’d need to take my car to feel comfortable. I sighed and messaged Devon back that I would meet him there in fifteen minutes. I tried not to feel like a fool, preparing myself to be fooled not a first or second time, but a third. If Kelly had been there, if she had known what I was about to do, then she would give up on me completely. I’d be practically dead to her. But she didn’t know, and I had no one else to ask. I owed it to Devon to give him at least a little bit of a chance, didn’t I?
I made my way off-campus, walking quickly in spite of the fatigue that had already set into my legs. “He’s just going to tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear,” I told myself as I walked. “Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. Listen to what he has to say, and figure it out for yourself.” I knew I looked like a crazy person yet again—talking to myself as I walked, muttering under my breath. I felt badly about how I had spoken to Devon earlier in the day, but I still couldn’t quite shake the rumors I had heard about him, even though he had been honest and candid with me. I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that a guy who could take such a huge gamble on his future could even be remotely worth my time…and yet, until that had come out into the open, I’d thought things with Devon were great.
I found my way to the park, which was thankfully well-lit in the darkness; even with the yellow and blue-white security lights shining down on everything, it still felt a little creepy, deserted as it was, and I looked around for any sign of Devon. If he tries to pull something to scare me, that’s it, I thought firmly. I was not going to play games; if this was some kind of petty prank, then I would not only not help him, I’d go out of my way to get friendly with Kelly once more and watch his whole academic career go up in flames.
Just as I was beginning to fidget, Devon appeared, his keys clinking in his hand. He closed the distance from the parking lot to where I stood in a few fast steps, wrapping his arms around me tightly before I could even say anything. “Thank you so much for meeting with me,” he murmured, brushing his lips against my temple. I squirmed free of his embrace, perversely angry with him in spite of how relieved I felt.
“I agreed to hear you out—that doesn’t mean I’m going to just believe you, you know,” I said firmly, looking up into his charming face. Devon put his hands up, holding my gaze with a slight smile twitching at his lips.
“All I want is for you to be fair and hear me out. But I’m relieved that you’re willing to listen to me, Jenny.” I scowled.
“You need to stop calling me that when I’m mad at you. It’s not helping your cause at all.” Devon hesitated a moment, and I saw something flicker in his eyes before they cleared. He nodded.
“I’m sorry. I won’t call you that until we get on good terms again, if that ever happens.” I crossed my arms over my chest, satisfied but still irritated.
“So go ahead, tell me what you’re going to tell me.” Devon chuckled softly.
“Let’s sit down first, it’s not going to be like a two-minute conversation.” I took a deep breath and nodded. Devon led me towards the picnic tables, and I sat down, looking around, unable to quite escape the creepiness of the entire place.
“This is kind of a weird spot to come clean, or whatever you’re planning on doing.” Devon shrugged.
“I’m suspended, so most places on campus…” he shrugged again. “And I wanted our conversation to be completely private. I didn’t want to have it in the frat house, because we might be overheard, and because I doubt you want to be up in my room right now.” I had to smile at the truth of that.
“So tell me what you were going to tell me. This place is creepy as hell at night.” Devon glanced around and nodded his agreement. He took a deep breath.
“I know you’re mad at me, and I’m mad at me too,” Devon said slowly. “What I did was stupid as shit. I really don’t deserve to be here.”
“I like where this is going,” I said, smiling slightly in spite of myself. Devon mirrored my grin wryly.
“It’s a stupid excuse, but the reason that I did it—the reason I cheated—was because I didn’t think I was smart enough to pass the test on my own.” I raised an eyebrow at that.
“You’re not a stupid guy, Dev.” Devon shrugged.
“I’d always done great in sports, but never really thought much of myself as a student.” Devon made a face. “When I was getting ready to start thinking of college, there were a bunch of schools that wanted me—but I wanted to come here in particular.” I nodded; the school was a good one, even with its reputation as something of a party campus.
“If you had gotten caught back then you’d never have gotten in.” Devon nodded.
“But if I bombed the test, then I wouldn’t get the scholarship they were offering. No school at all would want me. So it was a risk, but it seemed like less of a risk to cheat than to bomb.” I worried at my bottom lip. It made sense, but it still didn’t redeem him.
“But now you’re thinking differently.” I had told myself I wouldn’t just take his words at face value, but I wanted to believe him so badly. Devon nodded.
“I’ve been in college for a while, now—so I know I’m not as stupid as I thought I was. I could have passed the test. I could pass it now…if I took the time and effort to prepare.” I took a deep breath. “I would hate to lose everything I’ve gained, but being in school and playing at this level… it’s given me a kind of confidence that I never had before. And I know I can do this. I just want a little bit of help. That’s all I’m asking for—not for you to do anything for me, just to help me get that little edge.”
“What kind of edge?” Devon smiled slightly.
“I just need to know what parts to study harder for, how to study better. You’re the smartest girl I know on campus, and I know you can help me.” I took another deep breath. Devon reached across the table and took my hands in his. “Please, Jenn. I’ve never given you any reason not to have faith in me.” I had to admit he was right; he had been honest with me, every step of the way, ever since the first night I had met him. He could have lied about having cheated—but he hadn’t. And he seemed genuinely sincere about changing his life.
“Okay,” I said. I exhaled slowly. “I will help you out. You’re right; you’re not stupid. You’re a smart guy. I think…as long as you just want help studying, I’d be happy to work with you.” Devon gave my hands a squeeze. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine.
“When do we start?” I shook my head, laughing.
“No time like the present, right?” Devon grinned.
“I knew you were the perfect person to help me.”
Chapter Five
Devon drove me back to the frat house and showed me the books he had gotten to study for the ACT, still in the bag in his car. “How much money did you spend on books?” I asked, grinning as I flipped through the pages.
“I couldn’t decide which one would be the best, so I decided to buy all three, and let you judge.”
“You must have been pretty sure I was going to help you,” I said, feeling a trickle of suspicion.
“Well, if you had really been dead-set against helping me, I’d have gotten one of the guys in Beta Chi to help me out,” Devon said with a little smile. I rolled my eyes.
“No, you’d have just kept coming and talking to me until I gave in, like you did with dating me.” Devon laughed.
“I’m not that terrible,” he protested. “If you really, really hated my guts and thought that I was a horrible person who deserved t
o swing in the wind, I would have left you alone as soon as you heard me out.”
“I’m so sure of that,” I said sarcastically, although I was still smiling.
I was surprised to find that as soon as we were in the frat house, Devon brushed aside his brothers’ invitation to watch the game and led me straight up to his room, books in hand. I had a sneaking suspicion that he would try and put the moves on me as soon as we were alone, but instead Devon told me to look through the books while he grabbed us some coffee from downstairs. One of the books was a newer edition of the very one I’d used to prep for my own ACT; one of the others was just as good, with a slightly different emphasis. All of them had practice tests for taking before, during, and after the exam prep.
When Devon came back with coffee enough for both of us, I handed him my preferred book, turned to the page with the practice test. “Okay, take this one first, and we’ll see where you are and what you need to work on.” Devon looked at the practice test form in the book doubtfully, but he settled at his desk while I flipped through one of the other books, sipping the coffee he’d made me—exactly the way I liked it, which made me smile again.
I spent the time he did the test reading through the sections that I knew I was weaker on. The goal isn’t to get him to a perfect score, I reminded myself. It’s to get him to where he can get a high enough score to justify his scholarship. “Do you mind if I put some music on?” Devon asked me. I shrugged.
“You’re not going to be able to listen to music during the test—in fact, they won’t even let you use your phone at all. But for right now it doesn’t really matter.” Devon put on The Strokes and finished the last twenty questions while I perused the third book he’d bought, trying to decide if it was worth taking anything from.
I flipped to the back of the book I liked the best, the one that Devon had used for his practice test, and graded his answer sheet. He had done okay—not great, and I could tell quickly that his hard spots would be the Math and the English sections. At least, I thought, he had a pretty good grasp of the questions in the science section—and he was solid on the reading part. Without any studying at all, he’d scrape by through the test with what would amount to a “passing” score—not quite enough for his scholarship, but respectable for a guy who hadn’t done any prep at all.
“Okay,” I said, setting the book down and going over the scores on the different sections with Devon. “We’re going to shoot for a composite score of 30—it’s a little high, but if that’s what we aim for you’ll probably get at least a 25, which is enough to justify the scholarship you got, and clear your name. You’re already pretty good on the reading and science sections—you got 25 each in those—but you only got a fifteen in English, and a nineteen in math. If we can get your reading up to thirty, and your other scores up over twenty-five, then you can probably do it.”
“Do you really think I can score that high?” I grinned.
“Dev, baby, I scored a 32 out of 36—with high scores in Reading, English, and Math. If anyone can get you over the hump, it’s me.” Devon gave me a quick kiss—which I almost hoped would lead to more—and pulled back, setting the three books in front of him.
“So how do we do this?” I considered the question.
“How much time have you got to study?” Devon laughed.
“Way more time than you do,” he pointed out. “I don’t want you pulling yourself down to help me. But I trust you’re not going to do that.” Devon tousled my hair. “So you just tell me how we’re going to work my brain, and I’ll commit to it.”
“Let’s start with English. We’ll do two hours a night until the test, broken up between mostly English, Math, and Reading. You can study the science stuff on your own.” I flipped to the English section, and we started working, sipping at the coffee and going over the different kinds of questions. Devon was not stupid; he was quick on the uptake, he just hadn’t had much chance in high school to study, since he was so good at basketball. So we went over the different concepts that were on the test, and I quizzed him, marking his answers on a sheet of paper.
We moved onto Math; Devon was even quicker at picking it up, especially geometry—since he had to use it so much, instinctively, in sports. We worked through problems together, me helping him out whenever he got stuck, filling in the blanks that his education had left behind. He knew a lot more than he realized he knew; I figured out pretty quickly that the biggest problem Devon had was thinking that he was something of a dumb jock. Once he got over the idea that all he’d ever really been good at was basketball, he was picking up the tricks I showed him right and left. He laughed at my mnemonic devices, but as I quizzed him again and again, he remembered them—and remembered what they represented, how they worked.
We went back to English for a while; he knew enough about reading, but the finer points of grammar and things like that, structural things, he wasn’t as strong on, and I knew that if he could just understand those things, he’d be much better on the test. Devon was focused, just like he was on the court, and while part of me wished that he might have used the excuse of being alone in his bedroom together to put the moves on me, I was glad to see that at least for the night, he was serious about using my help the best possible way. He really seemed to want to get better at the subjects, to really prove that he was able to make the cut on the test itself.
We moved onto reading after the English refresher, and as I found myself getting a little tired, my own brain kind of scrambled from trying to think ahead and around what Devon already knew, we both started winding down for the night. “I’m so glad I have you,” Devon told me, pulling me close.
“Yeah, well, while we’re getting you up to snuff, you’re going to hate me,” I told him with a grin. “I won’t tolerate any fooling around during study hours.” Devon laughed.
“That’s just what I need. You can be my academic coach—just like my basketball coach. Push me.” He kissed me lightly on the temple, and we dove into the science section for a cool-down on the studying. It was his strongest subject, and I decided as we were working on it that we’d end all of our sessions with a few minutes on the science section, just to give Devon more confidence. He was able to handle the difficult questions and the easy ones; it was the ‘middle’ difficulty questions that he had trouble with—he either over-thought them or under-thought them. We joked and laughed, and gradually any hesitation I had over whether it was the right thing to do went away from me.
As the study session wound down for the night, both of us brain-tired in spite of the coffee, Devon went downstairs and retrieved a bottle of wine along with two glasses. “I would not have expected this frat house to have anything so classy as this,” I said as Devon opened the bottle and poured us both a glass.
“Hey, we’re plenty classy here…just not usually when we’re in the public,” Devon told me with a grin. “I actually got this when I went to buy the books, hoping you’d agree. To celebrate our first session together.” I rolled my eyes.
“You know, one of these days, you are going to push me too far.” Devon shook his head, his expression almost comically solemn.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Whenever you tell me to stop, and really mean it, I will stop. Always. Believe it, Jenny.” I cuffed his shoulder.
“I keep telling you not to call me that, and you keep doing it.” Devon grinned again.
“I keep doing it because I know you secretly like it a little bit that I do it in spite of you telling me not to,” he told me. He handed me a glass of wine and I sipped it slowly. I have never been much of a connoisseur, but it tasted good: crisp and clean and sweet.
“Like I said,” I told him, wagging a finger in pretend warning. “One of these days. You are just going to push me too far.” Devon took a sip of his wine and set the glass down, climbing onto the bed next to me. He leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“One of these days, maybe,” he said, brushing a lock of hair out of my face. “But not today,
right? Today we’re both golden.” He kissed me again, and I felt him taking the glass of wine out of my hand, setting it aside somewhere; it no longer even mattered where. He wrapped his arms around me and deepened the kiss, his tongue slipping past my lips to bat at mine, to probe my mouth. I had been waiting for this all night. In spite of my reluctant feelings, in spite of my anger at him, I had been hoping that Devon would take the chance to make some kind of move on me, to show me that it was still a relationship he wanted. He broke away from my lips with a little grin. “You don’t want to study anymore, right?” I chuckled lowly.
“Well, maybe a little biology. Oh god, that is every bit as cheesy as it sounded in my head.” Devon laughed.
“That’s okay,” he murmured against my lips, his hands beginning to roam over my body slowly. “I love you being cheesy. Way better than being mad at me.”
Chapter Six
For what felt like almost an hour, Devon and I kissed, touching each other everywhere, teasing each other until I was certain I might die if we didn’t get down to the main event. Devon’s hands trailed all over my body, caressing, tickling, making me shiver as I heated up all over, getting wetter and wetter. “I’m starting to get into this,” I murmured against his lips, squirming underneath him and pushing my hips down against his.
“Oh, babe, you’re a natural,” Devon told me, slipping one hand underneath my tee shirt, grazing my ribs on his way up to cup my breast. “I can’t even imagine anyone who could be any better than you, Jenn.” He gave my breast a squeeze through the thin fabric of my bra, teasing my nipple with his fingertips until it hardened into a little nub. He began to pull and tug at my shirt, sliding it up over my head slowly, breaking away from my lips just long enough to get it off of me and toss it across the room. Devon buried his face against my breasts, nuzzling against my sensitive skin, kissing me everywhere before he brought his mouth back up to mine.