by Claire Adams
“Well, we need to get back to work in a minute,” Devon said. He kissed me. “But maybe if you’re good, I’ll learn everything in a blink of an eye, and we can spend the rest of the night seeing how many times I can make you come.” I laughed.
“Unfortunately, after we finish your study session for the night I have to do one of my own,” I told him, wriggling free of his arms. “I’ve got a test tomorrow in Chem, and I am not as naturally gifted at science as you are.” Devon frowned, looking at me in concern.
“We can study together—I mean, I’ve got time before they give me the ACT again. Let’s go over your stuff for a while, it’s bound to help me, too.” I grinned.
“Well lay it on me, player!” We switched out his books for my own and started going over some of the things I was having trouble with in chemistry. I was surprised—and shocked to be surprised—that Devon was actually really interested, really helpful. As good as I was in math and English, he had a knack for science, showing me a shortcut to a couple of the solutions in the chemical equations. “How is it that you can balance a chemical equation but not work out a quadratic formula?” Devon chuckled.
“The chemical equations give you a result; that’s why. You know exactly what it should be before you even start.” We switched back and forth between my studies and his, trading different tips and tricks, and it felt so good and natural that I was almost sorry when I started to feel sleepy. As we began to wind down, our conversation became more about flirting than it was about studying; we teased each other about different things we’d noticed each other doing. “You know, whenever you’re really focused, you get this little wrinkle, right here,” Devon told me, lightly touching the space between my eyebrows.
“Yeah, well, I saw you sticking out your tongue while you were writing out the equation for one of the questions in the book,” I countered, sticking my tongue out and wiggling it in Devon’s direction.
“Hey! You were supposed to be reading up on Planck’s constant while I was doing that. Some great student you are.” Devon pushed me down onto the bed playfully, tickling me all over until I squealed and squirmed my way free of his hands.
We talked about Devon’s friends and teammates, about the rest of my friends except for Kelly, and it just felt so comfortable to be with him that I couldn’t imagine ever breaking up with Devon. I can’t even think of why I let Kelly influence me in any way, I thought, watching him read through a section of the English portion of the test as the final drill of the night. Devon was just exactly what I had always wanted in a boyfriend, and I couldn’t imagine any person making me happier than he did. It was impossible.
“I’m so glad you decided to stalk me,” I told Devon as I nestled into his arms at the end of the night. Devon chuckled.
“You make me sound like such a creep when you say that.” I grinned.
“Well, kind of it’s true. You did sort of stalk me, tracking me down to the movie theater the way you did. You’re just lucky I already liked you and deep-down wanted things to work out.”
“I am lucky,” Devon told me, nuzzling against my neck. “Considering all the bad stuff you heard about me, you could have easily just decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
“I am never going to listen to gossip again,” I told him, turning around in his arms to face him. “All it gets anyone ever is trouble.”
“At least check with the person the gossip is about. Some gossip is true. After all, before you I was actually kind of a terrible guy.” I rolled my eyes.
“If you wanted to change, you couldn’t have been that terrible.” Devon kissed me passionately, letting his hands roam over my body slowly.
“You are a damn good reason to want to be a better guy,” he told me, barely breaking away from my lips. “I never want you to be disappointed in me. I want to always strive to be good enough for you. You believe me, right Jenny?” I laughed.
“One of these days, I hope you’re going to stop calling me that.” Devon grinned against my lips, shifting his hips against me.
“Nope,” he told me, nibbling on my bottom lip playfully. “I’m going to keep calling you that nickname until you love it. No more thoughts about stupid kids in school.” I sighed, grinning in spite of myself.
“You have got an uphill battle then.” Devon smiled again, and I could feel him starting to get hard, pressing against me. I was only too happy to let our study session turn into something else, something even more gratifying than learning about square roots or the quadratic formula.
“I’ve learned something,” Devon murmured, stripping off the last of my clothes with deft hands. “I don’t just want easy things anymore. I want stuff I have to work for. If I have to work to keep you loving me, then that’s even better.” I melted against him, my hands wandering all over his body, wondering how I had managed to possibly get so lucky.
Chapter Four
The next morning, Devon made me another special breakfast, insisting that since I had a test to take, it should be even better than any of the others he had made me. “I want my girl to keep up her game,” he said, grinning at me from the stove. He made eggs benedict, using a powdered mix for the hollandaise—but it was so good I couldn’t even tease him about the mix, digging into the food on my plate with a hunger I had never felt before. We chatted over breakfast, taking our time, and Devon quizzed me on a couple of the things we had talked about from my chemistry test the night before, checking that I remembered what he had told me.
By the time I got into class, showered and my stomach full, I was shocked at how confident I felt, how positive and at ease. I was never really completely nervous about taking tests, but with science I always had a little bit of doubt. Chemistry had been kicking my ass, at least a little bit, from the beginning of the semester; my professor for the course was a mousy looking guy who had the thickest Russian accent imaginable, and it seemed like he couldn’t even understand that there were people in the class—namely me—who just couldn’t look at a chemical equation and immediately know the answer.
But for the first time all semester, as the papers for the test made their way through the room, I felt calm. I could hear Devon’s voice in my head, giving me little hints and tricks for how I could go about finding the answer faster. The same way that he had of almost overthinking questions in Math or English was what I had been doing with science for years; it occurred to me, looking over the different problems before the test officially started, that I was comfortable almost not because of anything specific that Devon had taught me about the subject, but because going over the fundamentals with him was making it easier to remember more complicated things. I smiled to myself as I went from one question to the next, knowing that the answers were in me, knowing I could figure it out.
I thought about Devon as I worked my way through the problems, wondering what he was up to. He was so sweet and kind, so generous, so wonderful to me—how could I have ever doubted that he really did want something serious? I felt a little weird that I had paid for a dorm that I probably wouldn’t get very much use out of, but I thought about the fact that when the semester was coming to a close in about another month or two, I could request a transfer. I could get a room with someone else on campus; plenty of other people had already put in their requests—but they wouldn’t be processed until the term was done with.
And anyway, I thought, looking over the answer to a problem that two nights before would have made my palms sweaty, plenty of other girls practically lived with their boyfriends on campus. There were a few other girls besides myself who spent time in the Phi Kappa house; Jeremy’s girlfriend was there almost all the time, and Jaxon and his girlfriend were a staple, hanging out and just having fun. The guys in the frat didn’t even seem to be quite as much the raucous, playboy partiers that I had first seen them as. They had lives outside of drinking and watching sports, and they had goals for themselves.
I would have to remember to thank my other friends for making me go to the party a few
weeks before; it had changed my life in so many ways, and while I was sad to lose Kelly as my best friend, I thought that it was for the best. She was nearing the end of her college years anyway—and even if she wasn’t, the fact that she could have lied to me so steadily, and tried to bring me grief, meant that she had never really been my friend at all, at least not since I had come to college. I tried to imagine how it could even be possible to have that much poison in your heart and brain and still be a functioning person. It seemed like complete and total madness to me.
I wasn’t the first one to finish, but I was also not the last one to turn my test in to the professor, who looked up from whatever he was doing and gave me a meek little smile. As I left the classroom—he had told us at the beginning that we were free to go once we finished—I thought about the fact that I had always studied by myself. Even when Kelly and I had studied together, we hadn’t really combined our efforts; we’d just sat in the same room, with the TV on, looking at our different subjects. It was a totally different experience with Devon, and it surprised me to realize that I had retained the information even better that way. I shook my head, smiling to myself. I could think of a half-dozen ways that we could get even better at studying together, provided that we were able to keep our relationship going.
I had to believe that Devon was capable of doing well on the ACT. It made me sad to think that he had to have had such impatient teachers, to grow up thinking that he wasn’t really good at school, only at basketball. What kind of teacher would make a student feel that way? He wasn’t stupid—he was incredibly bright, and even after only two sessions, he was making major progress in filling the gaps. It made me feel good to be helping him, coaching him along the way that he should have been coached the entire time he’d been in school. It had given me so much pride, the way that Devon had introduced me to the people in the stands with us, telling them how smart I was, what a great tutor I had been already. He really cares about me, I thought, unable to help the big grin that formed on my face at the idea. Devon Sealy, the bad boy, the legend who slept around and drove girls crazy, cared about me.
For the rest of the week, I spent every night at the frat house; in fact, anytime I wasn’t spending with my friends or in classes, I tried to be by Devon’s side. I told him the first time I saw him after my test that I had never felt more confident or more comfortable in my chemistry class the entire semester, and Devon had kissed me and told me that he would do anything he could to help me succeed—just like I had helped him.
As word got around campus that Devon and I were seeing each other seriously, my friends started to ask me about him; at first, they were absolutely appalled that I could even think about dating a guy like Devon with a reputation as horrible as he had. Giselle told me I was insane outright, while Alicia predicted by heartbreak as soon as Devon found someone he wanted more. “Guys, if you can’t just be happy for me, then I can find new friends.”
Kelly was spreading poison too; I knew it because I heard whispers of the rumors she had spread, and continued to spread, about why I was never in the dorms anymore. She told everyone that I was out of my mind about Devon, that I was going to be just another victim of his cheating, playing ways. She told people that I had said I would choose Devon over her even if he broke my heart. I found more and more reasons to never want to have anything to do with her for the rest of my life. I couldn’t trust her—and slowly our group of friends came around to realize that she was being spiteful, that she wasn’t interested in anything but making Devon look bad and her own life. One by one, my friends came to my side, eventually shunning Kelly altogether.
At nights, I was always at the Phi Kappa house; even when Devon and I weren’t actively either studying or making love in his room, it felt good to be there. None of the guys ever really gave me a hard time about anything—they were glad, one of them told me, to see Devon finally settling with a “bomb-ass, chill girl.” They wanted him back on the team, bringing prestige to the fraternity with his skills on the court. They knew that I was working with him, and more than a few of the guys told me that I was clearly responsible for Devon taking life, in general, more seriously.
My life had changed so drastically I almost didn’t recognize it, and while I loved the fact that Devon and I were getting closer and closer every day, I couldn’t help but hope that things would just stay the same for a while, that I wouldn’t have to deal with another crisis. We studied in his room together—taking turns on each other’s work. I brought him the assignments from the class we shared; the professor had said that since I was Devon’s girlfriend, I could make sure that he kept up, so that once he passed the ACT on his re-take, he could jump right in once more.
We broke up our study sessions into chunks, going over parts of the test that Devon would have to take and then alternating with different things I needed to study. Devon was great at coaching me through the Chemistry material, and I even started to enjoy discussing the work for my other classes with him, excitedly explaining things that I was starting to understand. “I love the way your face lights up,” Devon told me one night that week, smiling in a way that I was starting to think he only ever did with me. “You’re like this enormous roman candle when you get excited, just shooting out everywhere. It’s awesome.”
With every passing day, Devon got better and better in his weak subjects, taking in the coaching I gave him and applying it with a focus that I knew had come from years of getting better and better at basketball. “You know,” I told him as I handed him a practice Reading section test, “if I ever get my hands on the teachers that made you feel like you were stupid, I’m going to end up in jail for assault and battery.” Devon laughed.
“It’s not their fault,” he told me, looking over the scores I had marked. “I had already stopped taking school itself seriously by the time they started giving up on me. It was mostly because I’d joke and fool around in class that my teachers just figured they’d give me a passing grade and have done with it.” I shook my head.
“Then I’m glad I’ve never been good at sports.” Devon grinned, giving me a shove.
“I gotta admit I’m kind of glad too. You’re so smart at everything—who would I have gotten to tutor me if I didn’t have you, babe?”
“Someone in one of the other frats,” I countered.
“Not as hot as you. Wouldn’t be nearly effective enough.” I decided one night to try and make a game out of our session; for every question that Devon got right on the English section of the practice test I quizzed him from, I’d take off one item of clothing. For every answer he got wrong, I put an item of clothing back on. Of course, Devon insisted that we should keep going and going until I was almost fully naked, sitting on his bed in nothing more than my bra and panties. And then, of course, we had to take a break—neither of us could focus on anything academic until we’d both gotten off.
It wasn’t all either sex or studying between us; throughout the week, I found myself spending more and more time just hanging out with Devon. He told me about his family and his friends from high school; he told me about the guys in the frat, and I told him about every little detail of my life that could possibly come up. I cooked dinner for him one night before our study session, picking the first dish my mother had ever taught me to cook, and Devon insisted to the rest of the frat that he had the absolute best girlfriend that any guy could have on campus: I was gorgeous, I was smart, I loved basketball, and I could cook. Everyone else would just have to die of envy or hope I had relatives.
I loved the fact that Devon and I could do nothing more than watch TV together and manage to have a good time; in the back of my mind, in spite of the fact that I had chosen to trust him instead of Kelly, I had thought that with a guy like Devon, we couldn’t possibly have much more than sex and basketball in common. Instead, we were able to talk about anything and everything, and even though I was getting less sleep than I ever had before in my life, I woke up happy and content, wrapped in Devon’s arms, ready
for whatever the day might bring.
“You know,” I said, curled up in his arms one night as we were both starting to fall asleep, “it’s kind of amazing how fast this happened.” Devon nodded, his arms tightening around me slightly.
“I feel like I kept waiting for a reason to take my life more seriously,” Devon told me sleepily. “Like I knew I should be focused on getting good grades, doing the right thing… but it was too easy to just win and get what I wanted.”
“And now?”
“Well, I met this awesome girl, and at first—I’ll admit—I figured I’d just have a good time and then move on with my life. But babe, as soon as I woke up and you weren’t in bed with me, I knew it had hit me hard. I wanted to be around you—I wanted to keep you right here with me.”
“So sneaking out before you woke up was a great choice then.” Devon chuckled, nuzzling against my neck.
“I think I would have felt that way even if you’d been right there, but it definitely made me realize I was going to have to try way harder with you.” He kissed me on the lips lightly. “When you kept brushing me off—god, do you know how crazy that made me? I’d never been with anyone like you before. I’m almost glad everyone told you terrible things about me and made me work to earn your trust.”
“You’re secretly a masochist, is what you’re saying. You wanted me to torture you.” Devon laughed in the darkness.
“I wanted to be worthy of you. And I still do.”
Chapter Five
When Friday night came around, I found myself getting ready for another Phi Kappa party; only this time instead of having to be cajoled and persuaded to go to it by my friends. I was excited and even eager to go—and it would just be downstairs from where I was getting ready. Devon took a quick shower and changed, heading downstairs to the main part of the house before I had even gotten out of class to help his frat brothers with setting everything up. It surprised me, how much effort the Phi Kappa guys put into their parties; in some part of my mind I had almost assumed that they simply happened more or less spontaneously.