Claire (Hart University Book 2)

by Abigail Strom

  She crossed the kitchen to give me a huge hug. Was it possible I actually knew this girl?

  “I’m Brittany,” she said, which probably meant I didn’t.

  The hug was over but she was definitely still in my personal space. She gazed up at me soulfully, which was a little embarrassing.

  I’d had experience with the whole athletic fifteen minutes of fame thing back in high school. That was actually the reason Lissa first went out with me, although our relationship turned into more than that. But after we broke up, I decided I wouldn’t go out with another football groupie—and I wouldn’t rely on football to attract girls.

  Did that make me a hypocrite for being glad Claire was at the game today? Maybe. Probably.

  But I was glad all the same.

  “You were awesome today. Does this hurt?” Brittany asked, reaching out toward the bruise on my jaw. I jerked my head away, not wanting anyone but Claire to touch me like that.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s a little sore.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly, backing off a half step but keeping her eyes on mine. “Do you want any help with your ice packs? I could… you know… hold them on you.”

  There are some people who have the ability to make anything sound like a sexual invitation. Brittany was one of those people.

  I felt my face getting red and I was glad no one else was around to witness my lack of coolness.

  “I think I’m good,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you later?”

  “Count on it,” she said, giving me a slow, very sexy smile.

  I slipped past her and headed for the stairs.

  Back up in my room, Claire was all business. She’d gotten a bunch of supplies from the bathroom and was sitting cross-legged on the bed.

  “Let me start with your face,” she said. As I sat down beside her, it occurred to me that if she’d said Let me start by cutting off your left ear, I would have gone along with that, too.

  She poured hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball and dabbed it on my forehead, and it wasn’t the liquid that made my skin tingle. Then she opened the little tube of Neosporin, squeezed out a pea-sized dollop, and smoothed it gently over the cut.

  Now it was more than tingling. I was practically shivering.

  I couldn’t look away from her face while she worked on me. She looked focused and serious, a single frown line between her eyebrows.

  She didn’t put peroxide on my lip but she did dab on a little Neosporin. Then she applied a small square bandage to the cut on my forehead and sat back in satisfaction at her handiwork.

  “Okay, let me see the bruise on your side.”

  I pulled off my T-shirt obediently, wishing like hell I had a bruise lower down.

  “Hold this,” she said, putting one of the ice packs against my ribs. I kept it there while she wound a long strip of gauze around my waist to bind it in place.

  “Good,” she said, scooting back on the bed when she was done. “Keep that on for fifteen minutes, okay? And you should ice again before you go to bed. Oh, and you should take ibuprofen. It’s good for pain, of course, but it’s also an anti-inflammatory and will help control the swelling.”

  She shook out tablets from a bottle and handed them to me, along with a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” I said after I swallowed the pills. “If this is your bedside manner you’re going to be a great doctor someday.”

  She grinned at me. “Well, I—”

  There was a knock on the door. Before I could say anything it opened, and my new friend Brittany was standing in the doorway with another girl. This one was dark-haired and curvy, and her breasts, like Brittany’s, were straining against the material of her Panthers T-shirt. It was just automatic when my eyes went there, and when I jerked my gaze back up to her face she was smiling.

  “Hi,” Brittany said cheerfully, glancing briefly at Claire before disregarding her completely. “This is my friend Nicole. We came to drag you down to the party. You are coming, right?”

  A minute before, I’d felt like a million bucks. Maybe Claire really did have a magical healing touch, or maybe it was something else. But every second her hands were on my body felt like the best thing that had ever happened to me.

  Now I felt pissed off and guilty at the same time, as if I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t.

  I looked at Claire to see what she was thinking. Maybe I could figure out if she’d felt anything when she touched me… anything like what I’d felt for her.

  But there was no conflicting emotion in her expression. She was just pissed.

  She walked over to Brittany and Nicole and stood with her hands on her hips. “He’ll be down in a few minutes. He has to finish icing his bruise first.”

  Brittany seemed pissed, too. “What are you, his nurse? Or his wannabe girlfriend?”

  “Neither one,” Claire said, grabbing the doorknob. “I’m just a friend. The kind of friend who thinks taking care of an injury is important.”

  She started to close the door, basically forcing Brittany and Nicole to back up or push past her. They chose to back up, and Claire shut the door in their faces.

  Then she locked it.

  “There,” she said in satisfaction, turning to face me with her arms folded. “That should give you a few minutes of peace.”

  I looked back at her. She seemed so fierce and protective… even more now than when she was patching me up.

  But was it the protectiveness a girl felt for a guy she wanted to be with, or the protectiveness a friend felt for another friend?

  “Will,” she said, sounding like she’d come to a decision.

  God, I hoped it was the kind of decision I could get behind.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to fix you up with someone.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  She nodded several times. “Definitely. I mean, otherwise you’re going to end up hooking up with someone like—” She gestured toward the door. “Someone who’s only into you because you’re a star quarterback.”

  Okay, that bruised my ego a little. “That’s the only reason you could imagine someone being into me?”

  She frowned. “Of course not. That’s not what I meant. It’s just that you should be with someone worthwhile. Someone who can appreciate all of you. Not just the football stuff and your—” Now she gestured at me.

  I raised an eyebrow. “My what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t fish for compliments. Will you let me fix you up, or what?”

  “I can find my own dates, Claire.”

  “You mean like those two Pantherettes?”

  “They seemed like very nice girls,” I said judiciously.

  Claire glared at me suspiciously for a second, and then she relaxed.

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “You’re making it easy.”

  She leaned back against the closed door. “Yeah, okay, I guess I am. Sorry. Are you telling me it’s none of my business?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just telling you I can find my own dates.”

  “Fine. Just… not the Pantherettes.”

  “What if one of them turns out to be—”

  “They won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  I could have done more teasing on the subject, but the truth was, it made me happy that Claire cared enough to criticize two girls who’d flirted with me. I wanted to keep that feeling going.

  “I don’t want you to pick my next girlfriend, but you can tell me what you think about any prospective dates.”

  She looked skeptical. “How would that work? Will you be sending me their resumes?”

  “We’ll figure something out. Maybe you could casually stop by when they’re here or something.”

  She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “Do you have someone in mind?”

  Only you, and that’s not happening.

  “No. But if I find someone I’m interested in you’ll
be the first to know.”

  She started to smile. “All right. It’s a deal.”

  “Great. Now I’m going to take this ice pack off before I freeze solid. And then we’re going down to the party. Apparently I have a flock of female admirers waiting to—”

  “Admire you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Just remember you have to run any serious contenders by me first.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  Chapter Eight

  A few weeks after Will’s season opener, Milton came up to me after band practice.

  “You should think about writing some solo stuff,” he said. “And performing it.”

  I frowned at him. “You don’t like the stuff I’ve been writing for Sugar Lane?”

  He sighed. “No, moron, that’s not it. I’ve just been noticing something new in your lyrics. Your songs are getting more thoughtful, you know? I was just wondering if you’d ever thought about doing a coffeehouse-style gig sometime.”

  Milton was the least coffeehouse-style musician I knew.

  “Is that an insult? Are you saying I’m not rock and roll enough?”

  He mimed smacking me upside the head. “Will you cut that out? There’s no subtext here. I’m not looking for a subtle way to say you suck. I think you’re awesome. I was just noticing this other side to your style and wondered if you’d thought about exploring it. But I will never, ever bring it up again.”

  Later that night I was still thinking about what he’d said, and I called Jenna to talk about it.

  My stepmother was always my go-to person for musical advice. She’d left home when she was seventeen to start a rock band, and she was still going strong almost twenty years later. I’d sent her a demo of Sugar Lane that she’d really liked, and she’d brought up the possibility of us maybe opening for the Red Mollies when they played a Boston club in February.

  “Do you think I’m rock and roll?” I asked her.

  “As opposed to what? Country? Maybe you’re a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.”

  “Very funny.” I told her what Milton had said after practice that day. “I don’t want to be some kind of folk singer. I don’t see myself that way.”

  “You’re nineteen,” Jenna said. “You shouldn’t see yourself any one way. You should be open to trying new things. Plus, all the great artists reinvent themselves on a regular basis. Sometimes they fail spectacularly, of course. But it helps them grow.”

  I felt a qualm. “I don’t want to fail.”

  I hoped she’d say something comforting. Something like, Don’t worry, you won’t. But being Jenna, of course she didn’t say that.

  “You should want to fail.”

  “What?”

  “Failure is important. It means you’re taking risks. Isn’t that what you wanted when you decided to be single for a while?”

  I’d told Jenna about my pledge.

  “I guess so.” I was lying in bed, and now I closed my eyes. “If I’m being completely honest, I think I’ve been hoping there’s a safe way to take risks. Which I know is stupid.”

  Jenna laughed. “Not stupid, just human. How’s this for advice? Instead of worrying about the labels, just follow the music and see where it leads you. It sounds to me like that’s what Milton was saying, too.”

  “All right,” I said. “I think I can do that. Sometimes when I get an idea for a song, I—”

  My phone vibrated. I opened my eyes and saw Will’s name on the screen, and a little shiver ran down my spine.

  There’d been two games since the season opener, one at home and one a few hours away in New York. I’d gone to both. We’d won both, too, and Andre had declared me the new team mascot, explaining that the only reason they’d lost so many games last year was that I hadn’t been there.

  Will and I had been hanging out a lot more, here at my dorm and over at his place. I felt like our friendship was on a really firm footing.

  “I have to go,” I said to Jenna. “Talk to you later, okay?”

  Then I switched calls. “Hey,” I said to Will, curling up on my side with the phone between me and the pillow.

  “Hey. Still up?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Well, I’m awake, obviously. But I’m in bed.”

  A beat went by. “Oh.”

  After that Oh, there was silence.

  And then a rush of heat went through me.

  I’d gotten pretty good at restraining my lustful feelings for Will when we were together. But I didn’t have to restrain myself now, did I? I mean, he wasn’t actually here. We were on the phone. He had no way of knowing that my whole body was now a few degrees warmer, or that my nipples tightened at the sound of his voice, or that there was an itch between my legs that made me squeeze my thighs together.

  I let myself imagine that his next question would be, What are you wearing?

  Nothing, I’d tell him, even though I was wearing a pajama top and underwear. Then he’d say—

  “Are you still interested in hearing about my prospective dates?”

  I was so caught up in my silly fantasy I didn’t process what he’d said at first. “What?”

  “You said you wanted to know about contenders. Girls I want to go out with?”

  Well, that was one way to kill a girl-boner.

  I sat straight up in bed. “There’s a girl? A girl you want to go out with?”

  I prayed to God I didn’t sound as panicked to Will as I did to myself.

  “Yeah. I met her yesterday at the gym.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her yesterday?”

  Now I hoped I didn’t sound as pissy to him as I did to myself.

  “I didn’t know I wanted to date her yesterday. I mean, that only came up today.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to dial myself down a notch. “Oh.” I cleared my throat. “So, tell me about her.”

  “Well, she’s an athlete. A soccer player.”

  An athlete.

  Before, the panic had been sort of amorphous. But now it was settling. Hardening.

  An athlete. Will was a jock, and now he’d met a girl jock. They could talk about jock things in a way I couldn’t.

  I’d been thinking of the girls in Will’s orbit as cheerleader types like the Pantherettes I’d met. But there were lots of other girls in his orbit. Girls who might not be interested in Will for superficial reasons.

  Of course I didn’t know this girl’s deal. The mere fact that she was an athlete didn’t mean she deserved an amazing guy like Will.

  “Well.” My voice was a little rough, and I cleared my throat again. “I need to meet her, obviously. You can’t go out with her until I meet her. That’s what we said.”

  “We did? I’m pretty sure you’re making that up.”

  Of course I was.

  “I want to meet her,” I said stubbornly.

  “I don’t think there’s time. Not before the date, anyway. We made plans already. Just now. She called me, and we’re going out tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night?” I could feel my panic rising again, and I forced myself to calm down. “Okay, how about this. Have her come to your house before the date, and I’ll just happen to be there. You can be upstairs getting ready, and I’ll have a chance to—”

  “I already told her I’d pick her up at her place.”

  Of course he had. Will was the kind of guy who’d pick a girl up at her place. He was a gentleman, damn it.

  “Unacceptable.”

  “But—”

  “Nope. Unacceptable. Are you going to see her before tomorrow night? Is she in any of your classes? Will you run into her at the gym? I could be there working out or something and—”

  I heard a snort of laughter. “You don’t work out, Claire. You’ve never been in a gym in your life.”

  It was true. I’d told him that last year, and he’d offered to show me around the university fitness center and teach me to use the equipment. />
  Why, oh why hadn’t I taken him up on that offer?

  “Are you seeing her before the date or not?”

  Now I definitely sounded pissy.

  “Well…”

  “You are. Where?”

  “We’re going jogging tomorrow morning before classes. But—”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  There was another silence, long enough for me to regret my impulsive and monumentally moronic offer.

  “You want to come jogging with us? We’re going to do five miles.”

  Was that a long way? I vaguely remembered running a mile and a half in junior high gym class, and it hadn’t been that bad.

  “Sure. I mean, running doesn’t require any special skill. And it’ll give me a chance to meet this girl and—what’s her name, anyway?”

  “Becky. But—”

  “Becky. Okay. It’ll give me a chance to meet her.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t—”

  “Do you not want me to meet her for some reason? Are you afraid I won’t like her?”

  “No, that’s not it. I’m just not sure jogging is the best—”

  “Just give me the where and when.”

  I heard him sigh. “Okay, but I’m going on record saying this is a bad idea. Do you promise you’ll stop running if it’s too much for you?”

  The minute he said that, he pretty much guaranteed that I would run with the two lovebirds until I dropped.

  “I promise,” I practically growled. “Where and when.”

  “The lake on the north side of campus. We’re meeting in front of the science building at six.”

  “Six a.m.?”

  “Yeah. But if you don’t—”

  “I’ll be there. Good night, Will.”

  “Good night.”

  I tossed my phone onto the nightstand and ran my hands through my hair.

  Six o’clock in the morning. I was going on a five-mile run at six in the freaking a.m.

  I flopped back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  Chapter Nine

  I’d set my alarm for five a.m., but by the time I stopped hitting the snooze button it was five-thirty. I jumped in the shower for a quick rinse, mostly just to wake myself up, and then I put on a pair of black yoga pants (the closest thing I had to athletic gear), my sturdiest bra, and a gray Hart University T-shirt. I added a headband to hold back my hair and my black Chuck Taylors, which were the only sneakers I owned.