I absently strummed some chords, content to sit and watch the flames in my drunken stupor. The fire was several feet lower than it had been earlier, probably because Luke was out here. He was so fucking responsible. Sometimes he was a real killjoy, but it was probably due to him that the house hadn’t been burned to the ground by now.
Suddenly my pick was yanked out of my hand from someone behind me. I jumped up and spun around. “What the fuck?”
It was Hunter. “Fuck, man, what was in that drink? Lara’s passed out.”
“It’s not that strong. She musta had a lot of it.” I handed him a one of my remaining beers. “Here, have a beer. And give me back my pick, fuckhead.”
He quickly downed the beer I handed him, then grinned. Before I realized what he was doing, he put the pick in the empty beer can and threw it onto the roof of the house.
I shoved him. “That was my favorite pick!”
He just laughed.
“It’s not funny, man.”
He stopped laughing. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.” I pushed him out of the way and stalked over to the side of the house, to an attached lean-to where we stored our trash cans. I easily jumped up on it, surprising myself. My path over here hadn’t been a straight line.
“Josh, what are you doing?” Cori called out.
“Getting my freaking pick,” I muttered, too quiet for her to hear me. “Fucking prick.” Hunter was laughing again in the background.
I reached up and grabbed hold of the sill of a window on the second floor.
“Josh, why don’t you wait until tomorrow, when it’s light out?” Luke was ever the voice of reason. “And when it’s not freezing.”
He had a point there. Now that I was away from the fire, it was freaking cold. The window had a thin layer of frost on it. My foot slid on some ice, but I still had a firm grip on the windowsill. I pulled myself up.
It would have been smarter to wait.
I wasn’t good at waiting, though. Or being smart.
And I wanted my damn pick back.
“Seriously, Josh, come down. It’s just a plastic pick.” Cori’s voice sounded like it was closer, like she’d come to stand below me. I didn’t look down, though. Don’t look down. Everyone knows that.
I used the gutter to pull myself up another level. As I swung my leg up onto the roof, I heard it creaking, and either Cori or Amber shrieked.
I swung my second leg up, and the gutter went crashing to the ground. I finally looked down. It had split into two pieces.
By now, a crowd had gathered outside to watch. I pumped my fists in the air. “Yeah!” I yelled.
The crowd below me cheered. I couldn’t see everyone clearly, partially because of the dark, and partially because I was three sheets to the wind, but I could see Luke’s face, and he was pissed. As house manager, he’d be responsible for fixing the gutter. Sorry, dude.
“Josh, get your ass down before you break your fucking neck!” he yelled.
“The gutter’s broken!” I yelled back. “You’ll have to catch me.”
I went to the edge of the roof and held my arms out, like I was about to crowd surf. The horde of people below me let out a collective whoop.
“We got you!” someone called.
“Josh, no!” Cori yelled. “Please just climb back down.”
“The gutter’s broken.”
“Go to the other end of the house.” Her tone was patient, but laced with panic. “It’ll be easier over there.”
A slow smile stretched across my face. “Jumping will be quicker.”
“Fuck this,” Luke said. “You’re going to break your fucking neck. I’m coming up.”
“No way,” I said. “It’s dangerous.” Even in my drunken state, the stupidity of my words struck me.
“Then climb down. Carefully.”
“All right, all right,” I muttered. See what I meant about him being a killjoy? How fucking cool would it have been to crowd surf off the roof?
I turned and peered into the darkness, the dark shingles making it harder to see, until I saw the glinting silver of the beer can. I snagged it and shook the pick out. Then I put it safely in my pocket.
I walked down several feet to where the gutter was intact and slowly lowered myself until my foot caught the end of a window.
If anyone had been thinking clearly, I could’ve slid in the window if someone had opened it. But clear thinking and frat parties didn’t usually exist in the same hemisphere.
I’d have to swing myself over to the lean-to unless I wanted to drop ten feet to the ground. When I had been standing on the roof, jumping off had seemed like a great idea, but now that I was dangling from a second story window, it no longer seemed like even a remotely good idea. Of course, this would be falling, not jumping, and the two were totally different.
My fingers were numb from the cold, and they were losing their grip, so I tried to move down the window a few inches so I could make it onto the lean-to. I was almost there when my fingers slipped. I made it, but my left foot hit a patch of ice, causing me to lose my footing. I went down hard onto the roof of the lean-to, then rolled and fell the five feet to the ground.
Fuck! The ground was hard. It felt like I’d hit a solid block of ice. The next time I climbed to the roof, I was definitely waiting until summer.
“Josh!” Cori shrieked and rushed over. She knelt next to me. “Are you okay?”
I tried to sit up, and as I propped myself up on my elbows, pain shot through my left wrist. I lay back down, cradling my wrist and grinning up at Cori. “Never better.”
Chapter Six
Bri
Josh was only seven minutes late this morning, an improvement from last week. Baby steps, right? He’d also managed to dress in jeans rather than sweatpants. Another tiny step. His hair was sticking up at all angles, though, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in days.
Strictly speaking, his appearance had nothing to do with his grades. However, I found that if you dressed the part, you felt the part. That’s why I wore suits on the days I had appointments with students. They weren’t required, and a lot of interns just wore jeans, but the suits made me feel more put together, like I belonged in this position.
I needed all the help I could get this morning. As expected, the phone call with Brett had not been easy, but at least it was done. Even though I knew cutting ties was the right thing, I had bawled my eyes out, leaving them puffy and my head dully throbbing. Honestly, I was surprised at how well I was taking it. I’d even considered calling in sick this morning¸ but instead I’d put on my big girl panties and come in. The normalcy of it helped. I thrived on routine.
And if my past appointments with Josh were any indication, I’d be too distracted to think about Brett for the next thirty minutes, anyway.
“Good morning,” I said brightly, the volume of my voice probably a hair too high.
Josh nodded, his eyes drooping.
“I looked through your courses, and you’ve got big exams coming up in all but two of them.”
“So, three,” Josh said.
“Um, yes, three classes, three exams.”
“So why not just say three? Why say all but two?”
I drummed my fingers on the desk, annoyed. “It’s the same thing.”
“Yeah, but the way you said it makes it sound worse, more ominous.”
“What’s your point?” Two minutes in and he was already getting under my skin. Why did I let him get to me?
He cocked his head. “You’re an alarmist.”
“No, I’m not,” I sputtered.
He laughed. “Yes, you are. A worst-case scenario kind of person.”
“If you don’t prepare for the worst, then what happens if it comes?”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The worst case rarely happens. So why not look on the bright side and enjoy things?”
I folded my hands in front of me and looked
him square in the eye. “Okay, then. Here’s your worst-case scenario. Two of those exams are worth thirty percent of your overall grade. The third one is worth twenty-five percent. You flunk those, you’ll probably end up failing the classes.”
“I’ll pass.” His tone was nonchalant yet confident, bordering on cocky.
“How can you say that? What makes you so sure?” Then I noticed he was favoring his left wrist, which was wrapped in a bandage. “What happened to your wrist?”
He looked down at it, as if he’d forgotten it was injured. “Oh, that. I fell off the roof.”
My jaw dropped open. “Why were you on the roof?”
“We had a party Saturday night.” He said it like that explained everything.
I shook my head, dismissing the train of conversation. I didn’t even want to know.
“Back to the impending exams—have you started studying?”
“Nah.”
“Then how can you be so sure you’ll pass?”
He shrugged. “I will because I have to.”
“Do you plan to study?”
“I guess so.”
I tilted my head and peered at him over the desk. I opened my mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. The words that were about to come out were not professional.
I closed my eyes for a second then cleared my throat. “Why don’t we come up with a plan of study? A plan of attack, if you will.”
He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “I plan to pass.”
“You have no plan!”
The voices in the cubicle next to me went silent. I’d spoken—okay, yelled—louder than I’d meant to. “You have no plan,” I said again, this time in a more appropriate tone, and the conversation in the next cubicle resumed.
“I’ll figure it out.”
I tapped my fist against my forehead, my alternative to beating my head on the cubicle wall, which was what I really wanted to do. Well, I’d wanted a distraction. I guess I should be careful what I wish for.
“Josh, please let me help you. Let me do my job.”
“Is it so hard to believe that I can pass on my own?” His tone was dejected. Was that hurt in his eyes? For goodness sake, he was on academic probation for a reason—because he hadn’t passed on his own.
“Your track record isn’t so good, Josh. I’m just looking at the facts.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Look, let me do this my way. If I fail, then I won’t fight you anymore. I won’t be able to, right? Because then I’ll have to ace everything just to barely pass those classes. I’ll even take your stupid personality quiz.”
I looked at him warily. “Okay,” I said slowly. This was too easy—a win-win for me. There had to be a catch.
“But if I pass, then you have to come to a party at the Beta house.”
And there it was.
“What?” I sputtered. “Why?”
It made no sense. He didn’t seem to like me very much, so why in the world would he want me to come to his party? My thoughts drifted to Stephen King’s Carrie. Was he playing some kind of trick on me?
He shrugged. “Everything about you is uptight—your clothes, your posture, your hair…” He grinned suggestively. “I’d just like to see you let your hair down a little.”
“I let my hair down,” I protested. Why, oh why was I engaging in this conversation? “You’ve seen me.”
His brow furrowed. “I have?”
My cheeks flushed. Had he forgotten our encounter at Thirsties? Now I felt stupid for bringing it up. “At Thirsties, remember?”
“Sweetheart, if that was you with your hair down, then you’ve got a lot of living to do.”
Even though I knew he must throw out terms of endearment like that loosely, my stomach still filled with butterflies. I was not the type of girl people called sweetheart. Not even Brett had called me that.
Then rationality kicked in, killing the butterflies.
“This is ridiculous. And besides, I can’t date you. I’m your academic counselor.”
“It’s not a date,” he said, making my cheeks flush a deeper shade of crimson. I hadn’t thought it would be a date, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t think it would be one. Now he thought that I thought it was supposed to be a date. Great.
Wait—I wasn’t agreeing to this, so none of this mattered anyway.
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“No,” I said more firmly. “It would be inappropriate.”
He smirked. “See? Uptight.”
“For your information, I just went to a party— You know what? That’s none of your business. My personal life is none of your business. We’re here to improve on your work habits and study skills, that’s all.”
“Whatever you say, Ms. Welch.”
My nostrils flared, but I continued on. “And it would be wrong of me to bet against you. I want you to succeed.”
“Who says you’d be betting against me? Either way, I’ll succeed—on my own or later on when I finally let you help me.”
I drummed my fingers on the desk. I couldn’t believe I was entertaining this idea. It was ludicrous. Me, at a frat party? I didn’t think so.
Of course, the odds of him passing all three of his tests were slim to none. It’s not that he was stupid—he was far from it. He just didn’t have the work ethic, which was far worse in my book. Give me someone who tries over someone who wastes natural ability any day.
“You’d have to get As.”
“Cs. I mean, technically Ds are passing, so Cs are above the minimum.”
“Bs.”
“Done.” He didn’t even hesitate. I should have stuck to my guns about the As.
“And you have to pass all three of them,” I reiterated.
“Yeah, all three. That was never up for debate. Despite what you may think, I do actually want to pass my classes.”
I bit back my snappy retort, instead focusing on the negotiation underway. “And if I—” I was about to say win, but I couldn’t think of this as a bet. My integrity wouldn’t allow me to gamble with my clients’ grades. It was more of a…compromise. “I mean, if you don’t meet your end of the deal, then you’ll do exactly as I say for the remainder of the semester.”
He faltered for just a second, then grinned. “Yeah. Everything you say. But when I pass—”
“If,” I interjected.
“No, sugar, when I pass, you’ve got to come to my party.”
“For an hour.”
“Hell no. At least three.”
“Two.”
“Done.” He held out his hand, and I shook it.
I looked up at the ceiling. “What am I doing?” I muttered.
He grinned. “Making the best decision of your life.”
“The question was rhetorical.”
“If you say so, darling.”
…
Josh
I underestimated just how much Brianna wanted me to succeed. The wound-tighter-than-a-yo-yo Ms. Welch at a fraternity party? I couldn’t picture it.
But I wanted to.
Which made me that much more determined to pass those tests.
It was crazy. Stupid. That probably explained my asking—no, betting for her to come to the party. I was generally attracted to all things crazy and stupid. Brianna was neither of those things. She was smart and logical. So why did she have my attention?
She wasn’t like the girls I normally went out with. Not that the party would be a date. Hell, no. That ground rule had been laid. There was just something about her, though—she was genuine. There was more to her than met the eye. Literally and figuratively.
Oh, yeah. I couldn’t wait to get her out of those damn suits, even if they did make her ass look spectacular.
I was probably a little too cocky in her office earlier. I had no clue how I was going to pass, much less pass with Bs, but I did know one thing—it wouldn’t be with her flash cards or SQ3R method or any of those other bullshit strateg
ies.
I opened my psychology notebook and threw it on the coffee table in disgust. The pages were blank. Every single one of them.
While I had been attending classes, I hadn’t exactly been a model student. No handouts, no notes, nothing. Best laid plans and whatnot. I was caught up in all my classes because I hadn’t had any assignments yet—they were all large lecture classes, which meant a lot of tests but not a lot of other assignments. I’d spent a long time crafting my schedule to make it that way.
I could just hear Brianna now if she knew the effort I’d put into creating the ultimate slacker schedule. “Maybe if you put as much effort into studying as you did finding ways to slack off, you wouldn’t be on academic probation.”
She was right. I was smart enough to realize it, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. Or openly admit to it.
I rooted around in my backpack and came up with a crunched up syllabus. After a quick scan, I hit the jackpot. All notes and recorded lectures will be on the class website.
This guy made it too easy. If everything was online anyway, then why did anyone bother to go to class? Shit, if I had actually read the syllabus, I might have spent the last few weeks chowing down on doughnuts instead of sitting in a lecture hall.
My next class, Civil War and Reconstruction, wasn’t as easy. The professor was world renowned, but he also had to be closing in on eighty, so he didn’t even have a class website. Everything was totally old school. I was pretty sure all classes were supposed to have an online presence, but what was the university going to do to this guy? Fire him? Yeah, right.
I had a great memory, but I’d fallen asleep a time or two. It went without saying that I didn’t take notes. I’d have to worry about this test later. There wasn’t much I could do right now anyway.
My third course was Introduction to Sports Medicine. I think at least half the football team was in there with me, along with a good portion of the basketball team if the size of my classmates was any indication. Having a class full of athletes signaled I’d found a winner—in other words, a slacker class.
So I was all set for two of the classes. Two out of three wasn’t bad. I just had to print out the notes and study them. Piece of cake.
I felt better already. What was Brianna so worried about? I only needed to figure out what to do about the civil war class, and I’d be in the clear. I could probably just ask someone to borrow their notes. Done. And since the tests weren’t until next week, I didn’t even need to start studying yet.
Wanting More (Love on Campus #2) Page 5