Third Degree

by Julie Cross

  My breath catches in my throat as I step in front of his doorway, but I plaster on a very neutral, friendly expression. Marshall jumps to his feet the second he sees me, abandoning his lounging position on the bed. There’s a broad-shouldered, big-muscled guy with dark, slightly curly hair standing in the room, sporting an NIU football jersey.

  “I thought you were home for the weekend,” Marshall says, glancing at the other guy and then back at me.

  “I came back early.” I shrug. “Got some things to take care of.”

  The other guy does that eye-scanning thing that Marshall insists is him checking me out. A grin spreads slowly across his face. He moves toward and sticks a hand out. “I’m Jesse, Marsh’s older, more attractive, more awesome, and more financially stable brother.”

  Before I can shake his hand, a pillow comes speeding across the room, smacking him in the side of the face.

  “Aren’t you a little old to be hitting on college freshmen?” Marshall says.

  Jesse. The oldest sibling, and the other person responsible for forcing a five-year-old to eat a peppercorn. Marshall might be away from home right now, but it feels like his family is always around in some form or another.

  “Maybe,” he admits, still staring at me. “But I have a feeling this girl is wise beyond her years. I bet you prefer older, more experienced men, right?”

  I lean against the door frame, sizing him up. He has the same dark, barely curly hair as Marshall, but he’s more intense and with hard lines, whereas Marshall has that sexy yet still boyish look to him. Jesse is stocky and Marsh is tall and lean.

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Definitely not too old,” I answer.

  Marshall’s mouth drops open, but it only takes him a second to pull it together. He walks over to Jesse and starts shoving him out the door. “Time for you to go.”

  Jesse laughs but doesn’t object. “Since you won’t sit with me at the game, I’m knocking you out and dragging you to that party later.” He turns to me. “You should come, too. Bring that roommate of yours. She’s a wild little thing.”

  So he knows Kelsey. And he knows that Kelsey is my roommate …

  Before Jesse is out of sight, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bag of something green. “Almost forgot. Got a present for you, little bro.” He tosses the bag to Marshall, who catches it but shoots a glare at his brother.

  “Way to be discreet, Jess.”

  He shrugs and points a finger at me. “I’ll see you later.”

  “He’s mostly talk,” Marshall says as soon as Jesse is gone. “He’s also kind of the party animal in the family. But I’ve never seen him hook up with girls seven years younger, so don’t get any ideas about him being a creep or anything.”

  “Seven years isn’t a big deal.” My gaze travels to the bag in his hand. I step inside the room, shut the door, and lunge forward, snatching the bag before he can stop me. I hold it up to the light, examining the contents. “This is pretty decent quality. I’ve seen a lot worse in the ER, for sure.” I lower the bag and hold it behind my back. “What are you doing with illegal narcotics in a dorm room? You’re a fucking RA, Marshall!”

  “Would you lower your voice, please?” he hisses and then before I can react, he’s got the bag in his hands and then tosses it into his top drawer. “Might I remind you this is real college—a time of experimentation?”

  “Aren’t you worried about your lungs?”

  “Not particularly.” He turns me around to face the door and opens it, pushing me into the hallway and following behind.

  The two guys in the room next to mine, Evan and Yoshi, come into the hall and stand there like they’re waiting for someone.

  “Ready?” Marshall says to them before turning to me. “We’re going to the game if you want to come.”

  “I thought you told your brother you weren’t going.”

  “I told him I wasn’t using one of his tickets.” He shrugs. “Figured I’d sit in the student section.”

  I suppress a groan, remembering the eyelash-batting blond girl from anatomy class and her invitation. Well, at least this will allow me to meet some new people and not be caught in another Marshall bubble. “All right, I’ll go.”

  Both Yoshi and Evan put a great deal of effort into hiding their disappointment, but I don’t miss the look and the eye roll that happens between them. Whatever. Now I’m that much more determined to not be weird today.

  “Are you guys going to the party later with Marshall’s brother?” I ask to make conversation.

  Evan and Yoshi both give Marshall intriguing looks as we all head for the stairs and outside. “Don’t know … Marsh, are we invited or is this a big-kid party?” Evan asks.

  “Jesse invited me,” I put in, “and I’m the same age as you guys.”

  Marshall lets out a sigh. “Fine, you can all go, but I’m not responsible for getting you back here or anything that requires disrobing, mopping, carrying, facilitating, or … well, you get the point.”

  It’s nearly a mile walk to the stadium, and right away I get the sense that Marshall is putting more and more distance between the other guys and us. Eventually he says, “What do you mean, seven years isn’t a big deal?”

  I laugh. “You’re really hung up on this, aren’t you?”

  He scratches the back of his head and keeps his gaze trained on his shoes. “I’m just thinking about what you said yesterday regarding on-call rooms … and then the seven-year thing …”

  “The on-call room activity involved a twenty-two-year-old intern, so four years’ difference,” I say.

  “Wait, there’s another one like you? A teenage doctor?” He lowers his voice on that last part.

  I snort back a laugh. “Not even close. He didn’t graduate from med school until he was twenty-one.”

  “What an idiot.” Marshall shakes his head. “So … seven years isn’t a big deal? Is that coming from personal experience?”

  I almost deny it, but then I remember what he said yesterday about lying being another method of avoiding assimilation. “Yeah, last year I had a thing with one of my professors.”

  Marshall grabs my arm, pulling me to a stop, allowing even more distance between us and the other guys, who by now have joined up with some more kids from our floor. “Seriously? A college professor? How old were you?”

  Hearing his tone, seeing the shock all over his face, makes me wonder if my relationship with Sam could have had a bigger impact on me than I realized at the time? Oh, God. Not more psychobabble.

  I shake out of his grip and continue walking.

  “How old, Izzy?”

  “Seventeen,” I say finally. “Almost eighteen. But it’s different for me. I had very little choices outside of college students—”

  “Professors are always off-limits for students,” he says, a hint of anger hitting his tone.

  I haven’t thought about Sam for a long time. Maybe because that was only three months of my life. And it was me wanting to get his attention, not as a child but as a woman, wanting—no, demanding—to get my way, like I’d done with everything else back then. In my mind, I’d been in control the whole time, I’d called the shots. But maybe it wasn’t just about physical attraction and a teenage crush on a teacher.

  “Technically I wasn’t a student. I was his TA.”

  Marshall shakes his head again. “That’s fucked up, Izzy, seriously. Didn’t your parents do something?”

  “They didn’t know. They don’t know.” That dreaded dark feeling is throwing a cloak over all the determination I had heading into today. I point at two girls on my floor. “I’m gonna go chat with them. You know, social studies and all that.”

  “I can’t believe you got to meet Marsh’s brother,” Yoshi shouts from my left. I can barely hear him over the cheering students and hyperactive marching-band drummers. “Jesse Collins is a legend here.”

  Hmm … something new to study up on.


  “Really? I had no idea.” My shouted conversation with Yoshi has lasted a full ten minutes, which is totally progress for me. I have a new mantra playing on repeat inside my head every time Yoshi or the two girls from my floor seated on my right side speak to me: be honest. Well, as honest as possible without revealing more than I want to reveal, without mentioning subjects that don’t pertain to the current conversation (another tip I snagged from Marshall, which is especially helpful when I’m about to dive into my nervous habit of reciting random facts).

  “Seriously,” Yoshi says, “he’s the fastest wide receiver NIU has ever had.”

  “We could use some of that speed right now.” I shake my head at the scoreboard, which proclaims our twenty-one-point deficit. “There were an unusually large amount of cars parked at the campus IHOP when I drove past this morning. I feel like the entire team hit the all-you-can-eat stacks before the game.”

  Both Yoshi and Lacey, the girl directly to my right, laugh. It takes a good bit of effort to hide the surprise on my face. They laughed at my joke. Not at me.

  Now what?

  I spot Kelsey down on the sidelines. She’s standing on one leg, on top of a guy’s hand, his arm extended high above his head. Her other leg is up by her ear. “God, how does she do that?”

  Yoshi’s gaze follows mine down to Kelsey. “I know. She’s a strong gust of wind away from face-planting, knocking all her teeth out.”

  “Is it me or is that cheer dude staring right up her skirt?” Lacey says.

  Both Yoshi and I lean to the left, around a tall girl in the row in front of us, to get a better view of the cheer guy on the bottom. “Definitely,” we say together. Before I can lean back into my own space, Yoshi tugs on the sleeve of my shirt and points at two people seated four rows down.

  “Look at Marsh,” he says, “snagging the blonde with the big rack.”

  I don’t need Yoshi to show me where our RA seated himself—or, more important, whom he seated himself with. “She’s barely a C-cup,” I say with a shrug.

  Yoshi flashes me a wicked grin, his eyebrows shooting up. “Trust me, she’s a C. And you are totally jealous.”

  I force my gaze away from him and back to the field. The other team has just scored three more points, and people around me are booing and shouting out profanities even I’ve never heard before. “True, I’m a B-cup. And who doesn’t want to have a little more cleavage every once in a while? According to Cosmo this month, a C-cup allows a female to be able to pull off thirty percent more of today’s fashion trends.”

  Fahima, the other girl from my floor, leans around Lacey and says, “If that’s true, then why are models so fucking skinny and flat-chested?”

  Fahima’s sporting double D’s. Maybe E’s.

  From the corner of my eye, I catch Yoshi staring at the large amount of exposed flesh Fahima’s flashing as she leans forward in her V-neck. I grab his face with one hand and tilt his chin toward the sky. “Eyes up, buddy.”

  Both girls laugh, but Fahima sits back, quickly adjusting her top, and Yoshi turns a bright shade of pink. His gaze returns to the game. “Sorry,” he says, only loud enough for me to hear. “It’s like Tourette’s sometimes. The more I repeat ‘Don’t look at her boobs’ to myself, the more I look.”

  I can totally relate. Though Fahima’s boobs aren’t of much interest to me, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from swabbing Kelsey’s one-night stand for microscopic study. I’d say staring at breasts is probably way more socially accepted than my faults.

  “There’s been a bunch of studies proving that staring at well-endowed female breasts is medically beneficial for the men who do it.” The words slip out before I can stop them. I know that’s a very Dr. Isabel Jenkins thing to say, but luckily Yoshi laughs, rubbing his hands over his face, like he’s trying to wash away the pink.

  “Seriously?”

  I nod. “Dead serious. Ten minutes of eyeing some pretty cleavage is equal to a thirty-minute cardiovascular workout. Sexual arousal is good for the heart and circulation.”

  “Those are some pretty strange studies. Probably a bunch of pervs who want an excuse to be rude.” He glances at me and then back at the game. “And your diversion tactics are pretty sick. By sick, I mean good.”

  I stare at him blankly. “What diversion tactics?”

  “You never really answered my question about being jealous of Mr. RA down there.” He nods toward Marshall and the blonde again. I swear, even if I ever learn her name, I’m not going to be able to call her anything but “the blonde.”

  Since I’ve got that be honest mantra going on, I zip my lips. “I plead the Fifth.”

  There’s a tap on my shoulder and both Yoshi and I turn around. Joe Longfield, the bee sting guy from boot camp class, is standing behind us holding hands with a redheaded girl. “I spotted you from five rows up,” Joe says at the same time I notice the fact that they’re hovering in front of two people. “I haven’t been back to class since … well, you know.”

  Now that he’s not suffocating to death because of his body’s autoimmune reaction to bee venom, he looks pretty embarrassed. The girl he’s holding hands with interrupts. “He’s attempting to say thanks for saving his life.” She rolls her eyes, but there’s too much affection flowing between them to believe she’s annoyed in the least bit. “Joe completely blanked about his EpiPen, and if you hadn’t been there …”

  “I’ve never even used it before,” Joe says.

  There have only been a couple of occasions when I’ve found myself in a situation where I might potentially receive some form of gratitude from a patient, and I hate it more than I hate Kelsey’s psychobabble and Justin’s superior bedside manner. I get this awkward string of responses bubbling up in my throat, and never once do I say the right thing.

  “You can practice on an orange,” I suggest to Joe. “I did that in—” I’d started to say med school, but luckily stopped myself. “I mean, I saw it in a YouTube video.”

  The girlfriend gives him a stern look. “You are so doing that, Joe. I will kick your ass if you die from a fucking bee sting.”

  Just then NIU manages to score a touchdown, everybody’s on their feet, and Joe and his girlfriend return to their seats. I release the biggest sigh of relief and shake the awkward tension from my arms.

  Not only are Yoshi, Evan, Lacey, and Fahima watching me carefully, trying to figure out what that interaction was all about, but when I glance forward I feel Marshall’s eyes on me, too. The honesty mantra replays itself. I shake my head. “What? All I did was stab the guy with an EpiPen. Those things are made for preschoolers to use on themselves.”

  “I went out with a girl in high school who had a peanut allergy,” Yoshi says. “I think I gave myself an ulcer from constantly worrying about what I ate before sticking my tongue down her throat. Talk about high maintenance.”

  Lacey leans over me and glares at Yoshi. “Medical conditions do not fall under the high-maintenance category, you asshat.”

  Yoshi shrugs. “I was fourteen. I decided basketball was much less complicated than girls, let alone girls with deadly allergies.”

  I sit back in my chair, stretching my legs in front of me and drawing in a slow, deep breath. I’m doing this. I’m really doing this. Normal conversation. Well, close to normal. Nobody looks disturbed by some of the unusual topics we’ve explored today. Though Evan has been mostly talking football with the guy on his other side, so he’s been out of our loop, and since he’s the one I made such an awesome first impression with by diagnosing his herpes, I’m not quite ready to give myself an A+ in social studies. Maybe a B+.

  Marshall catches my eye all the way from four rows down. I hold his gaze for several seconds, and then he gives me that sexy half smile and a nod of approval. And even though Marshall has been my diversion from trying to fit in, I can’t help but feel this swell of pride. There’s no denying the fact that I care what he thinks. That maybe I care about him.

  Chapter 13

  “I
hate my name,” Fahima says, stumbling into me and reeking of cheap beer.

  The party Jesse insisted I attend is much cleaner and more civil than I had imagined, but now that midnight has nearly arrived (and we started right after the game, so before 5:00 p.m.), things are taking a sharp turn toward drunk and disorderly.

  “Why?” I ask, though I doubt she’s in any condition to have a real discussion on the matter. “It means ‘quick-witted.’ What’s wrong with that?”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Yoshi asks.

  He’s sitting on one side of me, on the bench that wraps around the deck of this house. I’m not sure who the house’s owner is. I’ve only seen Jesse or Marshall in short bursts throughout the night. And we left for a little while to get pizza. The house is very nice and just barely off campus. I’m thinking maybe it belongs to an alumnus, because there doesn’t appear to be many underclassmen besides us here.

  I shrug and focus on the back door, where Kelsey is stepping through, carrying two cans of beer. “Don’t know. I guess I just like to memorize weird stuff.”

  Not untrue at all.

  Yoshi’s already got an arm around the bench behind me, though he hasn’t made any move to touch me, but I sense it coming as his blood alcohol level rises. Sure enough, his fingers take hold of a strand of my hair and study it like it’s some odd piece of clothing. “I think it’s kind of hot.”

  I lean back a bit, toward Fahima. “It’s only sixty-eight degrees. Maybe it’s those shots of whiskey you just drank?”

  Yoshi laughs. “No, I mean your random fact-reciting skills. That’s what’s hot.”

  The screech of Kelsey’s heavy chair being dragged across the deck and turned to face our group prevents me from having to respond to that awkward comment. She hands me one of the cans and sits down. I open it but take only a tiny sip. It’s my third, so I might be hitting the limit.

  “Did I hear right? Izzy’s making you all hot and bothered with her knowledge of strange things?” Kelsey says.