The Wrong Way: Hanson University: One

by McKenna Kerrick

  “I was mad.”

  “Then throw your cowboy boot like a sane person. You won't get hurt that way. And aim accordingly.”

  I should've thought of that. Cowboy boots are excellent projectiles. And definitely wouldn't have resulted in a clinic visit. Well, not for me at least.

  “Today is going to be great,” Nina hums. “I'm living vicariously through you.”

  “But you already have a boyfriend.”

  “Exactly. I'm used to him. I need someone else to fuss over.”

  I scoff at her. “And you decided it needs to be me?”

  “You're the one going around making out with the university's manwhore, I can't help it if your life is more interesting than mine.”

  Dear Lord. I'm kissing a guy that probably over half the campus has kissed. Something that brings me back to that conversation right before the whole date night at the Union thing Ian set up, on if I met a manwhore and liked him. Would it bother me? Yeah, it still does.

  “Uh-oh. I see the wheels turning and the look of terror. Sit down,” Nina points to the couch. “What's going on in that head of yours?”

  “I don't think I could be with Killian.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you know how many people he's kissed?” I tell her in a high, panicky voice. “There's no way I could measure up to all of them.”

  “Woah, okay. You need to put a lid on this freak out you've got going on because you're being insane. You don't have to measure up to anyone, Lila. That was the whole point. You are the highest measure he's been looking for.”

  I narrow my eyes at her.

  “It's true,” she insists. “How many of those girls do you think actually could amount to something in his life? The answer’s none, because if any of them had, then everyone would know about it.”

  She makes a valid point, but I’m still having trouble accepting it. Falling for your best friend wasn’t in my game plan. Hell, I don’t even know what was in my game plan, but this was so far from what I would expect.

  And it was driving me insane.

  “He’s driving me crazy,” I mumble my previous thought aloud.

  “Yeah, well, he wouldn’t be Killian if he wasn’t.”

  Isn’t that the truth.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Killian

  It should not be this difficult to talk to a girl.

  I have never in my life had a problem talking to a girl. Except that one time I popped Lila’s favorite Barbie’s head off and buried it in the backyard and mom made me dig it up and apologize.

  Beyond that day, I can't recall any other time I've had trouble speaking to a girl.

  Except right now.

  Lila pulls on the straw that's buried in her milkshake as she takes a long pull. She looks just as nervous as I do. I thought going to the ice cream parlor would somehow keep me relaxed, boy was I wrong.

  How the hell does one go about asking their best friend to be their girlfriend? Because I haven't got a damn clue.

  You'd think it'd be easy, having known her almost all my life. But right now, I'm sweating bullets and tapping my boot under the table since I can't seem to sit still.

  Lila pops the straw out of her mouth and leans back in her seat across from me. She looks so beautiful in her jeans and plain t-shirt. Much more real than all the other girls who come up to me.

  “So,” Lila says slowly, “you got me a milkshake.”

  I nod my head like a dumbass since my voice decided to quit working on me.

  “Look, Killian,” she shifts in her seat looking uncomfortable.

  Shit, she's going to tell me she doesn't want to do this.

  “I don't know if I can date you,” she sighs.

  Yup. I feel my heart split in two, half choking off air in my throat and the other piece churning my stomach.

  “I just need a boyfriend-break.”

  Which is exactly what Ian and Alex told me to give her before I shot that plan to hell by kissing her.

  “So maybe, if you're being serious, we could just go slow? I don't know.” Lila puckers her brow. “Date without dating.”

  I stare at her. That was...not what I was expecting in the slightest to come out of her mouth. And now I'm really pissed that I can't seem to come up with a response.

  “If not, that's fine, too,” Lila rushes on. “We can pretend this never happened if you prefer.”

  “No!” I cringe at the loudness of my voice. A voice that finally wants to fucking work. “You want to date without dating? Like a booty call?” I frown at Lila. “I'm not okay with treating you like that.”

  “I think I need to just go in slowly is all.”

  Slow? Okay, I can do slow with Lila. “Alright.” I lean back in my own seat and fold my arms across my chest. “That's fine with me.”

  Lila raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Seriously?”

  “What? Did you think I was going to pass up the opportunity to date the perfect girl?” I frown.

  Lila shakes her head. “No. I was more expecting you to tell me you just wanted a hook up.”

  Uh, that would be a hell no. She really hasn't been paying attention at all. Clearly, I'm far more ahead of her in realizing just how much I want her. Maybe she needs to go slow to catch up, and that's fine by me.

  This is happening.

  “I don't want to hook up with anyone anymore,” I shrug.

  “Okay, so,” Lila shifts in her seat again. “We’re doing this.”

  It's not a question and suddenly everything inside of me rights itself. “Yes.”

  “Just to be clear, while we're doing whatever it is we're doing, don't,” she winces, “do it with anyone else.”

  “Gee, that sounds like a hardship,” I tease. Leaning across the table, I snag Lila’s petite hand in mine and fiddle with her fingers. “I'm not going to mess around with anyone else. I haven't done the exclusive thing in awhile, and I'll probably drive you nuts, but I want this.”

  “It just seems so out of the blue,” Lila says while tightening her fingers around mine. “You know, one moment we're joking around and the next, I don't know, I wasn't expecting you.”

  “Why not? I'm a catch,” I grin. “But I get what you mean. The guys have been giving me hell about it.”

  Lila raises her eyebrows again.

  I let go of her hand to shift in my seat. Shit, might as well tell her. “The guys kind of know. When I said I wanted someone who didn't give a damn about my name, they started telling me I had you. And I finally caught on that they were right.”

  “This is so weird.”

  “Your mother’s going to flip,” I snort, then frown. “Hell, my mom is going to flip.”

  “We have to tell our parents?” Lila’s eyes go comically wide. “I don't know about that.”

  “Why not?”

  “What if something goes wrong and we aren't friends anymore? That's going to make their life difficult, and ours.”

  “First off, if this doesn't work, we’ll still be friends regardless. Never doubt that. It might be awkward at first, but we’ll get through it. And second of all, our moms will deal with it if it comes to that. Otherwise, we’ll be in more trouble keeping it from them.”

  Lila laughs softly. “Yeah, they’d definitely be mad that we kept it from them.”

  Then something occurs to me that twists my insides. “So what do I call you? Because you don’t want to be boyfriend-girlfriend.”

  “Oh,” she frowns a little, too. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “We’ll just say we’re seeing each other,” I suggest. “That seems like a good starting place. I mean, it’s nobody else’s business but ours anyways.”

  “Okay,” she agrees, and everything inside of me stops tensing up. “Nina is going to flip out.”

  “Probably.”

  “And drive me insane.”

  “That’s a given,” I snort. “She’s got your back, though. Can’t fault her for being happy for you.”

  “Oh
yeah,” Lila rolls her eyes. “So happy that I get to date the Killian Blane. You realize I will probably never talk to you about football, right?”

  “I know,” I sigh dramatically and look up at the popcorn ceiling. “I ruined football for you when we were kids. To be fair, I didn’t know how long football would go on for. So it’s not all my fault.”

  “You kept playing.”

  “Okay, so it’s partially my fault.” I grin over at her, but she’s staring down at her injured arm. “Everything okay?”

  “It just hurts.”

  “That’ll happen when you hit people.”

  “Really?” she grumbles sarcastically. “I had no idea.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say and slide out of the booth. Her milkshake only has a tiny glob left in the bottom, and I finished mine almost the second we sat down.

  Lila stands up next to me and I slip her hand in mine, tugging until she’s following me out into the parking lot. We get settled in my old truck, before I turn on the radio and pull out. Neither of us says anything, but it’s not awkward. Almost a peaceful kind of quiet. Something that makes me feel like whatever this is, wherever it’s going, we’ll be just fine.

  Once we’re back to the apartment complex, I unlock my door for her to step in before me. How many times have I done this before with faceless women? Far too many to count.

  “Is this the part where you attack me?” Lila asks.

  I’m too caught up in my own thoughts of treating her right, that she catches me off guard. “What?”

  “You know, shove me against a wall, kiss me. That sort of thing. Isn’t that what you normally do?”

  What I normally do, yeah. “Uh, no.”

  Lila raises her sun-kissed eyebrows at me.

  “I’m not shoving you against my door to kiss you.”

  She looks from me, to the door, and back again. “I can’t decide if you’re being admirable or messing with me.”

  I point at the closed door behind me. “I am not trying to hook up with you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Jesus,” I run my hands through my hair. “Is that what you think this is?”

  “I thought that was going to part of the game plan.” She looks awful uncomfortable standing there having this conversation, but I’m too shocked to move this further inside. “You know, the whole Killian Blane experience.”

  “Lila,” I warn.

  “I know, I don’t want to be like them,” she quickly adds. “And I don’t want you to think of me like them. But I guess I was sort’ve anticipating on you kissing me when we got here.” She waves her good hand at me. “And you’re just over there...not.”

  “You want me to kiss you?” I must be reverting back to when I was in middle school, trying to figure out how girls’ brains worked.

  “If you want to.”

  My God, I must be losing my game if she was wondering this. She’s got me all tied up in knots and doesn’t even know it.

  “You don't have to,” Lila continues when I don't respond.

  Yes, yes I do. I walk towards her, watching her eyes get bigger as I get closer, before I'm able to wrap one arm around her waist and haul her towards me. I'm careful of the arm still wrapped in the ugly black plastic and bend my head down until I'm eye-level with her.

  She doesn't make a sound, just staring at me like I'm taking over her whole world. And damn if that doesn't make me feel like I could hang the moon for her.

  “I do want to kiss you,” I tell her. “But attacking you first thing didn't seem like a good plan. I'm trying to go slow, remember? Trying to be a gentleman.”

  “You've never been a gentleman,” Lila smirks. “You once purposely shut a door in my face so I couldn't hang out with you.”

  “You were cramping my style.”

  That causes Lila to roll her eyes.

  “Actually, I shut the door in your face because I heard you had a thing for Matthew Verch and it pissed me off,” I clarify.

  “What?”

  “He was an asshole,” I say defensively. “And I needed to have a talk with him about his asshole ways.”

  “You're ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, but it worked,” I grin. “You never went out with him.”

  Lila snorts. “No thanks to you.”

  “Please, like you would've made it with him. He doesn't know the word faithful at all. I'm not even sure he's aware that monogamy is a real thing.”

  “Killian,” she says, pulling me from my little rant.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I thought you were going to kiss me, not talk to me about how terrible a person Matthew is.”

  “But he is a terrible person,” I insist with a smile. “And I got you, which makes me the luckiest person.”

  Killian,” she groans, but I'm already moving closer.

  If someone would have told me a month ago that I would be standing in my front hallway, having Lila wrapped in my arms, and that I would be kissing her, there's no way that I would've believed them.

  But I pull her bottom lip in, and that forever smell of vanilla is assaulting my nose in the best way. She tastes like a mixture of vanilla milkshake and the most heavenly cupcake.

  I might be getting high from this. Goosebumps break out across my arms, sending my nerve endings into overdrive. Every part of me feels like it's vibrating all at once.

  There's no comparison to be made. Kissing Lila is the only thing that I remember, the only feeling that matters right now. Everything else doesn't exist.

  I'm not ready to pull away, not ready for this spell I'm under to suddenly shatter, but if this keeps going then I don't know if I can stop.

  She looks dazed as I pull away slightly. Her cheeks pink, lips swollen, and eyes still shut. When suddenly, she blinks and I'm met with the soulful color of gunmetal eyes staring back at me.

  “There,” I murmur and frame her face with my hands, “you got your kiss.”

  “Wow,” she sounds so far away, like she's riding down on cloud nine.

  And that makes me smirk. I put that look of desire on her face. Not Jared the douche or Bradley the wannabe emo, but me. “Well?”

  Lila blinks slowly, coming out of a haze. “Well, what?”

  “Was it better than you imagined?” I ask.

  “You had to go and ruin it,” Lila rolls her eyes. “We couldn't be normal.”

  “Nothing about this is normal. And what do you mean we couldn't be normal? We are.”

  “You just ruined it by talking.” She pokes her finger in my chest to drive her point home.

  “Gee, sorry,” I snort. “What else was I supposed to do? Stare at you awkwardly like in one of your Disney movies?”

  “No,” she laughs.

  See? This isn't a disaster at all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lila

  “I don't know,” I repeat.

  Killian smirks next to me, leaning back on his hands in the middle of the only grassy lot on campus. The football team decided to have a picnic today after their game.

  Which was supposed to be a small gathering. But then Alex had to go grab the microphone from one of the student announcers and tell the whole damn stadium there was a party happening.

  “No, I want to know!” Ian frowns. “You can't keep something like this a secret. It's not nice.”

  “It's not not nice, it's just none of your business,” I shrug.

  “Is she refusing to tell you they're dating, too?” Nina flops down on the blanket next to Ian. “She wouldn't tell me either.”

  “Liar,” I laugh. “I did too tell you.”

  “Well, then I didn't like your answer,” Nina sticks out her tongue. “So you need to change it.”

  “Wait a minute, what was the answer she gave you?” Ian demands. “She won't tell me anything.”

  Nina lifts her fingers to do air quotes. “They're ‘going slow’ apparently. Whatever that means.”

  “It means we're going slow,” Killian rolls
his eyes. “I don't get how that's so hard to comprehend.”

  “Because I was hoping you'd do better,” Nina scowls at Killian.

  “You told me to go slow!” I point at her.

  “Like you ever listen to me,” Nina gapes. “And your boy toy was supposed to ask you out like a proper gentleman.”

  I glance at Killian and he winks at me.

  “What was that?” Nina shoves Ian's shoulder. “Did you just see him wink at her?”

  “So you're not dating?” Ian asks, ignoring Nina.

  “We’re not not dating,” I say.

  Ian scrubs one hand over his face. “I fucking hate whatever word game you're playing with me. It's not fun.”

  I stick my tongue out at the poor wide receiver. “You'll survive.”

  “Your girl sucks, man,” Ian shakes his head at Killian.

  “Yeah, but she's mine. So she only sucks to you,” Killian laughs.

  “Where's Alex at?” Nina looks around the massive crowd.

  There was no way this party wouldn't be ten times this big if Alex hadn't opened his mouth. And now it's starting to turn into what I would imagine Times Square looks like on New Year's Eve.

  “Not sure,” Ian says and ducks his head down to look off towards the pond. “I wonder if they'd stop playing water chicken out there if they knew the zoology department lost a baby alligator.”

  “There's a baby alligator on the loose?” I gape.

  “Yeah,” Ian waves it off. “I mean, he's just a baby. They lost the boa constrictor last month and no one even knew until they caught it.”

  “They lost a snake?” Nina gulps, looking far too pale. “Maybe they should just get rid of the zoology department until they learn to not lose their animals.”

  “Reptiles,” I correct her. “But yeah, fully agree.”

  “Am I the only one who kind of wishes the baby alligator would appear and sneak up on them?” Killian asks, gesturing to the two girls in very little clothing shoving one another in the pond.

  “Already so anti your harem of women?” Nina asks.

  “What can I say? I'm good with what I've got,” Killian shrugs.