by Claire Adams
“What’s up, Jax?” I asked with a smile. I was terrified that he would say that I was off the team—that they had too many girls, or that the team itself had decided I just wasn’t quite good enough.
“Got a ride back to campus?” he asked. I shrugged, looking over at the brother who had driven me to the practice in the first place.
“If you’re offering?”.
Jaxon laughed “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t offering.”
“I’ll catch a ride back with Jaxon,” I called out to Ben. He shrugged and headed for the exit.
Jaxon walked out to his car with me, glancing down to see me hobbling slightly. My legs were not quite up to the demands of a lot of practice just yet—but I was going to make sure that they got up to it as soon as humanly possible. “Gonna have to toughen up,” he said with a little grin.
“Yeah, well, I’m out of practice, but I still shredded.” Jaxon laughed out loud.
“Nearly face-planted after that first half-cab,” he pointed out.
“I didn’t know the action on that track. Maybe I should’ve gone safe—but would you have noticed me if I had?” Jaxon’s bright eyes were sparkling as he grinned slowly.
“I already noticed you, stupid,” he said, reaching out and tousling my hair. I couldn’t help feeling just a little tingle work its way down my spine at it, but I told myself it was nothing.
“Right—well, you probably wouldn’t have let me on the team if I didn’t try to go big. Besides, I landed that same move the next time I went on the track just fine.”
“Gonna have to work hard, can’t have you pulling us down,” Jaxon said, but he was still smiling, his eyes full of mischief.
“I not only won’t pull you down, I’ll do better than you in our first competition, just you see.” Jaxon extended his hand on me.
“You do better than me at the first comp; I’ll buy you a bottle of whiskey to celebrate with.”
“Done.”
“Don’t you want to know what will happen if I do better than you?” I shrugged.
“It won’t happen so it doesn’t matter.” Jaxon rolled his eyes, grinning.
“Get in the car,” he said, gesturing to the passenger side. I threw my gear into the trunk next to his and got in.
CHAPTER 4
After the first practice, when I got onto the team, I noticed that Jaxon’s demeanor towards me changed; when I hung out at the frat house he noticed me more often—but I figured at first that it was just because I was on the team. But it was obvious as the week went on that he was actually seeking me out on campus; and he ramped up the flirting in a big way.
When I was walking to the dining hall from one of my classes, starving and more than ready for lunch—even if what the dining hall put out could not, strictly speaking, be considered food all the time—he ran up behind me and called out my name before pulling the hood on my hoodie over my head. “Big improvement,” he said with a grin. “You look like way less of a babe this way.” I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t you want me to look like a babe? I could distract the other teams that way.” Jaxon laughed.
“Yeah, but you’d be distracting your own team while you were at it. That’s it, Mia: from now on you have to wear a hoodie or a beanie any time you come to practice.”
“You’re just worried I’ll beat your score in the first comp.”
“Hey, if you can beat me, I will buy you two bottles of whiskey.”
“Upping the ante, are we, Jax? That’s not wise if I’m such a distraction.”
“I can use the distraction. I’m not like those guys you dangle at the end of your hook in the Tau Delta frat.” I snickered. It was kind of true; I was friends with the Phi Kappa boys, but at one of the frat mixers a group of Tau Delta Epsilon guys had noticed me. Tau Delta was made up almost exclusively of tech guys, nerds who were not all that unattractive, and who were definitely doing better in their math classes than I was doing in mine. I’d used it to my advantage more than once already in the semester, convincing one of them to help me out with free tutoring in Pre-cal.
“I do not dangle them at the end of my hook!” I said, just to be contrary. “I can’t help it if they’re in love with me.”
“You could wear the hoodie around them; see how much free help you get then.”
“I will get just as much because they will see me for the stunning beauty I truly am.”
When we were around the other guys, Jaxon didn’t flirt with me as obviously, still treating me like one of the guys—which was at least a lot more comfortable and what I was used to. I got to hear chapter and verse about the girls in the sister sorority to Phi Kappa, and told them they were all crazy—Jaxon included—for thinking any of the girls had any intention of just hooking up with them. “Look guys, it’s simple,” I said, shaking my head. “They wouldn’t have joined that particular sorority if they didn’t think they’d snag themselves a hot guy they could get their hooks into.” Jeremy agreed with me.
“She’s got a point, there are lots of sororities—and anyone can see they’re totally into us.”
“Yeah, but they like hookups just as much as we do.”
“They think they’re going to not just hook up but hook you,” I insisted. Someone changed the subject to the most recent Preds game and I was back on normal guy footing once more. Everything was how it was supposed to be.
It bothered me a little bit that when we were with the rest of the frat, Jaxon didn’t make a move to flirt with me—but when we ran into each other on campus, he would touch me; tousle my hair, poke my ribs, he even picked me up and slung me over his shoulder once when I told him I didn’t want to go to the frat until I’d had a chance to shower. Everything had changed between us, but only when we weren’t among the other guys. I shook it off as best as I could; I figured he didn’t mean anything about it, it was just a matter of practicing his skills. I flirted back—stealing his hat, or jumping onto his back and demanding a piggyback ride, responding to his little comments about how hot I was—but I reminded myself over and over again not to expect anything to come from it. After all, if he had any intention of doing anything with me, he would have told the rest of the guys that I was off-limits, and there were still some of the members of the frat who flirted on occasion.
The thing I was most afraid of was that if anything ever went farther than flirting between me and Jaxon, it would ruin all of the friendships I had in Phi Kappa. The last thing I wanted to have happen was that things would suddenly get weird, and I would lose my spot in their midst as just another one of the guys. If Jaxon slept with me, or even if he dated me, and things didn’t work out—and I knew well enough that it would be easy for things not to work out—everything would get awkward. I could technically still go to parties, and still hang out in the frat house, but the guys would feel weird around me. I felt comfortable around the Phi Kappa guys—I didn’t want to have to change the group I hung out with just because things had gone weird with Jaxon.
And anyway, just because he was flirting didn’t mean he had any intention of doing anything about it. I told myself every time it happened that I’d seen Jaxon flirt with tons of girls that he never even tried to kiss; he was the kind of guy who flirted as readily as he breathed. If I read something into every little remark he made or every time he touched me, I’d be as crazy as any of the girls in the sororities who insisted that so-and-so was totally into them because they hooked up at a party. I would just accept that Jaxon was that way, and that since I was a girl—in spite of being treated like a guy—he flirted. I couldn’t make myself take anything that happened seriously, because I had no proof—not even a hint—that Jaxon meant any of it seriously. It was all fun, all playing around.
Nothing changed among the guys at the frat, and I still went over as often as I could to catch a game or just to hang out and play cards, or study. It wasn’t as quiet as the library, but I didn’t particularly like to study in a quiet place; I liked to have some background noise. When
I went to the gym to work out, or went out onto the court to join in a pickup game, everything was the way it had always been, and I would take that over having a shot at a guy like Jaxon any day of the week.
CHAPTER 5
After the second and third practices, it got harder to think that Jaxon didn’t have any kind of intentions at all towards me. It seemed like whenever I wasn’t in the middle of the group of guys I normally hung out with at the frat, Jaxon managed to find me and we ended up hanging out together. He asked me about my classes and teased me about getting more tutoring help. I was good in English and History but horrible in Pre-Calculus and Biology—and he taunted me over and over again about taking advantage of the Tau Delta boys by asking them for help. He offered to help me out in Bio after class, running into me seemingly by accident as he was leaving one of his professors’ office hours appointments. “You know, I got straight As in Bio,” he told me, reaching out and tweaking at one of my braids. “So you can stay in your normal couch potato position and not go running off to Kenny over at Tau Delta—I got you covered.”
“I’ll have to see your transcripts for proof, because I can’t believe you put in enough work on any subject to make straight As,” I told him, tugging my braid free of his fingertips with a grin.
“I will show you proof, come on; let’s go to the computer lab and you will see that I am the all-time Phi Kappa master of biology.” He pulled me into the closest lab room and dragged me over to the computer, where he logged into his account and pulled up his transcripts. True to his word, he’d managed an A on all of the major assignments.
“Okay, so you did well in Bio. I suppose I could let you tutor me.” He lifted me up onto his shoulder and carried me across campus like that, dragging me all the way to the frat house and not putting me down on my feet until we’d gotten to the mailbox outside.
It would have seemed weird if he started talking to me like a normal girl; he spotted me at the gym and we talked about hockey or football or even basketball, sizing up each other’s favorite teams, trash-talking just like we always did. In practices for the snowboarding team he seemed to always be on hand when I flubbed a trick or botched a landing, giving me advice on how to do it better and cheering me on when I tried it again. After one practice, where I’d twisted my ankle, he carried me out to his car and then into the frat house, rolling his eyes as the rest of the guys hooted and hollered; he dumped me on the couch and went into the kitchen to grab me an ice pack. “You should sleep here,” he suggested. “Don’t want you walking across campus with your ankle messed up like that.”
He got me through a big Bio test, quizzing me on the parts of the cell until I could have recited them in my sleep, and he had an uncanny knack for knowing what drinks I liked when I would party it up with the guys—but in every other respect it was just the way it had always been, and after weeks of flirting with nothing happening, I had to assume it was just Jax’s way of being friends. It wasn’t as though he didn’t help out the other guys on their own tests, and the other members of the team got treated almost the same as I did whenever they got injured in practice. But I couldn’t help noticing that we were spending more and more time together.
After the night I spent on the Phi Kappa couch, sleeping with my ankle wrapped in someone’s enormous tee shirt, Jaxon walked me to my first class using the excuse that he wanted to be able to carry me to the campus nurse if I looked too shaky. “Can’t have you making your ankle worse when you have practice next week, and you end up not mastering your Wildcat because you had to take time off,” he told me. He broke off to go to the dining hall and I didn’t see him the rest of the day, but the next day he managed to catch up to me on the way to the same class.
“Do you even have anywhere to be this stupid hour of the morning?” Jaxon shrugged.
“I was going to hit the gym anyway; I just don’t really like walking alone.” Since I didn’t really enjoy it myself, I was happy for the company.
By the next week, he was walking with me to all of my classes, meeting me on the quad or catching me as I went past the dining hall. I never figured out how he knew when and where my classes were, but I must have told him at some point while we were hanging out; I couldn’t think of any other way. But it was nice to have someone to walk with and talk to, especially in my early morning classes—when half the campus was still asleep. “I don’t know why you picked classes at eight in the morning,” Jaxon said, shaking his head as he walked next to me across the campus to English.
“Because that way I get them over with before all the good games are on,” I countered, feeling sleepy and still a little irritable.
“Good point,” Jaxon said with a grin. “But it’s no wonder you’re struggling in Bio if you have to make your brain work on a Monday at 8:30. I can’t even understand how you’re passing at all.”
“I have natural genius and several excellent tutors.” Jaxon pretend-scowled at me.
“Hey, are you cheating on me with other tutors?” He pretended to pout. I rolled my eyes.
“We don’t have an exclusive agreement, Jaxon, and anyway why would I go to anyone else when I have you?” I stuck my tongue out at him.
Apart from the flirting, it was absolutely normal: talking about sports, the latest gear and upgrades for our boards, different techniques for working out. I couldn’t really get what was going on between us, but I told myself that it was just one of those things. Jaxon liked me well enough to hang out, and he flirted naturally, so in spite of the fact that I was spending more and more time with him, there was nothing I could point to and say that he was interested in me.
I’d even seen him flirting it up with a girl at a party, disappearing into his room for at least thirty minutes before he appeared—the girl never turned up again, though; I suspected she either passed out on his bed or snuck out after the hook up and I just didn’t see. If he was hooking up with girls, he couldn’t possibly be all that interested in me. It obviously wasn’t a matter of him being too shy to make a move—he wasn’t shy about making a move on anyone. So I appreciated the company on my way to classes and the help in the gym and on the practice track and assumed that it was all there was to it. I wasn’t going to just be some stupid girl hanging on his every word, especially if there were plenty of other guys who were obviously interested in me. I didn’t go after any of them, but I didn’t rule any of them out either, even though I hesitated—just a little bit—to go for any of the other guys in the frat, because it would make things weird between me and Jax.
CHAPTER 6
If I hadn’t gotten used to hanging out with Jaxon, it would have been at least a little bit weird to find myself on the couch in the Phi Kappa living room, all alone, watching the game with him. There had been a few guys hanging out before, but the game wasn’t really all that interesting. It was Patriots at Ravens, but it really wasn’t very thrilling at all—even I had to admit that. “You know, I feel like the really big teams just aren’t as much fun to watch,” I said to Jaxon. He shrugged.
“Sometimes if you get two really well-matched teams it’s good, though.” I made a face.
“Well you either end up getting a shut-out game or it’s like this, no one really scoring, no one really advancing. It’s a total snooze-fest.” The few guys who had been hanging out to watch the game had gone off on a beer run; they’d run out before the game even got properly started, and Fred commented that with a game that boring you needed plenty of alcohol to make it interesting. Everyone had piled into one of the cars to head to the grocery store; only Jaxon and I had stayed behind. I had noticed that Jaxon had looked in my direction when the guys invited me to pile in with them—“You’re tiny enough to sit on someone’s lap, it’ll be fine,” Jeremy had said, giving me a suggestive leer. I just shrugged and said that after the Pre-Cal exam I’d taken that afternoon, I wanted nothing more than to sit on the couch and watch TV. Jaxon said that he was watching the game to make sure the buddy he’d placed a bet with wouldn’t try an
d welsh on him, and everyone had just accepted it and left.
I was thinking that, even if I didn’t think Jaxon was interested in me as a girlfriend or anything like that, he clearly wanted to hang out with me. I didn’t know what to think about that; it was back and forth, constantly, in my brain—so frustrating that more than once I’d almost decided to just start turning down invitations to hang out. “What do you think about the team making a trip out to the mountains next week? They say there’s going to be pretty decent snow, and it’d be good to get some time in the actual elements.”
“If we get the snow, then I’d say it’d be great. It’s not that far, and I’m better on actual snow anyway.” Jaxon nodded.
“I’ll ask the others what they think. I want us to have as much of an edge going into the first competitions as possible. The more points we can get early on the better our overall score will be.” We started talking about the game, arguing about a call—I thought the ref was totally blind; Jaxon took the position that it was valid. The game went to commercials and we kept it up through the first one or two—but then it fizzled as we both laughed at a stupid commercial for an insurance company.
We fell into a comfortable silence, and I was thinking about the option that Jaxon had mentioned—hitting a mountain to get practical experience in—when I saw him stretching against the back of my couch in my peripheral vision. He pushed his arms over his head, yawning a little bit, and I was surprised and not surprised all at the same time when I saw him look around to make sure no one was watching, and then drop his arm on the back of the couch, along my shoulders. I looked at him with a grin, raising my eyebrow as he pulled me just slightly closer to him on the seat, his hand resting against my arm.
I snickered, shaking my head. “Dude, that is the oldest, lamest trick in the book.” Jaxon glanced at me like he was surprised to find that his arm was around me, and grinned.