Make It Last

by Megan Erickson

  The crowd on the patio began to clap. And Cam whistled while Max hollered.

  When they came back to the table, Alec no longer looked nervous. He looked like he just won the lottery. Kat dropped into her seat, eyes on her ring. The round diamond sat on a yellow gold band. “It’s so beautiful.”

  Alec leaned over. “The gold is actually from my father’s ring. My mom let me have it and the jeweler melted it down for you.”

  Kat looked up at him with wide eyes and started crying harder. Alec wrapped her in his arms while she sobbed on his shoulder.

  Tate looked at Cam questioningly. “His father died when he was a kid.”

  Tate nodded and smiled knowingly at Alec over Kat’s head. He returned the smile.

  Max cleared his throat. “So, uh, I don’t wanna be a dick or anything—”

  “So that means you’re gonna be a dick,” Cam growled.

  “—but you kinda stole my thunder, man,” Max said with narrowed eyes.

  Kat leaned back and wiped her eyes while Alec stared at his friend. “What?”

  Max waved his hand. “Rockefeller Center. Hello, this is my romantic gesture.”

  Alec rolled his eyes. “You own fucking Rockefeller Center now?”

  “Just saying, this is kind of my thing. This is where I thought I’d get engaged.”

  Lea smacked Max on the head. “Will you shut up? Let them have their moment.” She leaned in closer to her boyfriend. “And what do you mean this is where you thought you’d get engaged? Who says I’ll say yes?”

  Max threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, doll, don’t even act like you’d turn me down.”

  “I might,” Lea said, her eyes all fire.

  Max’s hardened with determination. “You challenging me? Because I will plan the best engagement in the history of engagements.”

  “Yeah? What if I said I want to get engaged while listening to the London Philharmonic Orchestra and drinking South African wine?”

  “Done.”

  Lea’s chin tilted up. “On top of an elephant.”

  “I’ll bring the whole fucking circus, doll.”

  Alec reached over and waved a hand between them. “Shit, you two. Give it a rest.”

  Max leaned back but mouthed, This isn’t over to Lea.

  She smirked back.

  Tate decided she needed Lea to be her best friend.

  Alec smiled at Cam. “You gonna get the marriage fever now.”

  Cam laughed. “I think we’re just gonna live in sin for a little bit.”

  Max turned to Danica. “What about you? Going to make an honest woman out of somebody when you move out to California?”

  Tate raised her eyebrows at “woman.” Danica eyed Max over her glasses. “I don’t think marriage is my thing.”

  Alec shoved her shoulder gently. “Even if you don’t decide to get married, you’ll find someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

  Danica shrugged, and her gaze wandered to the fountain. “Maybe.”

  After chatting for another hour or so, and getting interrupted by strangers wishing Kat and Alec good luck, they all parted ways.

  Tate was sad to see Cam’s friends go and told him so as they began the walk to the train station. “Can we all get together again?”

  Cam smiled. “Sure, and hey, we have a wedding to attend now.”

  Tate frowned. “I need a dress.”

  Cam bumped her with his hip. “I think you got some time.”

  They bought Tate’s train ticket at the terminal and then took a seat at the station so they were ready when their train departed. Cam rolled his head on the back of his seat to face her and laced his fingers with hers. “When I propose, it’s not going to be in Rockefeller Center.”

  Tate laughed. “That’s quite all right.”

  He stared at their hands and rubbed his thumb in circles on her skin. “You know I wanna marry you though, right?”

  “With the house and dog and rain forest with the poison dart frogs?”

  He pressed a kiss to her lips. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  Chapter 23

  In Utope:

  CAM STOOD OUTSIDE their house with his hands on his hips. Months ago, they had razed the deadly rain forest in the backyard, donating the poison dart frogs to the zoo. Now, their backyard was fenced while a live Pinkie Pie grazed. He waved to the pony, and she grinned back. It was weird that a horse could grin. And it’d been one heck of a hack on the game to do it.

  He walked inside the house, his anxiety meter bordering on red.

  Everything had to be perfect. He had all their bags packed by the door. He called for Tate and she ran down the stairs with an extra backpack on her shoulder.

  He rolled his eyes and ushered her out of the house.

  They hopped in their yellow Jeep with the top down and cruised to a secluded spot to set up camp. They made s’mores over a fire and told ghost stories.

  And then, as Tate’s figure was silhouetted against the back of the fire, Cam got down on one knee and held up a huge diamond ring. He’d had to hack the fuck out of the game for this, too.

  Tate’s hands flew to her cheeks, and then she flapped her arms as little pixel tears streamed down her face. “Yes,” she screamed. She tackled him, and then their bodies blurred out because their clothes were no longer on. That was on the next hack list.

  CAM COCKED HIS head, listening for the footsteps. And there they were, flying up from the basement of the house he and Tate shared.

  He’d told her to open up the game console down in the basement, while he used the one upstairs in their bedroom. It might not be the most epic proposal. It might not be Rockefeller Center, but it was he and Tate.

  The door flew open and Tate stood there, her hair wild and wet around her head from her recent shower.

  “Are you fucking serious right now?”

  He pulled a box out from under his pillow on the bed. “As a fucking heart attack.”

  And then she tackled him in real life, and nothing was blurred when their clothes came off. And in the end, Tate wore nothing but a diamond ring and a smile and Cam thought it was the best she’d ever looked.

  The End

  Don’t miss any of Megan Erickson’s Bowler University series! Read on for a look at where it all began with

  Make It Count

  and

  Make It Right

  Make It Count

  Kat Caruso wishes her brain had a return policy, or at least a complaint hotline. The defective organ is constantly distracted, terrible at statistics, and absolutely flooded with inappropriate thoughts about her boyfriend’s gorgeous best friend, Alec . . . who just so happens to be her brand-new math tutor. Who knew nerds could be so hot?

  Kat usually goes through tutors like she does boyfriends—both always seem to bail when they realize how hopeless she is. It’s safer for her heart to keep everyone at arm’s length. But Alec is always stepping just a little too close.

  Alec Stone should not be fantasizing about Kat. She’s adorable, unbelievably witty, and completely off-limits. He’d never stab his best friend in the back . . .

  But when secrets are revealed, the lines of loyalty are blurred. To make it count, Alec must learn messy human emotions can’t be solved like a trigonometry function. And Kat has to trust that Alec may be the first guy to want her for who she is, and not in spite of it.

  KAT CHEWED ON her pen and studied her tutor’s bent head. Ashley’s shiny black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, held in place by a . . . scrunchie.

  Seriously? Was that really a sparkly teal scrunchie? Kat bit down harder on her pen in concentration. Did they even sell those anymore? The last time she’d seen one, she’d been six and wrapped it around her side ponytail, pretending to be Kelly Kapowski while watching Saved by the Bell reruns.

  Ashley droned on about something, and Kat yawned. She looked down at her notes but some of the words blurred, increasing her headache, so she gazed around
the library. Through the windows, the late-January wind rattled the bare trees.

  “Kat? Did you hear me?” Ashley’s voice needled into her ear.

  Kat snapped her head back. “Um . . . yeah?”

  Ashley slumped her shoulders with a sigh. “Look, I’m going to be honest here. I like you, okay? But I don’t think you’re getting anything out of these sessions. I think my time would be better spent with someone else.”

  Kat opened her mouth but then snapped her jaw shut. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard it before. Her inability to stay focused had annoyed plenty of tutors. Not to mention just about everyone else in her life. She jutted out her chin with as much confidence as she could muster. She’d find another tutor.

  “I think that’s a good idea, Ashley. I’d planned to say the same thing.” The lie came easily. “I’m doing better in statistics anyway, so I don’t need the help anymore.”

  Ashley raised an eyebrow while gathering her papers. “Okay, well, it was . . . nice to meet you.” She winced, as if it was painful to say, then waved meekly and left.

  Kat groaned softly. She was in the second semester of her sophomore year at Bowler University and already on academic probation. If she failed another course, she would be kicked out. This semester’s bane of her existence—statistics.

  She hated her brain. Absolutely hated the way it could never make sense of words and numbers on the page in front of her. How it wandered and couldn’t focus on one thing for very long. How it was to blame for the dumb blonde jokes that had followed her like an unfunny comedian her whole life.

  She wasn’t even blonde. Not really. She held up a wavy curl and picked at the ends. It was more like a light brown. Caramel. Or whiskey. With blonde highlights. Were those split ends? She needed a haircut, stat. And a root touch-up because her highlights were growing out. And maybe an eyebrow wax. There was that place over on Lexington that took walk-ins . . .

  Her cell phone vibrated on the table, announcing an incoming text message from her boyfriend. She swiped her thumb across the screen, automatically launching the text-to-speech app she’d downloaded after repeatedly reading her text messages incorrectly. She’d thought downloading it was genius at the time, until a clearly audible Your ass looks hot today text read in a sexy male Australian accent scandalized an unfortunate seventy-year-old at the drugstore.

  Luckily, this message was tame.

  Come over tonight.

  She muttered to herself, “And that’s an order, Private.” Would it kill him to type please? It was only an extra six letters.

  Max Payton didn’t know she had a tutor. He didn’t know much about her at all, really. But he was hot—really hot—and fun and as a junior, lived in a house off campus with his own room. And he liked to bake. Seriously, the man baked her chocolate-chip cookies. They were really good, too. When she asked him about the secret ingredient, he’d laughed and said flour. She was pretty sure he was making fun of her. But she’d learned at an early age to pretend mocking was just teasing.

  She gathered her books and stuffed them into her plaid Burberry messenger bag, then headed toward the front doors, smoothie from the library snack shop in hand. Head bent, fiddling with the clasp of her bag, she stumbled into a wall of human on the pavement outside.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—” Her voice dropped out when she realized the solid flesh belonged to Alec, Max’s best friend.

  She’d only met him once or twice before he’d moved in with Max this semester and every time, he cocked his eyebrow with a half frown like he knew something she didn’t. Which he actually did, since he had brainy superpowers. Smarter than a speeding Einstein. Able to leap over C-minus students like her in a single bound.

  She didn’t trust people that smart. And she didn’t trust a guy who didn’t ogle her ass or leer at her boobs like every other member of the straight male species on the planet.

  She once asked Max if Alec was gay, and Max had laughed so hard, she feared he’d pop a blood vessel in his forehead. Then he assured her his friend was in fact, very straight.

  She’d believe it when she saw it.

  Right now, that raised-eyebrow frown pinned her where she stood. His pale green eyes behind thick black frames roamed over her shoulder to the library and then back to her. With his pin-stripe button-down, dark jeans with Converse shoes and hair styled in a short, messy pompadour, he looked like a nerdy Elvis.

  His frown morphed into a smile when he spotted the smoothie in her hand, and she definitely didn’t notice his full lips. “You know, you don’t have to venture into the forbidden zone just to get a smoothie.”

  Oooh. The jerk. She glanced around surreptitiously, then leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Just play it cool. Don’t let it slip someone like me snuck in the library.” She gripped his forearm and whispered. “Password today is rosebud.”

  His face blanked and he looked at her like he’d never seen her before. Kat debated whether or not that was an improvement over his other look.

  But then those intelligent eyes narrowed and a smirk curled his lips. “I know. We nerds get an e-mail every morning.”

  See? He always needed the last word. She propped a hand on her hip and leaned in. “Well, sounds like you have a mole. Might want to look into that.”

  He opened his mouth but she cut him off. “Just looking out for you guys. Anyway, see ya around!”

  Before he could shoot back a snarky comeback, Kat skirted around him and bounded down the stairs. She chalked that up as Kat 1, Alec 0.

  She pulled out her phone and texted Max.

  Come get me. At campus entrance in 10.

  Kat stuffed her hands in the pockets of her fabulous—bought for a total steal—red peacoat, and took the long walk to the head of campus. The air was cold, that damp chill typical for Maryland. She glared sullenly at the bare trees on campus, wishing for spring, when they’d bloom again. She’d visited the campus in the spring of her junior year of high school with her parents, and everything about the university and nearby town of Bowler felt right. During her first year as a student, she’d built friendships and kept a decent reputation.

  This second year was proving to be a huge pain.

  Kat arrived at the large stones marking the entrance of the campus, BOWLER carved into them and painted red. She began to worry about the condition of her frozen toes until Max pulled up to the sidewalk in his old truck.

  “Babe, get in.”

  She didn’t need the invitation as she wrenched open the rusted door and hopped inside, smiling at him.

  The first time she saw Max, he was standing on a table in the middle of a raging house party in October, fist at his mouth as he belted the chorus to “Don’t Stop Believin’.” He was gorgeous in that confident, cocky way. And he looked like he belonged on the cover of a romance novel, wearing nothing but unlaced football pants and artistically placed eye black, the right amount of sweat running down the middle of his tanned pecs.

  Their gazes had met and when he winked those big brown eyes at her, flashing a wide easy smile, she was a goner.

  And one of the things she liked most about him was he didn’t ask her too many questions about herself. So she didn’t pry into his life.

  She wasn’t going to marry the guy. But she liked his kisses and his cookies.

  “Your roommates around?” She buckled her seat belt.

  “Uh, I think Cam went home for the weekend. Alec is around, I guess.” He squeezed her thigh. “You know, he’ll be busy studying like always. Should be quiet if you want to spend the night.”

  She sighed and wondered if Max was fed up with her evasion of sex. It wasn’t that she didn’t like sex. She loved it, actually. And while she was attracted to Max, something was holding her back.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Max sighed, and she absorbed the sting of his disappointment.

  Kat gingerly placed her feet on crumpled fast food bags. Something oozed out of a damp corner and she hoped it was ketchup. The color sug
gested otherwise.

  “I thought we agreed you were going to clean out your car.” She eyed the suspicious substance and wished she had one of those hazardous-waste trash cans from a doctor’s office.

  Max snickered and nodded toward the bags. “I’m saving that for later.”

  Kat wrinkled her nose and he laughed harder. Organization was key to her life. She could control that—her bedroom tidy and her calendar neatly filled out with color-coded highlighter. Of course, it was a stark contrast to the riot of chaos that was her mind. But fake it ’til you make it, right?

  Max parked along the sidewalk outside of his townhome off campus and as they crossed the street, Kat tried to grab his hand. He evaded it like always and wrapped a beefy arm around her neck. She huffed under her breath. For once, she wished he didn’t act too cool to hold her hand.

  Max’s place was on the end of a row of four townhomes. The high ceilings made the already large living room feel even bigger. The kitchen was a decent size but outdated, with old appliances, a crumbling tile floor and a ceiling-fan light you had to tug just so if you wanted to see your hand in front of your face.

  The staircase leading to the bedrooms upstairs was ornate, with a thick, solid railing Max often straddled and slid down with a whoop. There was one bathroom on the second floor, which for a guys’ place was relatively clean.

  When they walked inside the front door, Max headed right to the kitchen while Kat settled on the couch in the living room, running her hands over the ugly, fuchsia-flowered fabric. Max and his roommate Cam had found it by a Dumpster before they moved in. Kat was still unsure if sitting on it would give her a rash.

  Minutes later, Max plopped down beside her with a can of beer and promptly turned on the TV to a hockey game.

  Kat yawned. Hockey was boring to watch. The guys didn’t wear tight clothes and lot of them were missing teeth. Playoff hockey was even worse because the players didn’t shave and had scraggly neck beards. Gross.

  When she’d had enough of trying to find the tiny puck on the screen, she said, “I’m going to make a sandwich. You want one?”