by Abby Donne
Sullen in a way a big swig of her sweet coffee couldn’t solve, Layla reached over and hugged Joanna. For a second she thought of Tyson, but she quickly shoved it to the back of her mind. They weren’t anything. She didn’t even have his number. But the way his fingers grazed hers as they sat tucked away from everyone else at his party with the twinkling lights around the fence glowing around them made Layla start to question everything.
It was just a stupid crush. One she needed to get rid of.
“I’m fine, really,” Jo sniffed, patting her eyes with the back of her hand. Sheepishly, she smiled. “I’m just tired, and when I’m tired I get emotional. You think my body would be used to the lack of sleep by now.”
“I totally get it. Like I said, all I’ve been doing is working really. The IT department stuffed this semester with interns so my shifts there aren’t too bad, but I’m everyone’s bitch at the gas station. It’s not like I can say no, either. It pays pretty well, all things considered.”
“That blows.” Joanna crossed her legs and raised an eyebrow. “So all work and no play? You know what they say about that, girl.”
“It pays the bills,” Layla deadpanned.
“Whatever. You’re seriously not seeing anyone? No crazy summer romance? No hooking up with the guitarist in your brother’s band? I need something here.”
The mention of Wade soured her stomach. She continued to smile, playing it off. “The last time one of his bandmates even looked at me he ended up with a black eye and almost got kicked out of the band. I don’t think they’re risking it anymore. I tried, but alas, I’ll never hook myself a bad boy.”
“What a cock block.”
“You’re telling me.” And because Layla was still feeling a little weird and wanted some validation that her crush on Tyson was totally bogus, she bobbed her head to the side before admitting, “There is this one guy, though…”
“I knew it!”
She rolled her eyes and leaned forward like they were conspiring to commit a robbery, spilling all the details about Tyson. Everything from the way he pushed her buttons to the night at his party to the cold shoulder she was currently receiving. By the end Jo looked near psychotic.
“Literally what is keeping you from hooking up with him?”
“I can’t hook up with someone I have to sit next to for the rest of the semester. It would be weird. I already hate that class enough.” Layla was trying her hardest to voice all the reasons she threw together when she asked herself that very question.
Avoiding the biggest reason of them all; she liked him too much for it to only be a one-time thing and walk away fully intact. Tyson was… well, he was Tyson. It would be easier to sleep with Heath, honestly, and sit next to him all semester because he was kind of an idiot. And she liked him well enough, but he didn’t make her entire body tingle.
“Do you want to sit there the whole semester with blue balls?”
“It’s hard to get blue balls when the table next to me literally never shuts up about dragons. You’d think all the talk of busty ladies in corsets slaying dragons would do it for me, but I just don’t see the logic in their stories. It really makes it all fall apart for me.”
She snorted, “It was like that when I took that class, too. The grad student who taught it really fueled the weirdos. I was just trying to improve my screenplays and they wrote and read horse erotica in front of the class. I shit you not.”
“I feel like you can sue the school for that torture.”
“I complained about it at the end of the semester. Obviously they aren’t letting him teach that class anymore.”
“What, you’re not a fan of horse erotica?”
“I mean, I’m definitely a fan of erotica. I think I could get into –”
“Don’t!” Layla laughed, clutching her heart.
Joanna grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Last semester I took this poetry class, right? And there was this gorgeous dark and mysterious kid that sat in the back. Naturally. When it came time to present his work at the end of the class he read some of the sexiest poems I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m pretty sure I had an orgasm when he spoke. I never thought the phrase ‘rose wet cave’ would turn me on but sweet baby Jesus, it had me going.”
“Are you going to be okay over there?”
She sighed and relaxed in her seat, shaking her head. “Maybe. I had to push him to the back of my mind so I didn’t spend the rest of my life mourning not getting to sleep with him. It would be a religious experience.”
“Rose wet cave? Really?” Layla asked, giggling, still hung up on the phrase.
“I’m going to look him up. Hold on.” Joanna was already scrolling on her phone, her eyes zipping up and down the screen while she chewed on her bottom lip. After a minute or two she lit up like a Christmas tree and spun her phone around on the table. “He has a goddamn Instagram where he posts this shit! Look at all his followers.”
He had nearly as many followers as Beneath the Sea, if not more. Scrolling through the poems it was easy to see why. They were hot. Somehow tasteful, too. Way better than horse erotica or the weird shit the kids in her class were writing. For the next half hour they went deep into the archives, finishing their coffee and Layla’s banana bread, giggling over the naughty poetry. For the first time in weeks she felt truly relaxed.
Not even her buzzing phone displaying her brother’s name was going to ruin her afternoon.
There was no point in getting to Jackie’s class early since Jackie herself was never on time. Yet there Layla was, twenty ‘til eight, strolling into the near empty classroom with her travel mug in one hand and a granola bar in the other. It had nothing to do with getting to see Tyson and everything to do with bugging Pete, who she wasn’t entirely sure didn’t sleep in the room overnight as he was always there when she showed up, for the notes from Thursday’s class.
“Hey,” She muttered, tugging out her earbuds as she dropped down at the circular table. Pete barely looked up from his phone. She rolled her eyes and tried again. “So did I miss anything interesting Thursday?”
“I guess,” He responded. He put his phone down, looking entirely too bored with the conversation already. “We started working on our midterms.”
“What midterms? I thought it was a test?” She squinted at him and started to pull out the folder she stuffed all the random handouts she received in looking for her syllabus.
“It was, until Jackie decided we need to dedicate ourselves to learning more about great American authors. We have to do a group presentation now,” He said it with so much disdain it made her uncomfortable. His eyes flicked over to Heath’s empty seat. “I’m stuck with that heathen. He wants to do our project on the chick who wrote Fifty Shades.”
“It’s not all of us together?” Her heart stuttered while speeding up all at once.
“Nope,” Pete popped the ‘p’, giving her a creepy smile.
Like they were summoned by the academic devil himself, Tyson and Heath spilled through the door of the classroom laughing loudly about something. Usually Heath’s volume was so obnoxious she could barely make sense of it. Tyson was wearing those damn grey sweatpants – the ones that drove her crazy and perfectly outlined his dick – and a plain white tee. His ball cap was on backwards, like it always was. Heath wore a similar outfit, but it didn’t look nearly as good as it did on Tyson.
Excitement curdled in her stomach when they locked eyes. Telling Heath to fuck off, Tyson dumped his bag on the ground and kicked his chair closer to Layla’s as he started to sit down.
“You feel better?” He asked softly.
“What?”
“You missed Thursday. Are you feeling better?”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat, hating how awkward she felt around him. “Yeah. I’ve just been working so much. I was exhausted, and I just couldn’t make myself do anything.”
His smile faltered a little. “Sometimes you have to say fuck it and take the day off.”
“I can
’t imagine you’re allowed to do that very often.”
“No, not really.” He leaned over to grab something out of his bag and the bottom of his shirt folded just enough to show her a patch of skin. Jesus, she was psychotic. Salivating over a strip of flesh. She looked away just as he sat back up, a knowing look on his face as he flipped a notebook over. “So you missed a thrilling day. Not only was Jackie fifteen minutes late, she had a total fuckin’ meltdown because none of us are ‘grasping’ the craft of fiction.”
“I heard about the midterm,” Layla said, testing the water.
That had him grinning. “Don’t worry. I take this class very seriously, Layla.”
To that, she could only hum. Tyson started to say something else when her phone began to buzz on the table. Both their eyes went to the screen. It was face up, displaying Wade’s name in big white letters. The fact that he was calling at all was concerning, let alone before eight in the morning. She snatched her phone off the table and ended the call, sending him a text:
Layla: Everything ok?
His response came almost immediately.
Wade: Yeah. Call me.
Layla: I’m in class.
Wade: After. I want to come down this week. For real.
She ignored that one, knowing better than to get excited. He’d been texting her for days practically begging for her to arrange another visit. Like a twenty eight year old man who literally traveled for a living couldn’t arrange a hotel for a night. Layla wondered if he snooped on her social media and saw all the tweets she made in her tired stupor last Wednesday. She didn’t care enough to delete them, but they were pretty mopey and awful honestly.
“You good?” Tyson asked, clearing his throat.
She blinked at him and, after a second, nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Anyway,” He muttered. He clicked his pen incessantly. She wanted to snap it in half. “You weren’t here so I had to pick our author. Hope you’re okay with Ernest Hemingway.”
Layla quirked a brow at him, desperately trying to regain the sense of easiness that they shared when he sat down. “Ernest Hemingway? Wow. He’s like, legit.”
“He was the first name that popped up when I Googled ‘Best American Authors’, so I’d say pretty damn legit.”
She snorted and sarcastically slurred, “Nice. This isn’t going to be a disaster at all.”
“Speak for yourself. I plan on crushing this presentation.”
Before they could talk any more Jackie came through the door like a tornado – a tornado that was actually on time for once, much to Layla’s disappointment – and started talking about their short story of the week like she was in the middle of a conversation and not walking into a classroom full of students staring at her like she was crazy.
Layla spent most of the class squinting at Jackie trying to figure out where the zipper on her meat suit was. There was no way she was actually a human being. She had to be a lizard or an alien pretending to be an Earthling. It was the only way to describe the horror-show that played out twice a week at the front of the classroom.
Actually, that was a pretty good idea for a story. She was sure Jackie would get a kick out of her likeness being used. At least Layla would be showing some interest in the class. The last assigned story was supposed to focus around scene setting. Layla was tired, per usual, and annoyed… also per usual… and wrote about being trapped in a hell that resembled their classroom. She actually got a decent score on it. Tyson got a kick out of it, too.
Before their time was up for the day a piece of loose notebook paper found its way on top of her doodle-filled notebook.
Give me your number.
chapter seven
Getting Layla to give up her phone number was like pulling teeth. It took an entire page of back and forth scribbles, along with a few dozen frowns from Jackie, to get Layla to concede and write out the nine digits Tyson had been trying to get for weeks. He wasn’t above this whole ‘I need your number for the project’ thing to get her number. It wasn’t like he didn’t need a way to get a hold of her. Sure, they could email about the project, but it was easier to just text.
Honestly, he didn’t have any ulterior motives. After nearly getting Layla to let loose at his party, Tyson realized it was stupid to keep pressing when she obviously wasn’t interested in acting on the wild chemistry between them. Such a goddamn waste. She still sat next to him in class, glassy eyed while she stared into space and rubbed her legs together. Still gave him those big bedroom eyes when they went back and forth over one of their stories in critiques. Still booked it out of the classroom like a bat out of hell, like he was going chase her down and fuck her in the bathroom.
Not that that was a bad idea…
He didn’t want to be a creep, and he was far from desperate. Despite not getting laid in months and having his options wide fucking open, Tyson couldn’t bring himself to text any of the girls hitting up his phone back. Every now and then he mustered up enough energy to flirt when they hit up the bars. He even danced with some girls here and there. It ended there, though. His roommates thought he was crazy; Heath especially, but he wasn’t even sure Heath had a brain that wasn’t between his legs. He’d at least given up sleeping with Jackie and switched over to trying to sleep with literally everyone else. With the first game of the season only two weeks away, Tyson didn’t have time to start up anything. Even with someone who knew it would be strictly casual.
Yet there he was on a Friday night tossing his phone back and forth trying to come up with all the reasons texting Layla was a bad idea. His dad was a list maker, always coming up with the pros and cons of a situation. Right now, there sure as hell were a lot of cons on his list.
Two quick knocks at his door followed by a, “Put your dick away!” startled him out of his day dreaming. Heath kicked the door open and hung from the top frame, swinging back and forth with a maniacal gleam on his face.
Turning down his music using his phone, Tyson cleared his throat and asked, “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” Heath mocked, still smiling. He looked like a possessed doll. It was creepy. “What’s up is it’s a Friday fucking night at ten and you look like you’re ready to go to bed and not hit the fuckin’ bar with us, man.”
“I’m gonna sit this one out,” He protested. Tyson heard the house milling about, laughing over their own music and voices while the prepared to go out. It was just like every weekend, really, and one of their last chances to let loose before their weekends were tied up until the end of the season. Spending another Friday night cramped in a bar listening to the same music on repeat drinking overpriced pitchers didn’t seem like fun. “Sorry. You’ll have to find another wingman tonight.”
“Whatever. C’mon. We’re just going over to Victory’s. It’ll be low key. Play some darts, catch a game.”
“Practice has been killing me lately.”
“You’re on your ‘A’ game this year. I mean, you’re no Karlsson…”
Tyson snorted, lifting his middle finger. “Fuck you, you greasy bitch.”
“I’m just saying,” Heath’s hands went up in defense. He took a few steps into Tyson’s room and looked around scrunching his nose up. “It stinks in here.”
“It smells fine. Your room smells like ass, though. You wonder why chicks don’t come home with you. I’m waiting to see shit on Twitter about you and the biohazard you call a bedroom.”
“I’m too busy to clean. You’re more than welcome to start picking my shit up.”
“In your wildest fucking dreams.”
“Even in my wildest dreams, dude, you’re never there. Sorry to disappoint.”
Tyson finally swung his legs over his bed and stood up. He shrugged, “Heartbreaking.”
“You’re really not coming out with us?”
“Really,” He confirmed. As if his bare chest and athletic shoes weren’t enough, he had to verbalize it again. “I’m too sore, and I don’t want to go into practice tomorrow hungover. I’m
not cleaning puke up off the ice.”
“Alright, but you owe me a drink next time.”
The logic in that made zero sense but Tyson agreed and practically shoved a laughing Heath out of his room, cursing at him while he tossed something over his shoulder about Tyson buying stock in lube and making sure to say hi to his blowup doll. He didn’t need a blowup doll. His hand worked just fine. He was all too aware lately of just how fine his hand worked, actually.
Once the house fell silent Tyson let out a breath. Everyone generally had the same schedule. They all had practice together. Had similar classes throughout the week. It was hard to get a moment of silence. Now that he had it, though, he didn’t really know what to do with it.
He played a few rounds of PubG and listened to some music, but that got boring entirely too fast. The thought of doing homework on a Friday night was pathetic, even for him. He thought about jerking off, which of course had him thinking about Layla.
Before he could think too hard about it he grabbed his phone and texted her.
Tyson: I’m bored. Give me a good movie recommendation.
It took a few minutes for her to reply. Long enough for him to regret sending the message in the first place. It was a lame line, but he needed something to get her talking.
Layla: You, bored on a Friday? Never would’ve guessed.
Tyson: What do you think I should be doing on a Friday?
Tyson: If this is an offer to hang out, name the place and I’ll be there.
Layla: I see why Heath says you have no game if this is how you ask a girl on a date. This is real romantic.
The three dots darted across the screen before disappearing. Then again. Tyson imagined her biting her lip, debating on what to say next. Finally she responded.
Layla: Not that you’re asking me out.
Tyson: I’m not? News to me.
Layla: Funny. I’m working right now, anyway.
Tyson: Of course you are. Slow night?