The Catch (Smart Jocks #0.5)

by Rebecca Jenshak

  I glance back at… whoever she is, and her smile is so big you’d think she’s happy I’m going on a date with someone else.

  “You said you were…” I start and then think back, trying to recall exactly what she said.

  “Well this got interesting.” She holds out her hand. It’s the first friendly gesture she’s made since I walked over. “Vanessa James. My friends call me V.”

  Travis pushes me back and moves to take her hand. “Travis Hartley. Friends call me Trav.”

  He blocks me out of the conversation, and I give Vanessa one last look before I go to my date. Damn.

  Two girls flank her, but as I approach, Vi steps forward. “Hey there. I’m Vi.”

  An hour later, I’ve learned three important things about Violet Anders. Number one, in the debate of who is the greater Jonas brother—Nick takes her vote all day long. I now possess more Nick Jonas trivia than any man ever should.

  Number two, she’s got one of those thick southern accents that I gotta lean in to hear. I’ve inadvertently grazed her boob three times while moving closer to understand her and I’m starting to suspect she’s doing it on purpose.

  Number three, she’s well aware of the incident last semester and she’s got all sorts of ideas about riding off into the sunset with some too good to be true version of me. I don’t think she’s heard a thing I’ve said about myself.

  That’s the thing about being labeled a hero for one wild moment in your life—people believe it’s your entire character. I could tell her that I’ve also robbed banks and she’d probably just smile and say, “I declare, aren’t you the funniest.”

  We circle around to the keg and I pour us both another beer and then take a long swig of mine.

  We aren’t having an awful time, all things considered. She’s nice and once I get her talking about herself and her interests, I find we even have a few things in common. Any other night, I might be content to stand around and talk to her, but instead I search for her hot twin in the crowd.

  “I need to go to the ladies—can you hold on to that for me?”

  I nod, and she hands me her cup and then skips off. I down the rest of my beer and then hers, then refill them and start in on mine again.

  “Hit or Miss night,” Vanessa—I decide to address her by her full name, even in my head, from now on to avoid confusion—steps in front of me with a grin on her face. “I should have known.”

  “Yeah, well, I should have known Travis would never set me up with someone like you.”

  She quirks an eyebrow. “Careful, I think you almost gave me a compliment.”

  I keep my mouth shut. This chick… I don’t know what to make of her, but I don’t want to give her any reason to walk away and if I open my mouth… seems more likely.

  “Where’d your date go?”

  I motion with my head to inside. “Bathroom.”

  “Could ditch her.”

  “Nah, she’s all right.”

  “You’re a decent guy,” she says, almost as if she’s asking me to be certain.

  “It’s part of the rules for tonight. We’re supposed to make sure the girls have a good time. Ditching her would look bad on the whole team.”

  “Something tells me you wouldn’t ditch her, regardless.” She places her hands on her hips and sizes me up.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I say because right now I want nothing more than to ditch Vi and spend the rest of the night with Vanessa. Reputation be damned.

  She looks over my shoulder. “Incoming.”

  I look back to see Vi returning.

  “It was… interesting. Have fun.” Vanessa’s red lips pull into a wide smile and she steps away.

  “Hey wait,” I call after her. She turns but continues to move in the opposite direction. “Can I get your number?”

  The following day, Stephens busts into my room and then stands at the foot of my bed. He left my door open and I can hear the guys downstairs messing around in the living room.

  “Classes haven’t even started and you’re already reading?” He gives me a confused look and shakes his head a little.

  “Some people do it for fun.” I close the paperback and set it on my makeshift nightstand—three milk crates stacked together.

  “Yeah, okay,” he says, disbelieving. “We’re gonna head over to the field for a bit. You wanna come?”

  “Nah. I’m gonna enjoy one last day of freedom before it’s mandatory.” Team practices for the fall season start up tomorrow and after all the hero nonsense, I’m less eager than usual to get back out there. I thought that they’d lose interest over summer break. No such luck. They’ll forget about it eventually, but right now they’re still in hardcore razz mode. When I went down for breakfast this morning the guys broke out into a really bad rendition of Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero.”

  He nods and heads back out of my room, but not before shouting, “Hero says he doesn’t need the practice.” He smirks and leaves my door wide open as he heads back down the stairs.

  I get up from my bed, close the door, and take a seat at my desk. The truth is, I probably should go over to the field with them. Anything to give my mind a break from the Vanessa James highlight reel it’s been replaying since I woke up this morning.

  I don’t know what it is about her. That’s a lie. I have some idea. I mean, she’s the hottest girl I’ve ever seen. By far. Times a hundred. No comparison.

  Combine that with the way she couldn’t care less who I am. I don’t usually get off on chicks playing hard to get, but it was a welcome change from girls wanting to hook up because of some crazy story they heard.

  There was something else about her though. She seems like a girl who wants to believe in fairy tales but has been burned too many times to not be guarded. I’m not a hero, but I am a good guy and for some reason I want to prove to her that the male population isn’t so bad. A select few, anyway.

  And, though I’ve had to stop myself about a million times already today, I think part of that includes not looking her up and creeping on her social media. Winning over Vanessa is gonna take a good old-fashioned wooing. The problem is, I can’t ask my teammates. Someone might know her, but if they get any indication that I’m into her, who knows what the hell they’ll do.

  I pull on my shoes and head out to the only place I can think of to get answers.

  Old Fashioned

  Mario

  The White House is a short walk, but entering the extravagant house where the basketball players live feels like entering an entirely different zip code. The baseball house is a shit hole by comparison. No, not even by comparison—it’s just a shit hole. But this place is amazing.

  “Anybody home?” I call as I walk through the downstairs toward the back yard. They’ve got a huge pool, which is where I find them.

  “Mario!” Nathan shouts from a raft in the middle of the pool, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  The other guys glance my direction from the lounge chairs on the far side.

  “What’s up, boys?” I say as I take a chair between Wes and Joel.

  “Not much,” Joel says, kicked back in his swim trunks and Ray-Bans. “Enjoying the last days of summer.”

  “Beer?” Wes offers, opening the lid on a cooler between our chairs. He’s got a cast on one foot from an injury earlier this summer and a permanent scowl that’s been on his face ever since. Not that I can blame him. Getting injured senior year would suck.

  “No thanks, just thought I’d check in. Saw you guys at the party last night, but never made it over.”

  “Heard it was Hit or Miss night.” Joel gives me his full attention. “Who’d you get paired with?”

  “Freshman. She was all right.”

  “Ringing endorsement.” Wes chuckles, a rough, sarcastic sound.

  “Yeah, well, she didn’t really have a fair shake. I met someone and… well, let’s just say I wasn’t as attentive as I might have been if I hadn’t met Vanessa James first.”
/>   “Vanessa? Valley U girl?” Wes asks.

  “Yeah, heard of her?”

  “Nah.”

  I turn to Joel and say a silent prayer the campus playboy hasn’t already slept with her. “What about you?”

  Joel thinks. “Name sounds familiar, but I can’t place her.” He grabs his phone and starts scrolling. “Vanessa Andrews, Vanessa Crawford, Vanessa Campbell…”

  “Jesus, how many Vanessas you got in there?”

  “A lot. I don’t see a Vanessa James though. Did you scope her out online?”

  “Nah and before you do, don’t. I don’t want to find her that way.”

  “Oooooh,” Joel calls, staring at his screen, and I know he’s already found her somewhere.

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “She’s hot. And I think I have seen her before at—”

  “Stop. Stop.” I hold up a hand to silence him. “No information. I’m doing this the old-fashioned way.”

  “Good luck with that. Technology is your friend, man.” Nathan, who’s been eavesdropping from the pool, drops beside me, shaking his long hair and dripping water all over. “Let me see.” Joel tilts his phone toward him and Nathan nods. “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen her around. She—”

  “Ahhh,” I yell to stop him. “No information.”

  “What exactly did you come to us for?” Wes asks.

  Fair point. “I thought I wanted to know, but I don’t want any secondhand information. I want to do this right and all on my own. There was something between us, but her guard is up. Way up. I don’t want to play this like every other guy’s done.”

  Joel finishes off his beer, stands, and walks toward the pool. “The world doesn’t deserve you, Mario.” He dives into the water and I stand to leave. Conviction has me optimistic and determined.

  “See you guys at Theta tonight?”

  “We’ll be there,” Nathan calls after me.

  I get to the frat house earlier than I’ve been to a party since freshman year. Overeager and prepared. I spent entirely too much time picking out an outfit, ironed my jeans (luckily the guys were still gone so there were no witnesses), and then manscaped to an embarrassing degree. It started out small. I was just gonna clean it up and then, well, an hour later I was lifting my balls and getting every nook and cranny.

  Nursing my first beer, I hang off to one side with Clark. He’s talking about the team and the season, but I’m only half listening. Every time a brunette walks outside, my heart stops until I realize it’s not Vanessa.

  I gauge the time by the number of songs that play and the amount of people gathering around the yard at Theta house. And by the number of bad pickup lines Clark attempts on chicks that walk by (one every five minutes or so). It’s gotta be close to midnight and still no Vanessa.

  “I’m gonna take a lap,” I tell Clark and start off before he can follow.

  Unlike last night, I don’t stick to the perimeter, I go straight for the middle of the action where I assume Vanessa will be. But nothing. She’s not here.

  “Hey, Romeo,” Joel says as I approach him and Wes off in one corner. Nathan’s not with them, but their other roommate Zeke is.

  I’m saying hey to him when Joel starts giving me shit. “Where’s your girl?”

  “Not here.”

  He nods and grins like he knows something.

  “Do you know why she’s not here?”

  “Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t.”

  Smug bastard.

  “Just tell me if she’s coming,” I say.

  “Highly doubtful.”

  Disappointment sits heavy in the pit of my stomach, making me realize just how excited I was to see her again.

  “Wanna know more?”

  “Nah. Thanks, man.”

  I shoot the shit with them a while longer and then head out. Time to come up with a new game plan. Running into her twice in a week was asking too much. Nobody gets that lucky.

  I wake the following day with a fresh determination. Starting this morning, we’ve got early practice followed by weight training. Official practices with Coach won’t begin for another few weeks, but Travis and the other seniors run us through drills and workouts.

  The fall season is light, only a few exhibitions to work out kinks, but the sooner we start meshing together, the better our chances of having a record that isn’t as laughable as the last two years.

  The team sings “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” while I’m up to bat, but otherwise the first day back on the field feels good. When I get to the house, I shower and sit down at my computer to commence my search for Vanessa.

  I’m still not on board with sliding into her DMs, but I decide that looking her up on the Valley U directory is a sane next step. Still old-fashioned, just the modern-day equivalent to using the phonebook. Look at me, courting a chick like men did in the olden days.

  And that’s how I end up jogging up the stairs to reach the Chi Omega front door. Suddenly, my attempts at chivalry and old-fashioned wooing feel creepy as hell. Who shows up at a sorority house unannounced? Are dudes even allowed inside?

  It makes sense that I haven’t run into her before. Sorority girls tend to date frat guys, attend frat parties, and hang out at… wait for it, frat houses.

  The door has some sort of combination lock on it, so I ring the doorbell and wait. And wait. I can hear girls talking and laughing, but no one comes to the door. I head around the house looking for another entrance or a person I can ask. There’s a raised deck off the second story of the house and three girls are painting it a fresh coat of hot pink.

  They’ve got music going loud enough that I get all the way to the bottom of the stairs before they notice me. The girl closest holds her paintbrush up like a weapon, slopping pink paint on my shoes.

  I step back to avoid wearing the entire bucket of paint. “Uh, is Vanessa James here?”

  “Maybe. Who are you?”

  “I’m Mario.”

  Another girl wielding a paintbrush steps forward. “You’re that baseball guy that saved the kid last semester.”

  Inwardly I cringe. “Yep, that’s right.”

  “Oh my gosh.” She turns to the other girls. “He caught the game-winning ball and then climbed the fence to save a kid that was choking.”

  They all face me like they expect me to regale them with the story. “It was no big deal. Anyone else would have done the same thing.”

  “I would have frozen,” someone says. “I’m terrible under pressure.”

  I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. “So… Vanessa? Does she live in the house? I was hoping to catch her.”

  “Oh yeah, right.” She hurries to the open door leading inside the sorority and yells, “V, you have a visitor.”

  The three girls go back to painting and casting covert glances at me. It’s an uncomfortable couple of minutes before she appears. V steps out of the doorway, distracted, staring down at her phone. I’m all too thankful that she doesn’t see me right away because it takes me a solid five seconds to pick my jaw up off the ground.

  The girl dresses like every day is a chance to play another character. Today is cleaning lady meets stripper. Cut-off jeans, white t-shirt tied up under her boobs, and a red bandana holding her hair back from her face.

  Slowly, she lifts her head to figure out why she was summoned and as she opens her mouth, maybe to ask, those dark eyes land on me.

  “Hey,” I say and lift a hand in a friendly wave.

  “Mario.” She looks around. “What are you doing here?”

  The other girls stop any pretense of painting and stare between us.

  “I wanted to see you again.”

  “So, you just showed up at my house?” She looks confused and maybe a little freaked out.

  “I didn’t have your number.”

  “You didn’t ask for it.”

  “Sure I did… as you were walking away.”

  Shit. This was a terrible plan, and I’m back to speechless.

  But she isn
’t. She holds her phone up and takes a step back toward the house. “I’m flattered you came all this way, but I’m sort of in the middle of something.”

  “Five minutes. No, three.” I decide to go with a little honesty. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “Aww,” a paintbrush-armed girl says. “That’s so romantic.”

  “Two minutes,” Vanessa relents. “Come inside.”

  She leads me through a long hallway, bedrooms on either side. Finally, we reach the end and it opens up into a large space with tables and chairs. There’s a mess of poster board scattered along the length of the tables and the girl she was with the other night sits on the floor coloring with a red marker. She looks up and a slow smile spreads across her face. “Hey.”

  “Hey, nice to see you again.”

  “Blair,” she introduces herself.

  Vanessa stops in front of me, blocking Blair’s friendly smile, and crosses her arms over her chest. “Two minutes.”

  “I went to Theta last night hoping to run into you again.”

  “You know what, I’m going to give you guys a few minutes.” Blair stands, gives me a reassuring smile, and leaves.

  “Blair’s ex is a real tool. He’s a Theta and she didn’t want to go into his territory, so to speak. We stayed in.”

  “Nice of you to hang back with her.”

  “Have you said yet what it is you’re doing here? Couldn’t you have sent me a private message or an email or something?”

  “Keeping it old school. Plus, you could have ignored a message or an email.”

  She snorts, uncrosses her arms, and moves to sit in a chair at the table. “How’d the rest of your date with Vi go?”

  “It was… fine.”

  “Do you sugarcoat everything that comes out of your mouth?”

  “Only when giving the unfiltered truth makes me sound like a dick.”

  She meets my gaze. “Are you a dick?”

  “I don’t think so.”