Me: Not really? That shit is expensive.
Rex: That’s true. I don’t know why I said that.
Because you’re nervous, too.
My stomach rolls and I try to quell it by placing my hand there, pressing down. Ugh.
Me: You’re cute.
Rex: Are you drunk?
Me: Lol why would you ask if I’m drunk? You were just here.
Rex: Because you’re complimenting me.
Me: Wow. I really…have to work on being sweeter, don’t I?
Rex: You don’t have to do anything but be yourself.
Oh my god, this guy. He’s too much. Too sweet and too nice and I’m a jackass for having been such a brat to him.
Me: I appreciate you saying that but…I want…
Me: I want to be sweet for you.
Rex: Has an alien taken over your body? Hannah, is that you?
Me: Shut up!
Rex: That’s my girl!
Oh lord. I’m in trouble with this one.
Me: Just a movie?
Rex: Well. I don’t know. Would you rather…
He sends the unfinished sentence, and makes me wait an entire five minutes before sending a new one.
Rex: …Go on an actual real, first date?
My heart rate speeds up, and I slide my hand from my belly to my chest, pressing my palm to my breast.
A real first date.
I’m grinning like a fool now, taking my hand off my boob so I can roll to my stomach, holding my phone and texting him like a teenage girl, feet kicking behind me. I’m practically chewing bubblegum and twirling my hair.
Me: I would love that.
Rex: Yeah?
Me: Yeah.
Rex: Okay. Uh. Great!
I can almost see and hear him running a nervous hand through his hair as I wait for him to continue.
Rex: Dinner? I can pick you up. How is six?
Me: I can do six. When?
Rex: Tonight? Technically since it’s after midnight, it’s a new day already.
Me: Tonight is perfect.
Rex: Cool. I’ll see you tonight then.
Me: I mean—you can text me today, too. We don’t have to wait until later to talk.
Rex: Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. I’ll text you today.
Me: I’m…
Me: I’m excited.
Rex: Yeah?
Me: Real excited. I might even wear a dress.
Rex: That’s it. I’m calling the cops. Someone has kidnapped Hannah Peterson and has commandeered her cell.
Me: Ha! You won’t be making fun of me when you’re staring at me in a dress.
Rex: You’re right about that—I’ll be too busy picking my jaw up off the floor.
Me: If you keep talking to me that way…
Rex: You’ll what?
Me: Keep talking to me that way and you’ll see.
Rex: Good.
Me: And Rex?
I yawn, stretching out on the bed, begin removing my clothes and hunkering down for some sleep.
Rex: Hmm?
Me: If you ever want to teach me anything, I promise I’ll be your best student.
Rex: I’m going to screenshot that, because somehow, I highly doubt it.
Me: Yee of little faith.
Rex: Yee has met you and yee knows you’re a brat who hates being told what to do.
Me: Maybe. But I like you and…
Rex: And…??
Me: I think you’d be worth behaving for.
Rex: Hannah Peterson, I think we both have plenty to teach each other.
Me: Like that thing you do with your tongue?
Rex: The thing where I swirl and suck?
Me: Omg. Yes, THAT thing. Will you come do it again?
Rex: When?
Me: How far away are you?
Rex: I just pulled into my driveway.
Me: I just took my clothes off, but if you’re already home…
Rex: See you in eight minutes.
Me: I’ll be waiting.
I don’t have to wait long.
And when after he goes down on me again, and we’ve had sex a second time tonight, Rex rolls to his back and closes his eyes—but reaches for my hand across the mattress.
I give it a squeeze before closing my own eyes and drifting off to sleep.
THE END
About Sara
Sara Ney is the USA Today Bestselling Author of the How to Date a Douchebag series, and is best known for her sexy, laugh-out-loud New Adult romances. Among her favorite vices, she includes: iced latte's, historical architecture and well-placed sarcasm. She lives in the Midwest, collects vintage books, art, loves flea markets, and fancies herself British.
Check out Sara’s Amazon page for a full list of her books.
A Slice of Love
Teagan Hunter
To my Starbucks crew in Jacksonville, NC.
No other Starbucks will ever hold a candle to the service I received there.
You’re my home. I miss you.
Slice One
Jonas
“If I have to listen to you say ‘go deeper’ one more time, I will murder you.”
“Well, then go deeper!”
“I can’t just go deeper. That’s not how it works.”
“That is exactly how it works.”
My hand is raised, prepared to knock as I stand at the customer’s door, unabashedly listening to the very loud conversation the couple is having, brows raised with so many questions running through my mind.
The first one being, Did I really have to make a spectacle and almost blow my chance in the NFL so I can deliver pizzas for a living?
Answer: no. No, I did not.
But here I am. Standing at the door, pie in my hand, listening to some chick and her boyfriend go on about how he needs to go deeper.
I don’t know who I feel worse for in this situation, the chick or the dude.
Poor dude has a small dick, and she’s not being taken care of.
What a predickament to be in.
With reluctance—because I really don’t want to have to see my third naked couple today—I rap my knuckles against the door.
There’s the now all-too-familiar shuffle.
The hushed, “They’re here! Grab the money!”
I brace myself for the swinging dick I’m about to encounter as I hear the knob turning.
The door is flung open and, to my surprise, the person standing in front of me is fully clothed.
And hot.
I will not check out the customers. I will not check out the customers.
I focus on the task at hand, pulling open the insulated pizza bag.
“Good even—”
“Holy moly.” The words drop from her plump lips on a whisper, her big, brown eyes widening. “Jonas.”
My brows shoot up when she addresses me by name, and I give her my full attention.
Something about her seems familiar, but I can’t recall where I’ve seen her. Maybe a party or two? There’s only one person I’ve ever met with hair her color, but there’s no way that’s who is standing before me now.
I trail my eyes down the woman’s body. I know I didn’t hook up with her—I’d remember a body like hers. I let my eyes linger a moment, enjoying the way her jade tank top clings to her curves and stands out against her pale skin before getting my shit together and bringing my gaze back to her face. Her mouth is still ajar, the shock of me standing at her door not yet having worn off.
Even if I don’t know who she is, she definitely knows who I am.
I guess that’s what happens when you have an amazing college football career, so great that you’re headed for the NFL when you graduate, and then when you’re high on winning a bowl game, you jump onto the railing of the bleachers and…fall straight on your ass. Or, in my case, directly on your knee in just the right way to put you out of commission, shattering and tearing not only it but all your NFL dreams, leaving you to deliver pizzas in your hometown while you work on ph
ysical therapy.
It’s been a long six months.
Clearing my throat, I push my shoulders back. “Good evening. I have a large pepperoni and extra cheese on hand-tossed crust with two ranch dipping sauces.” I slide the pizza out with ease and shove it her way. “That’ll be $10.47.”
She doesn’t take the pie.
“I’m not imagining this. You are Jonas Schwartz, right?”
I sigh, slightly annoyed the ball cap I’m wearing and the beard I grew aren’t enough to hide behind. “I am. Have we met before?”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Nice to see ya, Schwartzy.”
The guy steps into view, and I recognize him instantly. Despite having attended the same college, I haven’t had a proper conversation with the guy since my freshman year when I got wasted and told him about what happened with Frankie.
I’ve seen him around campus a few times since, but he mostly hung out with the theater kids, which definitely wasn’t the crowd I was running with.
“Well fucking well,” I drawl. “Julian Schenn. How the hell are you, man?”
“Not bad, not bad. Helping my girl here put together her bookshelf. She can’t seem to understand you have to put the screws all the way in and not just leave them sticking out.”
Ah, so that’s what go deeper meant.
The girl stares daggers at him, crossing her arms over her chest, pushing her tits up. Stop noticing, you dick.
“First, I am not your girl. Second, I was going as deep as I could.”
“Sure you were. You just gotta put a little more muscle behind it, that’s all.”
She holds her arm up, flexing her bicep. “You see these guns? I was putting all the muscle into it.”
He squeezes her nonexistent guns. “You’re still using that two-pound weight, huh? Need a spotter next time you hit the gym?”
She socks him in the gut, and I can’t help but laugh as he grunts.
She might not have muscles, but she can apparently pack a punch.
“I yield,” he wheezes. “Schwartz, you remember Callahan, right?”
Callahan? There’s only one Callahan I’ve ever known, and there is no way this chick standing in front of me is her.
It’s impossible…right?
But my eyes see the undeniable truth.
Right there, just below her left eye, is the scar I remember so fondly.
It is her.
“Frank.”
Her cheeks redden at the nickname I gave her in high school, and my palms begin to sweat in response to the reality of being face to face with her.
For four long years, I looked for her, scouring social media. Checking every face at every party, hoping she’d appear. We were set to attend the same college, but not once did we run into each other.
Turns out, I wasn’t looking for the girl I knew at all.
In high school, she was all frizz with big, bulky glasses covering her pale face. She always reminded me of Anne Hathaway from that damn movie my sister Thea used to make me watch over and over.
I guess Frankie had her own The Princess Diaries moment, because right now she looks a hell of a lot more like Mia Thermopolis after the makeover.
I’ll never admit this out loud, but even though Mia was hot as fuck after that transformation, I always kind of preferred her with the frizz.
Which is exactly why I could barely stand having Frankie as my lab partner our senior year.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like being around her. It was the exact opposite.
Every morning she’d walk in smelling like oranges, probably from that boxed orange juice she’d toss into the trash when she stepped through the door. She’d shuffle her way to our table, slide onto her stool next to me—the one I’d drag just a few centimeters closer each day—then reach into her bag for a piece of orange-flavored gum, offering me one too. It didn’t matter that I turned down her every offer; she was still the politest lab partner ever, and she’d still try.
Without fail, this was our routine.
I made sure to take my vitamin C every fucking day so I wouldn’t get sick and miss a second of the seventy-five minutes I had with her. It was the first time in my high school career I didn’t have any absences.
It’s not like I showed up for the conversation. Hell, we probably only spoke a handful of sentences to one another out loud the entire time we were in school together.
But that didn’t mean we didn’t talk.
Every day I had to sit next to her while she sat in silence, chewing on that damn bottom lip of hers and hiding behind the ball of frizz she called hair.
It was annoying…yet I couldn’t stop stealing glances at her.
I loved the way she’d let her glasses fall to the end of her nose before pushing the center piece until they were tucked back into place. I adored the way she’d line up her notebook and pencils in the same order, ensuring everything was straightened out before she flipped open her notebook, always adding the date in the top right corner in the most precise handwriting I’d ever seen. And when her mind would wander, she’d chew on the ends of her pencils until they were all marked up and unusable.
I’d never wanted to be an inanimate object so badly in my life.
By that first Friday, the silence and miles spanning between us were killing me.
I needed to talk to her.
On a whim, I scribbled a frivolous note and slid the paper her way.
I’m 75% sure Ms. Day just farted.
I watched as the corner of her lips ticked up and she reached for the third pencil in her lineup, chewing on the end of it for a moment or two before finally bringing the utensil to paper.
Only 75%?
Just two words, and I knew I had her.
We managed to fill five notebooks during those 180 days. She’d take it home one evening, and I would the next. Sometimes our entries were lengthy, packed with our deepest, darkest confessions. Sometimes it was nothing but a doodle—well, a masterpiece in her case, and in mine, a crude drawing a kindergartener could have out-scribbled.
Nothing was off limits.
Our aspirations, fears, strongest desires, and embarrassing confessions…it was all there between the pages.
Inside those cheap notebooks, there were no rules, no social ladders, no lines.
It was just us.
We spent the entire school year like this, our stools moving ever closer together, elbows rubbing as we worked silently side by side for months.
Until we hit a snag in whatever it was we were doing.
We had an end-of-the-year project due and were required to work on it outside classroom hours.
The moment our teacher proposed this, I knew I was screwed.
Frankie Callahan was not to be touched…especially not by me.
Everyone in school knew it. She was the one person you didn’t mess with.
Yet, there I was, watching her every day like a fucking creep, eager to see if she’d show up smelling like oranges.
There I was…wanting her.
Somehow, during the month we had to work on the project, we managed to keep our interactions limited to the library and courtyard. I think we both knew what being alone would mean.
At least I thought we were on the same page.
Frankie had other plans.
“Uh, J-Jonas?”
It’s the first time she’s said my name out loud, and a warmth like no other spreads through me.
I blink up at her, surprised to find her even speaking to me.
She rushes to apologize. “S-Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Oh.” She clears her throat. “I-I just… W-We…” She pauses, shaking her head at herself for all the stuttering. “I believe we should move the rest of our project elsewhere. It’s going to require a lot of cutting and gluing, and I don’t think we should be doing that around all these”—she waves a hand toward the stacks—“precious beauties.”
My lips quirk up a
t her choice of words. “Precious beauties, huh?”
Her cheeks fill with color, and I realize in that moment her blushing is one of my favorite sights. “What can I say? I’m a bit of a book lover.”
“You?” I fake gasp. “Say it ain’t so, Frank.”
“It’s Frankie,” she says.
I study her. “Nah, you look like more of a Frank to me.”
She doesn’t say anything else but seems pleased by me giving her a nickname, and I want to slap myself for flirting because anything happening between us just isn’t possible.
I’m Jonas Schwartz, captain of the football team. I score off the field just as much as I do on it. I’m known for letting things get a bit too wild, and the only time I’ve ever shown any restraint is in first period chemistry when I have to sit next to her every morning.
She’s Frankie Callahan…the pastor and the principal’s daughter.
Enough said.
“What were you getting at, Callahan?” I ask.
“O-Oh. I, uh, well, my parents are out of town this weekend.”
“They leave you home alone?”
“I’m responsible,” she says haughtily, and it’s the first time I’ve heard her have even a hint of attitude.
She’s…fiery.
I kind of like Fiery Frank.
“So, do, uh, do you want to come over this weekend?”
My heart rate picks up at the thought of being alone with Frank. There are so many things that could happen. So many things I want to happen. So many things that shouldn’t happen.
If I go over there, she’ll try to kiss me. And I’ll let her.
The last thing she needs is to be tainted by my use-’em-and-lose-’em reputation. If someone were to find out we were hanging out outside of school hours…well, let’s just say that wouldn’t work out well for either of us.
We’d be alone though…
“You, uh, you could come in the back. Stay the night. It would be just us.”
Just us.
No one would ever have to know. They’d never even know I was there. We could spend the entire weekend together, do whatever we wanted, live in our own little world.
It’s a bad idea. The worst idea she’s ever had. The foulest idea in the history of ideas.
Team Player 2: A Sports Anthology Page 49
