“Of course he is,” Girl Number Three dressed in hot pink says, her hungry eyes on me. “You’re adorable up close.” She seems in possession of enough sense to take over, so I hand over her friend.
“Take care and watch where you’re going, ladies,” I say and turn to move on.
Tristan and George flank me as we walk away.
The girls groan their disappointment and fling goodbyes, reciting phone numbers, but thank fuck they don’t follow us.
“Keep walking and don’t look back,” Tristan says. “Do not encourage them. Coach will make us run triple sprints if he catches girls following us to the field like last time.”
George laughs. “That was fucking funny. Jack the Pied Piper.”
“Shut up. They’re harmless.”
“Until they’re not,” Tristan says, referring to my stalker from last semester.
“Don’t worry, man, stalker lady is no longer on campus,” I say.
“They booted her ass all because of you,” George says. “Doesn’t that make you feel guilty?”
“Kind of,” I admit, though I grin to take the edge off my sincerity. George punches me in the arm again and hoots anyway.
We’re about five yards from the walkway to the field house entrance when I spot another girl heading our way, but this time it’s me who stops in my tracks.
It can’t be her. Feet planted in place, my mind freezes along with the rest of me, disbelief transforming me into the red-light statue of our childhood games.
When her eyes connect with mine, my heart starts up again, making up for lost beats at a stuttering pace.
Jesus fucking Christ, please don’t let it be her. The last-ditch prayer doesn’t work. No fucking kidding. Did I forget I’m in league with the devil?
The hammering of my heart is a true measure of reality, because the woman walking in my direction with a smile on her face, talking to a friend, is not a conjuring of my morose musing, not a hellish hallucination.
She is none other than Joni Dowd. In the flesh.
The one woman on the planet I wouldn’t mind never seeing again. Ever.
So she was the reason for the premonition of my past catching up to me. The reason that only being off this planet would be far enough away from home. Fucking home.
She’s the personification of everything I ever hated about my past, the place I came from, home fucking sweet home.
The spoiled little rich princess from high school who made me feel like gutter trash, who made me feel every bloody step of my struggle to make something of myself while she had everything in life handed to her on a silver platter with no effort at all. The girl who has everything. The girl with a family, a mansion, a father to make her path easy. The opposite of my journey from the gutter. But I got here.
Now she’s here . . .
Taking her eyes from mine, she turns away without acknowledging me and keeps walking. She reaches the corner, about to cross the street. My heart tumbles with fear and excitement at missing the confrontation with the terrible ghost from my shameful past. Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on me. But unlike old Scrooge who didn’t want to see his ghostly old friends, I’m a sick bastard who enjoys the torture. Don’t I relish the challenge of overcoming pain, facing every last one of the ghosts, no matter how bloodied and broken my soul becomes? No matter how futile it is to try and overcome the pain, because I’m inflicting it on myself, aren’t I?
I break away from my friends and they protest and warn that I’ll be late and I wave them off. George complains to Tristan, “Of course he’ll get away with it. The special star fuckoff.”
They think of me as privileged. Ironic. I almost snort a laugh.
Instead, I trot to catch up with Joni who’s walking away with some guy I don’t know. Poor bastard. When I reach her at the corner, I reach for her arm to stop her from crossing the street.
“Joni Dowd? Fuck. It is you.”
She looks up at me and I don’t know what I’m expecting—shock? Fear? Adoration? Good one. But not the smile of familiarity that I get from her like we grew up together. Why not? We sort of did grow up together, albeit in a distant way. Then a spark of anger and hurt cuts the life from her smile as if everything comes back to her, dissipating whatever warmth of recognition she held.
I hold onto her arm, not letting go even as her sidekick eyes me, mute and star-struck. It’s the look I’ve become used to, come to expect. It’s the attitude that’s sapping the life and excitement from my college experience to the point where I can’t wait for my senior year to end. The only people I can stand associating with anymore for any amount of time are my teammates and a handful of professors.
“If it isn’t Jack Hunter. Good to see you too. Now let go of me.” She speaks in a casual voice, like we’re old friends instead of old enemies. I laugh. By millimeters, I release her arm, taking time and deliberation to feel her, the taut energy of the connection between us like sizzling acid.
“You visiting campus?”
“No.” She turns away, bites that luscious lower lip before turning back, surprising me with a lift of her chin and that defiant fire in her eyes I saw only once before—the last time I saw her. “I transferred here.” She turns to her companion. The mute dude is three inches shorter than her and not in nearly as good condition as she is. I realize this as I sweep my gaze from him to her, stroking my eyes up and down her lingerie model-worthy body.
She says to her buddy, “Dooley, this is an old acquaintance from high school, Jack Hunter.”
“I know who he is,” Dooley says in a breathy voice. I smile at him and he looks even more uncomfortable, his face going full supernova red, his mouth open again but not working.
“Jack, this is Dooley. We both transferred here from Amherst this semester. I heard you were here. Playing football.”
“And you came anyway?”
She laughs. I’m stunned by the genuine lightness of it. And impressed.
She says, “I’ve done some growing up since we last . . . spoke.” She looks me over. “You look the same.”
“You don’t.”
I stare, because it’s almost four years later and I can’t believe my eyes. Dowd the Disappointment has made something of herself since she disappeared. She must have made the grades if she transferred to SPU, gorgeous and unique with a dry insulting wit that makes me smile when I don’t want to. She isn’t dressed like a spoiled little princess. Of course her clothes are expensive, but she has a style all her own.
She wears Lucky jeans with pink leather Montelliana hiking boots and a silky ruffled poet’s blouse that makes me want to stroke it. Her honey blonde hair is long and straight, blowing in the breeze, begging to be played with and showing off her elegant neck. It’s unstyled as if she came in a time capsule from the 70s. If she wears makeup I can’t tell. But it doesn’t matter, because her face is flawless. Not a blemish in sight on her peachy high-boned cheeks. Long lashes fringe her golden hazel eyes. They look fake, but I know they’re not. I remember them behind her glasses back in the day, remember thinking she could be pretty.
I was wrong. She’s not pretty. She’s fucking drop-dead gorgeous.
Did I mention how her body filled out? She’s now a top prospect for a Sports Illustrated swimsuit layout.
These are forbidden thoughts, but they’re real and I can’t stop them. Even if she is my worst enemy.
“Because I’m not the same,” she insists a little louder than necessary. Then she backs up a step, turning away to hide her blush under a curtain of shiny touchable hair, but it’s too late. Of course I see her embarrassment. It’s my role in her life to cause it. “Nice seeing you,” she says.
I believe her and I’m taken aback at the truth in her words, even though everything in her body language says otherwise. Almost everything. There’s that light in her eyes, that vibration of energy between us. If I don’t miss it, neither does she. She moves on, dragging Dooley along with her, trying like hell to behave as if she hasn’t giv
en a thought to the torture I inflicted on her in high school four years ago. But then I notice the rush of her steps, the tense line of her back confirming she’s not over me.
Not at all. She bought her way out of her trouble with me—or her dad bought her out of it—rather than stick it out and fight her own battle. You asshole. It was never a fair fight.
As I watch her retreating form, she looks like the last girl on campus who wants a fucking thing to do with me. My dick twitches with perverse interest in her perfect ass. There’s no sway, no bounce to it as she moves fast and smooth. Interesting. But she’s no braver than she was before. She ended up running away from me again, didn’t she?
What did I expect? She’s not still crying over me, but she’s not about to thank me for bullying her to make her stronger either. I’m not sure she is stronger or deserving of everything she’s been handed. Still.
So what? She was always a privileged princess and I already took her down for it, didn’t I?
Yet, if I’m honest, I still feel the burn of shame. Because I’m still that fucking asshole bully. I never apologized to her. I know I should. And Joni knows it.
As for Joni . . . I have no idea what she is anymore. She looks different. Her sophistication seems real, genuine now, not put on like a costume. She’s more interesting if not a fighter.
She’s still a fucking privileged princess.
A perfect candidate for trophy girlfriend of the semester.
Dangerous thought. She knows who I am, where I’m from, that I have no father and a drunk floozy for a mother. She knows I’m poor. From a white trash loser family.
Who the fuck cares? She’s nothing to me.
I don’t give a fuck about her. She and her family mean nothing to me. They’re old news. They have no power here at St. Paul’s, no control over me anymore. I’m having a helluva time convincing my nerves of this as I turn and walk away, trotting back to the fieldhouse.
I’m her enemy as sure as she’s mine. And she knows my secrets, that my mom is a drunk who doesn’t know who my father is, that we’re poor, and that I was a mean bully, if only to her. She can mess up my reputation, cause the kind of suspicion the NCAA could run with. They might start an investigation. The NCAA made it clear they have St. Paul U in their sights. Worse, the press could run with whatever bad rumors she might spread. Even a whiff of bad publicity would hurt my chances for the Heisman.
But Joni is a good girl. The kind whose moral compass is unquestionable and uncompromising. She would never spread rumors to hurt me or St. Paul’s.
Would she? She hates me.
We’ve made a tacit agreement to go our own ways, put more water under the bridge. She’ll leave me alone if I leave her alone.
Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer. I push through the doors and trot down the hall to the locker room in the back of the building near the practice field, contemplating the prospect of keeping Joni Dowd close. The idea has appeal.
She’s not exactly a snake. It would be more like bringing a sheep to slaughter if I were to make her mine for the semester, a true trophy girlfriend. But that’s the kind of dangerous game I can’t afford to play. Shoving through the locker room door, I take inventory and realize the only guys left inside are on the injured list. Fuck.
I dismiss Joni from my mind along with the notion of making her mine. Sleeping with the enemy is a strategy that never ends well. For at least one of the parties involved. And everyone knows my relationships always end before the semester.
“Where the fuck you been?” Billy, a linebacker with a strained groin greets me dressed in a towel. “Coach is taking heads off demanding to know.”
“I’ll be on the field in five. Do me a solid and run out there and let him know.”
“I’m wearing a towel. I’m scheduled for an ice bath.”
I look at him, taking my eyes from the contents of my locker as I strip my pants off. “When was the last time I asked you for anything?”
“Never.” He nods, knows he owes me for setting him up with his last three dates and hastily throws on a pair of gym shorts and flies out the back door. I like Billy. He’s cooperative.
Shaking my head, I dress, moving through the routine fast, but my head goes back to Joni. A vision of her on my mattress takes hold. Fuck.
You’re not out of it yet, Jack. You haven’t won the Heisman yet, haven’t been drafted to the NFL. Leave her alone. You don’t need any more trouble. She knows who you really are, and who you aren’t.
She knows I have no money. I don’t need any more scrutiny from the NCAA about my financial situation.
No, I don’t. Fuck.
Speaking of which, I need to hustle out to the field because in spite of what my teammates think, I really can’t get away with being late. Not again. I’m running out of excuses for Coach Radz. He’s what they charmingly describe as old school when it comes to coaching. He speaks loudly and carries a big fucking stick. And he’s not afraid to use it. If we don’t get banged up in games, we pay double for the failure in practice. He literally counts our bruises.
There’s no way in hell I’m telling him the real reason I’ve been late four times since the team arrived three weeks ago for preseason triple sessions. Money. Busy working my side-gig earning money. That’s not something anyone knows about. It’s the kind of gig that needs to stay under the radar, hidden from everyone.
The team starts well ahead of the rest of the student body who aren’t participating in fall sports. That cuts my summer job short and I need the income. Every fucking penny of it. No way am I admitting to that to Coach. He’s already sketchy about the arrangement I had to work for the alumni supporter who overpaid me by about twenty-k to hang around his car dealership. Until last summer when a rep from the NCAA visited and asked questions. Either I needed to quit the job or accept a pay-cut down to almost minimum wage to avoid the appearance of a gratuitous payment against NCAA rules. Beyond tuition, room and board, I can’t accept any money from SPU or their supporters. Now I’m in a deeper fucking hole than ever. Barely twenty-one and I already have money problems with no grand spending spree to show for it. No fancy car, no fancy digs, not even a fucking bed. Poor Jack. I snort a laugh.
I turn to the door and take off at a lope, no need for the full burner speed.
I save that speed for my nightmares, in case the demons turn out to be bigger and badder than me. In case I need to escape all the way to the dark side of the moon where I came from.
Chapter 2
Joni
“Wait up you Amazonian woman,” Dooley says, finally opening his smart-ass mouth. I turn on him after we’re safely across the street and Jack fricking Hunter has disappeared into the fieldhouse.
“You haven’t lost your power of speech after all,” I say. “What was that back there? I could have used some support.” This is patently unfair to put on him since he has no idea that Jack is my demon, my biggest nightmare. No one has any idea of my sad history with the Big Man on Campus, Jack Hunter and I want to keep it that way. I want to never see him again.
Liar, liar pants on fire.
My face goes up in flames of shame. Okay, I want to see him long enough to make him wish he’d never done what he did to me, to make him sorry. Then I never want to see him again.
“Are you crazy, bitch? That was Jack fucking Hunter—and you never mentioned you happen to know the biggest celebrity on campus—hell, the biggest celebrity in college football, the odds-on favorite to win the Heisman.”
“Heisman?” I say dumbly, because even though I know about Jack playing football, I’m not exactly a college football fan. I’ve been too busy studying my ass off to get the grades to transfer here.
“You are so sorry, so lost, little lamb.” He takes me by the arm and leads me to the coffee shop in the Student Union building, a very big and very old brick monolith that was probably built by the Masons and is riddled with secrets and treasures, if St. Paul U mythology is to be believed. An Episco
pal institution, it’s an elitist enclave first and foremost. But its current status as a top university, one of the most difficult to get into in the country, is in no small part due to the sports teams winning trophies and championships left and right.
“I didn’t come here for the sports,” I say because it’s true no matter that no one would believe me. I’d like to think I’m lucky I got in, or got in based on my essay, but I know my dad pulled strings. The thought causes a bubble of discomfort in my gut.
“Of course not. I know, honey. You came here because Amy Soullier, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist is in residence as the Booker professor. Or so you’ve said. Maybe too many times.” He stops and narrows his eyes at me. “Now I’m not so sure. Maybe you really had me hoodwinked with that story. Maybe Jack Hunter, who you mysteriously know from your mysterious past, is the real reason you wanted to come here.”
“He is not—” I stop because I can’t tell Dooley I came here in spite of knowing that Jack was here, and with no small trepidation about it. But I’d convinced myself that the campus was big enough for both of us and chances were I’d never run into him, because I have every intention of never going to a football game or anywhere near the kinds of parties or social events that football players go to. Feeling the crimson flood me at my ridiculous unfinished sentence, at the childish way I said the words, it’s as if I’ve reverted to that girl from four years ago in the matter of ten minutes upon seeing the hideous ghost who’s haunted me ever since I can remember.
But he’s not so hideous. My demonic conscience won’t let me get away with that label. My traitorous dreams won’t let me think of him as anything short of a desirable if broken boy, one I dream about … in not terrible ways. Can I admit that I dream about getting even with him in the most intimate of ways?
No. I can’t. Because that’s the hideous nightmare in me for real. That I actually find the baddest of bad boys desirable. Of course I do. I live and breathe. The hottest snack in high school is now the king of hot snacks at St. Paul University. Of course he is.
Big Man on Campus: an Enemies to Lovers College Romance (Big Men on Campus Book 1) Page 3
