by Claire Adams
“Yeah, not being honest hasn’t done us any favors yet. If I’d been up front with you…” I shrugged. “But we can be honest from now on, right?” Devon nodded, grinning so broadly, his eyes sparkling with happiness.
“Finish your breakfast, maybe we’ll have some time to fool around before you have to run to class.” I widened my eyes, feeling my cheeks warm up with a blush.
“In that case I can totally do without breakfast, you know. I’ll be fine.” Devon laughed.
“No, you won’t. Eat up; I didn’t cook this just to give it to those pigs in the living room. I made it for you! And then we’ll go fool around until you have to run to class. Deal?” I laughed with him.
“Okay, fine,” I said, only a little disappointed. “It’s a deal.”
As I went from class to class, I thought about my relationship with Devon. Everything felt so good and right; I was actually able to focus through the lectures—which I hadn’t been able to do when things were so up in the air, before. I was almost completely certain, after everything that we had been through, that nothing could possibly come between Devon and me anymore. I was pleased that he had come to me for help in passing the ACT, and I was even happier that he had been the one to bring the idea of being completely honest to the forefront. He wanted us both to be totally up-front with each other from now on; if he were planning on using me and then ditching me, he wouldn’t have been the one to suggest it, would he?
I also thought about Kelly. What she had told me—what she had admitted—along with what Devon had confessed to me meant that I could never trust her again. I hated to think that I could be friends with someone so dishonest, and frankly crazy; it was insane of her to have tried to take Devon’s ACT for him, and just as absurd to try and hold it over him for the rest of his life, and then throw him under the bus once he got together with someone seriously. I shook my head to myself, thinking about it as I went from one class to another.
I would have to stay away from her, at least while Devon and I were preparing for him to re-take the test. I couldn’t trust myself not to let something slip—and I couldn’t possibly trust Kelly not to figure out another way to get at Devon somehow. Would I now be her enemy too, since I was with the guy she had decided she needed to either have or get back at. What is wrong with her? It’s been so long since they dated; why would she still be clinging to this? It didn’t make any sense to me that anyone would continue so long after their relationship had ended.
The more I thought about it, the happier I was. It was bizarre; there was so much stress, with the preparations for Devon to re-take the ACT and everything else that was going on in my life. And yet, I was more comfortable and at peace with my life than ever. If Kelly was going to get in the way of that, there was no reason for me to keep being friends with there, was there? I thought that if she was really going to be so horrible to me as well as to Devon—if she couldn’t just be happy for me that I’d found someone, and couldn’t just accept that it was never going to work with her and Devon—then there must not be any reason to try and keep things up with her. There was no reason to apologize, or to make up. If she was really going to lie to me, and she didn’t feel bad about it or even want to make amends, then I must have been mistaken about what good friends we had been before I’d even met Devon. She kept carping on how Devon was trying to use me…but she’s been using me all along. I could give up on the friendship with her, as far as I was concerned. It might make things a bit awkward with our circle of friends for a while, but if I just let her fade into the background of my life, then things would just move forward. It made me feel even better; I didn’t even have to worry about Kelly anymore if I didn’t want to be friends with her.
Chapter Three
That night, Devon and I went back to studying together. It was almost strange to me, how much the rest of the guys simply accepted the fact that I was hanging out in the frat house, spending time with Devon. I felt as if I was almost one of them; as if it was just a simple fact that Devon and I were together. I knew that some of the girls on campus—the ones Devon had fooled around with in the past and the ones who wanted to ‘tame’ him themselves alike—envied me, but I thought that as long as they weren’t like Kelly, I could live with a little jealousy.
We started in on the material that Devon was weakest at, breaking it down into the different subjects and spending a little bit of time on each one. I switched between the books, picking the one I liked best overall to show Devon some tricks for the English section of the test—it had the best tips for breaking down the questions for that section—and one of the other three for the Math section. It almost amazed me how much better Devon did on the practice tests for each section after relatively little work. “You are way, way smarter than you think,” I told him, showing him the scores he’d gotten.
“I have a great tutor,” Devon countered, kissing me passionately. We took a break before diving into the reading section, talking about what we would do together once all of the stress of him re-taking the test was out of the way. “The season doesn’t last forever, you know,” Devon pointed out to me.
“Well duh, it wouldn’t be a season then,” I quipped. Devon grinned.
“What I mean is, once we’re in the off-season, we can just relax. I’ll still have to hit the gym—gotta stay at my peak—but I won’t have practice, I won’t have games. We can go out on dates, see movies, all that stuff.” I rolled my eyes, grinning.
“We do that now!” I gave him a playful shove. “You’re just looking forward to a time when you can keep me in your room all weekend without missing a practice.” Devon laughed.
“No, I think that’s you,” he told me, pinning me down on the bed and kissing along the column of my throat. “You’re the most sex-obsessed woman I’ve ever met, babe. Seriously.”
“Well, that’s thanks to you,” I told him, reaching up and threading my fingers through his hair, holding his face close to mine as I looked up into his eyes. “If you weren’t so great in bed, I probably wouldn’t be so obsessed with keeping you here.”
“Well, we need to get back to work in a minute,” Devon said. He kissed me. “But maybe if you’re good, I’ll learn everything in a blink of an eye, and we can spend the rest of the night seeing how many times I can make you come.” I laughed.
“Unfortunately, after we finish your study session for the night I have to do one of my own,” I told him, wriggling free of his arms. “I’ve got a test tomorrow in Chem, and I am not as naturally gifted at science as you are.” Devon frowned, looking at me in concern.
“We can study together—I mean, I’ve got time before they give me the ACT again. Let’s go over your stuff for a while, it’s bound to help me, too.” I grinned.
“Well lay it on me, player!” We switched out his books for my own and started going over some of the things I was having trouble with in chemistry. I was surprised—and shocked to be surprised—that Devon was actually really interested, really helpful. As good as I was in math and English, he had a knack for science, showing me a shortcut to a couple of the solutions in the chemical equations. “How is it that you can balance a chemical equation but not work out a quadratic formula?” Devon chuckled.
“The chemical equations give you a result; that’s why. You know exactly what it should be before you even start.” We switched back and forth between my studies and his, trading different tips and tricks, and it felt so good and natural that I was almost sorry when I started to feel sleepy. As we began to wind down, our conversation became more about flirting than it was about studying; we teased each other about different things we’d noticed each other doing. “You know, whenever you’re really focused, you get this little wrinkle, right here,” Devon told me, lightly touching the space between my eyebrows.
“Yeah, well, I saw you sticking out your tongue while you were writing out the equation for one of the questions in the book,” I countered, sticking my tongue out and wiggling it in Devon’s direction.
We talked about Devon’s friends and teammates, about the rest of my friends except for Kelly, and it just felt so comfortable to be with him that I couldn’t imagine ever breaking up with Devon. I can’t even think of why I let Kelly influence me in any way, I thought, watching him read through a section of the English portion of the test as the final drill of the night. Devon was just exactly what I had always wanted in a boyfriend, and I couldn’t imagine any person making me happier than he did. It was impossible.
“I’m so glad you decided to stalk me,” I told Devon as I nestled into his arms at the end of the night. Devon chuckled.
“You make me sound like such a creep when you say that.” I grinned.
“Well, kind of it’s true. You did sort of stalk me, tracking me down to the movie theater the way you did. You’re just lucky I already liked you and deep-down wanted things to work out.”
“I am lucky,” Devon told me, nuzzling against my neck. “Considering all the bad stuff you heard about me, you could have easily just decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
“I am never going to listen to gossip again,” I told him, turning around in his arms to face him. “All it gets anyone ever is trouble.”
“At least check with the person the gossip is about. Some gossip is true. After all, before you I was actually kind of a terrible guy.” I rolled my eyes.
“If you wanted to change, you couldn’t have been that terrible.” Devon kissed me passionately, letting his hands roam over my body slowly.
“You are a damn good reason to want to be a better guy,” he told me, barely breaking away from my lips. “I never want you to be disappointed in me. I want to always strive to be good enough for you. You believe me, right Jenny?” I laughed.
“One of these days, I hope you’re going to stop calling me that.” Devon grinned against my lips, shifting his hips against me.
“Nope,” he told me, nibbling on my bottom lip playfully. “I’m going to keep calling you that nickname until you love it. No more thoughts about stupid kids in school.” I sighed, grinning in spite of myself.
“You have got an uphill battle then.” Devon smiled again, and I could feel him starting to get hard, pressing against me. I was only too happy to let our study session turn into something else, something even more gratifying than learning about square roots or the quadratic formula.
“I’ve learned something,” Devon murmured, stripping off the last of my clothes with deft hands. “I don’t just want easy things anymore. I want stuff I have to work for. If I have to work to keep you loving me, then that’s even better.” I melted against him, my hands wandering all over his body, wondering how I had managed to possibly get so lucky.
Chapter Four
The next morning, Devon made me another special breakfast, insisting that since I had a test to take, it should be even better than any of the others he had made me. “I want my girl to keep up her game,” he said, grinning at me from the stove. He made eggs benedict, using a powdered mix for the hollandaise—but it was so good I couldn’t even tease him about the mix, digging into the food on my plate with a hunger I had never felt before. We chatted over breakfast, taking our time, and Devon quizzed me on a couple of the things we had talked about from my chemistry test the night before, checking that I remembered what he had told me.
By the time I got into class, showered and my stomach full, I was shocked at how confident I felt, how positive and at ease. I was never really completely nervous about taking tests, but with science I always had a little bit of doubt. Chemistry had been kicking my ass, at least a little bit, from the beginning of the semester; my professor for the course was a mousy looking guy who had the thickest Russian accent imaginable, and it seemed like he couldn’t even understand that there were people in the class—namely me—who just couldn’t look at a chemical equation and immediately know the answer.
But for the first time all semester, as the papers for the test made their way through the room, I felt calm. I could hear Devon’s voice in my head, giving me little hints and tricks for how I could go about finding the answer faster. The same way that he had of almost overthinking questions in Math or English was what I had been doing with science for years; it occurred to me, looking over the different problems before the test officially started, that I was comfortable almost not because of anything specific that Devon had taught me about the subject, but because going over the fundamentals with him was making it easier to remember more complicated things. I smiled to myself as I went from one question to the next, knowing that the answers were in me, knowing I could figure it out.
I thought about Devon as I worked my way through the problems, wondering what he was up to. He was so sweet and kind, so generous, so wonderful to me—how could I have ever doubted that he really did want something serious? I felt a little weird that I had paid for a dorm that I probably wouldn’t get very much use out of, but I thought about the fact that when the semester was coming to a close in about another month or two, I could request a transfer. I could get a room with someone else on campus; plenty of other people had already put in their requests—but they wouldn’t be processed until the term was done with.
And anyway, I thought, looking over the answer to a problem that two nights before would have made my palms sweaty, plenty of other girls practically lived with their boyfriends on campus. There were a few other girls besides myself who spent time in the Phi Kappa house; Jeremy’s girlfriend was there almost all the time, and Jaxon and his girlfriend were a staple, hanging out and just having fun. The guys in the frat didn’t even seem to be quite as much the raucous, playboy partiers that I had first seen them as. They had lives outside of drinking and watching sports, and they had goals for themselves.
I would have to remember to thank my other friends for making me go to the party a few weeks before; it had changed my life in so many ways, and while I was sad to lose Kelly as my best friend, I thought that it was for the best. She was nearing the end of her college years anyway—and even if she wasn’t, the fact that she could have lied to me so steadily, and tried to bring me grief, meant that she had never really been my friend at all, at least not since I had come to college. I tried to imagine how it could even be possible to have that much poison in your heart and brain and still be a functioning person. It seemed like complete and total madness to me.
I wasn’t the first one to finish, but I was also not the last one to turn my test in to the professor, who looked up from whatever he was doing and gave me a meek little smile. As I left the classroom—he had told us at the beginning that we were free to go once we finished—I thought about the fact that I had always studied by myself. Even when Kelly and I had studied together, we hadn’t really combined our efforts; we’d just sat in the same room, with the TV on, looking at our different subjects. It was a totally different experience with Devon, and it surprised me to realize that I had retained the information even better that way. I shook my head, smiling to myself. I could think of a half-dozen ways that we could get even better at studying together, provided that we were able to keep our relationship going.
I had to believe that Devon was capable of doing well on the ACT. It made me sad to think that he had to have had such impatient teachers, to grow up thinking that he wasn’t really good at school, only at basketball. What kind of teacher would make a student feel that way? He wasn’t stupid—he was incredibly bright, and even after only two sessions, he was making major progress in filling the gaps. It made me feel good to be helping him, coaching him along the way that he should have been coached the entire time he’d been in school. It had given me so much pride, the way that Devon had introduced me to the people in the stands with us, telling them how smart I was, what a great tutor I had been a
lready. He really cares about me, I thought, unable to help the big grin that formed on my face at the idea. Devon Sealy, the bad boy, the legend who slept around and drove girls crazy, cared about me.
For the rest of the week, I spent every night at the frat house; in fact, anytime I wasn’t spending with my friends or in classes, I tried to be by Devon’s side. I told him the first time I saw him after my test that I had never felt more confident or more comfortable in my chemistry class the entire semester, and Devon had kissed me and told me that he would do anything he could to help me succeed—just like I had helped him.
As word got around campus that Devon and I were seeing each other seriously, my friends started to ask me about him; at first, they were absolutely appalled that I could even think about dating a guy like Devon with a reputation as horrible as he had. Giselle told me I was insane outright, while Alicia predicted by heartbreak as soon as Devon found someone he wanted more. “Guys, if you can’t just be happy for me, then I can find new friends.”
Kelly was spreading poison too; I knew it because I heard whispers of the rumors she had spread, and continued to spread, about why I was never in the dorms anymore. She told everyone that I was out of my mind about Devon, that I was going to be just another victim of his cheating, playing ways. She told people that I had said I would choose Devon over her even if he broke my heart. I found more and more reasons to never want to have anything to do with her for the rest of my life. I couldn’t trust her—and slowly our group of friends came around to realize that she was being spiteful, that she wasn’t interested in anything but making Devon look bad and her own life. One by one, my friends came to my side, eventually shunning Kelly altogether.
At nights, I was always at the Phi Kappa house; even when Devon and I weren’t actively either studying or making love in his room, it felt good to be there. None of the guys ever really gave me a hard time about anything—they were glad, one of them told me, to see Devon finally settling with a “bomb-ass, chill girl.” They wanted him back on the team, bringing prestige to the fraternity with his skills on the court. They knew that I was working with him, and more than a few of the guys told me that I was clearly responsible for Devon taking life, in general, more seriously.
