In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3)

by Mara Jacobs

  “You have me,” I said, smiling, almost laughing, letting him know I was teasing. But damn, I would absolutely love for the organizing and transcribing I was doing for him to be the catalyst for him to keep his resolution.

  “Do I?” he said, almost in a whisper.

  “Do you what?”

  He leaned all the way forward, resting his forearms on the table, right in front of the laptop. So close I could make out the grey of his eyes, even in the poor light.

  “Do I…have you?” he asked.

  I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I answered, “you do.”

  His shoulders drooped a little and I realized they’d been bunched up…tensed up…while he’d asked me that question.

  Could he honestly doubt how I felt about him?

  Well, yeah, maybe. Because he didn’t know what he’d meant to me for the past five years. He only thought we had shared the past two weeks.

  But maybe even that alone should have let him know I would be anything he wanted me to be.

  I had molded myself into a Bribury Basic, I could easily become what would appeal to Billy Montrose.

  Jane’s pendant seemed to burn against my skin just then, and I pulled it out from beneath the comfy sweater, feeling the warmth from my skin as I held it, tracing my fingers along the outside curves.

  Strength. I had it, I should show it, Jane had said about the necklace.

  I pushed the thought away as Montrose said, “Do you think we should talk about what’s going to happen when the semester starts?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and I dropped the pendant out of my hands, then held on tighter to the sides of my laptop. Was he already backpedaling?

  “What, specifically, do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean, you’re not my student anymore, but you are still a student.”

  “Yes…”

  He rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin. “And you are my employee.”

  “A short-term, project-specific employee. I mean, I’m not going to be in a position to cry sexual harassment because you didn’t promote me when I deserved it.”

  “Not that I wouldn’t. Give you the promotion, I mean.”

  I smiled, and he returned it, his teeth almost as bright and evident as his white shirt. “I know you would,” I said.

  His smile stayed as he said, “So…apart from you being a student and my employee…absolutely no roadblocks for us to…”

  “To…?”

  “Well, I guess that’s the question, isn’t it?”

  I tried to channel my future, super-confident, twenty-eight-year-old self. “Do you really think it’s a question anymore?”

  The smile left his face as I just looked at him, then silently quirked one brow up in…question? Challenge?

  Slowly…oh, so slowly…he shook his head just the tiniest amount. But it was enough for me to silently thank my future self for being so bold.

  “No,” he said almost too quietly for me to hear. In fact, maybe I’d just read his lips and hadn’t even heard him at all.

  It didn’t matter. I had the answer I wanted. I nodded once but didn’t say anything. I would have given anything to be with him in person at that moment, sitting on his terrace, hearing revelers from the streets below and out in the city. To be able to reach across the table and touch him. To get up and walk over to him, where he’d make room for me on his lap. And I’d wrap my arms around him, feeling the thin, cool cotton fabric of his shirt, and the hard, warm man beneath.

  Wait. The cotton of his shirt? “You must be freezing out there,” I said, realizing he’d been outside for the last ten minutes or more with no coat, hat or gloves. I shivered in my warm cozy bed just thinking about it.

  “Actually,” he said, grinning, “I am totally freezing my nuts off out here.”

  “Why didn’t you go back inside? After midnight?”

  He shrugged and I noticed the redness of his cheeks and nose. “I was going to right after the countdown, but it seemed like, I don’t know, the darkness and stillness out here gave us a deeper level of…intimacy.”

  “Wow, spoken like a writer. Yeah, you better finish that book this year, so you’re not spouting lines like that in everyday conversation.”

  He laughed, then turned his head. “You’re right. I hear my parents coming in. I should probably go see how their night was.”

  “They braved the madness?”

  “Not really. Our neighbors a couple of floors down had a small party. They didn’t even have to leave the building.”

  He started to rise and I felt a moment of panic, the same feeling I got every time one of our conversations was winding up.

  “Umm…okay, well, I’ll be in the office tomorrow if—”

  He was shaking his head as he rose from the table and picked up his laptop. “We leave tomorrow for Gstaad to ski for a week. My parents, sister, her boyfriend and me.”

  I didn’t bother starting in on my New York not remotely being a launching pad for a European vacation. But I thought it.

  “Have fun,” I said, keeping all traces of jealousy out of my voice, though I wasn’t really sure who, or what, I was jealous of. I didn’t even ski. (Just the thought of someone from my neighborhood on skis made me inwardly cringe.)

  “Thanks, I will. But I probably won’t be calling you while I’m gone. Time zone, and I didn’t get the roam thing for my phone. There’s always internet in the resort, for email, but…”

  I didn’t want him to think he had to be accountable to me. Waving a hand, I said, “Don’t worry about it. I have plenty to keep me busy for the next week and a half. Any questions can wait until you get back.”

  He nodded while closing the terrace door behind him and stepped back into his bedroom, which was about the size of my family’s entire apartment. “Yeah, I know you can handle it,” he said.

  “Okay. Well, then…”

  “Hey, Syd?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think it’s going to be weird, be awkward, when we see each other for the first time?”

  “You mean like a blind date or something?”

  He chuckled, setting his laptop down on the desk, but continuing to stand. He tilted it so I could see his face, but being eye level with his body was very nice indeed.

  “I guess. I mean, we’ve grown…really close over the past two weeks, and yet…”

  “And yet…”

  We watched each other, neither one wanting to define the other’s feelings—or their own—by finishing the sentence. He rubbed his chin again. “I just don’t want it to be awkward, you know?”

  “It won’t,” I said. I hoped.

  We wished each other “Happy New Year” again, and then hung up.

  I placed my laptop on the floor by my bed and wrapped myself tighter in my comforter. With my computer light off, the candlelight took over and I lay there and thought about the upcoming year, and how much I couldn’t wait for the next week and a half to fly by.

  This was going to be the best year of my life, I just knew it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Much like Montrose had feared, it was awkward when we first saw each other. For about ten seconds.

  And then he kissed me.

  I was sitting at his desk typing up notes when I heard his key in the door. I always kept the door locked when I was in there alone.

  I knew he’d arrived home from Switzerland yesterday—he’d texted me that he was on US soil, but hadn’t mentioned when he’d be coming back to Bribury. It was Saturday, and students were beginning to arrive, though most would be coming back tomorrow, with the new semester starting on Monday.

  I guess I really hadn’t expected him to arrive until Sunday night, and that I wouldn’t see him until Monday afternoon.

  I rose from my seat as the door unlocked, and moved around the desk as he opened and closed it.

  A slow smile crept across his ruggedly handsome face as he saw me. “I knew you�
�d be here,” he said as he tossed his messenger bag onto the now box-free guest chair.

  “I’m here,” I stated the obvious as he looked at me.

  “Me too, now,” he said. The awkward level rose a few decibels until he laughed and stepped the five paces to get to me, put his hands—still cold from the outdoors and not wearing gloves—on my face, and brought his lips to mine.

  Though he was cold from being outside, his lips were warm and the feel of them on mine nearly burned, the intensity was so strong. I had loved this man for five years, never thinking I would ever even meet him. I was in awe of his talent for so long. To now have his hands on my face, stroking my chin with his thumb as he ran his tongue along the seam of my lips…it was beyond my comprehension.

  It had been the stuff of dreams, of fantasies, and yet here he was, kissing me. The feel of his camel hair coat as I placed my hands on his elbows, bent so that his hands could touch me. Real.

  The scent of his cologne, barely there, but deep and musky, and not at all like the preppy Burberry Brit that Bribury guys bathed in. Real.

  The taste of coffee as I opened my mouth to him and he swept his tongue in to find mine, to dance together. Real.

  And yet, so…surreal.

  Sliding my hands up his arms, I stepped closer to him, desperate to feel his body against mine.

  “Syd,” he whispered against my lips. “God, I missed you.”

  All I could do was nod a tiny bit because his mouth covered mine again. More pressure this time, more urgency. His hands fell away from my face and he pulled me into his arms. I wrapped my arms around him, my hands sliding through the hair at the back of his head—so soft and wavy, maybe even a little wet. Was it snowing outside? I burrowed my fingers deeper, and the backs of my knuckles encountered more wetness. Definitely melting snow.

  It seemed like steam rose from the contact of my warm hands in his cold and wet hair, but maybe that was just how I was feeling inside. Very hot and steamy, like I was being singed by extreme weather conditions.

  Being singed by Montrose.

  I could feel his breath against my cheek as he angled his mouth for a better, deeper position. His hands slid down my fleece, and curved around my butt, pulling me even closer to him. His chest was strong and solid, and I loved that he was a man and not a Bribury boy who was still growing into himself.

  I needed to feel that chest, know for sure how solid, how real, he was. But there were too many layers on him. I slid my hands down the lapels of this smooth-as-silk camel-hair coat and pushed it off his shoulders, his hands quickly returning to my butt once his coat had dropped to the floor.

  Being Saturday, he wasn’t wearing a sports coat, but instead had on a three-quarter zip wool sweater in black with the soft cotton of a grey T-shirt peeking out at the collar.

  One of his hands glided up from my butt and underneath my fleece, pulled my cami from my jeans and crept onto the small of my back.

  Yes, that was what I needed, too—to touch his bare skin. “Yes,” was what I murmured against his mouth. Yes, was what I would always tell him. He squeezed my ass and his hand at my back flattened against my skin, and he pulled me closer.

  I’d be tucked into him with no room to move, except my hands were skimming his chest, then moved down to the bottom of his sweater. I raised the sweater just a tiny bit, then dipped a finger into the waistband of his jeans, right at the button, feeling both the harsh denim and the soft cotton of his tucked-in tee.

  His breath hitched and he gently bit down on my lower lip, causing a groan from both of us. I slowly moved my finger back and forth, though no deeper into his jeans. “Jesus,” he said against my cheek as he kissed me there. Moving to my jaw, and down my neck, he placed kisses all along the way. Some soft, barely there, and very sweet. Others long and involved sucking, and weren’t sweet at all. I loved it all, baring my neck for him, his nose nudging the high collar of my fleece pullover out of the way.

  I was just about to end the teasing (though the teasing was pretty damn good) and slide my hand lower, when a knock at the door pulled me out of it. It was a good thing, too, because Montrose kept reaching for me, even as I stepped away and returned to my side of the desk.

  A look of confusion—perhaps even devastation?—crossed his face until a second knock came and he visibly shook his head.

  He used to do that in class sometimes, pulling his thoughts back to us, back to reality.

  I always wondered what he’d been thinking about when he did that.

  Seeing the hunger in his eyes, the depth of it sending chills down throughout my limbs as I sat down behind the desk, didn’t have me wondering what he’d been thinking this time.

  He’d been thinking we were about thirty seconds away from pulling each other’s clothes off, and ruining all my hard organizational work by swiping the credenza clear and laying me on it.

  And I’d be so okay with replacing every last scrap of paper in its rightful place…after.

  With a sigh, and a look of regret—and promise—he turned from me, grabbed his coat from the floor, and returned to the door, opening it just as I started typing into my laptop, pretending whoever was at the door was none of my business.

  And it wasn’t, but whoever it was, they were now firmly at the top of my shit list.

  “I thought I saw you coming in the building from my office, Billy,” came a female voice. I didn’t even look up, just kept on typing. I would have been more proud of myself for not being nosy, except that I could tell from her voice that our mood killer was a much older woman. Like, grandma old.

  “Hello, Corrine, how were your holidays?” he said, stepping away from the door and allowing in my enemy number one.

  Except she couldn’t be my enemy number one because, well, she was just adorable. I realized this as she came completely into the office, Montrose shutting the door behind her, still holding his coat firmly in place in front of what I knew to be a pretty impressive hard-on.

  Corrine was like a ball of cotton: white, fluffy hair, and nearly as round as she was tall, which was not very.

  Totally a nurturer, Corrine, you could tell at first glance.

  I briefly thought of my own grandmother. My earliest memory of her was hearing her tell my mother, “Don’t bring that spic bastard around here anymore. She don’t look like no grandkid of mine.” This was the closest I ever came to knowing the ethnicity of my father (the spic slur), and I wasn’t even sure that she knew for certain.

  I would see her again only when she’d come to visit my redheaded, oh, so Irish, little brothers.

  She never acknowledged me, even though it was obvious that I was the one taking care of her beloved little Irish potatoes.

  I’d bet my whole paycheck from Montrose that Corrine hugged and kissed every one of her grandkids with the same amount of love and enthusiasm.

  “Oh, they were wonderful, Billy, thank you for asking. I went to Chicago and visited my daughter and her family. So wonderful to see those grandchildren, you know they’re the only ones that don’t live in Maryland anymore.”

  Montrose was nodding, like he did indeed know where each and every one of Corrine’s grandchildren resided. He leaned against the credenza, his fine ass resting just between two different stacks of his notes.

  “And then this past week we saw all the ones around here. Which we do quite often, of course, but you know me…I just can’t get enough of them.”

  Yep, Corrine had probably not rung in the new year by calling one of her grandkids “spic bastard.” I kept my head down and typed.

  “That’s great,” Montrose said.

  “And how about you, Billy? Your family all doing well?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the picture on Montrose’s desk of his family as he gave Corrine a brief summary of his break.

  “And New Year’s Eve? Did you go to Times Square?” she asked.

  My fingers stilled and I looked up then to find him staring at me. “Uh, no. I spent it in. Jus
t a quiet evening with…someone special.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. I suppose to a native New Yorker that gets kind of old.”

  He just nodded his agreement. Corrine then turned her attention to me. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Corrine, this is my new literary assistant, Sydney O’Brien. Syd, Corrine Patterson. She pretty much runs the department.”

  She swatted at Montrose in an “Oh, Billy,” delightfully exasperated kind of way, as she made her way to me. I stood, and offered my hand to her. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Patterson.”

  “Oh, Corrine is fine, please.” Her hand was soft and warm, but the handshake firm.

  “Syd,” I said, returning her smile.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, and I nodded my agreement. She waved me back to the chair I had just vacated. “Please, dear, don’t let me disturb you from your work.”

  “You didn’t,” I said, but sat back down anyway, though I continued to keep my attention on Corrine. And Montrose. Always on Montrose.

  “Syd’s helping me get all my notes together so I can—hopefully—spend all my time not in class, writing.”

  There was a momentary look of something that resembled…hurt? on Corrine’s face and then she bloomed into a warm smile (I doubt there was any other kind of smile for Corrine). “Well, that’s wonderful. And exactly what you need, Billy, so you can finish that book. Everybody’s so anxious to read it, and I’ll be at the front of the line at the bookstore.” She clasped her hands together, as if she couldn’t contain her glee at the thought.

  My eyes were on Montrose and, though it was slight and Corrine probably wouldn’t notice, his body tensed at her words. The black sweater, which I’d had my hands under only moments ago, seemed to pull tighter across his shoulders.

  I wasn’t sure if it was Corrine assuming that Billy was close to finishing his novel (when I’d just spent three weeks sifting through the evidence that it hadn’t even been started), or the crazy anticipation of Corrine, and really, the entire literary world and reading public.

  Most likely both, and it was a wonder Corrine didn’t pick up on Montrose’s lack of enthusiasm as she rambled on about how excited she was to read it, and how certain she was that it would be brilliant.