by J. Sterling
“Get what out of the way?” He actually looked amused as he pulled some papers and pencils from his bag and placed them on the table.
“My dad’s a big fan of your dad.”
Chance laughed. “Really? He is?” He sounded honestly shocked.
“Is that so surprising?”
He shrugged. “Well, you are from New York. At least, I’m assuming you are with that accent and all.”
“He’s a genius, ladies and gentlemen.”
He rolled his eyes before continuing, “Most New Yorkers I know are Yankees fans.”
“I never said my dad wasn’t a Yankees fan,” I argued. All I seemed to do was argue with this guy. It was like I couldn’t stop myself.
“So, he’s a Yankees fan with a sweet spot for my dad?”
“Something like that. I guess they met at one point, and my dad really liked him. Always rooted for him,” I added with a smile as I thought about how much my dad liked Jack Carter. He even had a framed signed jersey on the wall of his office. “Even when the Mets were playing the Yanks.”
Chance matched my smile with a grin of his own, and a single dimple appeared.
How have I never noticed that adorable thing before this moment? Down, girl.
“Your dad sounds rebellious. I like him already.”
I laughed out loud because I’d never thought of my dad as a rebel, but maybe Chance was on to something.
Ralph Marchetti was a big-time real estate mogul who had built his business from nothing but hopes and dreams and eventually a few investors. He’d started from the bottom and worked his way into becoming one of the most respected guys in Manhattan real estate.
“Let me ask you something,” Chance said as he shoved his papers and pencils to the side, leaning his body on the table.
I grew nervous, wondering what he possibly wanted to know. “What?”
“Do you really have a boyfriend?” he asked, his eyebrows rising in question as he waited.
My jaw dropped open slightly before I narrowed my eyes. “You think I’d lie about that?”
He shrugged, all nonchalant, and I wanted to hit him.
“Yes, I really have a boyfriend, you arrogant ass.”
Chance arched back in his chair and huffed, “You call me a lot of names.”
“Well, you act like a lot of things,” I fired back.
For every thought he had, I had one in response. It was like a verbal chess match, and I planned on winning.
“Who is he?”
“Who’s who?” I asked before putting it together that he meant Jared. “Oh, my boyfriend?”
Chance nodded.
“His name’s Jared.”
“How long have you been together?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Are you always this closed off?”
“Me?” I let out a brisk laugh because Chance Carter apparently had a reputation for being as hard to get to know as a bank vault locked up after hours.
He was supposedly unbreakable, his innermost thoughts hidden behind a fortress of impenetrable walls, and I hated that I knew that about him. I blamed Sunny for all of my additional Chance Carter knowledge. She had heard me on the phone this morning and put two and two together, and as soon as I hung up, she’d launched into a sixty-second diatribe, detailing everything she had heard about him over the years, including the rumor that he hadn’t gone on a single date since coming to school here.
“We aren’t here to be friends, Hotshot. We’re here to work, remember?” God, why am I like this with him?
Chance’s face twisted into an unreadable expression before he reached for the papers he’d pushed aside earlier and pretended to sort them.
I found myself apologizing. “I’m sorry. You bring out the worst in me for some reason.”
Green eyes met mine as he held my gaze. “I noticed,” he agreed before adding, “But you’re right. We’re not here to be friends.”
Six words that kicked me right in the gut. It was irrational, considering the fact that I had been the one to say them in the first place, but they sounded harsher, coming from his lips. I wanted to reach back in time, tear the words from my throat, and shove them into a grinder, where they could disappear forever instead of coming out and crash-landing between us.
“Do you even have friends who are girls?”
“No,” he answered without even taking a breath.
I was curious about what made a guy like Chance Carter tick. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever met anyone who didn’t have at least one friend of the opposite sex. It was possible to be just friends, no matter what people said.
“Have you ever?”
He cocked his head to the side and studied me before responding, “I have a hard time finding girls who just want to be friends with me.”
Ten seconds ago, I would have launched another grenade in our verbal war, but I suddenly didn’t want to anymore. I believed that Chance wasn’t trying to sound arrogant or come off like a typical jock. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew that he was telling the truth. I remembered seeing it on campus—the way girls followed him around or watched him while he ate in the commissary. And even though I didn’t follow Chance on any social media platforms, I had come across his pictures before and had gotten lost in the sea of flirtatious and downright scandalous comments that had been left for him.
Without thinking further, I extended my hand toward him. He stared at it a beat before gripping it, his palm pressing against my own. A multitude of fireworks exploded inside my body with that single touch, but I fought them back, pretending that I felt nothing.
“Then, I’ll be your first,” I said with a grin, and he cocked an eyebrow.
“My first what?”
“Girl who’s a friend.” I gave his hand one hard shake before dropping it, breaking our contact and hoping like hell I wasn’t sweating. I felt hot and flushed all over.
“Now, you want to be friends? You just told me a minute ago that we were here to work.”
He started to jump into whatever else he was going to say next, but I interrupted him, “I know, but I think you need one. You can’t just have guy friends your whole life. You need at least one girl who won’t lie to you. Who can give you a female perspective on stuff.”
“I have a sister for that.”
“I’m sure you have a mom too. Neither one of them can ever be impartial. Oh my gosh, why are you making this so hard?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. You’re like an emotional tornado, whipping things up, changing them all around, and then expecting me to like the chaos.”
A tornado, huh? I’d never been called that before. At least, not to my face. “You do like it.” The verbal jousting was back on.
“Is this what being friends with a girl is like? I’m exhausted already, and I need a nap.”
It was my turn to laugh. “I think it’s what being friends with me is like. So, are you in or what?”
He shifted in his seat and ended up leaning closer to mine. “What’s expected of me in this ‘friendship’?” He used air quotes around the word.
“I-I don’t know,” I stuttered because I hadn’t thought that far ahead, and I didn’t usually have to plan out requirements for people I wanted to be friends with. You just decided to be friends, and then you were. “Normal stuff, I guess?”
“Like what? Braiding hair and shit?”
I jerked my head back and gave him a look. “Chance Carter, do you know how to braid?”
His cheeks started to color, and all I wanted to do was tease him more about it, but I stopped myself when he answered, “I told you, I have a sister.”
“That’s actually kind of adorable.” I felt myself softening. All of this internal melting was happening too quickly; it was too unexpected and far too unlike me. I cleared my throat and sat up straighter. “I think being friends for us means that we can talk about things other than math.”
“Like baseball?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure if he was be
ing a smart-ass or being serious.
I shrugged. “I mean, sure. Yeah. If you want to talk about baseball, we can. Or girls. Or guys on the team pissing you off. Whatever.”
“And in return, you’ll talk to me about what? Your boyfriend and how romantic he is?” He sounded unhappy at the mention of Jared.
And that shouldn’t have excited me. It shouldn’t have made me feel any type of way, but here I was, sitting in this small tutor cubicle, next to Fullton State’s living god, feeling all kinds of ways.
“I guess sometimes. But just for the record”—I held up a single finger—“girls usually talk about their relationships when they’re upset. So, if I did talk to you about Jared, it would most likely be because I was mad at him, not because I was happy with him.”
“Is that true? You’d only talk about your boyfriend if you were pissed at him?”
“Most likely,” I said with a slight laugh. “Girls need to vent. Venting is like breathing for us. We do it to stay alive and to stop ourselves from killing the people who make us mad.”
He leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. “Kinda fucked up, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“That you’d only talk about the bad things and not the good.” His chair came down with a slam.
“It’s not that.” I tried to figure out exactly how to explain this to him. “It’s just that we need to talk out the bad stuff. We want to feel validated in our feelings. We’re not usually looking for a solution as much as we like someone to tell us that they get it. That they understand. And that they’d feel the same way too.”
Chance nodded his head slowly, like the words were sinking into his skin and becoming a part of him. “I guess that makes sense. Totally reminds me of my parents.”
“How?” I perked up because this—this—was what friends did.
“Whenever my mom gets riled up and is about to tell some story, my dad always asks her if she wants him to fix it or just listen. Then, he reacts accordingly.”
Clapping my hands together, I couldn’t stop grinning. “Brilliant. Your dad’s literally a genius. Do you know how many fights that question alone probably stops them from having?”
“I didn’t before, but I kind of get it now.”
“So then”—I extended my hand one last time—“friends?”
“What the hell?” He relented before shaking on it, and I pretended, once again, that I felt nothing when he touched me.
I was officially Chance Carter’s first female friend. This was going to be interesting, to say the least.
The Boyfriend
Danika
Chance and I called it a day shortly after our friend agreement. There wasn’t much to do until his class met a few more times and we had actual problems to work on. With both of our proverbial walls bearing cracks, we parted ways without exchanging any additional information to get in contact. I decided that was for the best as I pulled out my phone to text my boyfriend that I was on my way over when I noticed that I’d missed a few calls from him.
Thankfully, Jared lived only a few blocks from campus, so I started walking. Being from New York, neither one of us had a car. I didn’t even have my driver’s license. I never needed it in the city. It was weird, being in a place where not having a car meant that you struggled to get almost anywhere. Ride-sharing was one thing, but if I wanted to go more than an hour away, I could forget about it.
Los Angeles was so different from Manhattan. LA was spread out, wide and vast, where Manhattan was compact, everything stuffed incredibly close together. But that was also what made it so exciting. There was more life packed into Manhattan than most other states had in their entirety.
The energy in the air here was different too. New York buzzed with life that you could feel when you walked the streets, but California didn’t buzz in the same way. It zinged underneath the surface … a constant fizzle of energy waiting to explode at just the right time. New York was always exploding.
When I rounded the corner of Jared’s street, I spotted his fraternity house immediately, the expansive lawn all brown and dead, trash littered on top of it. I knew the neighbors hated having a frat house so close by, and looking at it in the blaring light of day, I couldn’t say I blamed them. I reached the front door and turned the knob, knowing it would be unlocked. The guys never locked their door, which seemed absolutely insane to me.
Unlocked front doors in New York? No. Just no.
“Where have you been?” Jared’s voice hit me the second I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.
The living room was dark, the curtains closed to keep out the light as a group of guys sat on couches, playing video games. All of them mumbled their hellos to me without breaking eye contact with the giant screen, and I said hi back as I maneuvered around them, not wanting to interrupt their combat play. Heaven forbid I was the reason one of them died during their mission.
“Hello to you too,” I said as I reached Jared.
He leaned down and planted a quick peck on my lips. The kiss was over as soon as it had begun. Long gone were the days of passionate, tongue-filled greetings that neither one of us could seem to get enough of. What had replaced them were now routine, almost-obligatory actions. Sunny had said that we acted like an old married couple before reminding me that she hadn’t meant it as a compliment. She said we’d lost our spark, not that she was convinced we’d ever had one in the first place. I’d tried to reassure her that we did—or at least, we used to—but she never believed me.
Jared reached for my hand and pulled me down the long hallway toward his bedroom. He opened his door before closing and locking it behind us. “Where were you?” he asked again, sounding either irritated or worried—I couldn’t tell which.
“Tutoring,” I answered with a little bit of attitude because I wasn’t sure I liked his tone.
“You said you didn’t have anyone today.” He gave me an inquisitive look as he moved to the bed, sat down, and patted the empty spot next to him.
I sat down, and he threw his arm around me, pulling my head against his shoulder.
“I didn’t. But they called me this morning, begging for my help.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said, kissing the top of my head, his demeanor softening. “Who’s it for?”
“Chance Carter,” I tried to say his name with no emotional attachment whatsoever, but my body betrayed me. Just saying his name out loud made it spring to life.
Jared pulled away, so he could look me in the eyes. “The baseball player?” He was not happy.
“Yeah.” Is there any other? I thought to myself but didn’t dare say it out loud.
“No.”
“Excuse me?” I argued, my defensive nature prickling. I did not like being told what to do. By anyone.
“I thought you were done tutoring guys. I don’t want you to tutor him.”
“Well, it’s not really up to you.”
“Are you joking, Danika? Don’t you remember what happened before?” he asked, his voice breaking slightly.
I immediately felt bad when I realized that he was concerned for my safety after the whole football-player incident.
Jared had been pissed when I finally confessed what had been going on. I had tried to keep it all to myself, not wanting to create any more of a scene or involve anyone in the drama I’d wrongfully assumed I could handle on my own. When I realized that I couldn’t, I told Jared everything, and I wasn’t sure if he was angrier with the actual player or with himself for not being able to protect me and keep me safe. But the worst part of all was that Jared called my father.
Things between Jared and I changed after that. A part of me stopped trusting him in a way. And maybe it was immature of me to punish him for doing what he’d believed was the right thing, but I felt betrayed by his decision. I’d specifically asked him not to bring my dad into it, and he had done it anyway. Jared knew that telling him about the footballer stalking would only make hi
m flip out.
And it did. I was forced to convince my father to let me stay and finish school here at Fullton State when he was ready to put a mob hit out on the player and drag my ass home to the “proper” coast before anyone could even notice the guy was missing. His words, not mine.
Jared changed after the incident too. He started acting differently. Like more of a bodyguard and less of a boyfriend. To be honest, I thought it was kind of hot at first, the way he wanted to protect me like some alpha Manhattan knight in shining armor, but my feelings eventually shifted. He grew too overprotective and started treating me like I was his job, his responsibility … his property. And I felt like a prisoner.
We had eventually found common ground, but things between us never truly got back on track. Not the way they used to be. I compared it in my mind to being on a waterslide: we were on the ride, but a little too much friction or a little too much water, and there was a good chance we were going to fly right off the side and pummel toward the ground.
“Chance isn’t like that. He was pissed that I was a girl in the first place. You have nothing to worry about.”
His body tensed. “Why was he pissed?”
“Because girls are crazy when it comes to him. I don’t know. He didn’t even want me there.” I pushed to a stand and started pacing before stopping.
“But now, he does? Now, he wants you there?” Jared’s dark brown eyes watched me, measuring my words against whatever was going on in his mind.
“Well, we came to an agreement,” I admitted with hesitation. “I was his only choice, and he needs to pass the class.”
Jared shook his head, his black hair flopping into his eyes. He really needed a haircut. “I don’t like it.”
“He knows I have a boyfriend.” I hoped my words would reassure him that he had nothing to worry about. “And he’s only interested in passing the class.”
“That’s what they all say.” He lay back on his bed and pulled a pillow over his face.
I’d just gotten over here, but I already wanted to leave. I pulled out my phone from my back pocket and started texting Sunny, asking if she could come get me, right as Jared’s hand gripped my wrist, the pillow that had been covering his face now falling to the floor.
