Right of First Refusal (Radleigh University #2)

by Dahlia Adler

  Don’t I?

  This conversation is unsettling me, and even though continuing the lie about Jake makes me cringe, it feels like the only way to maintain my sanity right now. “You’re right,” I reply, ignoring the twinge in my gut. “I’m seeing Jake Tuesday night, to meet up for our project.”

  “Perfect!” Lizzie drains the last of her beer. “Trust me, sex in the library is something everyone should be trying at least once, anyway.”

  “Far, far too much information,” I say at the same moment Frankie says, “Truth.”

  As they shift into talking about the best places to hook up on campus, I sit back and just listen, trying and failing not to remember when Mase and I used to contemplate the exact same thing—whether the gazebo was hidden enough (it was, except that one time it wasn’t), whether we were brave enough to skinny dip in the lake at night (we were), whether it was safe to get each other off in the back seat of the bus during away games (as if anyone wasn’t doing this).

  Fuck. They’re right. I need to stay away from him. And though obviously Jake’s not the solution, if I don’t find another guy to focus on, my brain is going to travel down the dangerous path of full-on coveting my roommate’s boyfriend.

  Plus, if I do end up going to my dad’s wedding, I sure as hell don’t want to do it alone.

  The question is, who on earth do I want on my arm, and where on this campus do I find him?

  • • •

  I don’t find any answers to my question in practice the next morning, but channeling all my aggression at the various shitty situations in my life sure does make me kick ass. “Nice hustle, Johannssen,” Coach Brady praises me as we rip off our goggles and jog off the field—frozen but miraculously snow-free for the first time in a while—and toward the showers. “That was some first class ball-handling.”

  “Thanks, Coach.”

  “You play like that in our scrimmage against Stansbury this weekend, you just might fill Rivera’s shoes,” he says, referring to our captain in a voice low enough that only I can hear.

  Not when everyone finds out I might have to bail on the championships, I think, but I don’t say anything out loud; just nod firmly at Coach and keep jogging.

  “Way to kick my ass today,” Nora grunts at me as soon as I enter the locker room. I don’t miss the admiration in her voice, even through her griping. As a goalie, she’s used to anticipating plenty of shots from the attack line, but I’ve been more about posting assists to Tish and Tessa than shooting myself. Expert cradling is kinda my thing, and a big part of that is learning how to restrain your own power for accurate passing.

  Today wasn’t a day for restraint. I shot the shit out of the goal, and only now do I see the resulting welts on Nora’s arms and abs. “Sorry, Price,” I say sheepishly.

  “You’re lucky I’m a pain slut,” she says with a wink as she strips down to nothing and steps into the shower. “Seriously, though, killer practice.”

  “Thanks.” I strip down too and get in, the water’s heat and pressure amazing on my sweaty skin. “Felt good.” Especially after finally reading my dad’s email from the day before, which ignored every word I said about not going to his wedding and instead provided me with a full schedule of events, ending with a PS that Abigail would be in touch to ask me a “very special favor.”

  If I could pre-emptively block Abigail from my phone and email, I would do it in a fucking heartbeat.

  I finish my shower and towel off, and only when I overhear Nora and the second-string goalie, Janet, gossiping about how hot the Stansbury goalie is do I remember my resolution from the night before. I drift over to Tessa, who’s rubbing lotion into arms, and take the seat next to her on the bench. “Hey, can I ask you a weird question?”

  “Always,” she says without looking up.

  Keeping my voice low so as not to be overheard by anyone else on the team—especially Nora, who’d probably die of laughter—I ask, “You don’t have any friends you could set me up with, do you?”

  She turns to me, her eyebrows shooting up to the sky. “You want to be set up?”

  Immediately, my face heats up. “Never mind. It was stupid—” I start to stand, but she pulls me back down.

  “No, crap, I’m sorry. It’s just…I thought you were with Jake Moss.”

  I resist the urge to sigh, knowing I’m gonna have to lie again. “We’re not exclusive,” I say, which at least has plenty of truth to it too. “Honestly, I’d like to meet someone who’s not on the basketball team. Maybe someone who’s not an athlete at all.” The better the chance of avoiding Mase.

  Tessa laughs. “Join the club. Between lacrosse and Kinesiology, I can’t even remember the last time I met a decent guy who wasn’t an athlete. If you figure out where they dwell, feel free to hand out my number.”

  She makes a good point; Communications is full of athletes too, because it’s full of easy-A classes, and I can’t exactly pick up a guy in Econ now that Jake is my fake boyfriend.

  God dammit.

  A new guy isn’t so likely, which means all I can do is work with the one I’ve got. Much as I fucking hate the idea of being a beard, at least the pretense will keep me honest when it comes to my roommate’s boyfriend.

  Time to kick this fauxmance into high gear.

  Turns out, I don’t even need to convince Jake keep our ruse going; he asks me first. “It’s Troy’s birthday this weekend,” he confides to me quietly in the library the following night. “There’s an Omega party Friday, and he’s dying to do pretty much anything that isn’t going to it.”

  “So…don’t go.”

  Jake snorts. “Easier said than done. The only way to get out of going to an Omega party if you’re a brother is basically to have a girlfriend insist on dragging your ass to something else.”

  “That is the most sexist piece of shit I’ve ever heard.”

  “You’re talking to a basketball-playing frat boy who likes cock, Johannssen,” he mutters under his breath. “You don’t need to tell me how shitty the ‘rules’ are.”

  “Fair point.”

  “Can you help me out?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he admits, “but I’m sure between the two of us we can come up with something. What do you want me to do for you?”

  “I don’t know either,” I say with a grin, “but someday, I will call upon you for a favor, and when that day comes…”

  “I’m in.” We fist-bump in agreement, then get back to work on our project.

  By seven thirty, both our stomachs are rumbling, and we agree to adjourn to the dining hall with our books. We all but float in on the delicious scents of hash browns, burgers, and pizza as we brainstorm ways to make Troy’s birthday a good one, but my appetite and our plans drift into smoke when we enter the dining hall and immediately spot Mase and Andi sitting at a table in the center. They’re not being particularly touchy or even flirty from what I can see, but having not seen them together since that first day, I’m surprised at how hard the image of them hits me in the gut.

  “You wanna go to Tate’s?” Jake asks, but the second the words are out of his mouth, Andi spots us, smiles, and waves me over.

  “Fucking kill me,” I mutter, unconsciously squeezing Jake’s hand. He squeezes back, and it isn’t until we reach Mase and Andi and her smile widens further at the sight of us that I realize how couple-y we look right now.

  “Hey, guys,” I say, pasting a warm smile on my face. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I was just talking about you,” says Andi. “I feel like I’ve barely seen you since you guys played basketball on Sunday. I had to hear how your game was and whether you keep up.”

  She says it with a smile and I know she means zero harm by it, but the suggestion I might not be able to makes me bristle inside. “I think I did okay,” I said.

  “Law seemed to think so.” The affection in her tone supercharges the bristling effect. “And you must be the basketball-pla
ying boyfriend.”

  The word “boyfriend” catches me by surprise—I’m pretty sure I never called him that to Andi—but Jake takes it in stride. “Yes, ma’am. Jake Moss—nice to meet you.”

  “Andi,” she says, returning his warm smile. God, she’s so nice, and it makes my gut twist. This isn’t a girl staking her claim on her man by pretending to be excited about mine; she has no idea that’s something to consider. All she sees is her roommate being happily coupled, and this is her being supportive. The same way I should be for her and her boyfriend. “I can’t believe this is the first I’m meeting you. You must sit with us.”

  “Oh,” I say, “we haven’t even gotten our food yet, and I don’t want to keep you—”

  “Don’t be silly.” Andi waves a hand dismissively. “I want to meet Jake! It’ll be like a double date.”

  I guess that’s supposed to be a good thing? It’s hard to make excuses in the face of her enthusiasm, so Jake and I excuse ourselves to go get food. “She seems nice,” he says when we’re out of earshot.

  “She is. Which kind of sucks.”

  Jake grins as we hold our trays for burgers, which are totally not on the lean-protein list I’m supposed to be adhering to during the season. Fuck it; I’ll take my virtue in the form of a salad instead of fries. The burger stays. “She’s too nice for him. Sunday morning was the only time I’ve ever seen him be a nice guy. He’s been a total dick at practice since then, and he didn’t do any more than grunt at us just now.”

  “He didn’t used to be like that,” I say as we both fill huge cups with water at the fountain soda machine. “He used to be like he was Sunday morning all the time—had fun, joked around, played well with others. It was nice to see again.”

  “I guess that makes it a little clearer why you like the guy,” Jake says with a scowl. “Well, that and he looks like he could break you in half without using his hands.”

  I’d been sipping my water as he spoke, and at that, I splutter and choke on it. “Jake, you fucking pervert.”

  He shrugs unapologetically. “When he’s not yelling or making us run an extra ten laps around the gym, I can appreciate that the guy is hot as hell.”

  Ugh, he really is. Those stupid long-lashed warm brown eyes; dark, smooth skin; and lush, full lips that used to part to reveal perfect white teeth all the damn time, back when he smiled. And I know that underneath the navy hooded sweatshirt he’s wearing right now, he’s still cut like a fucking Greek god.

  I’m…not going to think any lower than that.

  With no excuses left to linger by the food, we take our seats with Andi, who still looks thrilled to see us, and Mase, who looks like he’d rather die. “So, where are you guys coming from?” Andi asks cheerfully.

  “Just the library. We’re in Econ together.” I take a huge bite of my burger, suddenly starving.

  “That’s how we hooked up,” Jake adds, bumping his shoulder against mine. “Such a classic story—teaming up for a class project. This one’s so smart, too.”

  I force my eyes not to roll out of my head as Jake lays it on thick as mud.

  “So sweet,” says Andi, looping an arm around Mase’s and squeezing tight. “Did I ever tell you how we met?”

  No. And please don’t. “I don’t think so!” Please don’t let me throw up this burger.

  “Oh, it’s such a funny story. Law was still at Indiana, and he’d just sprained his knee, so he was hobbling around on these crutches, which of course had to be custom made because, well, look at him.”

  I’d rather not.

  “We don’t need to talk about me as an invalid,” Mase says quietly, trying to sound like he’s joking while most definitely not.

  Andi rolls her eyes and pats his biceps as if he’s a child. “Anyway, I was there visiting my cousin, who’s a cheerleader, so she takes me to this party full of athletes. I of course have no idea how to talk to anyone there—I don’t know a thing about sports—and I see this guy on crutches and think, ‘Okay, there’s someone else who doesn’t play sports! I can talk to him!’”

  I hate this story already—hate that not playing is what drew them together—but I just smile and nod, because Andi’s eyes are sparkling at the memory and what else can I do?

  “So we spend the entire night flirting, which is mostly me talking about Radleigh and my classes and stuff. Of course we can’t dance, and he was still on painkillers, so no drinking. And the whole night I’m thinking he’s gonna walk me back to my cousin’s dorm after and maybe I’ll actually get up the guts to ask him out, but duh, he can’t walk. Well, I mean, he could walk, but not, like, across campus.”

  “I think they get it,” Mase says with a strained smile.

  Under the table, Jake flicks my thigh. I flick his back. No question about it—Andi and Mase have a strange dynamic, and just being in their presence is weirdly uncomfortable, history or not. But this is also the most animated I’ve ever seen her, so clearly there’s some spark there I just do not get.

  “So at this point, I’ve had a couple of drinks without even realizing it, just because I was totally nervous, you know? So I offer to carry him.” She breaks into peals of laughter then, and I force a laugh too. I know if it’d been Lizzie or Frankie, the line would’ve been “I offered him a ride,” infused with as much innuendo as possible; Andi’s sincere silliness is totally new to me. “God, you looked at me like I was crazy,” she says to Mase.

  “Your tiny ass offering to drag mine around? You were a little crazy, babe,” he replies, and I have to force myself not to wince at the genuine affection in his voice.

  “But it was totally worth it.” She turns back to me and Jake. “He very smoothly pointed out the easiest thing of all would be if I just stayed over. How could I argue with that, right?”

  I don’t even realize I’m clawing my nails into Jake’s thigh until he gently disengages me with one hand and feeds me a fry with the other. I never eat fries, but I don’t think twice before letting him do it in a nauseating display of faux-coupledom that keeps me blissfully distracted from the image of Mase and Andi going at it for a whole ten seconds.

  “So cute,” I finally manage when I’ve swallowed.

  Andi beams, pulling her long dark curls up into a ponytail before returning to the salad she’d abandoned for her storytelling. “We didn’t even stay in touch, really, but then one day he emailed me that he’d applied for a student coaching job here, and once he got it, well…how could we not reconnect?”

  “What a coincidence,” Jake mumbles around his bite of burger.

  It does seem like a bizarre coincidence, unless he really was so taken with her from that one night that he followed her to Radleigh. That’s a pretty intense move, and not one I’d ever imagine from Mase. But obviously I don’t really know the guy sitting across from me anymore. Maybe their formerly one-night stand was just that good.

  I try to catch Mase’s eye but his are firmly fixed on the crusts of what I’m guessing were once pepperoni pizzas, if I recall his topping preferences correctly—and I’m sadly sure I do. I still can’t process how a guy I used to know so damn well just keeps on becoming a bigger and bigger mystery to me. Finally, I go back to my burger and let the conversation change from their coupledom to our Econ project, then to Andi’s major—Anthropology—and finally to some lackluster conversation about the basketball team. When both Jake’s and my plates are clean, I jump up, grabbing him with me.

  “It was so good to see you guys,” I say apologetically as I pull my coat on, “but this project is pretty huge, and we have to get back to it before the library closes for the night. See you back at the room?” I ask Andi.

  “Actually, I think I’ll be staying at Law’s tonight, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Right, sure.” I grab my tray with so much extra force I nearly send my cup flying. “Maybe I’ll have Jake stay over then.” I turn to Jake. “We should study in my room instead. Not that we’ll get much studying done if we do that,” I add with
a wink that makes me hate myself so much I wish I could throw myself in the meat grinder that made the burger now churning in my stomach.

  Andi laughs, and I wrap my arm around Jake’s and yank him toward the tray depository. “This is getting a little pathetic, Johannssen,” he warns me as we dump the garbage off our trays and return them.

  “Like I don’t know that,” I mutter back. “Just shut up.”

  When he throws back his head and laughs and I yank him out of the room, I can only hope it looks like the romantic joking of a couple in love.

  Pathetic.

  • • •

  I can’t force myself to return to the dorm after that, so Jake and I walk off together for just long enough to suggest we’re spending the night, and then I head off to Lizzie and Frankie’s instead. Frankie answers the door with colorful smudges all over her face and arms, and ushers me inside, where I’m not sure what assaults me harder—the paint fumes or the absurd tableau in front of me. Lizzie’s desk has been pulled out into the living room, and Connor’s sitting behind it, looking like the paragon of college professor in an elbow-patched tweed jacket that’s probably sending Lizzie into conniptions. Lizzie, meanwhile, is perched on the desk, vamping it up in a low-cut shirt and a skirt so tiny I think it might actually be one of my sweatbands. One hand is splayed out on the wood, showing off dramatic red-black polish. The other is curled around an apple she’s extending in Connor’s direction.

  “Please tell me I did not just walk into some fetishist role play.”

  “This is art, thank you very much,” Frankie sniffs, stepping in front of her easel and picking up a brush. I drop my stuff in the entryway and walk over, admiring the likeness on Frankie’s canvas. Lizzie and Connor look spot on, right down to Lizzie’s omnipresent black-framed glasses, but there are also jungle vines creeping around the edges, spotted with brightly colored fruit. As usual, I have no clue what I’m looking at, though I think Frankie’s talented as hell.