Hooped (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series #1)

by Claire Adams

  “No one knows it was my first time except for him—and you.” I pulled the blanket up around me again; it was slipping down, and while Kelly and I were close I wasn’t going to go around flashing her just to prove it. “Actually, it’s pretty promising. He was even really sweet after. I think he likes me.” I grinned. Kelly started to smile and then something like sadness came into her eyes. “I think I might have finally found someone worth going out with,” I said with a little laugh. Kelly laughed with me for a moment and then went quiet. “What?”

  “It’s not a big deal, just forget it.”

  “No, seriously; tell me what’s on your mind. You’re practically the closest thing I have to a big sister.”

  “I’m telling you; you don’t want to hear it anyway.” I rolled my eyes.

  “I do want to hear it or I wouldn’t be asking you. So spill already!” Kelly pressed her lips together and glanced at the bedspread before meeting my gaze again.

  “Okay. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, so don’t—like—kill the messenger or anything,” I frowned at her.

  “What are you talking about?” Kelly shrugged.

  “It’s just that Devon is a total player, you know? I mean he talks a good game, and he’s gotten lots of girls to give it up.” I laughed.

  “Well, he’s a member of that frat, of course he sleeps around. But if he was really into a girl…” Kelly shook her head.

  “No; I mean a total player. He’s a master at it; he knows just what to say and what to do to get into a girl’s pants and then once he’s done with her it’s like he never even met her at all. He just goes onto the next one. He’s all about the chase. Once he gets what he wants, he’s moving on.” I felt my throat tightening up, my mouth going dry.

  “Ah, they say that about all the guys, though,” I said weakly. I started to feel angry; I knew that Devon had been different with me. He hadn’t just manipulated me into giving it up to him—he had actually been interested in me as a person. He had held me close after we’d finished, and we’d continued talking until we’d both fallen asleep. That wasn’t the move of a guy who just wanted to get laid and move on. “It was different from that,” I told Kelly firmly. “He was—it wasn’t some guy who wanted to get laid. He was really sweet, and really into me.” Kelly shrugged.

  “Think what you want, but his reputation speaks for itself.” I rolled my eyes.

  “It’s not like you were there. You don’t know what he was like.” Kelly shrugged again. “It’s true! I didn’t even expect him to be that good to me. He said we could stop anytime I wanted, and he was just…” I shook my head. “He was nicer than any guy I’ve ever been with.”

  “Because you’ve been with so many guys,” Kelly said, grinning sardonically.

  “Well not—not like that, but I’ve done lots of other things, so it’s not like I’m a total naïve schoolgirl, or something.” Kelly pushed herself up and off of the bed, landing nimbly on the floor.

  “Ask around if you want. I’m telling you: Devon Sealy’s a man-slut. Total trash. Don’t be surprised if you never hear from him again.” She left the room, and I felt myself getting angrier and angrier. Kelly had no idea what she was talking about, I thought. She was just repeating gossip. I had to give her credit for at least looking out for my feelings like a good friend, but I was more than a little resentful that she couldn’t just be happy for me. Probably just jealous I got laid last night, and she didn’t I thought bitterly. I decided that I still wasn’t going to go around telling everyone about it—I wanted to keep it private between Devon and me—but I was not going to let Kelly’s rumor-mongering get to me. I was just going to see what happened, and then I would show her that I wasn’t as stupid or as naïve as she thought I was.

  Chapter Six

  In spite of the fact that I’d told Kelly that she had no idea what she was talking about, after she left—not only my room but also the dorm suite itself, based on the sound of the door closing behind her—I started to doubt almost immediately. She had always looked out for me. We had fallen out of touch her first year in college but gotten close again when I decided to go to the same college she had chosen. I’d messaged her, and she’d been delighted that I was going to be there.

  I had been so grateful to be close with an upperclassman when the first week of classes had started; she had given me all of the shortcuts to my classes, and she had told me about all of the professors I had for the mandatory courses that all freshmen had to take. She’d become like an older sister to me, and we’d both been happy to discover that we didn’t have to complain to each other about keeping the dorm clean or about noise during quiet hours. Of all of the friends in the group we were in, she was the one that I was closest to for very good reasons, and she had never given be bad advice.

  I also remembered with a little bit of regret that she had never been the jealous type. She had seemed pretty happy for me that I had lost my virginity; she had seemed to know I’d gone for it even before I admitted it. If she was saying that there was something basically wrong with Devon, I had to give her something like the benefit of the doubt—didn’t I?

  I called up every detail I could remember, trying to figure out whether there was a sign of Devon being the kind of player that Kelly said he was. He had sat down next to me on the loveseat uninvited, but as I replayed our conversation in my mind, I couldn’t think of anything that he’d done that was particularly manipulative. After all, we’d started off talking about basketball; he’d been doubtful that a girl could really be into it—that made sense, didn’t it? Most guys seemed to think it was weird for me actually to like the sport, especially when they found out I’d never actually played. I wasn’t the tomboy type, so it didn’t seem to compute for them.

  And then talking about the other people at the party, joking around, it was the kind of thing that you did, wasn’t it? I wracked my mind, trying to remember everything that I had ever heard about Devon, trying to decide whether or not to put any stock into what Kelly had said.

  Part of me wanted to think that she was just protective; after all, most guys probably were just out for a lay and didn’t really care, even when they knew that the girl they were with was a virgin. It wasn’t an unusual thing at all. And I had hooked up with Devon on the spur of the moment—I hadn’t even thought about making him wait, trying to make him work for it. Devon did have a reputation on campus from what I’d heard about him, but I had always figured that that was just the sort of thing that went around about guys on a team, and especially the guys in the Phi Kappa frat.

  I rolled my eyes and decided to take a shower; I was still sore, and my skin felt sticky from all the sweat I’d worked up. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. I put my robe on and walked across the dorm room to where the shared shower was. I figured that Kelly must have gone down for brunch once the dining hall opened. She was probably annoyed with me for completely ignoring her advice.

  Every guy in the Phi Kappa frat, it seemed, had racked up more women than anyone had any right to—if you believed the rumors about them. It seemed silly to me to think that the guys could all be completely and totally the same about women. After all, they were individuals, weren’t they? And Devon’s behavior towards me hadn’t seemed at all like he was just trying to get what he wanted and cut me loose. If he had wanted that, then he would have convinced me to head back, or offered to walk me back to the dorms, once we were finished. It didn’t make sense for a guy who just wanted the chase to let the girl stay the night, even if she was a virgin.

  I washed my hair and carefully scrubbed my body in the shower, deciding that I was really overthinking things. I’d ask around about him—some of the other girls in the group with Kelly and me were upperclassmen too, and they’d have a better idea of what Devon was really like. But until I had any kind of evidence against him, it wouldn’t be fair to assume that he was just screwing around with me. Especially not after he had been so sweet and gentle, so interested in me. I sat in my
dorm room, drying my hair and trying to decide what to wear down to the dining hall.

  I went back and forth on the subject of whether or not to believe Kelly. She had so much more experience than I did that part of my brain said her warning must have come from somewhere; she wouldn’t have just been spreading gossip. But I couldn’t credit Devon being so great to me, reminding me over and over again to tell him to stop if he was hurting me, if he was the kind of guy who was just looking for another notch in his bedpost.

  I compared him to the other guys I had dated. I’d only ever really been serious about one guy: my boyfriend, senior year of high school. We had never had sex, but we had come close to it over and over again, fooling around in his car or mine. On prom night, I had barely managed to not give into his subtle hints. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have sex—or that I didn’t want to have sex with him. It just didn’t feel right to give it up on prom night, even if I knew that it was what so many other girls in my graduating class were doing. I wanted to wait for the right time, the right moment, not transform my first time into a massive cliché.

  We had ended up breaking up over the summer without doing the deed, because we were going to different schools, and Alex had said that he didn’t want to take my virginity and then have our relationship just fall apart afterwards. I had to laugh at myself in hindsight; I’d put so much effort into trying to find the right moment to lose it with Alex, who I’d dated for months, and yet Devon had gotten me hot enough to give it up to him within an hour or two.

  That thought gave me a chill. I remembered what Kelly had said; that Devon was a master manipulator—he would read a girl, and react just the right way. If Alex, who I had loved, couldn’t talk me into having sex with him, then how had Devon managed to do it so quickly? Had it been the alcohol helping him, my own impulsiveness, or had it just been a matter of knowing all of the right moves?

  You’re making yourself crazy over this, Jenn. I shook my head. I was going to ask around and see what other people had to say, see if anyone had anything even remotely like a real story. Kelly hadn’t given me any examples of anyone that Devon had hurt—she had just given me the kind of information that regular old gossip would provide. If she was worried about me just because Devon had a bad reputation, then I could understand that even if I didn’t intend to follow her advice. I had to think that there was something more between Devon and me. It had felt so good, so right to be with him; that kind of feeling couldn’t just be manipulation, could it?

  I got dressed in a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, dried my hair, and tried to make up my mind to go downstairs. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to see either Kelly or Devon in the dining hall when I went for my late breakfast. Alicia texted to tell me they were all heading down, and I unplugged my phone from the wall. I’d ask a few questions, and if either Kelly or Devon were there, I’d be cool about the situation. I wasn’t going to make a scene, and I wasn’t going to throw myself at Devon. I’d find out what to think, and then I’d act on that. I grabbed my purse and made sure my key card was in it and headed down to brunch to meet my other friends.

  Chapter Seven

  I wandered through the serving area of the dining hall, grabbing things at random; on the weekends, they only served two meals: brunch and dinner. My friends were already seated, so I tried to hurry so that I could have time to talk to them before anyone went off to do anything with the rest of their afternoon. I knew that if I hadn’t gone out the night before, and if I hadn’t met Devon—and slept with him—I would probably have already had brunch and gone back to the dorm or the library to study, but at the moment, studying was the farthest thing from my mind. So I loaded my tray down with breakfast and lunch items alike, along with some coffee and a big, cold glass of juice. Bacon, eggs, salad, a waffle, some carved turkey, and a little fruit; I figured I wouldn’t need to go back to the serving area.

  I wandered out of the serving area and into the dining room, looking around. In part, I wanted to find my group of friends—but I was also looking, at least a little bit, to see if Devon was in the dining hall, or if Kelly was. If Kelly were with everyone, I’d have to save my questions for another time.

  She wasn’t at the table where everyone else had crowded, which gave me some relief. I wanted to be able to talk about Devon objectively, with people who didn’t know what Kelly had told me, or the fact that I had slept with him. Alicia and Giselle moved aside when I approached, giving me somewhere to sit. “So little Miss ‘I’m too tired to go to a party’ ended up not even coming home at the end of the night,” Alicia teased me. I rolled my eyes.

  “Well if I’m going to go to a party then I might as well go all out, right? Or would you rather I go around whining all night and make one of you walk me back to the dorms at midnight?” Everyone laughed. I knew I was going to have to wait to broach the topic on my mind; if I said something too close to Alicia commenting on my overnight stay in the frat house, then someone might conclude the reason for my questions. Everyone compared notes about their nights; it turned out that a couple of my friends had ended up going back to other dorms, though they’d had the presence of mind to check in with someone in the group first. I shrugged off everyone’s concern about the fact that I’d just disappeared and pointed out that they had disappeared from my side instead of the other way around.

  We started talking about our plans for the rest of the weekend; this would be my opening, I knew it. “Anyone else going to the game?” I asked. “It should be a good one—we’re up against Valley State.”

  “I was thinking about it, but I have that stupid paper to write,” Alexis said, sighing. Everyone else had other things going on as well; Giselle had a date with one of the guys she had made out with the night before, Alicia was going to another party, Becky was going out with her boyfriend since, for once, they both had the same night off from work.

  “I wish I could go,” Samantha said with a sigh. “If nothing else I’d love to watch Devon Sealy play.” Everyone at the table giggled.

  “I actually had an incredible piece of dumb luck last night,” I said. “I met him.”

  “Really? He wasn’t surrounded by girls three deep?” Alexis asked. Everyone laughed again.

  “Nah, it was while the party was winding down. He’s pretty cute up close.” My heart was beating faster, and I could feel my cheeks starting to warm up.

  “Ooh, Jenn has a crush on Devon,” Alicia surmised.

  “Who doesn’t?” I asked, rolling my eyes and pretending to be less interested in the question than I was. “I hear he’s kind of a player, but everyone always says that about guys on the basketball team or whatever.”

  “You heard right, though,” Samantha said, shaking her head.

  “What do you mean? I mean if he’s single, it’s not like it’s a big deal for him to sleep around.” The girls around the table began to cluck with concern.

  “It’s not just sleeping around,” Alicia said.

  “Yeah, it’s way more than that. He’s a complete and total player.”

  “How so?” I asked. Giselle shrugged.

  “He totally manipulates girls,” Giselle said. “I mean, like—totally. He’ll make a girl think she’s really special to him.”

  “Yeah, he’ll get all involved in conversations with her, be interested in whatever she has to say, and then as soon as he gets what he wants from her—he drops her.”

  “Usually doesn’t even last longer than a night. He’ll corner a girl somewhere and just like, flirt up a storm, say what she wants to hear, and then it’s like he never met her the next day,” Alicia added.

  “Do you remember Haley and Mackenzie?” Giselle asked.

  “Oh—yeah! I remember that,” Alexis said, half-laughing and shaking her head.

  “Haley and Mackenzie?” I asked, confused.

  “These two sophomore girls. They were both after him for like weeks. He loved it; he totally pitted them against each other and watched them fight over him.” I felt cold
er and colder the more they said.

  The stories kept coming; how Devon would set girls up, making them think that he was really a virgin, or how he would go after the “bunnies” who went to all the games. Someone in the group—I couldn’t even remember who, afterward—said that he’d “pass along” some of his groupies to the other guys in the frat, part of why he was such a legend and so popular.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; I honestly couldn’t believe that anyone could be so callous. I tried to eat my food, but my stomach started to churn inside of me. It was ridiculous. I tried to find out how much of what they were saying was just rumor and how much of it they actually knew for a fact.

  No one in the group had had anything to do personally with Devon; that much was clear. “If you do have a crush on him, though, better to admire him from a distance,” Alicia said.

  “Yeah, he’s great to look at and he’s a good basketball player, but he’s probably crawling with diseases anyway, and even if he’s not, he’ll just do whatever it takes to get you in bed and then drop you the next day.”

  “It’s not like I’d ever have a chance in the first place,” I said, brushing off the idea. I didn’t want anyone to think that I had already had a “chance” with Devon. If I told anyone in the group that I’d slept with him the night before, it would just make them make fun of me.

  I tried to keep up my end of the conversation while we sat around, none of us quite ready to go on to what we had going on that afternoon, especially those of us that had papers to write or classes to study for. I couldn’t help but think about what they had said, though. I had to think that Devon’s behavior towards me was not like what they were describing. It wasn’t like he’d gone out of his way to convince me to sleep with him; it had been a good conversation that had become a better conversation. Everything had been so natural. I just couldn’t think that Devon had gone into the situation to manipulate me.