Pump Fake

by Lila Price

  Except I don’t really know where the bathroom is, so really, I’m just walking toward the back of the house. hoping to find some sort of sink or bathtub or cooler of ice I can use to splash water on my face and sober up enough to get home. Instead, I find the last person I want to see when I’m sloppy and feeling pathetic— Finn Thorne. Tucked away in a corner, a girl leaning toward him, everything about her hungry and predatory and eager. Finn is grinning— until he looks up and sees me.

  “Kenley?” he asks, his voice loud in the hallway, which, compared to the main rooms of Football House, is silent as a church.

  “Sorry, don’t let me interrupt,” I say, and try to smile apologetically, but I think I just glower at him. The girl casts me a dark look, one that grows darker still when he slips away from her and walks over to me.

  “I didn’t know you’d be here,” he says, looking a little concerned. He stops a few feet in front of me, then stoops to put down the bottle of beer in his hand.

  “As if you care,” I say, hating how difficult it is to sound as hurt as I truly am right now.

  His brow creases. “I don’t get it.”

  “You never called,” I say, my voice harsh.

  He shrugs. “I got busy.”

  “Whatever,” I tell him, my hand fluttering as I try to wave him off.

  I tilt a little and, before I realize what’s happening, Finn is touching me. “Hey, hey…you’re going to fall if you’re not careful,” he tells me.

  One hand on my shoulder, the other on the small of my back, palm so broad it covers the spot entirely. It feels like we’re dancing, and I find myself swaying a little.

  Finn laughs quietly. “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m tipsy.”

  “You’re drunk,” he corrects me. “Where are your people?”

  “Mandy is my people, and she left with her people,” I say thickly.

  I lift my hands into the space between us, then place them flat against his chest. I can feel the rise and fall of him breathing, and beneath that, the thump of his heart. I press my hands harder against him, let my fingertips grip the places where his muscles ripple, lead forward and place my forehead against him—

  He feels good. He feels right.

  It should have been us together all night, not me alone and him with his hands all over those fucking hot girls…

  What the hell am I doing? I jolt and try to pull back, but my reflexes are too slow— I swing backward and, if it weren’t for Finn’s hands on me, I’m sure would have fallen on my ass.

  He’s quick to react, though; his palms move from steadying me to embracing me, watching my weight easily and holding me against him until the world stops swimming.

  “Sorry,” I mumble into his t-shirt, which smells glorious and spicy. I close my eyes.

  “It’s no problem,” Finn says, voice lowering a little. I mean to open my eyes, to look up at him, to step away and act like an actual adult who can hold her liquor, but instead I just lean farther against him, until I hear the quiet, breathy sounds of laughter in his chest.

  “Hey. Stop it. Don’t laugh at me,” I say, and try to push him away.

  “I’m not!” Finn protests, and doesn’t release me— which means I don’t have a chance of escaping his arms. I look up at his eyes, so far above me that I find myself wondering how tall he is. Eight feet? Nine feet? Eleven feet? How tall are football players? How tall are you before you’re considered a giant? How tall is the tallest giant?

  “Now I’m laughing at you a little,” Finn says, and I realize I’ve been looking at his eyes for a good minute, without speaking.

  “Fine,” I mutter, pulling my eyes away. “I’m drunk. Where’s my phone? I need to call SafeRide. Oh— I think I left it with that golfer player.”

  “How about you sit here, and I’ll go get your phone from whatever a golfer player is.”

  “He’s on the couch. He’s bringing me another drink,” I explain crossly as Finn lowers me to the ground and leans my back up against the wall.

  “Then he’s a real asshole,” Finn says. “Don’t go anywhere,” he repeats, and I nod, as I lean into the wall and watch him go.

  He returns a few moments later with my purse and my shoes, which apparently I’m not currently wearing. “Ready?”

  “Where are we going?” I mumble, reaching up. I mean to take his hands so he can help me stand, but instead he ducks his head into the space of my arms and lifts me up into his. I don’t know that I’ve ever been carried by a guy before, and am a little mad that I’m too tipsy to appreciate the experience.

  “A tutoring session, obviously,” he jokes.

  “Oh, good. I like tutoring you. Especially when I see your big cock,” I say, then realize I said the words out loud.

  Now Finn laughs properly, loud and echoing down the hallway. I try to wither and die, but fail.

  “Glad to hear you enjoyed it,” he says, voice lower and a little growling, but in a way that makes my chest tighten.

  I close my eyes and enjoy the feeling of being carried, and knowing I’m safe.

  Chapter 5

  I’m not in my bed. My bed isn’t this comfortable. And my sheets are the cheap ones from Target, not these fancy smooth linen type things. And my ceiling is popcorn, not solid. And there’s no view of the Harton stadium from my window—

  I sit bolt upright and yelp into the near-darkness. The room I’m in is lit only be the emergency lights in the yawning Harton football stadium that stretches out below it, at least fifteen floors down. It smells like men’s deodorant and shaving cream, and has the stark feeling of a hotel room.

  I squint into the dim, then fumble around in the bed— this has got to be a king sized bed, it’s like I’m sleeping in a small European principality. My hands finally land on my phone, but it’s dead. What happened? My senses seem to be coming back to me in a weird order; it’s only after I’ve confirmed that my phone is useless that I look down and see I’m wearing an enormous Harton t-shirt and, thankfully, my own underwear and bra underneath that. As my eyes adjust, I see my dress and shoes are on an otherwise-empty desk just across from me.

  “You okay?” a voice asks. A male voice. Finn. It’s coming from the floor next to me, where he must have slept last night.

  “Finn?”

  “Oh, you remember my name. I had my doubts there, toward the end.” His voice is groggy, even lower and sexier than usual. I look over. I make out the half-smile on his face as he says this, though his eyes are still in shadow.

  “What happened?” I ask, trying to stop the 20/20 specials I’ve seen on the dangers of college drinking from flooding my mind.

  Finn rubs his eyes and scoots back so he can lean against one of the nightstands. He’s not wearing a shirt, and his body is just as beautiful as I remember it. Tan skin, chiseled muscles, every piece of him carved from stone. I shiver.

  “The last of that booze hit you around the time we left Football House,” Finn says. “I tried to take you home, but you lost your keys somewhere and your sister didn’t come to the door. So I brought you here.”

  “And where is here?”

  “My dorm room,” he says, like this should be obvious. Really, it should have been— I’ve seen photos of the football players’ dorm rooms. They’re all massive like this, they all overlook the stadium, they all have kitchens that the players never use since the nutritionists plan and deliver almost all their meals. I look outside at the stadium, at the way the lights cast ghostly shadows across the yard lines. I’m trying hard as I can to draw up memories of the night, but after seeing Finn in the hall, after feeling him pick me up, it all becomes something of a blur.

  “Nothing else happened,” Finn says, as if he knows what I’m wondering. “Though I did put you in that shirt, since that dress looked like it’d be miserable to sleep in with all the sparkle things. Also some asshole spilled a beer on you while I was carrying you out of the party.”

  “Oh. Yeah, the sequins,” I say, face flushing.
He saw me in my underwear, then. I’m embarrassed, but simultaneously relieved that I wore a cute matching set. “Thank you,” I say.

  “Keep it,” Finn says. He has his arms propped up on his knees, and his eyes search my face, like he’s waiting for me to say something.

  “Um, I should go… I mean, I’m going to go, I can call an Uber or something, but… um, I’ll have to wait till I know my sister is home, since I don’t have my keys. If she’s out with Bradley it’ll be later this morning. I mean, I could go to his place and track her down, if you want me to go—“

  “It’s fine,” Finn says calmly. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t want you here.” He rises and walks to the tiny kitchen, then returns with a coffee mug of water. He hands it to me.

  “Thanks,” I say, and sip the tap water.

  “How do you feel?” he asks, sitting at the foot of the bed.

  My stomach warms and I feel my heartbeat quicken. “Fine,” I mumble, suddenly tongue-tied. I sip more water.

  “You were really, really drunk,” he says.

  Now that my eyes are fully adjusted, I can see more of his features— the sharp arcs of his cheeks, the way his brows shadow his eyes. The room is so gray that it looks like we’re in a black and white picture, which serves to make Finn look like some old Hollywood star.

  “I don’t get hung over,” I say.

  “Must be your superpower,” Finn says.

  “Wasted on me, then. I hardly ever drink.”

  Finn nods, then says, “I never drink.”

  I frown at him. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Liar. I saw you with a beer.”

  “You saw me holding a beer. Easier to fake it than to explain why I don’t.”

  I pause, but the near darkness and our proximity gives me courage to prod further. “Why don’t you?”

  “Ah, well…” he says, glancing down, smiling a little— though it’s a defense mechanism, not a real smile, I’m sure. “My dad drank. He sucked.”

  “What did he… I mean, um, did he – ”

  “He just drank a lot. Cleaning your drunk ass father’s vomit off the floor a few dozen times will make drinking seem a lot less glamorous.”

  “Oh,” I say, then realize something. “Oh, and you had to take care of me drunk@ Wow. I’m sorry.”

  “Taking care of you was much different,” he says, and the low, sexy tone in his voice gives me goose bumps.

  “Well. Still.” I clear my throat nervously.

  “Still what?”

  I glance at him and his strong, intense stare makes my breath catch a little in my throat. “Still, I feel bad that you had to leave the party on my account.”

  He shrugs. “It wasn’t a big sacrifice, Kenley.”

  I like the way he says my name. But then I suddenly flash on a memory of Finn in a corner hitting on some giggling beautiful woman at the party last night.

  “It wasn’t a sacrifice to leave that girl behind?” I challenge him.

  He looks confused. “Which girl?”

  I laugh and shake my head. “Exactly.”

  Finn leans forward a little and cocks his head at me. “You sound jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous.”

  “Are you sure?” he teases.

  “There’s no point in being jealous,” I say, catching myself before I say anything more incriminating. And then I wave in his general direction, feigning indifference. “This conversation is silly. Your conquests are none of my business.”

  Finn rolls his eyes at me. “My conquests? You’ve really got something against football players, don’t you?”

  I shrug a little. “In my experience, you’re all more or less the same, if we’re being honest.”

  “Come on. You really think Stewart Adams and I have a lot in common?”

  I paused. “Okay. There are exceptions. You and Adams are nothing alike. That guy is such an asshole.”

  “And I’m not.”

  “No, you aren’t. Even though it was a pretty asshole move to be in the shower when I showed up that first day, you know. Were you trying to scare me off? Tell me honestly.”

  “Even if I was, you didn’t look particularly scared.” I give him an exacerbated look and he sighs. “I forgot you were coming over. I wanted to use the shower. It has a steam setting.”

  “Seriously? I want to try it,” I say, wondering what the point of a steam setting is. Just another way for a rich person to spend his money, I wager.

  “Well, let’s go try it right now,” Finn says, and his voice is a little lower than before, a little more scandalous, a little less…

  “Don’t do that,” I say hurriedly, looking at my hands. I pull my knees up to my chest.

  “Do what?” he asks, startled.

  I take a breath, consider my words carefully. “Act like you want to get in a fancy shower with me. It’s mean.”

  “I’m not acting,” Finn says seriously.

  “Okay, fine, but even if you aren’t, you know that I’m not—I’m not like those girls at Football House, okay? I mean, obviously I’m not, they were like models, but my point is just that I’m not going to be a random hookup and then it’s done. We have to work together, remember? So don’t act like something can happen and then we can pretend like it didn’t because that isn’t going to work—“

  “Kenley,” Finn says once, twice, a third time, growing in volume until I fall silent. He looks like he might laugh at me, and it’s suddenly infuriating. This, this right here, is the way that all football players are the same—they all think they can have what they want, when they want it, and don’t think about how it might make someone else feel. It’s all a big game to them, even largely decent guys like Finn.

  Forget this, I think, swallowing the hurt that’s welling up in my chest. I kick my feet over the edge of the bed and move toward my clothes. The fact that I’m not wearing pants hits me right as cool air licks at the tops of my thighs, but whatever; it’s a testament to how frustrated I am that being without pants is less embarrassing to me than staying in this room a moment longer. I stuff my dress in my purse and sit down, sliding into my shoes and stooping to do the straps. Heels and a Harton t-shirt. I look like some kind of college-themed stripper-gram. I rise.

  “What are you doing?” Finn asks, still sitting at the foot of the bed.

  “It was really nice of you to help me out of there. But I just…you’re a client. I’m a tutor. So I shouldn’t be here, and you shouldn’t be in showers when I arrive, and neither of us should be thinking about taking steam showers together or…whatever.”

  The words rattle out of my mouth, despite my best attempts to sound cool and collected. Finn considers them; his grin is gone, but I wouldn’t call his face concerned, exactly. He looks almost…self-assured? Confident? It’s a hard expression to place, but it freezes me, holds me still as he rises and takes a few steps forward, till he’s only a few feet away, towering over me despite my heels.

  “If you think that’s best,” he says, voice calm.

  “I do,” I say, and fold my arms over my chest.

  “But in that case, I don’t think I should be giving you gifts. So I need that shirt back,” he says, nodding at it.

  “Um. Okay, sure. Yeah. I’ll wash it and bring it to our tutoring session,” I say, confused.

  Finn frowns, then takes a step forward, then another, another. I mean to back up, but there’s a table behind me, and besides, my knees don’t seem to be functioning all that well at the moment. He looks down at me, and this close, I can see a glimmer in his eyes. I thought it was a glimmer of laughter, before, but now I understand—it’s excitement. One side of his mouth curls into a slight smile.

  “Finn—“ I stammer, the jump when I feel his right hand brush my thigh as he takes hold of the shirt’s bottom hem. He keeps his eyes on mine, and touches my left thigh a little more deliberately as he lifts the hem on that side. I’m not even sure why I do it, how he communicated what
he wanted, how I knew—but I find myself slowly, shakily lifting my arms above my head, allowing Finn to slide the shirt up and off my body.

  He tosses it to the side, and then steps back, studying me. I look down, realizing I’m breathing heavily, a fact extremely obvious now that I’m wearing nothing but a bra and panties. They’re purple and flowery and look all-too innocent when paired with strappy heels. My stomach is clenched, my heart quickening. When I dare to look back at Finn, he’s still studying me.

  “What are you looking at?” I whisper.

  Finn smiles, but doesn’t meet my eyes; his gaze is on my legs, my waist. He reaches forward and I feel my skin prickle as he hooks his massive pointer finger through the side of my panties. “The most beautiful person at that party tonight, as a matter of fact. The only person I want to be looking at.”

  I close my eyes—I have to, because I can’t handle those words and the feeling of his hand brushing along my hip. When he begins to slowly tug downward, I wince—

  “Kenley?” Finn asks.

  “Mm?” I answer, the closest approximation of words I can muster. I feel on fire, I feel alive, I feel hungry in a way I’ve never felt in my life before. My lips are parted, breath racing in and out of my chest.

  Finn leans in—my eyes are still shut, but I feel him grow closer, then feel his face next to mine, feel my breasts brush his chest each time I take a desperate gulp of air. He whispers in my ear. “I’m going to take your clothes off.”

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