College Girl

by Shelia Grace

  College Girl

  Kindle edition

  Copyright © 2013 by Sheila Grace

  sheilagracewrites.blogspot.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work.

  Reader discretion is advised.

  This book is NOT appropriate for readers under 18 and those who are easily offended. It contains strong profanity throughout, explicit sexual situations, violence, underage drinking, and other themes not intended for sensitive readers.

  Dedicated to the two people who know who I am.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 1

  Alex

  “Fuck, he’s hot,” Brit whispered next to me.

  To my over-sexed roommate, every guy was hot. I looked up from my notes and gave her my best shut-up-I’m-trying-to-pass-Calculus look. She just pointed with a sly grin to the front of the lecture hall. Relenting, I turned and saw what—or more accurately whom—she was pointing at. The tall man standing next to Professor Robertson. He had broad shoulders, wavy golden blond hair … totally not my type. I generally leaned toward tall, dark, and handsome. Not that I had a type to begin with, but this guy wasn’t it. He was all ego. I could tell with one look. Suddenly his bright blue eyes shifted toward the lecture hall and stopped on me just as I was studiously surveying the muscles in his upper arms.

  Shit! Seriously? I had to be open-mouthed and idiotic-looking the second his eyes swept over the front row? And what the hell was I doing in the front row of Calculus, anyway? I should have dropped after the second day when it had become crystal clear I was in over my head. But now here I was two weeks into winter quarter—and failing. Miserably. So, unless Professor Robertson suddenly decided to start grading on a very generous curve, I was so very screwed. Meaning my GPA was never going to recover from my ridiculous decision to take higher math. I had passed the first quarter only because the curve had brought my F up to a nice passable C.

  Why had I decided to take Calculus after barely making it through Trig in high school? Well, right after quitting my part-time job—before Mom and I had packed up the 4Runner and driven approximately four hundred miles to my new home-away-from-home, as the university’s brochure put it—I had spent the last two weeks of summer camped out in my pajamas watching old reruns of L.A. Medical. Dumbest move ever. During those two weeks of giddy pre-college idealism, I had decided—stupidly—that I could do pre-med while double majoring in English and French. Again—stupid. Yeah, it would’ve been fine if I had been some major math genius, or even if I had really, really wanted to be a damn doctor. But this so wasn’t the case. The problem was that TV had a way of making ninety-hour workweeks in a rundown city hospital look sexy.

  I would have been totally fine with my English/French major even with the horrible post-grad employment possibilities. But no. I had gone off and told Mom about my half-baked idea about becoming a doctor—one of those pretty doctors with perfect hair on L.A. Medical who were always yelling Stat! Yeah, worst fucking idea. Ever. Because even if Mom would never admit it in a million years, she was totally obsessed with having a doctor for a daughter. And maybe that was why I had told her. So that I could be the special daughter for once.

  And that was how I ended up sitting in Professor Robertson’s Calculus class staring stupidly at Mr. Hot. Sinking down in my seat, I glanced at Brit. My roommate was still staring shamelessly at the newcomer. Not that I was surprised. Brit was currently sleeping her way up and down our dorm floor—and the one below it. I couldn’t even count the number of times I had come back after studying in the library to find a sock on the door, broadcasting the fact that she had brought another guy to our room.

  A sock? Really?

  Unfortunately for me, sleeping with ever-willing guys actually seemed to be Brit McIntyre’s entire collegiate goal. On my roommate application I had requested two things. First, a non-smoker. Second, someone sane. Brit McIntyre was the university’s idea of practical joke. She was only sitting next to me now because I spent more time studying than she did. Not to mention that I was getting somewhere around forty percent on the exams—rather than in the teens like she was.

  “Folks, I would like to introduce you to Ryan Matthews, who’s going to be taking over as my teaching assistant for the rest of the term while he finishes his doctorate in Applied Mathematics,” Professor Robertson announced.

  Damn. I had liked the other TA, who had been about two inches taller than me, balding, and too nervous for me to feel remotely threatened. Mr. Hot, on the other hand, didn’t look like a math nerd, which made it even worse that he was going to spend the rest of the term writing the letter F—or if I got lucky, the letter D—on my exams. I glanced over at Brit. She didn’t care. She was here for the parties, not the academics. Sure, she claimed her life’s goal was to be a pediatrician, but she was actually doing worse than I was—in all of her classes. Plus, she seemed genuinely amused to be on “Ac-Pro.” “Ac-Pro” being the trendy vernacular for Academic Probation.

  I wished I could be as blithe about it as she was. Then again, I wasn’t about to trade places with her. From the little she had told me about herself that might actually be true, she had some awful family shit going on. Her father was dead; her mother was crazy. That was undoubtedly worse than Mom reminding me every five minutes: “I took a part-time job so you could go to school!” Or: “Tell your stepfather thank you!” The unavoidable implication behind Mom’s statement was: Your stepfather shouldn’t have to pay your way through school because your own father is a loser. I’d been tempted many times to ask whose fault that was. After all, I wasn’t the one who picked my father. But I wasn’t about to say that. Despite my grade in Calculus, I wasn’t a complete moron.

  I watched out of the corner of my eye as Mr. Hot, or Ryan Matthews, sat down in the corner several feet from the podium. In my brief college experience, I’d already discovered that TAs mostly sat around during undergrad classes looking like they were averting world destruction on their iPads. Whatever. I went back to scribbling notes—a gnarled mass of equations and practice problems.

  By the time I looked up again, Ryan Matthews was staring at my legs. At least that’s what it looked like he was doing. I blinked, started turning bright pink, swallowed—and then started choking. Professor Robertson stopped. Looking over at me with that wry expression he got like we were all unruly kindergartners, he pointed toward the door.

  “Water, maybe?”

  Still choking, I nodded, jumped up, and raced—red-faced—toward the door. Bursting into the hallway, I made it to the water fountain just as my coughing fit was subsiding, relieved not to have to ingest water from a receptacle I had seen guys spit into. If I had had the se
nse to grab my bag, I totally would have skipped the rest of class. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no faith that Brit would pick up my stuff for me, so I trudged back to class, not sure whether to be relieved or not that Mr. Hot had vacated his spot.

  As soon as I sat down, I looked over and noticed that Mr. Hot had just relocated—to an empty seat three seats from mine. Brit, of course, was staring at him. Given my luck, she’d beat me back to the room, and I’d find a sock on the door handle. I looked over at Mr. Hot. Actually, Brit wasn’t really one for high standards. Her weekend activities mostly involved beer, pot, and whatever guy was willing. But if Mr. Hot happened to fall in the willing category? I’m sure she’d give it a go.

  I smirked. I was being totally unfair, but this Ryan Matthews guy just looked like a walking ego case. I’d seen that look on guys’ faces before. They were the ones I avoided. They were too good looking, and they knew it. Guys like him were the deep end of the pool, and I had never even stuck my toe into the kiddie pool.

  In fact, when I had confessed to Brit that I hadn’t slept with anyone—this was before I knew what a headcase she was—she’d practically howled with laughter. At least I had had the common sense not to mention the fact that I had never gone out with, made out with, or done pretty much anything else with anyone. As it was, every time I came walking back into the room when she had friends over, she’d say something crass like, “Yeah, Alexis has a big fucken V right on her chest.” Honestly, I was fucking shocked that she was able to reference—intentionally or not—The Scarlet Letter. The most I had seen her read was Cosmo.

  Yeah, I smiled and played the nice, innocent little roommate. Golly gee, aw shucks, and that shit. Really, though, I wanted to fucking kill her. Like I was all up tight because I didn’t crank up the pretentious top forty faux-alterna-crap to a deafening volume, smoke constantly, and fuck everything in sight. This made me subject to her scorn?

  “All right, that’s it. Remember that each exam is worth a third of your grade. Mr. Matthews will collect your assignments.”

  Lovely. The professor was, of course, referring to the problems for this week’s homework, which I had completely and totally botched. I swallowed my regret for not dropping Calculus while I had the chance. Shoving my notebook into my bag, I turned to Brit.

  “I’m going to the library …” ’cause I can’t get a fucking thing done with you blasting your music and braying into your iPhone all night.

  “’Course you are,” Brit said in that syrupy sweet tone she adopted when she was being a condescending bitch.

  Then again, it was Thursday night, which was a big bar night for anyone with an ID in this town. I was surprised Brit had bothered showing up for class. If I got really lucky, she’d be out all night. Getting in line, I marched slowly toward Mr. Matthews to turn my assignment.

  This guy did not look like someone who spent all day worrying over math problems. In faded jeans and a gray T-shirt that strained at his biceps and shoulders, he looked more like someone who spent his days surfing or lifting heavy objects. Imagining him shirtless, I blushed and looked down as Brit leaned against the wall and scribbled something on a piece of paper. I knew it wasn’t the assignment, but she handed it to our new TA, anyway.

  When he looked up at her with a puzzled expression, that’s when I realized it must have been her cell number she had scribbled. She made what I liked to call her “suggestive face,” and I rolled my eyes. Vomit. She slinked by him, and I handed over my assignment without making eye contact. Then, just as I was about to escape, his hand shot out and touched my wrist, sending a spike of adrenaline through me. I looked up into his bright blue eyes, and he smiled, but it wasn’t in a nice way. It was in a way that made my legs shake.

  “You must be the girl with no name.”

  Dammit!

  Fucking Brit had handed him her cell number, and I had forgotten to put my name on my homework? That was just great. Reaching for my assignment, I leaned against the wall, only inches away from him, and tried not to pay attention to his delicious aftershave as I wrote my name on the sheet of paper and handed it back to him.

  “Alex Reed?” he murmured.

  I looked up at him reflexively, blushing when I realized that he was just reading my name from the paper. Knowing anything I said would come out sounding beyond stupid, I bolted out of the room. It was pitch black and freezing outside, and the miserably short days of winter, which hadn’t bothered me back home, were officially making me psychotic four hundred miles north. Of course, every time I talked to Mom, she told me to get campus security to walk me back from class at night. I never bothered mentioning that I’d end up dying of old age if I waited for them. Besides—embarrassing! The walk to the library was five minutes at the most.

  Still, this didn’t mean I wasn’t freaked out walking in the dark across a college campus that was completely empty by nine-thirty. I watched my breath come out in white puffs as I rushed toward the library. Was Northern California supposed to be this freaking cold? Hearing Mom’s voice in my head, I kept an eye out for the “rapist alarms.” Only I called them that, but that’s essentially what they were—posts that the university had erected every hundred yards or so that rang the police. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make the co-ed population feel safer, but it just made me feel like there was a rapist hiding behind every bush.

  Shorenberger was deserted by the time I got there, and the main building was going to close soon. By then I figured I could move to the twenty-four hour reading room. Anything to avoid going back to the dorm and dealing with Brit and whatever she was planning on bringing back to our room. In the back of my head, I was hoping it wasn’t the insanely hot Calculus TA. But, then again, what the fuck did I care?

  After stopping by the bathrooms, I settled into a quiet little alcove on the third floor right before a crackly voice came over the intercom saying the library was closing in twenty-five minutes. Rather than spending that time torturing myself with Calculus, I opened up the anthology for my creative writing class.

  I had the bad habit of reading the stories that weren’t assigned. The weird, creepy ones. Creative Writing was the one class I didn’t mind spending extra time on, which was too bad, because Calculus took up most of my time. A close second on the time-suck list was Chemistry. Fall term I had taken Chemistry for Idiots. At least that’s what people called it. Basically, after botching the placement exam, I had ended up in the university’s pre-chemistry class. By the time I had enrolled in “real” Chemistry this quarter, my TV-induced delusions of medical school had worn off, but—like Calculus—I hadn’t dropped it soon enough. I figured that right now the only reason I wasn’t going to end up on Ac-Pro like Brit was because of Creative Writing and French. They evened out the gap.

  I tapped my fingers on the desk with nervous energy. The story I was reading had to be in the top five creepiest short stories ever. I flipped through the pages as fast as I could, and as soon as I finished I knew that images from this story would give me nightmares for years. Twin girls laid out in shining white, plastic caskets. I shook my head, wishing I had stuck to the assigned reading for once.

  When the elevator doors slid open across the hall, I jumped. Looking up, I felt my heart thump as someone got off. It took a second before I recognized him—the shifty-eyed guy from my Creative Writing workshop. I was pretty sure he wasn’t a freshman, and based on the short stories he had written so far, I was also pretty sure he had a collection of dolls with blacked-out eyes. I had never said a word to him, but the way he watched people in class—like he was plotting their deaths—creeped me out.

  He looked around, and when he started moving in my direction, I froze. Walking toward me, he grinned like he could tell I was freaking out. Suddenly it felt like I was in one of those terrible horror movies where the lights go out row by row as the main character hides behind a desk or stack of books—seconds before a hand shoots out and grabs her. I watched as he disappeared behind a bookcase and let out the breat
h I had been holding.

  Fuck. I had been doing this since fall term with no problems. Until tonight. My hands started shaking as I put my books back in my bag and scanned the room for a normal-looking person. No luck. The floor was completely deserted. Getting up, I walked quickly toward the back elevators. I was almost there when someone stepped out from behind the stacks. Shit! That creepy asshole must have doubled back.

  This was a fucking horror movie, and I totally should have taken off running when I first saw him get off the elevator. He took a step toward me, smiling again in a way that made my fingers go numb. Grasping at the pocket of my backpack, I tried to reach my phone, but his hand shot out and grabbed my other wrist. He tugged me toward the stacks. Then, before I could scream, he saw something behind me that made him drop my wrist immediately. I was about to kick him in the nuts when I heard someone running toward us.

  “Alex!”

  I turned toward the strangely familiar voice—and my jaw dropped when I saw Mr. Hot. Or Ryan Matthews. Watching in awe as my new Calculus TA jogged up to me, I completely forgot about the asshole who I was pretty sure had been about to make me the star of his own torture-porn movie.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Ryan Matthews said when he reached me.

  Frowning, I stared up at him. It sounded like he was truly apologetic, and before I could make any sense of what was going on, he took my face in his hands and leaned down across our considerable height difference. When he touched his lips to mine, my knees weakened and I gasped. My eyes closed without my permission. Then, to my horrible embarrassment, I whimpered and gripped the front of his shirt. Suddenly his lips parted mine, and I felt his tongue skim along my bottom lip, which caused a sharp spike of unfamiliar warmth to pool low in my stomach. A second later I sort of fell forward into him, completely hypnotized by the feel of his mouth on mine.

  I didn’t want this feeling to stop … ever, and when his hands moved to my shoulders, gently pushing me back, it felt like somebody was waking me out of an epically wonderful dream. I opened my eyes, and my hand flew to my lips, which were puffy and sensitive. Then I just stood there, gaping up at him like an idiot.