The Studying Hours (How to Date a Douchebag #1)(49)

Shit, they’re right.

I haven’t been focused.

I haven’t been training as hard because I’ve been preoccupied. This thing with Jameson has a guilty knot forming a pit in the bottom of my stomach.

The look on her face when she walked away has haunted me all week.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Then I don’t understand why you went on that snowboarding trip when you could have gone to Daytona with the team. Man, there was so much * it’s a miracle I’m able to walk straight,” a bronze Zeke calls out from a shower stall. His booming declaration echoes off the tiles and bounces off the ceiling. “My dick is still numb.”

“I told you, I wanted to relax.”

A snort. “Oh. Snowboarding is relaxing now, huh?”

“Well, no. But the scenery was pretty.” Jameson was pretty.

Jameson is pretty.

“Pretty.” Zeke’s voice is flat, unimpressed. I hear him pause. “The f*ck, dude.”

“Wait,” Aaron Bower cuts in. “At least tell us you got laid on that trip. I mean, there had to have been snow bunnies somewhere, right? MILFs? Bored housewives with Hoover-like suction?”

He makes a sucking sound with his mouth, pumping his fist against his cheek, mimicking a blowjob.

“Right?” Zeke agrees, still inside the shower. “Last time my mom went on a trip during spring break, she f*cked some douchie Ivy Leaguer hanging out by the hotel pool.”

“Daniels, your mom sounds like a lady slut,” comes a taunting shout.

“Up yours, Santiago.”

The water in the shower cuts off and Zeke steps out, dripping wet, toweling off. Undeterred, he wraps the towel around his neck, letting his balls air dry as he turns to me.

“So. Did you at least get laid?”

I roll my eyes and make a show of digging through my cubby. “What do you think,” I posture, neither confirming nor denying the claim.

A hand claps me on the back. “That’s my boy. Who was it?”

“Please tell us it was the slutty librarian chick I keep hearing about,” John begs. “That is who you went with, right?”

Someone lets out a loud, sardonic laugh.

Zeke.

“Yeah right. That bitch? She’s wound up tighter than Betty the actual librarian.”

I ease myself down onto a nearby wooden bench and sit ramrod straight while they hassle me, mock Jameson, and shoot the shit.

“Have you tapped that yet?” another teammate asks, referring to Jameson again.

“I don’t know, Santiago—do people still say tapped?”

“Tapped. Fucked. Screwed. Banged. Shagged. You like any of those better, pansy? You’re starting to sound like your virgin girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Not even close—I saw to that on Monday.

The guilty pit in my stomach churns.

“Oh yeah? You seem to be spending a lot of f*cking time at the library these days studying with someone you claim not to give a shit about.” Zeke uses air quotes around the word studying.

What a douche.

I pull my socks on, the impulse to defend Jameson strong. Defend myself. Us. “I never said I gave a shit about her.”

“So then why are you always at the library, dude?”

“Just tryin’ to maintain my average.”

Zeke, always confrontational, stares me down hard. “Your average.”

“My GPA,” I clarify. “Grade point average.”

“I know what a f*cking grade point average is, dickhole.”

My dark eyes bore into him. “You seem really pissed off for some reason. Did someone take a dump in your oatmeal this morning? Didn’t you blow off any steam locking Rogers in that half nelson an hour ago?”

“Maybe I am pissed. Maybe I don’t want you dating a prig. It gives the rest of the bores false hope.”

“You’re a dick.”

He laughs, almost maniacally. “Never said I wasn’t.”

A loud, roaring shout carries over the locker room, echoing from the office. “Osborne. Daniels. This isn’t a pissing match. Get your goddamn asses dressed and on the bus. You have eight minutes.”

Zeke grunts out his disappointment, leveling me with an icy glower before going to his own cubby. He yanks out his duffle bag, calling out over his shoulder, “This isn’t over Osborne. Far from it.”





Sebastian



I stumble into the house, exhausted from the long bus ride and Zeke’s continued badgering during the five hours it took to get us home. He criticized. He fumed. He bitched until my head rolled to the side and I popped on my Beats to drown out the sound with music.

I’m tired.

I’m starving.

I’m ready for warm food and a soft bed.

It’s quiet when I drop my bags in the laundry room, first one back at the house. Hanging my duffle and removing my jacket, I make quick work of taking my shoes off and setting them aside.

I flip on the kitchen light and pad, sock footed, to the fridge. Yanking it open, I stare into it, blinded by the bright light, contemplating the slim pickings: three-day-old spaghetti sauce, a half-eaten hamburger, yogurt. There’s a gallon of orange juice left, some filtered water, and an open bottle of Dr. Pepper.