Addicted to You (Addicted #1)(70)

So far I’ve only been distracted once, and it wasn’t even to fantasize about the cute guy with glasses two tables away. Some student beat a Fizzle machine to death when it refused to deposit his Cherry Fizz. He gave up after realizing the big plastic box is indestructible—at least against a pair of Vans.

Lo texted me twice. The first to ask if I’m going to be home to drive him to the liquor store. The second to tell me to pick up condoms. I almost choked on my Diet Fizz with that comment, never believing we’d be so intimate and comfortable about it.

At the end of my long table, a girl in a navy Penn sweatshirt leans across to whisper to her friend.

“Do you see him?” she hisses. “He’s walking this way. Oh my God.”

The tiny, muscular blonde with a Gymnastics hoodie cranes her neck, trying to look past the eight foot bookshelves.

“Don’t be so obvious, Katie,” the girl hyperventilates.

Who the hell could be good looking enough to incite such dramatics? Now I’m curious. I bite the end of my pencil and glance around, not seeing what they do. Damn. Less subtly, I lift my butt from the uncomfortable wooden chair and angle my body to peek around the bookshelf. Unless this guy is a ghost, he’s acquired my favorite superpower and literally vanished from thin air.

“Who are you looking for?”

I jump, my spine hitting the wood slates with a thunk. Uh…I lean back and look up as he towers above me. They cannot be talking about him.

Ryke, aka Green Arrow, has a hand on my table, a smug look plastered to his face. He must know I was trying to spy on him—but that was before I knew the hot mystery guy was the same one who carried my boyfriend into my apartment.

The athletic girls press their noses to their notebooks, taking pretty obvious glances at him. He follows my gaze and bridges the gap between our chairs, but turns his back on them. They shoot me the worst looks imaginable.

“I think your friends want you,” I tell him, staring at my textbook.

To appease me, he actually rotates. “Katie, Heather.”

Katie acts surprised. “Oh. Hey, Ryke! I didn’t notice you there.”

“You guys have practice today?”

“Yeah, conditioning. Will you be in the gym?”

Ah, yes, they know each other through athletics; it all makes sense now. Since I don’t necessarily belong to any group at Penn, especially one that involves bouncing balls or tumbling in the air, Ryke’s allure is quite lost on me. Maybe he dazzles them when he stretches his quads.

I glance at his calf muscles, sadly hidden beneath jeans. I will not cheat on Lauren Hale, especially not with him. I really need to stop thinking about other guys. It’s not as if Lo isn’t enough. He is, so far, but when there’s someone else lingering, my mind starts wandering to sinful places.

“I’m running outside today.”

“That’s too bad. Well, if you ever want to work out together, you know where we are.”

He nods and then shifts back towards me. No. Go away. He skirts around to the other side of the table, and for some reason, I think he may obey my mental order. Instead, he scrapes a chair and sits down. He leans in, setting his elbows on the wood.

And I lift up my textbook to block his view.

Seconds pass and he puts his hand on it, the spine thudding to the table. “I need to talk to you.”

“And I don’t want to talk to you.” I go to lift the book again as a blinder, but he slides it towards his body, taking my textbook hostage.

“I have to study,” I say in that screechy tone.

“Do you always whine?”

I glare. “Do you always insult people when you want something?” I wish Lo was here. He’d be able to shoo this guy away without a problem. Why don’t my words have the same effect?

“Only you,” he muses, flipping through my book and shutting it closed. “Biology? Are you a freshman or something?”

I blush. “I put off some of my core credits.” I reach out to snatch the book, but he jerks it away from me again.

“I’ll give this back to you after you hear me out.”

“Is it about alcohol?”

“No.”

“Is it about Lo?”

“Not entirely.”

“Are you going to be mean?”

He leans back, his chair creaking, and lets out a short laugh. “I don’t know. I could be depending on the direction of this conversation. How’s that?”

Good enough. “Fine.” I motion for him to continue and then cross my arms over my chest.

He catches the haughty movement and manages to stifle a smartass comment, cutting to the point. “When I was at your apartment, I saw your posters from Comic-Con. I’m a freelance writer for The Philadelphia Chronicle and they’re paying me to go to the convention. Thing is, I have no idea what to expect or what it entails or even what to do.”

I figure out the rest. “And you thought we may know?” I didn’t expect him to ask me that.

“I was hoping I could talk with Lo about it.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “You want to talk to my boyfriend? About Comic-Con?” That’s not weird. “Is this really about comics, Ryke?”

“You think I’m lying?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

He rolls his eyes. “Look, I’m a journalism major. I’d rather talk to a primary source about Comic-Con than quote from Wikipedia and blogs.”