Looking to Score(14)

“Uh-huh,” she sniffled.

“Ok, good, that’s a good start.” I spoke gingerly. “Text your friend and let them know you’re coming. What’s her name?” I asked.

“Jessa,” she told me. After she texted Jessa, I took her phone and scrolled through until I found her messages with her mom. I didn’t trust Chantell to text her mom convincingly while she was so upset. I quickly tapped out something I thought was believable and hit send. Chantell seemed to be calming down.

“I’m going to get you an Uber. Make sure Jessa is waiting for you so that she can sneak you to her bedroom without her parents seeing. You need to drink tons of water. Dale, go get her some water.” Dale scoffed at me, but he left the room. I prayed to the flying spaghetti monster that he actually remembered to go to the kitchen, get the water, and bring it back.

I got the notification that Chantell’s driver was here. I helped her to her feet and started walking her down to the front. Oakley moved like he was going to try to help. “You’ve done enough,” I snapped at him. “Wait here for me to come back. Don’t move, we’re not done.”

We ran into Dale on the staircase. I grabbed the bottle of water he was holding and handed it to Chantell as I clumsily guided her back through the crowded party, past the formerly puking sorority girls who were now the passed out sorority girls, and into the car. It looked like she had sobered up quite a bit, and she thanked me profusely for helping her. I wrestled with my inner self trying to decide if I should try to manipulate a drunk high school junior into keeping quiet. But ultimately, I figured that she had more to lose by talking about her drunken night at a frat house than we did if it came out. So I shut the door and wished her good luck. Now to deal with Oakley.

I stormed upstairs and found him sitting on the bed where Chantell was just crying. “So what have we learned from this?” I sang in a sickly sweet tone while sitting next to him.

“Check the ID of every girl you want to bone?” he asked.

“Or you could just not fuck random strangers at parties. This could have been bad, Oakley. Forget your career, a pretty boy like you would not do well in jail.”

He scrubbed his hands down his face with a sigh. “Fuck,” he cursed. “Thank you. That could have really been bad.”

Fuck, indeed.

“No shit, Sherlock. I know we’re in this awkward stage of hating each other and not really wanting to work together, but I think tonight taught us a valuable lesson.” He turned to look at me, his expression full of annoyance. Tough shit, asshole. I didn’t want to be here any more than he did.

“And what is that?”

“You’re a fucking hot mess. And you need me,” I said matter-of-factly.

He rolled his eyes. Hard. “Fine. You did come in handy tonight. And it’s actually kind of nice that you organized my calendar. Even though the alarms piss me the fuck off, I haven’t been late to class in a while. Though the meditation and breathing exercises are a bit much,” he replied begrudgingly.

“Practicing mindfulness is good for your mental health,” I preached.

“Is that what you do? Because I do not want to sip from whatever Kool-Aid put that stick up your ass,” Oakley growled.

I could have punched him in the jaw. “Careful,” I began. “That stick just saved you from going to jail,” I reminded him, and I hoped he didn’t fucking forget it.

He stood up and stretched his hands over his head and rolled his neck in a stretch that had me salivating. “How about we go grab something to eat? We can start over or something, okay?”

My stomach growled at the mention of food. I didn’t really want the temptation of a restaurant, but the opportunity to put this feud behind us was too good to resist. “Okay, I’m down,” I replied with a fake smile.

Oakley looked me up and down, wiping his hands on his pants, as if he were trying to figure me out. “Okay. Let’s go, Solver.”

The nickname made me pause. “After you, Problem.”





7





Watching Oakley eat was disgusting but oddly fascinating. Did he even chew? I guess when you worked out and practiced a sport like he did, you didn’t really need to watch your calorie intake. I must have been staring, because he paused long enough to notice that I hadn’t even touched my grilled chicken sandwich in the time he had devoured his fries and half his burger. “You gonna eat?” he grunted in my direction.

“Yes. But I like to take the time to enjoy my food. My body is a temple,” I replied as I picked a piece of chicken free from the bun. That seemed to satisfy him, and he went back to his burger, although he seemed a little more mindful that I was watching him.

“How did you know what to do with that girl? Have a lot of practice getting drunk when you were in high school?” he asked. He looked at me and grinned like the thought of me having a scandalous past was hilarious. He had these really fucking sexy dimples when he smiled like that. Dimples that made me think of what it would be like to kiss him. What it would be like to kiss down his chest and follow the ripples down into his abs with my tongue.

“Well?” he asked, snapping me out of it.

“Umm…” I stalled. “I’m sure I had the same amount of fun as everybody else did,” I replied, not really wanting to get into the details in a diner in the middle of the night. I took a bite of my sandwich so that my mouth was full.