Misadventures of a College Girl (Misadventures #9)(21)

My clit pulses. “A girl like me?”

“A freshman.” Another smile. “I hope you’re hungry, little freshman.” He motions to a nearby table laid out with two plates of food. “Because I made us cheeseburgers.”





Chapter Twelve





For the past forty-five minutes or so, Tyler and I have been sitting at his table, eating our cheeseburgers and salad, and chatting about surprisingly nonsexual things. True, the songs playing during our meal have been about sex, sex, and more sex—either doing it or desperately wanting to do it. And, yes, Tyler has stopped midsentence on several occasions to suddenly and enthusiastically sing along with some particularly cheesy lyrics. His enthusiastic but off-key rendition of the chorus of “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was a highlight, I must admit. But, mostly, we’ve just…talked. And I’ve loved every minute of it.

Tyler puts down his napkin onto his empty plate and leans back in his chair. “You want to brainstorm our Shakespeare project now, partner?”

Wow, I’m shocked. I thought it’d be like wrangling cats to get Tyler to work on our Shakespeare project tonight. “That’d be awesome,” I say. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

It’s an understatement. Our Modernizing Shakespeare assignment is a doozy. We’re required to select any scene from Shakespeare, write a five-page paper dissecting its themes and language, and then write a contemporary scene inspired by it. And then, after all that, we’ve still got to do the biggest task of all. Perform both scenes—the original Shakespearean one and the contemporary scene we’ve created—in front of our entire class.

After a bit of back and forth, Tyler and I settle on our Shakespearean scene: when Romeo meets Juliet for the first time at a masquerade ball.

“So, this scene is about Romeo trying to get into Juliet’s pants?” Tyler asks.

“Yup. We shouldn’t have any trouble writing a contemporary scene inspired by this one, huh?”

Tyler laughs. “Art imitating life, definitely.” He gets up from his seat. “We threw a Mardi Gras-themed party at the house last year. I’m pretty sure we’ve got some leftover masks. Hang on.” He leaves and returns a moment later, holding two sparkling masks. “Do these look like sixteenth century masquerade masks?”

“They’re perfect.” I take one of the masks from Tyler and slip it on.

“Wow, that’s sexy,” he says, putting on the other mask. “No wonder Romeo wanted to get into Juliet’s pants. Damn, girl.”

I giggle. “Just read the scene, Romeo.”

We read through the scene in our masks, right up to the spot where the stage direction tells us Romeo kisses Juliet.

“This is where we’ll kiss,” I say tightly.

“Great. Let’s kiss.”

“Not tonight,” I say, my cheeks coloring. “Let’s just read through the scene tonight and figure out our blocking another night.”

“Blocking?”

“Our movements.”

“But we’re going to kiss for real when we perform it, right?”

“Of course.”

“So, we should practice kissing now. There are a thousand ways to kiss, after all. We need to make sure we kiss the way Romeo and Juliet would have done it.”

I swallow hard. If I kiss this boy tonight, even as chastely as Romeo and Juliet would have kissed at their first meeting, I’m positive I’ll lose all my willpower and agree to sleep with him. “Not tonight,” I insist. “We’ll practice the kiss another time. Say your next line.”

Tyler exhales and begrudgingly continues the scene. But, quickly, it’s time for Romeo and Juliet’s second kiss of the scene.

“And here we’ll kiss again,” I say flatly.

Tyler looks up from his book. “This is stupid. We should practice kissing now. Practice makes perfect, after all.”

“Not tonight.”

Tyler pulls off his mask and tosses it onto the table. I follow suit.

“You seem stressed, little freshman,” he says. “Let’s go sit on the couch and talk this over.” Without waiting for my reply, he pulls me up from my chair and leads me to the couch.

“Okay, so are you ready to talk about our Social Psych project now?” I ask weakly, settling myself on the far end of the couch from Tyler.

“No,” he replies. “I was thinking we’d relax for a bit and then rehearse those two kisses.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to ‘relax for a bit’ until we’ve figured out our topic for our Social Psych project. I’m stressed about it, to be honest.”

Tyler smiles. “All right. Social Psych it is. I definitely want you nice and relaxed for me tonight.”

I abruptly grab a notepad off the coffee table. “Great. Let’s brainstorm topics for our experiments.”

Shockingly, Tyler doesn’t argue with me. Instead, he launches into an earnest discussion about the project—and, twenty minutes later, we’ve already got a list of twelve potential topics for experiments.

“Okay,” I say, looking down at our list. “If you had to choose our general topic right now, which one would it be?”

“The power of persuasion,” Tyler says without hesitation.