The Relationship Pact(21)

I consider his proposal. It would work. It could be fun. And it might be the only way to solve all of my problems.

Sure, I could ask someone else. But I would have to see those people again around town. It would be easy to call them up in a moment of weakness too. But Hollis doesn’t live here. I’ll probably never see him again.

Come to think of it—this might be the only way to stay true to myself while keeping the peace with everyone around me for the time being.

“You have to admit it’s a pretty great idea,” Boone says.

It is, but I’m not about to tell him that. Not yet, anyway.

I sigh. “I need to figure out what I’m going to do. Thanks for helping me.”

“Anytime.”

“Talk to you later.”

“Later, Riss.”

I end the call. But before I even remove my finger from the phone screen, a text pops up.



Hollis: It’s my turn to ask for a favor.





Seven





Hollis





“What the hell am I doing?”

I glance down at my phone and re-read the text I sent Larissa.

It’s my turn to ask for a favor.

Could I have been any more pathetic?

Maybe she didn’t notice. After all, she didn’t ask questions. She simply volunteered to meet me here.

Groaning, I sit back in my seat and watch the door.

Paddy’s is fairly quiet, which is not a surprise since it’s two thirty. I worked at a restaurant on campus my sophomore year and learned that the hours between two and four thirty are pretty dead. That’s precisely why I tried to work every shift I could that included those two hours. You basically got paid for sitting on your ass.

I spin my phone around and around. The sound the device makes as it slides across the wooden tabletop is smooth and almost melodic. I find myself humming a tune that starts slow. But as the minutes tick by and my eyes stay trained on the door, waiting for Larissa to walk in, the spins get faster, and the beat gets harder.

Fuck, Hollis. You’re calmer than this before game day.

Finally, the phone jets from between my fingers and winds up leaned against a menu display.

My body pulses with the need to move—to run or do push-ups or lift some weights. Something. Anything. For a split second, I wish that I was back on campus and in my daily routine.

As much as I thought I’d hate everything about college except football, I was wrong. It was the first time in my life I had structure. Routine. Predictability. I could go to sleep at night in my bed and know that I’d be crawling back into the same bed the night after.

Unless I ended up at a girl’s house, but the point remains the same.

I find it strange that the one thing I thought I’d hate most about Braxton College—the regime of it all—will be the one thing I look back on and wish I had the most. Because after graduation, who the fuck knows what’s going to happen?

I squirm in my seat and shift my eyes to the door again.

I’m not sure if all this pent-up energy is from knowing that Larissa will be walking through the doors or if it’s because I have a commitment to be at Landry’s house in a few hours. Both are exciting in their own way. They’re also equally nerve-wracking.

“She’s just a chick,” I whisper to myself. “A chick who owes you a favor.”

But even as I say the words, I know they aren’t true. She doesn’t owe me jack shit.

She’s about to be my fake date.

I imagine her next to me at some fancy table in Landry’s dining room. The conversation in my mind is about football and the future—things that are inherently private and personal to me. If I imagine Larissa with me, it doesn’t feel like a fake date anymore.

And that’s enough to make my insides seize.

The fun of just screwing around diminishes when you start adding in real-life talk. I don’t share those conversations with anyone, really. River knows the most because he has shit he needs to get off his chest too. We sort of talk about things and then blast abrasive rap music or go for a run and pretend it never happened.

I should’ve considered having to discuss things in front of Larissa before I got all impulsive and sent her that text.

Shit.

Do I really want to do this?

As alarm bells start ringing in my head, the door to Paddy’s opens.

Larissa walks in.

Jeans kissing her thighs, a jacket skimming the curve of her waist, and a smile on her lips that feels like it’s challenging me not to groan.

I’m not sure if she walks really fast or if my brain slows way down, but she’s at my table before I have time to get settled.

“I just realized something on the way over here,” she says as she sits across from me.

“And what might that be?”

She grins. She’s even cuter this afternoon than she was yesterday—and that’s quite a feat. Most women are much better looking in the evening hours than they are during the day. It’s some kind of law of the universe that’s never been fully explained.

“I realized that your little ploy of pretending to be my knight in shining armor was just that: a ploy,” she teases.

I lean forward and rest my elbows on the table. Her eyes dance as I peer into them. They’re clear and fresh with little lines coming from the corners that give her a playful energy.