Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(33)

"Socks? That's it." I giggle.

"Yes."

The image of Jason wearing nothing but socks floods my mind. Damn him.

Before I can snap at him, he begins to read again.

He reads to me until my phone beeps. The battery is dying. It's full dark outside, and the clock has just ticked over nine forty-five.

"You still need help with your history homework. You should meet me in the library tomorrow."

"No I shouldn't."

"You're so cruel, Anastasia. I just want to look on your gorgeous face once more. My heart lifts at the sight of you."

"It's not your heart that's lifting."

"Why do you always have to make it weird? God, there you go with the innuendos."

"I'm hanging up."

I cut him off with the button, stick the cord in my phone, and get up to change into my sleeping clothes.

The phone buzzes. Exasperated, I yank it from the nightstand.

Jason: Are you in your jammy jams?

Anastasia: GO TO SLEEP, JASON.

Jason: I can't, you're not here.

Anastasia: Good night.

I type it angrily, not that he can tell, and put the phone in the drawer. Except I can't, because of the cord. I turn the buzzer off instead, so it won't bother me until morning, and turn on my alarm clock. My anger turns into laughter as I imagine him hunched over his phone, grinning at me. Suddenly I'm not angry at all, just warm.

Rest, I must rest.

Sleep drags me down hard, and I am out cold in minutes. When I wake up in the morning, the light warming my face, I find myself on my back, clutching Jason's hoodie to my chest. I lie there for a few moments, sniffing the fabric and feeling its warmth before I gently lay it on the bed and get up to face my day.

My phone rings. I pull it out, expecting Mother to be calling.

It's Dee.

Dee never calls me.

When I answer she says, "Princess, get outside. You need to see this. Just go out in your backyard."

Bleary-eyed, I get up, pull on last night's jeans, and stumble onto the porch, barefoot. I yawn, loudly. "What am I looking for?"

"Up. Look up. The airplane."

Airplane?

I hear it before I see it. It's buzzing low over town, not far above the rooftops. An old-type biplane, bright red. Something trails behind it.

A banner.

I squint and read it as it passes.

It reads, in big bold letters, GO OUT WITH ME, ANASTASIA.

I'm not the only person watching. All of the other student renters on the street are on their back porches, either talking or texting on their phones.

A groan escapes my lips.

"He's crazy," Dee tells me over the phone. "I think he means it, Princess."

The plane makes another four laps before flying off. Presumably Jason couldn't afford any more.

As I walk to class, people pay even more attention to me than usual. Thorlief edges closer as they snap pictures of me, or text at my appearance. Ignoring them, I tromp defiantly to my first class.

Jason will be there, I realize. I sigh, expecting him to sidle up to me as soon as I step into the building.

Instead he waves as I pass him in the hall. He and his two enormous roommates are passing out yellow tshirts from a stack of boxes set up along the wall. They are wearing shirts of their own, all three identical.

Emblazoned on the chest of each shirt is a big blue outline of a heart. Inside the heart, it reads:





JASON




ANA

I grit my teeth and storm into the lecture hall. When I make it to the front row, I find all the seats filled with flowers, with my customary place in the center of the row stacked with boxes of candy and wrapped gifts.

My face turns beet-red. All this, for me? I can't let everyone else see these. If Grandolf finds me standing over a pile of gifts from Jason….

"Hurry," I tell Thorlief and Bjorn. "Clear it away."

I join in, dragging a garbage can from the corner of the room to dispose of all of it. Behind me, dozens of students file in wearing the shirts. Not all, but most.

Jason finally walks in and looks right at me, waving a shirt.

"Want one?"

I stick my tongue out at him.

I finally take my seat, with a pile of still-wrapped gifts at my feet. The other students are murmuring to each other, looking at me, looking at him. I sit up straight and stare forward, arms folded over my chest.

The professor walks through the hallway door at the bottom of the lecture hall, by the lectern and whiteboard. She sips coffee from a paper cup and begins setting up.

Then she glances at me and her eyes to wide. She stands straighter and looks at the tshirts, the gifts at my feet, at Jason, at nothing in particular. A vein throbs on her forehead, and I swear I see a capillary burst into a little red spot in her twitching eye.

"What… what…?" she starts, then grits her teeth. "Let me be well understood. Any antics like this in my class tomorrow, and I will dock a full letter grade from the midterm of anyone who participates. Jason, see me after class."

Then she turns and begins her lecture. She delivers most of it to the blackboard, and one out of every three times she writes something, the chalk snaps in her hand and she goes to get another one.

The lecture ends twenty minutes early and concludes with, "Hand your papers to the assistants and get out."