Beg You to Trust Me (Lindon U #2)(42)
My stomach flutters hearing his name, so my eyes train solely on the processed sugar in front of me.
I woke up to a text this morning from the boy in question. Two words.
Danny: Morning, Blondie
Two words and an instant smile formed on my face. I’m glad Becca had already left for her early study session because I didn’t feel like her digging into my business and asking what had me so happy. Especially not when she’d walked into our room halfway through the movie Danny and I were watching on my bed and gave us a look of disgust even though nothing was happening.
Our arms were touching, that was it. I wasn’t fondling his goods or shoving my tongue down his throat. But the way Rebecca looked at us would make anyone thing otherwise.
“There’s nothing to say,” I say, breaking the peanut butter cup in half and studying the contents inside. “We’re friends.”
A weird look pinches Olive’s eyes. “You haven’t said a word about him since the weekend you hung out, and I haven’t seen you two make googly eyes at each other at Huden nearly as much from across the room,” she remarks.
My face blasts with heat. “We don’t make googly eyes at each other!” Do we see each other in the dining hall from time to time? Yes. And do I find myself catching his eye more than I like from where we sit with our perspective group of friends? Also, yes.
But googly eyes?
I meet Olive’s knowing eyes for a millisecond before casting my gaze downward at the table with little phallic carvings made into the wood top.
After the movie, Danny and I talked about our majors. I expected him to be studying something in the athletics field, and he admitted he started out his freshman year in sports management but changed it to marketing his sophomore year. He said he wasn’t sure he wanted to be surrounded by sports as he got older, so marketing was a safer bet.
But nothing about Daniel Bridges seems ‘safe’ to me.
One smile has my stomach filling with flutters that I don’t trust one single bit. It wouldn’t be the first crush I’ve had, but it’d be the first one where the person might reciprocate. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
When I told him I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my communications major, he didn’t say anything condescending or make suggestions like Tyler or others have. He simply shrugged and said, “You’ll figure it out.”
Melted chocolate coats my fingertips as I pull myself out of thoughts about the school’s wide receiver. I lick off the sugar and stifle a sigh, causing Olive to study me.
She says, “Those pictures he took of you two don’t seem very friendly to me.”
“We take selfies like that all the time,” I remind her.
“But neither of us were smiling with our eyes,” she counters, grinning. “If I saw that posted online, I’d assume he’s your boyfriend.”
My stomach dips.
She taps my hand with the end of her pen. “I heard a few people talking about what a total flirt he is. Just be careful with him. If you’re friends, then that’s great. But if you decide to be more…”
It hurts to swallow as a swarm of emotion rises up my throat. “I already know what he’s like, but duly noted. Can we talk about something else, please?” I don’t acknowledge the hoarseness in my voice that isn’t there when I think about Tyler hanging around other girls and shooting them winks and panty-dropping smirks.
It doesn’t make me feel great to acknowledge that most of the guys who pay me attention also pay plenty of other girls the same amount, but it isn’t like I laid claim to any of them. I’m not interested in Tyler, so I don’t even care what he does. But Danny? I don’t know what to think about his ability to make me laugh when I want to bawl. Or how he braids my hair without a care of what people think of him as they watch. Every time I find my mind wandering to Daniel Bridges, it gets trapped there for too long.
On how his shoulders shake when he laughs. How his eyes brighten when he’s up to something. He can’t sit still for too long without fidgeting, hates taking notes in class but still gets good grades, and puts one hundred and ten percent into everything he does.
Like always, my friend delivers with a much-needed subject change that successful draws me away from my brain before I slip into a void. “I slept with Alex.”
I blink slowly. “Can you repeat that?”
She nods sheepishly, her cheeks turning red as she fiddles with the pen in her hand. “We hooked up after the bonfire. He and my brother are kind of mortal enemies. Like, my brother Sebastian can’t stand Alex.”
I’m lost. “So…? Huh?”
“I’m pretty sure Alex figured out who I was and slept with me to get back at my brother,” she concludes, her shoulders lifting like it’s not a big deal. “I mean, I met Alex last year when I visited Sebastian here to get a feel for the campus. They both play hockey. They were teammates battling it out for top spot to get noticed by pro scouts. Alex obviously didn’t recognize me because he had a band of followers around him at all times. My brother and him didn’t get along at all when Seb still went here, and he drilled it into my head to stay away when I announced I was enrolling. He and Alex would get into these prank wars and try to outdo the other his entire four years at Lindon. It was borderline hazing.”