Undecided(64)

Crosbie clears his throat. “Okay,” he says, shifting in his seat. “So you know where she works. You can probably call the club and leave your contact information. Hopefully she calls you back.”

Kellan nods. “Good one. Will do.”

I take a breath. “Number nine? Lin from stairwell at gym? You meet girls in stairwells?” Is there any place he can’t meet women?

“We didn’t exactly ‘meet’ there, if you know what I mean.” Kellan grins thoughtfully. “Or rather, we met there, but for the express purpose of—”

“I think I get it.”

“She’s a volleyball player,” he supplies, though I hadn’t asked. “And we’d been eye f*cking for a while, then after one of her matches we bumped into each other and decided to just go for it. She kept the kneepads on, if you know what I mean.”

I rub a hand over my hot face. Be indignant, I tell myself. Be righteous! But all I’m doing is picturing myself on my hands and knees, Crosbie behind me, in front of me, under me, doing so many dirty things.

I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve had sex since that night in the front seat of his car. He picks me up after work regularly and we drive some place to mess around as best we can. Because it’s cold out and I’m not willing to get arrested for public indecency—again—we’ve had to be creative. Hand jobs in the back row of a mostly-empty movie theater, a quickie against the wall in the supply closet at Beans after I let him in the back door, one painful attempt to squeeze into the backseat of his car that left us both with seatbelt-shaped bruises and vows never to try again.

We’d finally gotten so frustrated that I’d pulled up the hood of my jacket and hidden my face as we ran up the stairs to his room at the frat house, so desperate to just have fully-naked, proper sex, that I’d been willing to ignore the consequences. Unfortunately we weren’t the only ones with sex on the brain, and his next-door neighbor and his very vocal partner were doing their best to bring the house down with their sex sounds. When the wall shook so hard it rattled Crosbie’s bed, he’d thrown on jeans and a shirt and stormed out of the room to threaten the guy with castration if he didn’t keep it down. When he got back neither one of us were in the mood.

By the time Kellan’s walked us through the details of his romp with number ten (either Tiffani or Brittani, but it definitely ends in an i), I’m ready to combust. I can barely sit still, my thighs clenching with need, and I’m familiar enough with Crosbie’s flushed cheeks and darkened gaze to know he’s on the same dirty page. The problem is, we have nowhere to go to read this page.

Kellan’s phone rings suddenly, jarring us all out of this strange sexual haze. “It’s Dane,” he whispers, before picking up and saying hello. “Good,” he says. “You?” He nods and listens, nods and listens, then for some reason, gives us a thumbs up. “He’s right here,” he says. “I’ll tell him, absolutely. Cool. See you soon.” He hangs up and gapes at us as though he can’t believe his good luck. “This is perfect!”

Crosbie and I exchange wary looks. “Is it?”

He turns to Crosbie. “Dane said they’re going over to prank the Kappa Deltas tonight, and we need to be there. In fact, we need to go right now, to help prepare. Come on. You walked over, right? I’ll drive you back.”

Crosbie’s flush is deepening and I see his chest rise and fall as he takes a calming breath. “Right now?”

“Yeah, right now. You can talk to Dane and get those numbers for me. Let’s go.” He snatches up the notebook and tosses it into his room, where it flutters to the floor like a bird dying of sexual frustration.

I stare miserably at my hands, twisted on the table to stop myself from lunging at Crosbie and dragging him into my room, shouting at Kellan that the deal’s off, feel free to bring any girl he wants back to the apartment.

“Actually…” Crosbie says tentatively. “I’ll follow you over in a bit. I wanted to ask Nora to look over my English paper. She said she wouldn’t mind proofing it before I turned it in. It’s just a few pages.”

I’ve never agreed to proofread this paper, because it doesn’t exist. But Kellan doesn’t know that and I’m more than willing to play along. “You finished it?” I say. “That’s great. Of course I’ll take a look.”

Kellan’s frowning. “Can’t you just email it?”

“I brought a hard copy,” Crosbie says. He reaches into his bag and passes me a stapled sheaf of papers. It’s a bunch of recipes for protein shakes to help build muscle faster.

Kellan grabs his jacket from the couch and pulls it on. “Okay, whatever. Will it take more than fifteen minutes? I have to get gas, so we’ll just run over, fill it up, and come back to pick up the paper—is that enough time? I know you’re both trying to keep your grades up, but tonight is really important. Last year the Kappa Deltas covered the Alpha Sigma Phi house in toilet paper. Dirty toilet paper. Remember that?”

“Er…” Crosbie and I exchange tortured looks.

“Why don’t you get gas and stop here on your way back?” Crosbie suggests. “I don’t want to come to the gas station.”

“Why not?”

“The, uh…fumes. They make me sick.”