Crush (5 page)

“What about him?”

“Did you think he was cute?” she asked.

I hesitated. Sure, he’d been kinda cute, but a little part of my mind couldn’t help but think that he was a lesser version of Brad. Muscular, but not as muscular as Brad. Nice eyes, but nowhere near as piercing as Brad’s.
Jeez, there I go again, thinking about Brad.

Dammit.

I pushed the thoughts of him aside. Again.

“Yeah, he was okay, why?” I asked.

She giggled. “Well, Ben told me Jeremy’s been harassing him about you for a while now. Apparently you made quite an impression on him.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so anyway, I know we’ll all be really busy with studying this semester, so I don’t want to push anything on you too soon, but maybe you could take him as a date to the Halloween bash when it comes around?”

“Oh…um, maybe,” I replied, still hesitant. I didn’t really know Jeremy very well.

Then again, the only way to get to know someone was to hang out with them, right? Maybe I could go on a few dates with him. Maybe that’d help take my mind off certain other men who I wasn’t supposed to be mentally fawning over. Yeah, you know who I was talking about.

“Think about it,” she said. “You’ve got ages to decide, so no stress.”

“Yeah, I’ll think about it.”

Who knows? Maybe Jeremy would turn out to be an awesome person. It could go really well.

Unfortunately, as much as I’d tried to stop it, the only guy on my mind was Brad…

CHAPTER FIVE

BRAD

I waited for my latest customer, poised with a pen and pad. She was an older woman with a perpetual sneer on her face, as if she’d been breastfed by a lemon as an infant.

“Get me a bottle of water and two glasses,” she said without so much as a glance in my direction.

I sighed on the inside. Tonight was going to be a long night, judging by her shitty attitude.

Between compulsory-attendance classes and studying at home, I worked two jobs to support myself and pay for college tuition. One of those jobs was at a warehouse, and the other was here at Al Dente Restaurant, a cheap Italian food joint. My general job description at Al Dente seemed to be ‘take shit from customers and never complain’. It sucked, but at least it paid the bills. I was also lucky enough to have a partial scholarship which helped pay for some of my tuition and part of my exorbitant fraternity fees.

I’d almost ended up not joining the frat when I first started college, but I’d been told it was a good way to foster relationships that might benefit me in the future, and so far that had turned out to be pretty accurate. One of my frat brothers had introduced me to his father, who was a Chief of Medicine, and he’d liked me and promised me a coveted internship at the hospital he ran when I got to the end of med school.

It just sucked that college and med school took so damned long. For the next few years, I was going to be stuck waiting on asshole customers and lugging stuff around the warehouse. Oh well. That’s life for you. You couldn’t get anywhere without working hard, unless you were lucky as hell.

“Still or sparkling water, ma’am?” I asked the customer, summoning up a friendly smile.

“If I wanted still water, I would have ordered tap water, not a bottle,” she replied with an eye roll.

Yep, tonight was definitely going to be a long night…

By the time my shift ended, I was totally beat. I could barely keep my eyes open on the drive home, and when I dragged myself into the frat house I lived in, I honestly considered passing out on a couch in the front lounge room, just so I wouldn’t have to use any more energy to drag myself upstairs to my bedroom.

I ran into my buddy Carter in the small entrance foyer. He was an engineering major with a minor in software development, and we’d met in our first year here at USM.

“Hey, man! I was wondering where you were,” he said.

“Work,” I replied. “I’m slayed.”

“That’s shit,” he said, although I knew he probably didn’t really understand. He was a trust fund kid, and he’d never worked a day in his life. “Anyway, come have a beer!”

He gestured to the main lounge room, which reeked of beer, stale food and weed. I couldn’t believe the mess which had already accumulated in the house after just one week of returning to classes. Empty beer cans and bottles littered the floor, and I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore it. That was one negative thing about living in a frat house – no one ever cleaned. I’d do it myself occasionally, but I very rarely had the time or energy.

“Thanks, man, but I think I’ll just head to bed. I’m tired, and I’ve got an early chem class tomorrow,” I replied.

He slapped me on the back. “Don’t be such a downer! Just one drink. It’ll help you get a good night’s sleep for your chem class,” he said with a wink.

“Fine. Just one,” I said, flashing him a reluctant smile. I’d been so busy with classes and work this week that I’d barely had any time to relax and hang out with the boys, but I could probably manage another half an hour or so before passing out.

Carter went to get me a beer, and I stepped into the lounge room. Apparently it wasn’t just the boys we were hanging out with tonight. Four scantily-clad girls were lounging around, hanging off the every word of the guys in there, and a couple of them watched me with interest as I took a seat on a couch.

“Hey, Brad…want some?”

One of my frat brothers offered me a drag of a joint, and I waved him away. “Nah, I’m good.”

I pulled out my phone, realizing I hadn’t checked it all night. I had two messages – one from Amanda, the crazy ex-stepsister, and one from Rose Patterson, the even crazier ex-girlfriend. I knew it made me sound like a dick to refer to both of them as crazy, but if the shoe fits…

I didn’t mind Amanda so much. Yeah, she was annoying as hell with the way she’d always tried to seduce me despite my obvious lack of interest in her, but I’d always felt kinda guilty about ignoring her, seeing as she’d been my stepsister for so many years before our parents divorced. Every so often, I’d reply to one of her texts and ask how she was going, although I never took her up on any of her offers to ‘catch up’ in person, because I know what that would likely entail. This most recent message was a request to meet up for ‘coffee’. Hmm, yeah…coffee. Sure.

Rose was a different story. Every time she messaged me, I had the urge to smash my phone into a brick wall.

I’d never been the type for serious girlfriends before I met her. Casual, short-lived hookups had always appealed to me because of the limited amount of time I had, plus there was the fact that for the first two years of college, I hadn’t met a single girl whom I thought might actually be worth going for. There were a lot of smart, capable girls at USM, but a lot of them were already taken. Either that or they were more interested in getting wasted at parties every weekend. Not exactly relationship material.

Then I’d met Rose about five months ago. She was hot, relatively intelligent, and seemingly nice. I say seemingly because I eventually discovered she was a raging, hypocritical bitch. She was the sort of person who was nice to other people to their faces, but as soon as they left the room, she’d say all kinds of awful things about them. I couldn’t stand that. The way I saw it, if someone had a problem with me, then they could tell me to my face…but if they talked about me behind my back, then they were a cowardly asshole. And that’s exactly what she was – she wore a mask of friendliness in public and then acted like a fucking monster behind the scenes.

That’s one thing I liked about my new stepsister, Mia. She hadn’t exactly been friendly to me ever since our pool encounter, but at least she had no problem being like that to my face. There was no two-faced hypocrisy when it came to her, and I had to respect that. Plus, the look of derision on her face whenever she looked at me was enough to get my dick rock solid in an instant. Fuck knows why. Maybe my dick liked a challenge?

Anyway, back to Rose
—
by the time I’d realized what she was really like, we’d already been dating for a while, and she hadn’t been too happy when I’d told her it was over. It was almost as if she hadn’t accepted it at all, because she still called and texted all the time looking for a quick fuck. She was one of those girls who thought that because she was hot, she could get anything she wanted from guys, and it clearly annoyed her to no end when I rejected all her offers of casual sex after the break-up. When I was done with someone, I was
done,
and she just didn’t seem to be able to comprehend that.

Besides, if I slept with her now, she’d take that to mean we were getting back together, and I wasn’t making the mistake of falling down that rabbit hole again.

I deleted her message without even reading it and then slid my phone back into my pocket. Where the hell was Carter? He was taking ages to get beers from the kitchen. I was about to get up and find out what was taking him so long when one of the scantily-clad girls in the room sashayed over and sat right next to me.

“Hi,” she said, twirling a strand of her blonde hair. Her voice was husky, like she was trying to sound seductive. Unfortunately for her, with her smudged raccoon eyeliner and fetid beer breath, she was about as seductive as a drunk sloth.

“Er...hey,” I replied.

“I’m Shana,” she said, sliding a hand onto my lap. “You’re Brad, right?”

My legs stiffened under her touch, but my cock didn’t. She smiled and rubbed her hand up and down my crotch before making an annoyed sound as I pushed her away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, pouting.

“Not interested,” I said. There was only one girl on my mind right now, and it wasn’t her.

“Aw, playing hard to get? Isn’t that what us girls normally do to you guys?” she said with a giggle before groping at my crotch again. Her eyes widened when she realized I was still completely flaccid, and she glared up at me as I shoved her hand away again.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

Wow. Talk about arrogant and presumptuous. Some people thought I was arrogant, but at least I didn’t go around groping people and getting mad at them when they rejected me.

I didn’t want to cause a scene in front of the guys, so I summoned up a weak smile. “I’m tired,” I said. “Maybe another time.”

“Whatever.”

She flounced away, and Carter took her seat a moment later. “Sorry, man. Got caught up on the phone.”

He passed me a beer, and I took a swig, watching as Shana made a move on one of my other frat brothers instead. Jesus. She was desperate. I’d never understood girls like that. Then again, I couldn’t really talk. I’d slept with my fair share of chicks like that, so I was probably just as bad.

“So tell me about your new family,” Carter said. “Your Mom got married to Michael Williams, right? That famous lawyer dude?”

“Uh, yeah,” I replied. I hadn’t really told anyone much about it yet, mostly because I was still so surprised about the whole thing. It’d only been eleven days since the quickie wedding, so it was still sinking in.

“Who do you think your new stepdad looks more like…Idris Elba or Kanye West?” he asked, nudging me.

I rolled my eyes, and he pressed on. “Probably more like Kanye West. He wrote that Gold Digger song, and Michael Williams isn’t exactly poor.”

I narrowed my eyes and put my beer down. “Not cool, Carter,” I said, my voice stiff. Yes, Michael came from the old-money Williams family and was also pretty wealthy in his own right, but my Mom wasn’t after him for his money. She wasn’t like that. On top of that, comparing him to Kanye or Idris Elba just because he was black was bullshit.

He chuckled, but his eyes looked serious. “Okay, man. Sorry. Was just trying to be funny. Your Mom’s cool. I know she’s not a gold digger.”

Carter was one of those guys who thought he was funny but always took jokes too far. I knew he didn’t mean anything malicious by what he’d said. He wasn’t like that. Despite his awful sense of humor, he was one of the most decent guys I’d met at college so far. Still, I’d immediately felt the need to jump to Michael’s defense when he’d made that comment about him. Hmm. I guess Michael had made a good impression on me in the short time in which I’d known him. I’d have never stuck up for Vince when he was married to Mom, no matter what kind of shit people said about him.

I gestured towards the mess on the ground. “I can’t believe how much you guys have managed to get through in just one week.”

Carter chuckled again. “Yeah, I know. We’re all still mentally on summer break, but I’m gonna be slammed this semester, so I’ll have to settle down for the next few weeks. By the way, you still up for the competition pool?”

“Sure.”

We had a tradition here at the frat
—
every semester, a bunch of us donated a little bit of cash to a kitty, and whoever hooked up with the most chicks during the semester won all of it. Usually no one took it all that seriously, other than a small handful of freshmen who hadn’t yet figured out that college wasn’t all about sex and partying. Yeah, believe it or not, some of us actually studied occasionally.

Overall, it was a bullshit tradition, but we mostly did it for shits and giggles. I wasn’t looking to win it, but I didn’t mind contributing some money to it for everyone else’s sake. Carter had won it for the last two years with all his preppy charms, and both times he’d ended up using the cash to shout us all drinks at a bar after the end of exams, which had been pretty cool.

“Sweet. I’ll grab the cash from you later. How are your classes looking, anyway?” he asked.

“Busy as well. But I’ll have the occasional night off for some drinks with the guys.”

“Cool. We’re not hosting as many parties as we usually do this semester, ‘cause everyone else is pretty busy too, but we are having that Halloween party in a few weeks. You gonna be around for that?”

“Yeah, I should be here.”

“Sweet. It’s gonna be big. Not just USM students; I hear a few are coming down from Jackson. Some from Overton too.”

At the mention of Overton, I wondered whether Mia would be coming. Probably not. She didn’t seem like the type of girl who’d go to many raging parties.

We chatted for a while longer, and then I chucked my can in the bin and headed upstairs to my room, yawning profusely. When I threw open my door, I got a nasty surprise that jolted me wide awake. Fuck. Rose was reclining on my bed, clad in nothing but a pale pink bra and matching panties.

“Jesus, how did you get in here?” I asked.

She flicked her auburn hair over her shoulder, rolled onto her stomach and threw me a seductive pout. “You never lock your door.”

She had me there. I always forgot to lock it. My frat brothers were fairly decent guys, so I’d never had to worry about theft or anything like that.