Exposure (5 page)

And, damnit, I’m giving up med school
to go into field research, so I must be a serious grad
student.

Finally, when I think I can manage to
go five minutes without getting a hard-on, I leave the shower and
change into a t-shirt and jeans. In the living room, Tricia still
sits on the couch with her computer in her lap, completely invested
in her work. Tricia works as a web designer, or I should say, lives
as a web designer. Dressed in yoga pants and a tank top, she
doesn’t even look at me as I walk past her. Recently she cut her
straight hair super short so she didn’t even have to style it
between rolling out of bed and getting to work. The cut fits her
face nicely, I just wish she’d actually look at me more so I could
see how it looks from the front.

I sit on the couch next to her,
wrapping my arm around her shoulder as she continues to clack away
at her keyboard. She’s emailing someone—must be a
client.

“
You going out?” she
said.

“
Yeah,” I scratch my head.
“I am. You wouldn’t want to come to a seminar on mitochondria and
metabolism, would you?”

“
I’d love to,” she says
with such a straight face that I can’t tell if she’s being
sarcastic or just not paying attention. “But these clients are
murdering me.”

I kiss right beneath her ear. “How
about I pick up a bottle of pinot on the way home and we can forget
about our clothes for the night?”

She turns to face me, pecking me
quickly on the lips. “Maybe, babe. You know I’d love for nothing
more. But this client is paying this month’s rent.”

I sigh, and slide my arm from her.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.”

She says nothing as a leave the
apartment. Connecting with Tricia lately has been difficult. She
loves her job and works hard at it, mainly because we’re both
buried in student loans and rent in this area isn’t exactly cheap.
It’s why she pushed for me to audition for EPE. Maybe, if the gig
actually gives me a solid paycheck, she’ll be able to work less and
things can go back to being like how they were when we started
dating three years ago. Passionate. Somewhat interesting. More
action with her than with my hand.

^^^^

The parking lot near the science
building is packed when I get to school. This guy is a big deal,
but I didn’t realize that every department in sciences and
mathematics would be attending.

When I enter the building, I push
through people near the auditorium and hurry up to the biology
office to check my mailbox before the event. As I’m leaving,
sifting through papers that one of my professors dropped off for me
to grade, I don’t notice the person darting through the
hallway.

I manage to hold onto my
papers as her shoulder connects with mine, but she drops her books.
They’re some of the published theory from the lecturer
I—
we
—are about to
attending.

“
Shit,” she mutters,
stooping to pick them up.

“
Damnit, I’m so sorry.” I
bend down to pick up a book that flew extra far. She grabs it at
the same time, and I look up at her.

She wears these chunky
hipster glasses with dark blue frames, her dark hair piled on top
of her head in a messy bun. He t-shirt says,
Dear Algebra, Stop asking us to find your X. She’s not coming
back.
And when our eyes meet, her
expression morphs to terror. We both simultaneously stand, staring
at each other.

“
Rylan?”

She slaps me hard across the
face.

Chapter Four

Evan

I can lose him in this
crowd.

There are enough people in the hall to
dart around and get away from Dallas. Night class must just be
starting. I rush away from him and around the corner, but he’s
desperate to keep up with me.

“
Rylan!” he shouts again.
“What the hell was that for?”

I spin on my heel to face
him. “Are you and idiot? Don’t you
ever
call me that name at school
again!” I hiss.

And then it dawns on him.
“Oh.”

I scoff and march away from him, but
he doesn’t get the hint. Right on my tail, he asks, “So what am I
supposed to call you, then?”

I give in, halting and leaning against
the hallway wall. People rush out of classrooms and down to the
auditorium. The symposium’s going to start at any moment. I’m going
to get a terrible seat. “Nothing, Dallas. You’re supposed to call
me nothing, because you aren’t supposed to run into me on campus.
People shouldn’t see us together.”

He narrows those gorgeous blue eyes of
his. “Why?”

I sigh. I really would rather not
discuss this in the middle of an East Park hallway. “Because,” I
whisper. He leans in close. “Britain’s going to use the photos from
the shoot.”

His eyes widen. “Are you
serious?”

I hate the fact that I
have to nod. Before I left for class, Britain told me that the
photos from the shoot were so good that there was no way she
couldn’t
use them. I
yelled at her a lot. And then I left.

“
So soon, everyone will
see the two of us mostly-naked in the magazine, and then if we’re
seen around campus, people will put two and two
together.”

“
And that’s bad
because…”

I can’t believe he isn’t getting it.
“Because I’m not Rylan, Dallas. I pull my phone from the pocket of
my jeans and glance at it. “I’m going to be late.” I turn from him
again and make my way down the stairs.

He continues to follow me.

“
Okay, whoever you are, I
get it. I’ll leave you alone. If I see you in the halls, I will
ignore you like I’ve never seen you before in my life. Tomorrow.
Let’s break the rules tonight.”

This boy is ridiculous. “And why would
I want to do that?”

“
Because I don’t want to
sit alone at the symposium. Come on.”

I pick up my pace. “Well, I won’t
publicly cause a scene if you sit next to me, if that’s what you’re
asking.”

“
Thanks,” he
murmurs.

I bite back the smile on my face and
hurry into the auditorium, Dallas right on my heels. Like I
guessed, there is hardly an empty chair in the sea full of hundreds
of seats. There are several solo seats scattered here and there. I
could technically just take one of those and Dallas would have to
find a seat somewhere else, but then I spot two vacant chairs next
to each other, and head for them.

Why am I doing this to myself? Because
he’s pathetic and doesn’t want to be alone?

That isn’t the real answer, but I
really don’t feel like thinking on it further.

Dallas sits next to me. He’s about to
open his mouth again, but the professor introducing the speaker
walks on stage and everyone begins to clap. Thank God for being
late.

I pull out my note book and flip to a
blank page. As I breathe in, I smell him next to me. His cologne is
like a spicy sea breeze, and instantly I’m back in that lounge
chair, Dallas’s tongue running over my hip bone.

I cross my legs and clear my
throat.

“
You’re
taking notes
?” he
says.

I glance over at him. He looks
impressed. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do at these
things?”

He shrugs. “I never.”

“
Well, I always do.” The
professor mentions one of the speaker’s books, and I pull it from
my stack, opening up the first page.

Dallas leans closer to me. “Evan
Cosette.”

Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck,
fuck,
fuck

Brilliant me, thinking it was a good
idea to write my name and phone number on the front flap of all my
books. Not the brightest move for a girl trying to hide her true
identity half the time. Not at all.

I keep my composure.
“That’s right.
Evan.
”

One corner of his mouth curves up in a
crooked smile. “Huh. Yeah, I can see you being an Evan. One of
those cute masculine girl names. Suits your
personality.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You calling me
masculine?”

“
Bold is more like
it.”

“
No, I think you’re
calling me masculine.” I turn back to the speaker, and he doesn’t
say anything else. But every time I glance at him through the
hour-long lecture, he’s still wearing that smug grin that I badly
want to wipe off his face.

The question is, how?

When the lecture is over, Dallas still
won’t let me get away from him. In the parking lot, I’m almost to
my car when he says, “Hold it, hold it. I barely got to learn
anything about you, Evan.”

I reach my Saturn and pop the trunk,
throwing my books inside. “Can’t we do that at work?”

“
Why can’t we do it
now?”

I slam down the trunk lid and lean
against it. “Gee, you’re a lot less annoying when you’re either
licking my neck or stumbling through a bad Power Point
presentation.”

He takes a step back. “Excuse
me?”

I cross my arms. It’s my turn to be
smug.

His expression falls.
“
You’re
in Bio
114?”

“
I am. And you know I’m
just giving you shit. You’re not half bad, but mostly because
you’re distracting eye candy.”

A glimmer of a smile arises on his
face. “You flirting with me?”

“
And why would I be doing
that? You have a girlfriend, don’t you?”

He sighs and pushes back his
hair.

I continue. “Well, if you’ll excuse
me, I have some biology homework to get to. Pretty sure you
assigned it.”

As I walk toward the front of my car,
he continues to stand there without saying goodbye. I open the door
and look back at him. “So… see you tomorrow?”

“
Was the shoot today
weird?”

I shake my head. “What do you mean,
weird?”

“
Like every conversation
we have is going to be as awkward as this one.”

I bite my lip. His shoulder are all
hunched over, hands in his pockets. Like this, in a t-shirt and
jeans, he just looks like another student. An undergrad maybe—a
gorgeous one. He must have girls coming up to him every day on
campus.

“
I guess we’ll find
out.”

^^^^

The girls are home and in their
pajamas, crowded around the living room computer. Delilah is
gushing about how sexy Adam is.

“
I don’t ever want to go
back to solo shooting,” she says dreamily.

I throw my bag on the couch. “You can
have my boy too,” I tell her with a wink. “Double the
action.”

“
Jesus, Evan,” cries
Britain, her attention remaining glued to the photos she’s editing.
“You’d think I’d make you pose with some ugly ogre.”

I dig in the fridge until I find all
the makings for a tofu scramble, and pull the frying pan out of the
cupboard. “It’s not that I don’t find Dallas
attractive.”

“
Yeah, I can tell that by
your o-face in all of these shots.” Delilah leans over Britain’s
shoulder. They must be going through my shoot from this afternoon.
“Oh my, did you let him
eat you
out
?”

“
Did not!” I yell.
“Britain was just playing her angles. Jesus.”

“
I do get what you mean,”
Delilah says as she studies my photos, playing with the end of her
auburn braid. “I still want my platform. Trust me, I love shooting
with Adam. I just hope that he doesn’t outshine me.”

“
Well, hopefully the boy
shoots flop,” I say. “That would make the most sense, right? Our
magazine is aimed toward men.”

“
Not for long.” Britain
spins around in her chair and crosses her arms. “Just hired a whole
bunch of women writers.” She pushes her glasses up the bridge of
her nose. “Sex, health, socializing—EPE isn’t just aimed toward men
any more. We’re going all out, baby. And you know what that means.”
She takes a paperback book from the desk and chucks it at me. It
flies over the island and I duck just in time. When it smacks
against the cupboards and falls to the floor, I glance at it and
realize that it’s a newer paperback romance novel. The smutty
kind.

“
You
are being given the job of finding out what turns women
on.”

I pick up the novel and
stand. “So, what? I’m supposed to read
this
?” I return to my sizzling
skillet.

“
That and the fifteen
other ones I have up in my room. It’s what you’re going to be
basing yours and Dallas’s shoots off of.”

I drop my spatula, and it
clatters beside my feet. “Wait…
what
?”

Delilah’s eyes are wide and excited,
darting between me and Britain.

Britain smirks. “That’s right. Little
Rylan is going to give it all up to Dallas for the
ladies.”