Hooped (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series #1) (5 page)

“Ugh, get off me you cow,” I told her, giving her a
playful shove with a grin. Kelly laughed. I had known her longer than any of
the other girls in my group of friends; we had gone to the same high school,
although Kelly was three years older than me. But we had been in a few clubs
together, and when she found out that I had chosen the same college that she
was going to, she put in to share a suite with me.

It was a little surprising to me to realize that of
all of the people who had texted me last
night,
Kelly hadn’t been one of them. She hadn’t seemed to care at all that I had
disappeared—or even worried about where I had gone to. “I don’t seem to recall
seeing much of you either.” Kelly grinned.

“I saw a few people. The usual stuff. I don’t like
spending the whole night with the same group anyway.” As long as I had known
her, Kelly had had a liberal attitude towards sex; she had been totally
up-front about the first time she had had sex with anyone, and she didn’t seem
to have a particular boyfriend, even though she got laid regularly. I didn’t
have quite her attitude towards it. I wasn’t exactly ashamed
of
giving up my virginity within hours of
meeting someone, but I hoped at least that Devon’s attentions towards me were
the mark of something special between us. I mean, a guy didn’t treat a girl so
kindly if he just wanted sex from her, would he?

“I am exhausted,” I said with a groan. “When did you
get in?” Kelly shrugged.

“Don’t remember.” I laughed, rolling my eyes at her. “So
it seems like you don’t mind partying so much every once in a while,” she said,
turning onto her stomach. “Have a good time last night?” I considered the
question—and all of its implications.

“It was up and down. You guys party hard.” Kelly
laughed.

“I think I saw Giselle make out with three different
guys. It’s a wonder anyone made it back to the dorms at all.”

“Did you have a good time?” I asked her. Kelly
shrugged.

“It was good as parties go, but the Phi Kappa guys
always throw a good party. Surprised you didn’t come back to the dorms last
night.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was kind of surprised too.” I
grinned, unable to help myself.

“
Oooh
, Jenn’s got a secret,”
Kelly said, laughing. “Everyone was asking me where you went—and when I got in
a little bit ago, Alicia told
me
you said
you’d gone to sleep upstairs.” She gave me a dubious look.

“Well, I did,” I told her, sitting up in bed and
keeping the blankets wrapped around me tightly. “I was too tired to walk home,
and I didn’t have any idea where everyone had gone off to.”

“I seem to recall seeing you pretty intensely
interested in a conversation with a guy,” Kelly said teasingly. “I didn’t butt
in because that would be rude, but I figured that was where you ended up.” I
blushed, burying my face against one of my pillows.

“Okay, fine, yeah, I slept with someone,” I admitted.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a big deal or anything.” Kelly gave me a little
look.

“I don’t recall you ever telling me about your first
time,” she mused. “Was that it?” I blushed again.

“What if it was? I mean, pure dumb luck, right? I go
to a party even though I didn’t want to and end up punching my V-card.”

“With Devon Sealy?” There was a strange note in
Kelly’s voice.

“Yeah! Oh man—so you saw who it was I was talking to.”

“Yeah, I overheard you talking basketball stats with
him.” I shrugged.

“We sort of… started making out, and then one thing
led to another.” Kelly frowned.

“You told him you were a virgin, right?” I
nodded,
and then frowned.

“He figured it out, and I admitted it. But he was so
sweet about it! He was really
gentle,
and
took it slow.” Kelly shook her head, laughing.

“You’re a wild woman when you finally do let your hair
down, you know that? Banging Devon Sealy for your first time? You’re on the way
to becoming a legend.” I rolled my eyes.

“No one knows it was my first time except for him—and
you.” I pulled the blanket up around me again; it was slipping down, and while
Kelly and I were close I wasn’t going to go around flashing her just to prove
it. “Actually, it’s pretty promising. He was even really sweet after. I think
he likes me.” I grinned. Kelly started to smile and then something like sadness
came into her eyes. “I think I might have finally found someone worth going out
with,” I said with a little laugh. Kelly laughed with me for a moment and then
went quiet. “What?”

“It’s not a big deal, just forget it.”

“No, seriously; tell me what’s on your mind. You’re
practically the closest thing I have to a big sister.”

“I’m telling
you;
you don’t want to hear it anyway.” I rolled my eyes.

“I do want to hear it or I wouldn’t be asking you. So
spill already!” Kelly pressed her lips together and glanced at the bedspread
before meeting my gaze again.

“Okay. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, so
don’t—like—kill the messenger or anything,” I frowned at her.

“What are you talking about?” Kelly shrugged.

“It’s just that Devon is a total player, you know? I
mean he talks a good game, and he’s gotten lots of girls to give it up.” I
laughed.

“
Well,
he’s a
member of that frat, of
course
he sleeps
around. But if he was really into a girl…” Kelly shook her head.

“No; I mean a total player. He’s a master at it; he
knows just what to say and what to do to get into a girl’s pants and then once
he’s done with her it’s like he never even met her at all. He just goes onto
the next one. He’s all about the chase. Once he gets what he wants, he’s moving
on.” I felt my throat tightening up, my mouth going dry.

“Ah, they say that about all the
guys,
though,” I said weakly. I started to feel
angry; I knew that Devon had been different with me. He hadn’t just manipulated
me into giving it up to him—he had actually been interested in me as a person.
He had held me close after we’d finished, and we’d continued talking until we’d
both fallen asleep. That wasn’t the move of a guy who just wanted to get laid
and move on. “It was different from that,” I told Kelly firmly. “He was—it
wasn’t some guy who wanted to get laid. He was really sweet, and really into
me.” Kelly shrugged.

“Think what you want, but his reputation speaks for
itself.” I rolled my eyes.

“It’s not like you were there. You don’t know what he
was like.” Kelly shrugged again. “It’s true! I didn’t even expect him to be
that good to me. He said we could stop
anytime
I wanted, and he was just…” I shook my head. “He was nicer than any guy I’ve
ever been with.”

“Because you’ve been with so many
guys,” Kelly said, grinning sardonically.

“Well not—not like that, but I’ve done lots of other
things, so it’s not like I’m a total naïve schoolgirl, or something.” Kelly
pushed herself up and off of the bed, landing nimbly on the floor.

“Ask around if you want. I’m telling you: Devon
Sealy’s a man-slut. Total trash. Don’t be surprised if you never hear from him
again.” She left the
room,
and I felt
myself getting angrier and angrier. Kelly had no idea what she was talking
about, I thought. She was just repeating gossip. I had to give her credit for
at least looking out for my feelings like a good friend, but I was more than a
little resentful that she couldn’t just be happy for me.
Probably just jealous I got laid last
night,
and she didn’t
I thought bitterly. I decided that I still wasn’t going to
go around telling everyone about it—I wanted to keep it private between Devon
and me—but I was not going to let Kelly’s rumor-mongering get to me. I was just
going to see what happened, and then I would show her that I wasn’t as stupid
or as naïve as she thought I was.

Chapter
Six

In spite of the fact that I’d told Kelly that she had
no idea what she was talking about, after she left—not only my room but also
the dorm suite itself, based on the sound of the door closing behind her—I
started to doubt almost immediately. She had always looked out for me. We had
fallen out of touch her first year in
college
but gotten close again when I decided to go
to
the same college
she had chosen. I’d messaged
her,
and she’d been delighted that I was going to be there.

I had been so grateful to be close with an
upperclassman when the first week of classes had started; she had given me all
of the shortcuts to my classes, and she had told me about all of the professors
I had for the mandatory courses that all freshmen had to take. She’d become
like an older sister to me, and we’d both been happy to discover that we didn’t
have to complain to each other about keeping the dorm clean or about noise
during quiet hours. Of all of the friends in the group we were in, she was the
one that I was closest to for very good reasons, and she had never given be bad
advice.

I also remembered with a little bit of regret that she
had never been the jealous type. She had seemed pretty happy for me that I had
lost my virginity; she had seemed to know I’d gone for it even before I
admitted it. If she was saying that there was something basically wrong with
Devon, I had to give her something like the benefit of the doubt—didn’t I?

I called up every detail I could remember, trying to
figure out whether there was a sign of Devon being the kind of player that
Kelly said he was. He had sat down next to me on the loveseat uninvited, but as
I replayed our conversation in my
mind,
I
couldn’t think of anything that he’d done that was particularly manipulative.
After all, we’d started off talking about basketball; he’d been doubtful that a
girl could really be into it—that made sense, didn’t it? Most guys seemed to
think it was weird for me
actually to like
the sport, especially when they found out I’d never actually played. I wasn’t
the tomboy type, so it didn’t seem to compute for them.

And then talking about the other people at the party,
joking around, it was the kind of thing that you did, wasn’t it? I wracked my
mind, trying to remember everything that I had ever heard about Devon, trying
to decide whether or not to put any stock into what Kelly had said.

Part of me wanted to think that she
was just
protective; after all, most guys
probably were just out for a
lay
and
didn’t really care, even when they knew that the girl they were with was a
virgin. It wasn’t an unusual thing at all. And I had hooked up with Devon on
the spur of the moment—I hadn’t even thought about making him wait, trying to
make him work for it. Devon did have a reputation on campus from what I’d heard
about him, but I had always figured that that was just the sort of thing that
went around about guys on a team, and especially the guys in the Phi Kappa frat.

I rolled my eyes and decided to take a shower; I was
still sore, and my skin felt sticky from all the sweat I’d worked up. I was
exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. I put my robe on and walked across the dorm
room to where the shared shower was. I figured that Kelly must have gone down
for brunch once the dining hall opened. She was probably annoyed with me for
completely ignoring her advice.

Every guy in the Phi Kappa frat, it seemed, had racked
up more women than anyone had any right to—if you believed the rumors about
them. It seemed silly to me to think that the guys could all be completely and
totally the same about women. After all, they were individuals, weren’t they?
And Devon’s behavior towards me hadn’t seemed at all like he was just trying to
get what he wanted and cut me loose. If he had wanted that, then he would have
convinced me to head back, or offered to walk me back to the dorms, once we
were finished. It didn’t make sense for a guy who just wanted the chase to let
the girl stay the night, even if she was a virgin.

I washed my hair and carefully scrubbed my body in the
shower, deciding that I was really overthinking things. I’d ask around about
him—some of the other girls in the group with Kelly and me were upperclassmen
too, and they’d have a better idea of what Devon was really like. But until I
had any kind of evidence against him, it wouldn’t be fair to assume that he was
just screwing around with me. Especially not after he had been so sweet and
gentle, so interested in me. I sat in my dorm room, drying my hair and trying
to decide what to wear down to the dining hall.

I went back and forth on the subject of whether or not
to believe Kelly. She had so much more experience than I did that part of my
brain said her warning must have come from somewhere; she wouldn’t have just
been spreading gossip. But I couldn’t credit Devon being so great to me,
reminding me over and over again to tell him to stop if he was hurting me, if
he was the kind of guy who was just looking for another notch
in
his bedpost.

I compared him to the other guys I had dated. I’d only
ever really been serious about one guy: my boyfriend, senior year of high
school. We had never had sex, but we had come close to it over and over again,
fooling around in his car or mine. On prom
night,
I had barely managed to not give into his subtle hints. It wasn’t that I didn’t
want to have sex—or that I didn’t want to have sex with him. It just didn’t
feel right to give it up on prom night, even if I knew that it was what so many
other girls in my graduating class were doing. I wanted to wait for the right
time, the right moment, not transform my first time into a massive cliché.