Hooped (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series #1) (6 page)

We had ended up breaking up over the summer without
doing the deed, because we were going to different schools, and Alex had said
that he didn’t want to take my virginity and then have our relationship just
fall apart afterwards. I had to laugh at myself in hindsight; I’d put so much
effort into trying to find the right moment to lose it with Alex, who I’d dated
for months, and yet Devon had gotten me hot enough to give it up to him within
an hour or two.

That thought gave me a chill. I remembered what Kelly
had said; that Devon was a master manipulator—he would read a girl, and react
just the right way. If Alex, who I had loved, couldn’t talk me into having sex
with him, then how had Devon managed to do it so quickly? Had it been the
alcohol helping him, my own impulsiveness, or had it just been a matter of
knowing all of the right moves?

You’re
making yourself crazy over this, Jenn.
I shook my head. I was
going to ask around and see what other people had to say, see if anyone had
anything even remotely like a real story. Kelly hadn’t given me any examples of
anyone that Devon had hurt—she had just given me the kind of information that
regular old gossip would provide. If she was worried about me just because
Devon had a bad reputation, then I could understand that even if I didn’t
intend to follow her advice. I had to think that there was something more between
Devon and me. It had felt so good, so right to be with him; that kind of
feeling couldn’t just be manipulation, could it?

I got dressed in a pair of jeans and a tee shirt,
dried my hair, and tried to make up my mind to go downstairs. I wasn’t sure
whether I wanted to see either Kelly or Devon in the dining hall when I went
for my late breakfast. Alicia texted to tell me they were all heading down, and
I unplugged my phone from the wall. I’d ask a few questions, and if either
Kelly or Devon were
there,
I’d be cool
about the situation. I wasn’t going to make a scene, and I wasn’t going to
throw myself at Devon. I’d find out what to
think,
and then I’d act on that. I grabbed my purse and made sure my key card was in
it
and headed down to brunch to meet my other
friends.

Chapter
Seven

I wandered through the serving area of the dining
hall, grabbing things at random; on the
weekends,
they only served two meals: brunch and dinner. My friends were already seated,
so I tried to hurry so that I could have time to talk to them before anyone
went off to do anything with the rest of their afternoon. I knew that if I
hadn’t gone out the night before, and if I hadn’t met Devon—and slept with
him—I would probably have already had brunch and gone back to the dorm or the library
to study, but at the moment, studying was the farthest thing from my mind. So I
loaded my tray down with breakfast and lunch items alike, along with some
coffee and a big, cold glass of juice. Bacon, eggs, salad,
a waffle,
some carved turkey, and a little
fruit; I figured I wouldn’t need to go back
to
the serving area.

I wandered out of the serving area and into the dining
room, looking around. In
part,
I wanted
to find my group of friends—but I was also looking, at least a little bit, to
see if Devon was in the dining hall, or if Kelly was. If Kelly were
with
everyone, I’d have to save my questions
for another time.

She wasn’t at the table where everyone else had
crowded, which gave me some relief. I wanted to be able to talk about Devon
objectively, with people who didn’t know what Kelly had told me, or the fact
that I had slept with him. Alicia and Giselle moved aside when I approached,
giving me somewhere to sit. “So little Miss ‘I’m too tired to go to a party’
ended up not even coming home at the end of the night,” Alicia teased me. I
rolled my eyes.

“Well if I’m going to go to a party then I might as
well go all out, right? Or would you rather I go around whining all night and
make one of you walk me back to the dorms at midnight?” Everyone laughed. I
knew I was going to have to wait to broach the topic on my mind; if I said
something too close to Alicia commenting on my overnight stay in the frat house,
then someone might conclude the reason for my questions. Everyone compared
notes about their nights; it turned out that a couple of my friends had ended
up going back to other dorms, though they’d had the presence of mind to check
in with someone in the group first. I shrugged off everyone’s concern about the
fact that I’d just disappeared and pointed out that they had disappeared from
my side instead of the other way around.

We started talking about our plans for the rest of the
weekend; this would be my opening, I knew it. “Anyone else going to the game?”
I asked. “It should be a good one—we’re up against Valley State.”

“I was thinking about it, but I have that stupid paper
to write,” Alexis said, sighing. Everyone else had other things going on as well;
Giselle had a date with one of the guys she had made out with the night before,
Alicia was going to another party, Becky was going out with her boyfriend since,
for once, they both had the same night off from work.

“I wish I could go,” Samantha said with a sigh. “If
nothing else I’d love to watch Devon Sealy play.” Everyone at the table
giggled.

“I actually had an incredible piece of dumb luck last
night,” I said. “I met him.”

“Really? He wasn’t surrounded by girls three deep?”
Alexis asked. Everyone laughed again.

“Nah, it was while the party was winding down. He’s
pretty cute up close.” My heart was beating
faster,
and I could feel my cheeks starting to warm up.

“Ooh, Jenn has a crush on Devon,” Alicia surmised.

“Who doesn’t?” I asked, rolling my eyes and pretending
to be less interested in the question than I was. “I hear he’s kind of a
player, but everyone always says that about guys on the basketball team or
whatever.”

“You heard right, though,” Samantha said, shaking her
head.

“What do you mean? I mean if he’s single, it’s not
like it’s a big deal for him to sleep around.” The girls around the table began
to cluck with concern.

“It’s not just sleeping around,” Alicia said.

“Yeah, it’s way more than that. He’s a complete and
total player.”

“How so?” I asked. Giselle shrugged.

“He totally manipulates girls,” Giselle said. “I mean,
like—totally. He’ll make a girl think she’s really special to him.”

“Yeah, he’ll get all involved in conversations with
her, be interested in whatever she has to say, and then as soon as he gets what
he wants from her—he drops her.”

“Usually doesn’t even last longer than a night. He’ll
corner a girl somewhere and just like, flirt up a storm, say what she wants to
hear, and then it’s like he never met her the next day,” Alicia added.

“Do you remember Haley and Mackenzie?” Giselle asked.

“Oh—yeah! I remember
that,
”
Alexis said, half-laughing and
shaking
her head.

“Haley and Mackenzie?” I asked, confused.

“These two sophomore girls. They were both after him
for like weeks. He loved it; he totally pitted them against each other and
watched them fight over him.” I felt colder and colder the more they said.

The stories kept coming; how Devon would set girls up,
making them think that he was really a virgin, or how he would go after the
“bunnies” who went to all the games. Someone in the group—I couldn’t even
remember who, afterward—said that he’d “pass along” some of his groupies to the
other guys in the frat, part of why he was such a legend and so popular.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; I honestly
couldn’t believe that anyone could be so
callous
.
I tried to eat my food, but my stomach started to churn inside of me. It was
ridiculous. I tried to find out how much of what they were saying was just
rumor and how much of
it they
actually
knew for a fact.

No one in the group had had anything
to do personally
with Devon; that much was
clear. “If you do have a crush on him, though, better to admire him from a
distance,” Alicia said.

“Yeah, he’s great to look at and he’s a good basketball
player, but he’s probably crawling with diseases anyway, and even if he’s not,
he’ll just do whatever it takes to get you in bed and then drop you the next
day.”

“It’s not like I’d ever have a chance in the first
place,” I said, brushing off the idea. I didn’t want anyone to think that I had
already had a “chance” with Devon. If I told anyone in the group that I’d slept
with him the night before, it would just make them make fun of me.

I tried to keep up my end of the conversation while we
sat around, none of us quite ready to go on to what we had going on that
afternoon, especially those of us that had papers to write or classes to study
for. I couldn’t help but think about what they had said, though. I had to think
that Devon’s behavior towards me was not like what they were describing. It
wasn’t like he’d gone out of his way to convince me to sleep with him; it had
been a good conversation that had become a better conversation.
Everything had been so natural.
I just couldn’t
think that Devon had gone
into the situation
to manipulate me.

“Well, I need to head to the Library,” Alexis said
finally, gathering up her tray. Everyone started to wander away one by one and
for a little while I was left on my own. I was torn between wishing that Kelly
was there so I could talk to her more about the real situation and hoping that
I wouldn’t see Kelly for a long time. I was so torn; none of my friends had had
an actual personal interaction with Devon from what I knew. Everything they had
told me was little more than a
rumor
, or
what they heard about from different people on campus.

Had Devon just been manipulating me? I had to think
that if he were going to do the sort of thing that they had accused him of, he
would have convinced me to go back to the dorms, instead of letting me spend
the night. I just couldn’t reconcile the way he had acted
with
the way that everyone said he was. It
didn’t make any sense.

Then, too, I had to think that they sounded like the
kind of rumors that would come up
around
a guy who slept around a lot, the kind of guy who had become a legend even
among a bunch of partying, wild guys. Every single one of the guys on my high
school football team had had several of the same rumors spread about them—and I
knew for a fact that a bunch of the guys on the team had been in committed,
monogamous relationships all through high school without cheating. But there
was always that kind of rough and wild reputation that jocks tended to get.

On the other hand, so many of the rumors about Devon
that they’d told me were so specific. What was the real story about Haley and
Mackenzie? Had he really tried to egg them on when they fought over him? I
couldn’t quite blame him if he had actually enjoyed having girls fight over
him; it would be hard not to get at least a little thrill out of it. But it was
a totally different thing to enjoy it, versus to actually encourage girls to
fight over him. To try and egg them on and manipulate them into fighting over
him.

It seemed to me like if Kelly had been warning me, she
might have been sugarcoating things, if what the other girls said they knew
about him was true. But at the same time I couldn’t even believe that anyone at
all could be the way that they said Devon was. Sure, guys manipulated girls
into having sex with them; it wasn’t good, but it was a thing that happened.
But I couldn’t think that any guy, no matter how dedicated he was to sleeping
around, would go so far as to target and manipulate someone so heavily and
actually be successful. If everyone but me knew Devon was like that, how would
he still be getting laid?

And at the bottom of it, I had
just to believe
that in spite of what they had said, my situation
with Devon had been different. I would know—I would feel it—if he had
manipulated me. I had made the decision to sleep with him all on my own. And it
wasn’t like he’d stopped caring about me once I’d agreed to have sex with him.
He had figured out on his own that I was a
virgin,
and he’d been so kind to me, so gentle, reminding me again and again that I
could tell him to stop any time. It just didn’t make any sense. I put away my
dishes and went back to the dorm, trying to decide whether or not I was still
going to the game. It was a difficult decision. I still wanted to see the game,
but I didn’t know how to feel about Devon.

I decided that I could enjoy watching him
play
and that I could go to the game just for
the sake of the game, and maybe see if I could talk to him
afterward
. I would know what to think once I
saw how he reacted to me. If he pretended like I didn’t exist or that he’d
never met me, then my friends would be right; if he actually spoke to me
afterward
, I would have some hope. Besides
which, I couldn’t see any point in wasting the money I had already spent on
tickets.

Chapter
Eight