James Games (17 page)

“Getting too demanding, are we?” he says into my ear.

“Damn it, James,” I manage. “Fuck you.”

“Language, language. You’ll have to be punished for that.” He bites one of my nipples again and a shriek pops out of me.

“Yeah? You like that?” He bites the other and the sensation shoots all the way to my core.

“James—I’m…”

“You’re what?” He sucks my bottom lip into his mouth.

“I’m not a doll,” I finally get out. “You don’t have to play nice with me.”

He stops. “You think I’m playing nice?”

“I think I might fall asleep here,” I say daringly, knowing the way to get him to play rough is to antagonize him.

He pulls me forward onto my lap, reaches around, and slaps my ass. Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to sting. I let out a startled yelp that mingles with the sounds of people yelling in the distance. My skin sings and heat floods my abdomen. I’ve always wanted to try getting spanked, but either the boys I was with before were too shy to try or I was too shy to ask.

It’s thrilling, naughty, and hot as hell.

“I’ve been making people scream all day,” I gasp. “Now I need someone to make me.”

He lays me on my back. To save space—of course, only to save space, it’s very cramped in here—I rest my ankles on his shoulders. He trails two fingers down my inner thigh, leaving sparks, before entering me in one swift push. Every bit of blood in my body rushes to my abdomen.

“James!” I cry.

He holds a finger to my lips. “Not my name.”

And just like that, reality crashes down on me. Not his name because no one can know. Because I’m not supposed to be with him. But I don’t
want
to be with him, not in the real way. Right?

“I’m thinking too much.” I reach up and kiss him. “Help me out with that.”

He helps me out with that by plowing into me so hard I skid the only two extra inches of floor space we have, floor-burns lacing my back and an explosion starting between my thighs. He leans forward and thrusts again, murmuring “Fiona, Fiona, Fiona,” into my ear, and then I take his face in his hands and look at him, look into his storm eyes, into the flecks of silver metal there.

We come at the same time, our bodies reacting and pulsing together, our eyes locked and breath mingled. When the heat wave subsides, he reaches down and touches my cheek. There’s water there. “Fiona. Are you all right? Why are you crying?”

Because my heart is doing something weird again.

~15~

Mid-terms roll around, and the party scene dies down a little as everyone frantically tries to keep their GPA high enough to avoid getting kicked out of Phi Delta Chi.

Because a Spanish quiz score obviously has so much to do with your ability to down six shots and not throw up all over your friend, who is also downing six shots.

Logic.

I have many talents. Being completely and undeniably gorgeous—it’s a lot of work, it’s not just the easy-breezy life that most people think fabulously attractive people lead. Being lots of fun. Annoying Iris. Going to parties naked. Chewing licorice jellybeans without getting black gunk all over my front teeth. I fully expect to have at least twenty pages of talents the next time I submit a resume.

Math is not one of those talents.

Sign up for a math class, they said. It’ll be better to get your math requirement out of the way as a freshman, they said. Cryptology will be fun and interesting and not involve much actual math, they said.

“Iris? Do you have a penknife?” I ask from beneath my midterms next. And my midterms nest, I mean I’m curled up on sheets I haven’t washed in a month, in clothes I haven’t washed in a week, under blankets covered with a fine layer of Doritos dust and a not-so-fine layer of misery.

“Why? Need to slit your wrists?”

Iris’s study nest is less of a nest and more of a neatly-organized desk with well-used study materials stacked in one corner, because she is a horrible person and most likely an android that Hitler made to win World War II but never got around to using.

“I was thinking actually I’d cut the screen out of our window so I could splatter myself gloriously onto the pavement below, but you’re right, what you’re proposing is much more convenient. Like the Wal-Mart of suicide.”

“I told you not to sign up for that class.” She turns a page in her textbook, remarkably idle for a witness to her roommate’s suicide.

“You did too tell me to sign up for that class! You said everyone took it as an easy way out of the math requirement!”

“Oh, right.” She leans back and chuckles. “Yeah no, that class is hell. Everyone regrets signing up for it. I told you to because I hated you our first week.”

“You are not fucking serious.”

“I am.” She yawns, looking mildly impressed with herself. “That was pretty deliciously evil of me.”

“I hate you,” I wail. “It’s too late to drop out and now I’m gonna get kicked out of Phi Delta Chi because if I don’t ace this exam, I’ll have a D in the class.”

“You’re that bad at math?”

“I’m that bad at math, and also I’ve spent the past eight classes working on a very impressive sketch of Professor Andrich’s head.” I pull it out of my notebook and hand it to her.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “This is incredible. Damn, Fiona. The shading…”

“So you can’t say I’ve been wasting my time. I’m going to sell it for a million dollars and then I’ll pay a body double to take the exam for me.” I spread out my fingers and inspect my nails. Polish is chipped. I should spend the next two hours giving myself a manicure, definitely. “This is a good plan.”

“You just have to do it, Fiona. That’s all I have to say.”

“If by it, you mean Brad Pitt, then yes.” I hold up several sheets of paper. “Do you know long I’ve been working on this one problem? Three days. Do you know how physically long it is? If I put these all together it’d be like four feet. That is fundamentally wrong.”

“What you need is a tutor, someone who’s really good at math. Why don’t you—”

“Why don’t
you
tutor me?” I throw my stuffed owl at her. She deserves it. “You’re really good at math.”

“Because I have better things to do. Like study for my own exams. I was going to suggest you call James. He’s supposed to be a math genius.”

Ten seconds later, I am on the phone with James:

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re good at math? Why would you betray me like this? Are you trying to sabotage me? I thought we were buddies here, James. Do you want me to jump out the window—”

“Slow down,” he interrupts. “And you need to stop jumping out windows. Why does it matter that I’m good at math.”

“
Because I’m about to fail my math exam and you need to shape-shift into a Fiona duplicate so you can take the exam for me!”

“Okay, okay. Chill,” he says, and his voice is faraway. He’s holding the phone away from his ear. Stupid baby eardrums boy. “The shape-shifting thing is not going to work out, but I’ll come help you study. My place is getting painted today, so we’ll have to do it at yours.”

“Thank you, my lord and savior. I’ll be here waiting!”

“Oh no you won’t,” Iris cuts in. “I have work to do and I won’t be able to get it done without you giggling and flirting and making out on the bed.”

“I don’t know
why
you think I’d be making out with James Reid when I could be doing
math
, Iris, jeez,” I say, stunning her with my logic, but James has already heard.

“It’s fine. I know a place. Meet me at the back entrance to the Anthropology department in half an hour.”

Excellent. Just enough time to shed my smelly midterm chrysalis and shower my way back to being Fiona. I hang up, leap out of bed and start hunting for my makeup case.

“Repeat after me—you do not need to wear lip gloss to study for a math exam,” Iris groans.

“Oh contraire. I’m going to seduce math into obeying me. It’s a brilliant scheme that cannot fail.”

Twenty-nine minutes later, I am dolled up and ready to rumble, with my math textbook under my arm and my sex appeal on high like every air conditioner in Southern California. I mean, my study game on high. Obviously.

One minute later, James shows up, parking in the faculty lot beside the building and then crossing the street to me.

“You’re not supposed to park there,” I observe as he opens the door to the building for me.

“I park where I want,” he says. “Come on.”

He brings me to the top floor and shows me a door I’d never noticed before. It leads onto the roof, a large flat expanse of concrete under a large flat expanse of sky, with nobody to see James Reid tutoring me math except the clouds. He sits down, and it’s then that I notice his huge, overstuffed backpack.

“Don’t tell me that thing is full of math.” I point. “Because I will jump off this roof.”

“What did I tell you about jumping off of things?” And from the backpack he pulls out something much better than math—a picnic blanket. Two wrapped sandwiches. A thermos of tea. Soft cheese, a baguette, raspberries.”

“I thought we could have a picnic while we worked,” he says with a note of uncertainty.

“I think I love you.”

He looks up at this, but it might be a happiness-induced hallucination, because I’m spreading cheese on a slice of bread and it’s the fanciest kind of cheese.

“Why don’t they have a requirement for a cheese class, huh? Cheese is more important than math,” I say with my mouth full.

“Cheese is definitely not more important than math.”

“Party pooper.”

We eat together, and once I’m in an awesome mood, we destroy it by doing math. Except not really, because math with James is much better than math by itself. Math with James means leaning into him, into the soft deep tone of his voice as he explains something with the sun turning his hair to gold. Math with James means studying him, memorizing each vein and shadow of his arm as he points to one number and then another. Math with James means…

“Fiona? Are you paying attention?”

“Yes,” I say immediately. “All the attention.”

Math with James means actually learning some math, because it turns out he’s a pretty good teacher.

We work until the sun moves from partway across the sky to more than halfway, until my four-page math problem is six pages and done. After that, we just lie flat on our backs on the picnic blanket, choosing shapes for clouds.

“That one is…” I consider. “That one is a pig with a horse’s tail playing an upright base while watching the Kim Kardashian show on his iPhone. No, it’s a Samsung.”

“That is oddly specific.”

“Well, what do you see?”

“A…” He squints. “A blob.”

“You’re kidding. Use your imagination.” I point at the cloud next to my pig. “What about that one?”

“I see an annoying girl who spends her time doing silly things like looking at clouds when she should be studying.”

When I look at him, he’s looking at me. But he’s smiling.

“You’re no fun.” I pout.

“And you’re lots of fun.” He kisses my cheek. “That’s why we should stick together. It evens out to about an average amount of fun.”

I try not to show how ecstatic this comment makes me. “I don’t know. I think my amount of fun is more powerful than your lack of fun. I’d say it evens out to more than average.”

“This is why you’re bad at math.”

“This is why you’re bad at fun.”

“Yeah?” He sits up, his abs tensing under his shirt with the effort. “Okay. Let’s do something fun.”

I consider this. “Fun is best when it’s also useful. How about a rain dance?”

“A what?”

“California’s in a huge drought right now, yeah? Let’s do a rain dance. It’s already cloudy. It’s probably the sky’s way of asking us for the rain dance it needs.”

“I am not doing a rain dance.”

“Yes you are.” I hop up, grab his hands and drag him upright. “Come on.”

I play Katy Perry as high as it will go on my phone and proceed to dance. Not seductively, but wildly. I flail my arms and kick out my legs and dare the sky to drench me.

“Come on, you damn clouds!” I yell at the sky. “Let her rip!”

“You look like a moron.” James is standing with his arms folded, but a hint of a smile plays at the corners of his mouth.

“There’s no one to see me!”

“Except me.”

“Except you,” I agree. “But I trust you enough to let you see me acting like an idiot.”

His eyebrow quirks. “You do?”

“I do. That’s what trust is all about. Letting the other person see you with your guard down.” I dance closer, picking up his hands and swinging his arms back and forth. “It’s really exhausting to have your guard up all the time, don’t you think?”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to make a point?”

I drop his hands. “Sorry. Still bad at subtlety. What I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to keep your guard up around me. You can do stupid things or say stupid things. I won’t tell anyone, or report it to the press.”

“And what if I don’t remember how to let my guard down?” he asks quietly. “What if I’ve had it up for so long that it’s stuck?”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to pull at it until it comes loose.” I tug at his hands again, and finally he steps forward, slipping one arm around my back and keeping one hand in mine.

“I don’t know how to do a rain dance,” he says. “But I do know how to waltz.”

I let the wildness in my limbs cool as he takes the lead, stepping slowly back and forth across the roof. The Katy Perry ends and we’re dancing in silence. The air is cool and sweet. I rest my head on his chest.

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Just follow me. Step, step, forward. Step, step, back…”

It’s so different from the charged starving dance we had when we first met, so different from any way I’ve danced before. It’s not sexual. Just tender and kind. I don’t want to move any other way than this ever again. I’ll have to waltz to all my classes. Waltz to the bathroom…

“Fiona?”

“Yeah?” I say into his shirt.

“You make me want to let my guard down,” he whispers.