Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (31 page)

“Well, he’s… it’s not important, but he
and I dated for a couple of years in high school. We broke up when he started
college; he’s a couple of years ahead of me.”

Jess’s eyes widened. “Oooh, tell me more!”

I rolled my eyes. The coffee and the
cheese crackers were starting to help.

“Not much to tell, really. He saw me, we
talked a bit…we danced, we kissed, and that was it.”

Jess looked at me for a long moment,
shaking her head. “It’s like every hot guy in the world is totally wasted on
you. He’s totally fuckable—why didn’t you stay the night?”

I shook my head at her. “Someone came up
and said I was his piece of ass for the night and just…ugh.”

Jess made a face, her lips twisting in a
grimace. “Yeah, I can see where that would put you off, especially if you have
history with him.” She shrugged. “So tell me about him! Come on, if you dated
for two years, it had to have been good.”

I thought about it—about the dates Zack
and I had gone on, about the little presents he had given me, about watching
him play.

I thought to myself that it wasn’t like
Jess would run around telling everyone, so I told her about Zack asking me out
in my freshman year, and how he’d been with me when my mom started to get sick.
I told her about the stupid little things—the dates, being some kind of hot
commodity because I was dating an upperclassman.

“But what was the sex like? I know you
aren’t a virgin.”

I blushed. She was right—I had lost my
virginity in sophomore year.

“Eh…it wasn’t really anything special. I
mean, I think—I’m not sure—but I don’t think I was his first. But he was mine.
It was just sort of…sex, you know? I just kind of laid there. The first time I
guess it was hot just because, you know, it was the first time. But we only did
it a couple of times after that and it didn’t ever really get to be good,
exactly. Certainly no screaming orgasms.”

“That’s a damn shame. I would think a guy
like that at least would have a nice-sized dick to get things done with.”

I thought about it; it occurred to me that
I didn’t really have any way to gauge how big Zack was. I had been with one
other guy since him, and while the sex had been better, I hadn’t really paid
attention to size.

“I guess he was average? I wasn’t really
paying attention to that so much.”

Jess nodded slowly.

“Oh man! I have to tell you about my
night.”
 

I grinned. “Okay, so what was up with the
guy you were with?”

I knew that it would be more than I wanted
to know—Jess always told more than I wanted to know—but I also knew that Jess
would be hurt if I didn’t pretend to be at least a little curious about her
night.

“He was hot, right?” Jess raised her
eyebrows at me and I nodded; the guy had been good-looking, though since he was
tall and skinny he wasn’t really my type. “His name is Nelson. Hoo buddy, he
was a good time. I might see him again.”

“So you two were just cuddling on the
couch and making out?” That didn’t seem like Jess’s usual MO.

 
Jess laughed out loud. “Nah, we were in the
bathroom before you caught up to me. Nelson’s room was too far away. We danced
for a while and then we had a quickie there—he wanted me to stay the night, but
I know better.”

It was the second time in two months Jess
had mentioned a quickie like that. I didn’t think any the worse of her for it,
but I could never have a one-night stand like that.

“Oh man, you should’ve seen his cock,
Evie—I don’t know if it’s true of all black guys, but Nelson was definitely
packing. Totally lived up to stereotype.” I rolled my eyes. “I swear to god it
was like a baseball bat in his pants. It was good though—right up against the
sink.”

Jess went on about Nelson for a while and
I only partially paid attention, enough for her to think I was listening to
every word. He was apparently on a basketball scholarship, top pick for the
pros in a year or two. He’d been the top college pick out of high school and
the frat had barely even made him work to be a pledge—they’d let him in right
away. He definitely fit into the bad boy image that Phi Alpha Kappa had; Jess
told me that she’d almost want to date him, if it weren’t for the fact that he
was a total hound.

“Man, as good as that quickie was, I
wouldn’t mind bringing him back here for the night. But he’s definitely not
relationship material. He’d be chasing the next skirt the minute I turned my
back.”

I nodded. In spite of the fact that I’d
told myself I wouldn’t even think about Zack again, he rose up in my mind,
along with the “piece of ass” comment his frat brother had made. When we’d been
dating, Zack had been faithful; but it was easy to imagine he’d turned into the
kind of guy who just slept with a girl and evicted her from his bed the next
morning without batting an eyelash.

I didn’t like to think about Zack being
that way. It was his right to sleep around as much as he wanted; I had no hold
on him. We’d been broken up for over a year. But it still turned my stomach to
think about Zack sleeping around without being attached to anyone. I wondered
while I dried my hair if it would make me feel worse to know that Zack was
sleeping around or to know that he had started up a new relationship. It wasn’t
important, I told myself firmly. I shouldn’t feel bad either way. If Zack had a
new girlfriend, that was his business. I wondered how he would react if I had a
new boyfriend; but then I took a deep breath and told myself that that didn’t
matter either. We were two separate people who happened to run into each other,
and because of alcohol and old feelings, we’d ended up making out a little. It
was no big deal. I wouldn’t think about it again.

CHAPTER
THREE

My journalism class was wrapping up for
the day; everyone else was looking at the clock or the door, putting their
stuff away even though there was another ten minutes and even though Professor
Grant wasn’t done saying the last few things about our reading on style.

“Remember, everyone: it’s important to
cultivate your own journalistic voice, but you also have to be mindful of the
rules of style—the basic elements that every publication looks for—and the
specific style rules that your publication demands.”

I took another look at the diagram on the
overhead—it compared AP style to Chicago style. Grant had had us all read
Politics and the English Language
, along
with part of
Elements of Style
for
the class; I’d liked both—especially the bitter, harsh humor in “Politics.” I
was really starting to enjoy the course, an introduction to journalism.

The end of class arrived and I joined in
with everyone else loading my stuff into my bag, ready to go. I was taking a
pretty full course load, but I had a couple of hours free before my next class.

“Evelyn, do you have a minute to talk?”
Grant called out as the other students started to file out.

I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, Professor Grant,”
I replied, calling out over the murmurs and screech of desks against the
linoleum floor. I sat back down, settling my books, my laptop, and my pens in
my bag while everyone left.

Professor Grant was gathering up his
stuff, and as the last of the other students left the room I got up and
approached the front of the room, stopping short of the desk.

“You wanted to talk to me, Professor
Grant?” I said, feeling anxious in spite of myself. I knew I was making decent
grades in the class.

“Absolutely, Evelyn,” Grant said, looking
up from his laptop bag with a grin.

He was in his forties, starting to go gray
but with all of his hair still there. Lots of girls at the college had crushes
on Grant, I knew; everyone vied to have him as their advisor and I’d seen
plenty of my classmates giggling as they left his office during office hours. I
could see why they liked him—he was nice, and he looked good—but I wasn’t into
older guys.

“Take a chair.”

I shrugged and sat down. It wasn’t likely
that Grant was going to chew me out—or at least, I hoped it wasn’t likely.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to keep my
nerves from showing. Grant leaned against the desk.

“I wanted to talk to you because I’ve been
reading your papers for these past eight weeks and they’re… well, frankly,
they’re well above the level you’d need to do well in this class.” I smiled,
relieved; even though I knew I had done well, it was good to hear it. “If I
graded on a curve, the entire class would hate you.”

“Oh come on,” I said, laughing. “I’m not
that good.”

Grant nodded his head slowly. “You are. In
fact, you’re so good that I wanted to ask you to consider joining the college
newspaper. There’d be a little pay for it—not a lot, but enough to finance the
occasional food run—and it would be a good early experience for you.”

My eyes widened at the offer. Grant wasn’t
just a professor—he was the Journalism Department head and the faculty member
in charge of the campus paper. I hadn’t even been aware that there were any
openings.

“There’s an opening?”

Grant nodded. “We can always use news and
features material. It would be a staff reporting position—nothing too major,
but a way to get your feet wet. Your first few assignments would come from the
editorial board, but once we know you can cut it on your own, you’ll be
covering your own beat—whatever you want to write about, with editorial
discretion.”

It was as good an offer as I could ever
get. It wasn’t professional publishing, but if I did good work, I could eventually
expect a column, maybe an editorial position to pad my resume with.
 

But on the other hand, a gig like
that—even part time as it was—would take away from my studying. Not all of my
classes were as interesting or easy as Intro to Journalism. I was hanging on to
a steady high B average in Statistics—but I could slip on that easily. Math had
never been my strongest subject. It was a tough choice, because as much as it
could advance my career in the future, it could also screw me up—which wouldn’t
look good on a resume.

“That’s… I can’t even believe it,” I said,
smiling—knowing that Grant expected me to say something. “It’s a pretty big
time commitment, isn’t it?”

“At first it shouldn’t take you more than
a handful of hours a week. Of course, as time goes on and you prove yourself,
that will change. But for right now, consider it maybe five or six hours out of
your week, for research and writing.”

I thought about it. The opportunity the
offer represented was a lot greater than the risk of losing a few hours per
week studying.

“I’d love to,” I said, smiling at
Professor Grant. He returned my grin.

“Excellent. The next meeting is in a
week,” he told me. “I will add you to the email group list in the meantime, and
I’ll send you log-in information for the Blackboard sub-site we use.”

I picked up my bag—now that I had made the
decision, I was excited more than I was afraid. I couldn’t wait to get started.
First, I had a study session in the library before my next class.

I was thinking about the opportunity, considering
buying back-editions of the campus paper to get a feel for the voice—something
that Grant had mentioned in passing when he did the first lecture on voice and
style—while I walked to the library. All of my homework was done for my next
class, but I was still struggling with a couple of things in American History
and I wanted to put in an hour or so. I had reserved one of the rooms; really,
for the purposes of seriously studying, it was either that or my dorm. The main
part of the library was always full of people working on papers or getting
tutoring—it was loud, impossible to focus.

I looked up and saw Zack walking into the
library a few yards ahead of me and stopped dead in my tracks. It wasn’t so
much seeing Zack—though that was plenty strange, to see him twice when I hadn’t
caught sight of him at all in my first eight weeks at the college—it was seeing
him going into the library that was weird. Zack had always been fairly smart,
but he’d barely kept up a high C-average in high school, getting extensions on
projects and assignments and taking the test under special circumstances
because he was a member of the football team. The idea of him going to the
library—studying, or even taking an interest in any of his classes enough to
look things up for it—was beyond weird. It was like walking in on your parents
having an orgy; not the kind of thing you would ever expect to see, and too
shocking to actually process for a moment.

For a moment my plans weren’t changed at
all; Zack was probably meeting with a tutor or something. The private study
rooms were in a completely different part of the library. But I would have to
go through the main areas to get upstairs to the private rooms, and there was
the possibility that Zack would spot me. If he spotted me, he might talk to me.
I shook my head. I shouldn’t let him break my routine; we were nothing to each
other, even if he had kissed me—even if he had said he missed me. He certainly
hadn’t missed me enough to put much effort into finding me at the party. I was
surprised that had apparently bothered me. It shouldn’t have, and I knew it
shouldn’t have. But all the same, I didn’t want to risk running into Zack.
Instead of walking to the library, I turned at the fork in the sidewalk and
headed back towards the dorms.