Hooped #2 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series #2) (2 page)

“I know. It sucks, babe. Guys are all scum.” I nodded,
feeling the tears coming again. “What happened?”

I swallowed my tears and told her about it; I had gone
to the game, hoping I might get a chance to talk to Devon and at least find out
how he felt about me. “I thought at least—you know—I’d have an answer, one way
or the
other,
” I told her about what the
other girls had said about him, and Kelly nodded. “And then just when I figured
he must have left
already,
and I was an
idiot for hanging around, I turned the corner and saw him
ki
-kissing
some g-g-girl…” I started sobbing and buried my face against one of the throw
pillows, shaking all over. It wasn’t just that he was kissing someone; it was
somehow more than that. If Devon had told me the night before that it was just
sex, I could almost be okay with it. I could have taken it as the sort of thing
that happened in college—you lost your virginity on a whim
—
and moved on. But he’d been so nice to me, and
it hadn’t meant anything.

The pizza came, and Kelly went downstairs to the lobby
to sign for it while I washed my face and shoved Goldfish crackers into my
mouth. With her out of the room, my thoughts began to spin again; I couldn’t
believe how stupid I had been. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t even stopped
him to tell him he had to wear a condom or else we’d have to stop right then.
The pill was all well and good for keeping me from getting knocked up, but it
didn’t do a damn thing to keep me from getting herpes or HPV or anything like
that.

Kelly brought the pizza in, throwing herself back onto
the couch next to me and urging me to grab the first slice. “Get the biggest
one,” she suggested with a little grin.

“Did you get a receipt?” I
asked,
even as I reached for the slice. “I’ll give you five bucks
or whatever half is.” Kelly shrugged.

“It’s no big deal. This is gift pizza, and I wouldn’t
let you pay me back for it.” I smiled at her, biting into my slice.

“God, I feel so stupid.
If it had been anyone else, I would’ve been able
just to tell
him to give me
time
or something.”

“Guys are like
that,
though,” Kelly said, digging into her own piece. “There isn’t a single one I’ve
ever met that wouldn’t try and get into your pants however he could.”

“Yeah, but that never works
on
me!” I countered. “I’ve told so many guys I wasn’t ready, and
I’ve managed to not be stupid about it. Fucking Devon Sealy manages to talk me
out of my panties in what—two hours?” I put my pizza down and went into the
communal mini-fridge for a coke.

“Beer is better. Come on, Jenn—it’s not like you’re
against underage drinking.” I shrugged.

“Considering what drinking got me last night, I think
I’ll pass.” I sat back down and took a break from pizza to eat a piece of
chocolate.

“Let’s stop talking about Devon for a bit,” Kelly
suggested. “I mean guys are super dumb no matter who they are.” For a while we
exchanged gripes about guys in general; how they always seemed to think they
could talk you into doing something that you didn’t want to do, how they
thought it was the height of cleverness to catcall. The campus had cracked down
on that, but it still happened.

For a
while,
I
was able to forget
Devon, but
my brain
went back around to him again and again.
Guys,
in general,
sucked, but Devon sucked more than usual. Guys had failed to
convince me to give it up for them, even after dating me for weeks or
months—but Devon had manipulated me into giving it up in hours. It wasn’t fair.
“I feel like such a fucking idiot,” I said, shaking my head. “I really thought
I was special, that he couldn’t possibly be that nice and sweet to someone who
didn’t matter to him.” Kelly hugged me again.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. Devon has pulled
that trick on so many girls; he’s an expert at it. You slept with him because
you thought he cared about you, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I’m still an idiot,” I said weakly. “I didn’t even
make him wear a condom. What’s wrong with me? It’s like everything I ever stood
for just went straight out the window because Devon fucking Sealy thought I was
cute.” Kelly laughed.

“Dude, that happens all the time. If it wasn’t Devon
Sealy,
it might have been someone else. At
least you got a good lay your first time around.” She told me about her first
time, and how the guy she had been with—someone we both knew from our high
school—had nearly missed the right hole when he started thrusting. I started to
feel a little bit better as Kelly told me about all of her disastrous escapades
in the bedroom; about the guy who had been shocked that women actually had
pubic hair, instead of being naturally bare, and the guy who had refused to go
down on her but expected her to go down on him.

“Okay, okay,” I said, laughing. “So guys all suck. We
should just all be lesbians. It’s obvious to me now.” Kelly laughed with me.

“Wouldn’t it be so much easier? I wish I was attracted
to women.” She shook her head. “You know what we should totally do?” I frowned,
curious and confused.

“If you’re about to say ‘be each other’s girlfriend’
I’m not actually into women either.” Kelly laughed out loud, shaking her head.

“God no—think how weird that would make everything! I
don’t even know if they’d let us be roommates if we were into each other.” She
laughed again. “No, what we totally need to do is get revenge on that bastard.”

“What kind of revenge?” I asked, curious and horrified
and intrigued all at the same time.

“Hmm. What would be the best way to get back at him?”
Kelly thought about it, gnawing on the crust of her slice of pizza. “You could
tell everyone he’s got a really tiny dick.” I rolled my eyes.

“No one even knows that I slept with him, first of
all—I mean, except him, me, and you. I’d have to admit that I’d been stupid
enough to sleep with him if I wanted to spread that rumor around. Besides,
apparently he’s slept with everyone; they’d know I was lying.” Kelly grinned.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Well, what else is
there?” she considered.

“I don’t
know;
it seems petty to try and get revenge.” Kelly looked at me sharply.

“He hurt you—doesn’t a little part of you want to get
back at him for that?” I chewed on an Oreo, thinking about it. There was a part
of me—a little voice in the back of my head—that said that it would feel good
to make him feel as shitty as he had made me feel. But at the same time, I
couldn’t really say that it was right to do it.

“Well yeah,” I said, shrugging. “Of course I want to
get back at him. I just…” I sighed.

“Oh! I know what you can do. You don’t even have to
admit you slept with him; you could just spread the rumor that he’s got herpes
or something. That way no one will ever sleep with him.”

“Yeah, but everyone would want to know how I know he
has herpes. And I don’t want everyone thinking that I have herpes too.” Kelly
shrugged, snagging a handful of Goldfish crackers.

“You don’t have to say you slept with him. That’s the
beauty thing about rumors. You can just be like ‘I heard from one of the girls
who slept with him that he’s
totally
got
it. She’s getting tested.’ Or something like that.” I frowned.

“That seems a little extreme. I mean…” I worried at my
bottom lip. “I really hope he doesn’t have herpes or something. He might.” I
shuddered. The possibility that Devon could have an STD was almost worse than
the way he’d just moved
onto
the next
girl.

“I’m sure we could dig up something on him that’s
true—but that people don’t really know.” Kelly grinned. “I mean a guy like that
has to have some skeletons in his closet, right? We could just find it out and
make sure to tell everyone we know. It’d be all around campus in less than a
day.”

“But should I really be putting that much energy into
getting back
at
him? Like, yeah, it’s
shitty that he could manipulate me like that, but…” I put the last of my pizza
aside. I was so full I was starting to get uncomfortable. I sipped at my Coke.
“Besides which, people would just figure I was some kind of crazy disgruntled
groupie.” The last thing I wanted was for anyone else to know that I had slept with
Devon.

“Well, as to how much energy you should put into it,
what went down?” I looked away. I was wrong; the last thing I wanted was to
have
to think
about how good it had been,
how hopeful I had been. But I told Kelly everything I could remember about what
Devon and I had talked about; both before and after having sex. I told her
about how sweet he’d been, about how he’d pulled me close and cuddled up to me.

I told her about waking up before Devon did, and the
small talk we’d exchanged, as best as I could remember it. I didn’t even know
how accurate my memories were. “I feel like… I know I wasn’t drunk.”

“Are you sure? I mean if you were drunk, you could
totally accuse him of taking advantage of you. And he did get you drinks while
you were talking before. Maybe he slipped something into yours
—
or had one of his brothers do that. There were
some accusations like that about one of the Phi Kappa boys a few years ago.” I
shook my head.

“Accuse him of rape? That’s—that’s
really
, really dark, Kelly. I couldn’t do that
to him. He was shitty
just to use
me and
move on, but that’s…” I exhaled slowly. “That’s not just something that would
ruin his
life;
it’d make it harder for
girls who really did get raped to come
forward
because once everyone found out it was fake…”

“Okay, so bad idea. I get where you’re coming from.”
Kelly sighed. “Did he actually say that it was special between you two?” I
racked my mind.

“He said something like that, that it was really
special… I think.” I chewed on my bottom lip. “But it wasn’t like he said that
he wanted to take me out or anything.”

“Not even before he got you in bed?” I shook my head.

“He suggested I could come over and watch the game
with the rest of the guys, but that’s not a date.” Kelly shrugged.

“If he didn’t really promise you anything, then I
guess it doesn’t make sense to do anything extreme to get back at him.” I
sighed
and nodded.

“Yeah, I’d feel—I’d feel like I was a worse person
than him, even. Or some kind of crazy person. I’ll just… I’ll just avoid him
and pretend like nothing happened. That seems like the best option.” I sighed
again. “Now if only I could make myself think that nothing happened. That would
be great.”

Chapter
Three

I woke up the next day, and somehow I felt both better
and worse. In a certain respect, the fact that I had lost my virginity was less
and less important, but the fact of how Devon had seemingly gone right onto the
next girl without even thinking, apparently, was even more painful. I lay in
bed for a while, trying to decide what I was going to do. The weekend was
halfway over, and I hadn’t done any studying at all. I had been too wrapped up
in the party, in the game—and in the bullshit involving Devon—to actually do
any of the things that I had been planning to do on Friday when I got back to
the dorms from class.

In addition to the fact that I needed to get a good
bit of studying done, I was less than interested in anything that could
possibly result in me running into Devon. I didn’t even want to see anyone at
all. I thought in my paranoid way that somehow, even though I had only told
Kelly about what had
happened,
if anyone
saw me, they would immediately know about it.

I still felt weepy, but I couldn’t quite bring myself
to cry about the situation. I was torn between being angry and Devon and
wanting simply
to never see
him again in
my life—so that I could start pretending that I had never met him.
There goes my perfect attendance at every
basketball
game,
I thought wryly. I
couldn’t imagine going and watching the team play anymore; at the moment I
couldn’t even imagine watching regular basketball, just because the sport would
remind me of Devon. I cringed, feeling bitter. Devon had managed to ruin an
entire sport for me, at least for a little while; that seemed like the most
unfair part of the whole situation.

I wandered out of my room and threw myself down onto
the couch; I didn’t want to leave the dorms, but I also didn’t want to wallow
around in bed all day. After a few minutes, Kelly came out, giving me a
sympathetic smile. “Any better today?” she asked me. I shrugged.

“I don’t know whether I want to go to some stupid
party and find a random guy and screw his brains out, or never leave this room
again.” Kelly laughed.

“That sounds about normal,” she told me. She sat down
on
the edge of the couch, pushing my legs
aside. “I can help you out with either plan, you know.” I chortled, sitting up
slightly and scrubbing at my face.

“I think
for now
I’m going to stick with never leave this room
again,
”
I said. “Except we don’t have enough junk food to last until tomorrow.” Kelly
laughed again.