Bastard.
Sexy, sexy bastard.
As much as I can't stand him, he's more than easy to look at. Especially after practice when he's all sweaty and his hair is in his face and I just want to lick him all over like a tall, ripped Popsicle.
Tobi, ever the observer, thinks the whole thing is hilarious.
"I feel like I want to put you both in a cage and study you," she keeps saying.
"Shut up," I say.
"You totally love him," Carrie sings and Willow giggles.
"I do not love him." Want to have a sweaty romp with him, sure. But that is not going to happen.
"You have to admit, he's hot as hell," Gwen says, sighing and gazing off into the distance. "If only I hadn't given my heart to one of the Hemsworths already." I laugh.
"Which one?" I ask, and she grins.
"Whichever one accepts my proposal first. There are three of them."
"I hate all of you," I say and head away from the group to get a drink of water mid-practice as they all descend into ranking the Hemsworths on the hotness scale. My face is red, and I hope Rhett doesn't notice. But Rhett has a way of noticing me when I would most like him not to. He's also been trying "clever" ways to get my number. Mostly by guessing, including yelling random numbers at me, offering to buy me one cupcake per number, and straight up asking. Repeatedly. I have to give this to him, he's determined. And it's kinda sexy. No, it's a lot sexy.
3
Rhett
Jem isn't at all surprised when I stick it out for more than a week.
"Hey, it doesn't sound bad from what you're telling me. Maybe I'll try out." He can't be serious. Jem's athletic, but I'm pretty sure if he tried to do a back tuck, he'd crash and burn so hard. Skateboarding and cheer are two very different things.
"Yeah, okay, you do that." We're at the bar again, blowing off steam from the week. Adding cheer to my schedule has definitely crunched me for time. Between classes and working part time at the campus day care chasing toddlers around, I'm completely beat.
I'm really, really hoping Freya is going to show up with the girls from the squad tonight. It's one of the only reasons I'd said yes when Jem asked me to go out instead of staying in and watching stupid movies with no pants on.
Not for lack of trying: I still don't have Freya's number, and she's ignoring my friend request on Facebook. I have yet to try and find her other social media accounts. I'm hoping there are a few. She seems like she might be a Twitter or Tumblr woman.
"You're really wound up about this girl," Jem says. I know it's painfully obvious, but there's nothing I can do about it. Has he seen her?
"I like a challenge. She's a challenge," I say, shrugging it off. It's more than that, and the more kind of freaks me out. I've been instantly attracted to girls before, but not quite like this. I feel like she's a fishing pole and I'm a prize bass, and she won't stop reeling me in no matter how much I fight it. She's funny and bright and smart as hell, and she blurts out literary quotes at the most random times. The more I've watched her with the team, the more I've decided that my instincts on that first night were correct.
"Mmm, those are the best kind of girls." Jem's single and has no intention of actually going on real dates. It's college. Then he doesn't have to worry about buying dinners or meeting parents, or emotional complications. I'd tried that for a while, but it was . . . empty. I want more.
Jem scans the room looking for his next conquest. He isn't as tall as I am, but he has no problem in the girl department. All he has to do is flash his perfect teeth (courtesy of his orthodontist parents) and the dimple in his cheek, and they're all melting at his feet. In the olden days, he'd definitely have been called a cad. A fop, a dandy. A bon vivant.
Yeah, I like words. Especially ones that are out of style.
My knee keeps jiggling on the rung of my barstool. I can't figure out why I'm making such a big deal of this. For fuck's sake, I'm going to see her on Monday morning.
But then the door opens and I catch a flash of blond hair and it's all over.
Freya
I instinctively knew he was going to be here. Even when Tobi and I had been talking about weekend plans and he'd volunteered his itinerary, it hadn't included going to the bar right off campus. Still, he's here, and I'm trying not to look at him.
Well, that's damn near impossible. Over the week Rhett has taken up a whole lot of real estate in my brain. Way more than I would ever want to give him.
I definitely don't like him, and I'm not even on the way to liking him but . . . he's so easy to look at. I keep having lumberjack fantasies of him chopping down trees and building fires and climbing mountains and wrestling bears and shit. He could probably take down a bear.