The Studying Hours(3)

I call that progress.

“Right. I got that the first time I came over.”

Her neon highlighter stills, hovering above the book fanned out in front of her. She clicks it closed once, removes an earbud, and holds it suspended in the air as she waits for me to say something. “Is there something I can help you with?”

She tips her head to the side, waiting, listening for me to speak but continuing to study.

I decide to go for broke. “I need you to kiss me.”

Nothing.

No reaction.

No balking, no blushing, no comment.

Like this sort of thing happens to her on the regular.

“Would you look at me, dammit?”

That does the trick; that gets her attention.

Her head lifts, her long brown ponytail cascading over her right shoulder, classy and sophisticated.

Her eyes are brilliant blue, lashes long.

Our eyes meet.

Gazes connect.

Heartbeats pound.

Whatever the fuck cliché you want to throw out there—they’re all annoying, but there you have it. She’s watching me warily, those blue eyes narrowing in a surly way.

Agitation flares her nostrils.

Very unpromising.

Dismissing me after a long stretch of silence, she pushes the earbud back in place, head lowering, highlighter resuming its even, effortless strokes across the paper laid out in front of her.

“You’re ridiculous,” she mutters with a cool flick of her wrist. “Go back to your friends.”

“I can’t.” Might as well be brutally honest; maybe she’ll appreciate that. It actually seems like something we have in common: zero tolerance for bullshit.

I can work with that.

She lifts her head and rolls her eyes. “You can’t go back? What does that even mean?”

I smirk, anticipating the bomb I’m about to drop. “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s impossible. I’m here on a mission and I can’t go back until it’s accomplished.”

I hold my hands up helplessly, beseeching.

“First of all, don’t ever call me sweetheart again. I’m a stranger to you. Secondly, I’m not interested in whatever games you little boys are playing. I have serious work to do here, so…”

The girl puts down the yellow highlighter, rifles through the writing utensils on the table, and chooses a blue felt-tip pen. Whatever she’s working on has her full attention, and she goes back at it like I’m not still standing here bearing down on her—all six foot two of me.

Despite the fact that I’m not attracted to her the way I’d be attracted to, say, someone willing to bang me, the competitive D1 athlete in me refuses to budge from this spot; rather, I re-strategize.

I move closer to her chair, large hand resting on the corner of the wood table. Inches from her laptop, encroaching on her personal space, my coarse fingers tap the corner of the desk, slowly stroke the wood. A few more caresses and I’m pulling out the chair beside her, conscious of my teammates watching from across the room.

Nosy assholes.

The legs of the desk chair scrape against the old hardwood floor, causing more than a few heads to snap in our direction.

I straddle it, crossing my arms over the back, and face her head on.

Head tilted to the side as she copies notes from a laptop, she’s handwriting them onto paper. The first thing I notice when she brushes the errant ponytail back over her shoulder is the smooth skin at the curve of her neck, then the small diamond studs in her lobes.

I observe the soft fabric of her cardigan—and I know it’s soft because I’m pretty sure the last sorority girl I fucked had the same sweater; it’s the uniform of snotty collegiate women everywhere.

This girl is all class.

She’s also blatantly ignoring me.

I watch her a few minutes more as she continues copying classroom notes from her laptop into a spiral notebook, snubbing me. “Why are you copying notes you’ve already taken?”

Long, loud sigh. “Repetition. So I can memorize them.”

Hmmm. Not a bad idea.

Perhaps I’ll try it sometime.

“My name’s Oz, by the way.” I give her a megawatt smile, mouth filled with pearly, perfectly straight teeth that have dropped thongs, bikini briefs, and boy shorts all over this campus—and, truth be told, at several other universities.

Who am I to discriminate?

Still, the girl says nothing.

“Oz Osborne,” I repeat, just in case she’s hard of hearing, because she’s still not answering me. Holy. Shit. What if she’s deaf and can only reads lips?

I wait for the name recognition to set in. Wait for her eyebrows to shoot up or cheeks to flush. Wait for any sign she’s heard of me; they all have.

But my salutation is met with an uncomfortable, deafening silence; so she’s truly never heard of me, she’s playing it cool, she can’t hear me—or she just plain ol’ doesn’t give a crap.

Scratch, scratch, scratch goes the pen across her paper.

Awkwardly, I’m stuck sitting at her fucking study table while my friends gawk from nearby, Zeke’s smug gloating visible from across the room. Arms crossed, he leans back in his chair, pencil shoved behind his ear, watching instead of studying like I’m a sideshow.

His arrogant, angry brows rise.

Whatever; I’ve got this. No snotty chick is going to give me the cold shoulder; I’m Sebastian fuckin Osborne.

Undeterred, I clear my throat and try again.

“Anyway, as I was saying, my name is Oz. Nice to meet you.” I lean my elbow on the edge of the table, my chest hovering perilously close to her personal space. I raise my voice and over-enunciate—just in case she is deaf and can’t hear me.

“See that group of guys over there?” I tip my head toward the table my teammates occupy; they’re egging me on with lewd gestures. Classy. “On second thought, don’t look. They’re assholes.”

The girl sniffs.

“They also don’t think you’ll kiss me.” Each word rings out clear as a bell, loud enough to get her attention.

“First of all, lower your voice.” She rolls her eyes but keeps her head down, writing. “And secondly, your friends are right. I’m not kissing you.”

“Ah! Good—so you’re not deaf. I was getting kind of worried.”

Her head shoots up. “Oh my god, what did you just say?”

“I thought for a second you were deaf and that’s why you were ignoring me.”

“You are an insensitive idiot.” The appalled look on her face speaks volumes, her tone horrified when she parts her lips to say, “I can hear you, smell you—gosh! Even see you! I am one hundred percent ignoring you.”

“I introduced myself to you four times.”

Eye roll. “Haven’t you heard of stranger danger?”

“I left my white kidnapping van back at the crack house, so you’re safe—for now.”

The witty comeback interests her, and she raises her head in disbelief. Sparkling eyes meet mine for the second time since I commandeered her table, assessing me the same way I studied her: with awareness, curiosity, and…

Humor.

She’s amused by me, I can tell.

“You’re kind of absurd, but…funny.” She pauses. “Oz.”

“Thanks? I think.”

“Sooo…” The girl taps her pen on the corner of the desk, squints at the corner of her computer monitor, and eyes me expectantly. “We’re done here, right? It’s getting late and I don’t have a lot of time left to study.”

I clear my throat. “Just one kiss and I’ll leave you alone.”

“What part of no didn’t you get? Did your jock brain not learn that word?” Her voice is measured, slow, like maybe I don’t understand English.

“Technically you never told me no.”

She stares back at me, expressionless.

I persist. “What about a small one? Just a quick peck on the lips. No tongue.”

My joke goes without even the barest trace of a smile.

“Fine.” I laugh. “Some tongue.”

She slaps down her pen and threads her fingers together, blue eyes blazing. “Stop.”

One word.

Stop.

Even I’m not dumb enough to push.

Fine, I’m going to push, but just a little. “C’mon babe. Don’t make me walk back over there with this long tail between my legs.”

At my innuendo, her keen eyes dart quickly between my legs, land on the crotch of my jeans, and widen before she catches herself doing it. If I hadn’t caught it myself, I’d think I’d imagined it.

Her lips purse.

The girl reaches up and pulls the black glasses down off her head, propping them on the bridge of her pert nose, and shoots a scornful glance across the room at my table full of teammates.

“I know how this whole thing must look, but I promise you, my intentions are honorable. We’re just trying to have a little fun, yeah? No harm in—”

“Honorable?” The pink wires are still dangling from her ears when she reaches up and removes them, dropping the earbuds onto her laptop. “A little fun? At whose expense?”

Speaking of expenses, I’m about to lose five hundred big ones to the motion of her hand rising to cut off my reply.

“Tell me this: you come over here, try to get a kiss for god-only-knows-what-reason, and I’m supposed to be flattered by your attention? Please. Who do you think you are?”

I open my mouth to tell her, but she cuts me off.