A smile brightens her profile before she schools her face. Typing quickly, she then turns over her phone as Aiden starts the lecture.
My phone buzzes. Asshole lumberjack. I could see your plaid from three miles away. Thanks for coming.
The rest of the class, I studiously avoid her, our attention ahead as we scribble notes while Aiden lectures. It’s hard to concentrate, thinking about how my name sounded, the memory of her voice. More than once, I bite my cheek, pinch my skin. Anything to bring back my focus. Spending my thoughts on Willa, our interactions and verbal sparring, paying her attention and backhanded compliments, is playing with fire.
But maybe just this once it would be worth it to get burned.
My hands shake. I stir the meatballs one more time, then toss the noodles in butter and parsley. My heart’s somewhere down in my stomach, banging around and ruining my appetite. I’ll be lucky if I don’t barf the moment Willa walks in the door.
It’s become a bit of a habit, to have dinner while we work on the final. Often, I arrive right after Willa’s out of the shower from practice. She’s always starving, so she shoves a protein bar in her mouth while whipping up something quick. A few times I’ve helped her to speed up meal prep, but we bickered so badly while we did it, she demoted me to setting the table. She’s cooked every time and last week my mother’s voice started lecturing me in my head, asking where her feminist son had gotten to, that he was comfortable letting a full-time female student athlete feed his fifteen-credit, lazy ass, twice a week.
So, last time, I offered to host at my place, take a turn making dinner, and Willa accepted.
I’m nervous to have her here. I’m nervous to host her and feed her and have a woman in my space as I never have. Because the girls I dated and brought home in high school were just that—girls. The few I’ve shared casual sex with thus far in college, much the same.
But Willa? Willa’s a ball-busting, fire-breathing, hellraising woman.
That’s not the only reason I’m tense. It’s probably not even the predominant reason. I’m shaking in my actual boots because I did something stupid, or maybe brilliant—I’m not sure yet. I went to the audiologist and got the hearing aid tweaked. I refuse to wear the one in my mostly ruined ear. It still just picks up harsh noises, shrieks with feedback and exacerbates my tinnitus. But the one for my semi-good ear was worth revisiting. The audiologist emphasized that this is the hearing aid’s final test. After this, I either pick up where I left off with the hearing aid or have to write it off for good.
My hair’s down, and thankfully it tends to fall parted to that side, covering my right ear and the hearing aid tucked behind it.
Tucker, one of my roommates, walks in. “Smells good.”
When he leans over me and tries to stick a finger in the meatballs, I smack him off.
“Geez, Ry. Can’t a man eat?”
Tucker’s my height but has even more muscle on him. Dark, glowing skin and an afro he’s committed to growing bigger and bigger, he loves giving people shit when they ask how he could possibly head the ball with “all that hair,” which he obviously can. One of the many reasons we get along is because we both similarly enjoy trolling ignorant humans.
We also went to high school together and lost our collective shit when we were both admitted to UCLA and signed onto the soccer team. We were roommates, already moved into the athlete’s dorm, but when everything went south for me during summer training and I left the team, Tucker insisted on us still living together. We got a place right off-campus and haven’t stopped being roommates since.
Becks walks in next, scratching his stomach before his hand disappears down his pants to adjust himself. He’s an oddball I met in a freshman humanities gen-ed. He’s weird and funny, and he makes my six-foot-three height look dainty. While he doesn’t play any sports for UCLA, the guy’s a beast to have on your rec-league volleyball team. He’s also slovenly, evidenced by the junk groping, especially as he advances on the food.
I lift a hand to signal he needs to stop.
“What?” he asks.
My finger points from his groin, to his hand, followed by a colorful expression he knows by now means, Get the fuck out of here.
Becks groans. “But it smells so good.”
I make a shooing motion, then shove Becks and kick him playfully in the ass when he won’t leave the kitchen. Both he and Tucker flop onto the sofa which takes up the far end of the combined living room and dining room in the house we rent. I clap my hands twice at them, earning their attention. Get out, I mouth.
“Hell, no.” Tucker throws his feet up on the coffee table. “I am one hundred percent staying for this.”
I shake my head, pulling out my phone and typing, No you’re not. Get out. She’ll be here any minute.
Becks peers down to his phone, swiping open to join the conversation. Duh. That’s why we’re here. I bet she’s hot as hell. Twenty-five bucks says she’s got a bubble butt. Ryder’s weakness is a woman with an ass.
Tucker snorts. Twenty-five bucks says that our boy Ryder’s bit by the love bug. He never cooks Mama Bergman’s homemade meatballs for *us.*
Tucker’s laugh quickly turns into a howl of pain as I wrench his nipple in a violent twist. I pick up Becks’s hacky sack and very accurately launch it at his nuts, earning his groan.
Every noise stops when a knock on the door draws our attention.
“I’ll get it!” yells Tucker. He flies by me, shoving me out of the way.
A stifled growl rumbles in my throat as I reach Tucker, just in time to shove him back from twisting the doorknob.
When I open the door, it’s not quite the welcome I was hoping to offer Willa. Her eyes widen as she takes in the scene. Becks still rolls on the couch cupping himself. Tucker climbs up the wall from where I threw him into it.
Willa tugs her lip between her teeth and cocks her head. Her hair’s wet and twisted tight in a bun. All I see are those big brown eyes dancing with amusement, the shine of her cheekbones. “Sounded like a gladiator battle was happening inside.”
I shrug, fighting the grin pulling at my mouth. Her voice sounds even better than I hoped it would. I hear its honey warmth in the middle and a scratchy note on the bottom, which has to be from shouting and exercise. It makes a filthy thought snag in my brain. What else makes her voice raspy and breathless? My dick swells and things start to get tight inside my jeans. I clear my throat as embarrassment heats my cheeks.
A quick visual of when I walked in on Becks taking a shit does what I need it to. My jeans are no longer uncomfortable, and I wave her in.
When she’s inside, I have to reach past Willa to shut the door behind her, placing our bodies close. She smiles up at me and draws in a deep breath.
Our eyes lock. Carefully, I reach for my phone, swipe to open it and type, Hope you’re inhaling the aroma of Swedish meatballs, not me, Sunshine.
Her eyes widen as she reads it, then pokes my stomach. “I am not a Sunshine.”
I huff a laugh that’s all air. It slipped out, calling her that. It’s the color of her eyes in the rare moments she’s not livid, the sound of her voice, filling my ear. But I can’t tell her that.
Ever heard of sarcasm, Sutter? I type.
She reads the text and her eyes darken with irritation, the irises switching from rich coffee brown to murderous copper. It’s intoxicatingly fun to coax reactions from her.