Now I’d met a good-looking, smart non-engineer who was interested in me, and I was stalling. It made no sense because this was the exact reason I was angry with Carson—because he had prevented opportunities such as this one.
“Text him,” I muttered to myself. “Stop being a pansy.”
Lucy stuck her head in my room. “Did you say something?”
“Sorry. I was just talking to myself.”
She eyed me warily. “Why are you staring at your phone like it did something to you? Was Carson an ass again?”
“What? No.” I’d told her that Carson and I had a fight, but I hadn’t gone into detail. I’d rehashed it enough in my own head, so I didn’t want to discuss it. Plus, I wasn’t confident that Lucy would understand. When I’d occasionally griped about Carson’s behavior, she’d been less than sympathetic. Champagne problem, she’d called it.
“Okay. Do you want to run some lines with me?”
“You know I don’t.” I hated helping her memorize her lines. She’d talked me into it once. Never again. And this play was Shakespeare. That made it a double-hard pass.
She sighed and looked at me forlornly. Lucy was a master at the guilt trip, but over the years, I’d built up my immunity.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “I’ll help you if you’ll quiz me for my cellular mechanotransduction test.”
“Cellular mechano-what?”
I laughed. “Mechanotransduction. Duh.” Yeah… it was a mouthful.
She looked at me blankly for a moment then shook her head. “I’m glad there are smart people like you who can do that stuff because I sure as hell can’t. You have fun with that.” She wandered out of the room, leaving me to stare at my phone again. I wasn’t normally such a coward. But I also didn’t normally exchange numbers with hot frat guys.
“Just text him,” I muttered. “For coffee. Just coffee.”
The whole reason I was giving Carson the cold shoulder was because he’d overstepped his bounds where my dating life was concerned. But I was hesitating, and I wondered if it was because even though my head was ready to get over Carson, my heart wasn’t having any of it.
It’s just coffee… Eff it.
Becca: Hey, Blake, it’s Becca! Want to grab coffee sometime?
I dropped my phone on my bed like it was on fire and continued to stare at it for a moment before shaking myself out of my stupor. The ball was in his court now.
***
Carson
PRACTICE WAS GRUELING for the rest of the week. Apparently, Coach Coyle did not take well to losing, especially when we could have won, at least in his opinion. His Texas twang had given me the impression that he was laid back, but I discovered exactly how wrong that was. I felt like I was in one of the clichéd high school sports movies, yet I was one of the players who hadn’t screwed up. Christ. I never thought I would say this, but I felt bad for the offensive line.
Wyatt didn’t. He merely shrugged. “They need to get their shit together.” I could understand his point of view because he was the one who suffered from their ineffectiveness. The last thing he needed was to get injured because of other players’ ineptitude.
Beside me, Jake hurriedly grabbed his stuff from his locker and shoved it into his bag. “I gotta run. It’s open house tonight for Ashley’s school.”
Damn. I had hoped he would want to chill and unwind. Jake had been MIA for almost the past year, first because his parents had died and now because he had the responsibility of his siblings. Any free time he had, he preferred to spend with Rachel. I got it—it just sucked for me. I supposed I could see if Jimmy or Demarcus wanted to chill, but I didn’t know them as well. I wanted to hang out with someone I could completely relax around. There were only two people that fit that description at VVU, and one of them was still avoiding me.
Fuck it. I was over that shit. She might be able to blow off my texts, but no way would she slam her door in my face… I hoped. I couldn’t believe it had come to that.
I parked outside her apartment building and headed up to the second floor. I knocked, and her roommate opened the door. She leaned against it with a smile on her face that bordered on a smirk. “Hi, Carson.” She and Becca had almost nothing in common, but they somehow got along perfectly.
“Is Becca here?”
Lucy stepped aside so I could enter. “In her room.”
Her door was ajar, and she was sitting on her bed with papers spread out around her and a highlighter in her hand. I knocked, feeling like a tool. I’d never felt like I had to knock on her open door before. Christ.
She looked up, and her eyes immediately became guarded.
You’re the one who’s hurting me, Carson.
The words I’d worked so hard to forget flashed in my mind, and I was immediately filled with regret. But for what, I wasn’t sure. There were too many things to narrow it down to only one, and I would never consciously admit to most of those.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Ouch. But I refused to be deterred so easily. I walked in and shut the door behind me then sat in her desk chair. “I’m sorry.” Simple and to the point.
She cocked her head. “Are you, though? Or are you just sorry that I’m mad?”
Damn. She had me pegged, and she wasn’t letting me off easy. “Both.”
“Really?”
Shit. I couldn’t lie to her. For one thing, she would know. But also, she deserved better than that. “Not exactly. I’m sorry I did something to upset you, but I’m not sorry I kept you from dating some loser.”
Looking up, she shook her head in disbelief. “I was talking to a guy in a bar, not dating him. But even if I were, that’s none of your business. And that ‘loser’ is your teammate. Have some respect.”
Now I felt like a total ass. I didn’t have anything against Stossel personally, and once I’d explained the situation to him the next time I saw him at practice, he understood. We were cool. It was in no one’s best interest to have infighting on the team. Which is why everyone knows to keep their damn eyes—and hands—off Becca.
“You can do better than him is my point.” I mentally patted myself on the back for my diplomacy. Guess politician blood runs in the family after all. “I’m always going to look out for you.”
She held my gaze for a moment, like she was gathering her thoughts. “I appreciate that, but you take it too far.”
“Maybe.” That was all I was willing to admit. She would never understand how deep my protective streak ran when it came to her. Hell, I didn’t understand it myself.
She studied me. “Are you okay?”
I ran a hand over my head. I must look as bad as I felt. “It’s been a rough week.”
“Tough loss on Saturday.”
I was pleased she’d still watched the game. All this time, I’d been telling myself that Becca wasn’t going to finally be done with my dumb ass once and for all, but I guessed I’d been worried she might be.
“I miss you.” Holy hell. Where had that come from? It was true, but I hadn’t consciously thought it, much less planned to say it. Becca knew how much she meant to me, just like Roman did. We didn’t talk about feelings and shit.