Tackled Page 4

  The image flashes into my head – her hair spilled against a pillow, looking up at me, her lips plump, her cheeks flushed. "Colton," she'd say, her voice breathy.

  "Colton," she says, and I look up.

  "Right." I shake the image out of my head. Focus.

  "It's Cassie," she says. "No one calls me Cassandra. Except my grandmother, and she's eighty. I'm named after her, though, and everyone calls her Cassandra and not Cassie, so it's Cassie to differentiate between us. Not that it's hard to tell the difference between me and my grandmother, but …"

  She exhales heavily. "I'm babbling."

  "I'm used to it," I say, shrugging. "A lot of women lose their shit around me."

  Cassie rolls her eyes. "They probably lose their lunches."

  "They didn't tell me I would get the funny tutor. Do I pay extra for that?"

  "You get billed extra for the nudity," she says, pulling out her laptop and a notepad.

  I lean back in the chair. "Well, then. I'm ready whenever you are, Cassie," I say. "Start with the button down shirt. The first two buttons, just to give me a little taste. Then slide that skirt up around your thighs and –"

  She glares at me. Glares. But her cheeks are pink-tinged again and her lips are open, just a little bit. She licks her bottom lip, which tells me she likes it. Miss Goody Two Shoes just might be a dirty little nerd. "I meant the nudity on your part."

  "I thought we were back to the whole stripping thing again."

  "I can find another job, you know," she says, straightening her glasses as they slip to the tip of her nose. She looks over the edge of them at me as she reaches into her bag for a pen.

  Shit. When she looks at me like that – and in that outfit — how the hell am I supposed to focus on anything but running my hands over her curves?

  "No more dirty comments," I say, mock-buttoning my lips. "Promise. I'll be a saint."

  The biggest lie I've ever told.

  She narrows her eyes. "Should we get started?" she asks, straight to business. "Your coach said you're on academic probation and you need to pull at least a 2.0 grade point average to maintain academic eligibility. Did I get that right?"

  "It's bullshit," I say, already irritated even talking about this. Especially with the hot nerd girl who thinks I'm a dumb jock.

  "Okay," she says, ignoring my comment. "I pulled up the syllabi for both of your classes and took a look. Your coach said something about getting you a history tutor specifically if you need one, but really, I'm pretty comfortable with liberal arts courses."

  Another tutor. No way another tutor is going to be as hot as the woman sitting across from me. Her tutoring is going to be much more effective than anyone else's … at getting a rise out of me. Literally. If she keeps wearing outfits like this, I'm going to have more spank bank material than I know what to do with.

  "Nope, I'm good," I say.

  She leans forward, a stack of papers and a pencil in her hand, and I get distracted by her cleavage. I can see just the tops of her breasts. The first button on her shirt is undone, but she really should unbutton one more.

  "Are you trying to look down my shirt?" she asks, looking up at me.

  "What?" I ask, forcing an offended tone. "Of course not. I was looking at the syllabus. I see lots of tits. I don't need to see yours."

  I don't know why I added the last part. Lots of tits? Way to go, Colton, reminding a virgin that you get laid a lot. Real classy.

  "Good." She clears her throat. "So, you're retaking English, right? And it looks like you have a paper due soon. Is this the same thing you did last semester? Can I look at your papers from spring semester?"

  "What class is that?" I ask, then stop. "Never mind. It doesn't really matter. I hardly turned in any papers for anything."

  "You just didn't do them?"

  I sit back in my chair, arms crossed over my chest. "Don't sit there looking at me all judgy," I say, only half-joking because I know that's exactly what she's doing.

  "I wasn't – I mean, why didn't you turn in anything?"

  Irritation swells up inside me at her for her that look she's giving me right now — the one that smart girls give guys like me — and at myself for not giving a shit about any of this stuff. But mostly at her.

  "I didn’t turn in anything because I'm a football god," I say, clasping my arms behind my head and leaning back in the chair. I know I sound like an arrogant fuck, but I keep right on going anyway. "And next year I'll graduate from this place and be making more money than you could ever even dream of."

  The room is so silent you could hear a pin drop. She looks at me coolly, then adjusts her glasses. "Well, football god, what's going to happen when you hire the wrong attorney or wrong financial manager to deal with all your millions of dollars and they bleed you dry, because you didn't have the basic life skills you need to even figure out whether someone's taking you for a ride?"

  I shrug nonchalantly, even though I'm getting more irritated by the second. "That's why you hire good people."

  But she keeps going. "What if you get injured – you blow out your knee or get hit on the head one too many times? What's your fallback plan? You barely pass your classes and graduate with nothing to show for it, and you have nothing to fall back on if things go south. Then you're the guy with the knee injury working as a used car salesman who used to be that guy who was a famous football player once."

  "Football is my fallback plan." My voice is far too loud for the student center. We're in a private room, but it still echoes off the walls. I hit my palm on the table and Cassie flinches. Shit. For a second I feel badly about yelling, but she's the one who's on my case about my fucking life goals. I don't need a lecture from a girl who's supposed to be getting me to pass my damn classes. "Football is the only plan, all right? I don't need a lecture about valuing education. I need you to do your job and get me to pass my fucking classes so I can play the game."

  I think I might have scared her off by yelling, but she just crosses her arms over her chest and looks at me for a long minute, her expression unreadable.

  Then she leans forward, her hands on the table. "Do that again and you figure out your own damn schoolwork."

  7

  Cassie

  My advisor looks across from his desk at me, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. "This is … not what I expect from you, Cassie."

  I swallow hard. I'm supposed to be further along on my thesis than this, a fact that Professor Richards keeps reminding me of via email after nagging email. And now I just gave him a lame proposed thesis topic. "I know. It's the topic. I'm not sure –"

  "It's not interesting," he says. "Toss it."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I can tell you're not interested in it." He pulls off his reading glasses and sets them on the desk. "This is my research area, not yours. Give me something better. It's your thesis, Cassie. It's not mine. You're supposed to roll this into your dissertation, so it had better be something you're interested in doing for the next few years."

  "Right," I say absently. Why can’t I get that stupid jock out of my head?

  "Did you hear anything I just said, Cassie?"

  "Yeah," I reply, pausing to look down at my notepad. There's nothing written, no notes detailing what we’ve even been talking about during this meeting. Just a doodle of my initials and a couple of flowers. Like I'm a sixth grader. At least it's not a doodle of Colton's initials. "Totally. That's a good idea."

  "You need a new thesis topic," he insists. "Preferably something you're interested in. And something publishable. At least if you still want to pursue a career in academia."

  "I do," I say firmly.

  "Are you sure everything's okay?" he asks, his expression concerned. Professor Richards is a great advisor. He's basically the professorial version of Santa Claus, kind and good-natured, except in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops most of the year.

  "Absolutely. I was just distracted by finding a teaching position and… it has a slig
htly steeper learning curve than I expected."

  "I forgot about that. You're teaching at…"

  "I'm tutoring at the athletic center," I finish for him. "One of the football players."

  Professor Richards leans back in his chair. "That's interesting. Have you thought about going in that direction?"

  "For my thesis?" I ask.

  "Football teams are an interesting in-group,” he points out. “Or there’s –“

  “Masculine identity in college football players." It pops into my head, just like that, and I blurt it out.

  “You should run with that."

  I shake my head, reconsidering my impulsive idea. “I can’t use anything I learn while tutoring,” I say. “I signed a non-disclosure agreement.”

  “You don’t need specifics,” he assures me. “It’s a proposed study. Propose it and then for your dissertation, you’ll see if you can get permission to run it through the athletic center.”

  Professor Richards is right. I wouldn’t be using anything I learned while tutoring in my thesis, and maybe my sessions Colton King will give me insight I wouldn’t otherwise have.

  Masculine identity in college football players. I wonder if winding up underneath one of them counts as "research".

  * * *

  “So?” Sable yells over the excessively loud music in the bar. We’re at one of the cheapest happy hours in town, which makes it the favorite hangout for poor college students everywhere. Cheap drinks and tacos – the perfect combination.

  Coupled with an interrogation by my roommate.

  “So what?” I ask, scooping up a glob of queso on a tortilla chip. I pop it into my mouth and crunch so that I have an excuse not to answer her questions.

  “You know what I’m asking, so don’t play coy,” Sable yells. “How did it go?”

  “I signed a confidentiality thing, Sable."

  She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh, please. I’m not asking for specifics. I don’t give a shit about the academic bullshit. I want to know if Colt –“

  I interrupt her, clearing my throat loudly. “No names,” I say, looking around.

  “A code name, then,” she suggests. “I want to know if Horse –“

  I roll my eyes. “Do I need to ask why you picked that as a code name?”

  “I was trying not to be subtle." She runs her finger along the rim of her margarita glass and licks salt off her fingertip. “Because he’s hung like a horse, obviously.”

  “Yes. I got the joke.”

  “Yeah, you should have, especially given the fact that you’ve seen all of the goods."

  “I’m not referring to him as Horse,” I protest. “Donkey would be more appropriate, since he’s a jackass.”

  “Oh, that fits, too,” she says, laughing. “Donkeys have huge dicks.”

  “Conversation with you is always so classy, Sable. It’s really a testament to how you were raised. Those classes in etiquette must have taught you a lot.”

  I don’t know if Sable ever had to take etiquette classes, but that’s the type of family she was raised in. Her family is the Pierce family, one of those old money families, like the Carnegies. She had a butler. An actual, real-life butler. I’ve never seen a butler, except for on television.

  “Oh honey." Sable laughs. “Rich people talk about cock just as much as poor people do. They just do it while they’re wearing designer dresses and drinking from crystal glasses.”

  “Clearly, since you’re so focused on donkey dick.”

  “Sure,” she says, sipping her margarita. “It’s me who’s focused on that.”

  “I’m certainly not,” I protest. “I haven’t said a word about you-know-who.”

  “Mmm-hmm. You can’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.”

  “I haven’t!” I lie. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Sure you haven’t, doll,” she says. “That’s why your cheeks get all pink when I mention donkey dick.”

  “My cheeks get pink when you say that phrase because it’s crude and disgusting,” I say.

  “Oh, don’t be such a prude,” she scoffs at me. “You really do need to get laid. Donkey might be the guy for the job.”

  “Not nearly,” I say. “He’s about as far from my type as someone can get. He’s more your type.”

  “I’m not sure whether or not to be offended by that. Are you saying that jackasses are my type?”

  I cock my head to the side as I look at her. “Are we really having this conversation? You’re the Queen of dating jackasses.”

  “I beg your pardon! I haven’t dated all jackasses.”

  “Name a nice one,” I challenge.

  Sable purses her lips and looks into the distance, tapping her finger on the side of the glass. “David –“

  I raise my eyebrows. “The one who said he really preferred thinner girls than you?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “Oh yeah,” she says, remembering. “He had that weird model fetish. I forgot that’s why I dumped him. Okay, then. Cooper. He wasn’t bad.”

  “The drummer in the band?” I shake my head. “No. Just no.”

  “He wasn’t a jackass,” she insists.

  I roll my eyes. “He brought his band over to play in our living room until three in the morning. And they brought groupies.”

  “The groupies are par for the course."

  “He borrowed money from you so he didn’t have to get a job,” I remind her. “And his band sucked.”

  “He was an artist!"

  “Oh!” I point at her, recalling another one. “The artist. Remember him? The guy who thought he was French?”

  “Okay, he was kind of horrible,” she agrees with a wince. “I’ll own that.”

  I giggle, recalling him. “He was insufferable,” I say. “He thought everything was superior in France. And wasn’t he from Miami or something? He wasn’t even French.”

  “His French was not good, either,” Sable points out. “Oh God, I’ve dated some terrible people.”

  “Yet you keep trying to get me to get into the dating game!”

  “No, no. I’m not trying to get you into the dating game. I’m trying to get you laid. There’s a huge difference between the two.”

  “It’s basically the same thing."

  “Hardly! Some of those guys were great in bed, despite being total jackasses. In fact, sometimes the sex is better with someone you can’t stand.”

  “That is not true,” I protest. “I’m not going to have sex with someone I can’t stand just to have sex.”

  “I just find it unbelievable that you’ve made it twenty-three years without losing it,” she says. “I mean, how many twenty-three-year-old virgins are there in the world? Do you think there’s anyone else on campus who hasn’t lost it at your age? You’re like a freaking unicorn.”

  “Are you purposely trying to make me feel bad?” I ask. “And how am I a unicorn?”

  “You know,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “You’re like a rare, exotic, fictional creature. Unicorn and Donkey Dick. You're a perfect combination.”