if I wanted to. But he hadn’t texted me either. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was.
As an engineering student, I didn’t have much time for a social life. What little time I did have, I spent with Nicole or Carson. Early in my freshman year, I’d dated a few guys who had also been engineering students, and it had become immediately clear to me that while I loved being friends with other engineers, I didn’t want to date one. So I didn’t have many opportunities to meet guys I would actually want to date, especially because I turned into a homing device for Carson whenever I was downtown and chatting with a guy. If I were in a spy movie, I would check myself for a tracking device.
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,