have to come up with that amount by the fourth week of the term.” I say sarcastically.
“Ten? Not twelve?”
“I only need around ten thousand now for spring term, since I’ve saved up two-thousand by eating nothing but ramen and cocktail waitressing nights and weekends and wasn’t enrolled during winter term. But, Grant, I really need to pay my tuition and stay enrolled in classes somehow. Not to mention I rejoined the track team spring term, and I’d like to finish the season. Even more important to me, I really want to study abroad in Italy next term, and I can’t apply to the program if I’m not even enrolled.”
“So you need ten thousand more?” He asks. “Or else you’re screwed.”
“Yeah, I can make some money this summer when I work as a server back home, but I’m desperate right now to come up with money for this term. I’m enrolled in classes, but what the administration doesn’t know is that I have zero money to pay my tuition with when the due date comes.”
“Hmm.” Grant stands up and starts pacing around the room, hands behind his back. “Damn. That’s a tough predicament.”
“You don’t think I’m being a drama queen?”
“Drama queen? God, no! This is huge, Maya. This could alter the course of your entire life!”
“Well, when you put it like that, I feel even more desperate.”
“I don’t mean to make you nervous.” He stops pacing and puts his finger up. “Come into my room. I’ve got an idea.”
“Inviting me to your bedroom?” I joke, “What? Do you want to make a porno for one of those naughty websites? Come on, Grant, I expected more creativity from you.”
He clears his throat. “That’s not what I was thinking, but we’ll definitely throw that on the list of possibilities. Depends how desperate we are, I guess.”
“What list? There’s a list?”
“Come on.”
I follow him into his bedroom, and I feel like I’m doing a very bad thing going into a very sexy man’s bedroom before eight a.m.
Thankfully, I glance at the clock and it’s 8:04 a.m. Okay, that’s better.
Grant has this spark in his eyes like he really wants to help me. Which is funny, because I totally mentioned the ten-thousand-dollar thing as a joke. But Grant is a man of action.
Once we’re in his room, he tells me to sit on his bed, and I see why he invited me in—he’s got a giant dry-erase whiteboard on one side of his bedroom.
“Whenever I need to come up with an idea or something, like for a paper, I always start with a brainstorming session on this whiteboard. Which is what we’ll do right now.”
At the top of the board, he writes How to get Maya $10,000 in Four Weeks and underscores it.
“Ten-thousand, because you’ve already saved two-thousand, correct?” He asks, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes that’s right.”
I lean back on his bed and no lie, I’m a little turned on because the bed has his scent. My eyes are at his well-endowed unit level—after all, I saw it in my sculpture class yesterday—and this is going to be distracting if I’m sitting, so I scoot my body back onto his pillows and use them as back support as I lie down at a forty-five degree angle.
The sexiest thing about Grant right now is the fire in his eyes as he stands there with his long fingers wrapped around a marker and his arms crossed, brain synapses sparking off. When he’s concentrating on something—anything—nothing stands in his way. The man’s mind is as sexy as his body, and that is a deadly combination, especially for me.
Plus, he’s taking my major life problem that I expected him to shrug off, as seriously as if he were trying to solve a complex math problem.
For the first time in months, I wonder if maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for me to stay enrolled this term.
“So, if you have any ideas just shout them out and I’ll write them down. First idea is make a porn with Grant,” he smirks as he writes it on the whiteboard in blue marker.
I roll my eyes. “Does porn even make that much money anymore? There are so many damn videos up there. The market is over-saturated, I’m pretty sure.”
“I honestly don’t know. But I do know you’re absolutely beautiful. So, if you want to look further into this…”
Our eyes meet, and we share a moment. My body tingles when he uses the B-word.
I don’t know if he feels what I do. But my lips