Kiss King - Mickey Miller Page 0,66
who the fraternity guys are at Greene State.
I stand up and put my fists down on the desk. “Coach, I love this team. I live for baseball, and you’re not even going to give me the chance to start a game this year?”
“Settle down, Taylor. You’re a walk-on, and you’re lucky we even have a spot for you on the team. Which brings me to another piece of news that I might as well tell you now.”
“Yes?”
“You won’t be joining the team for the spring break trip to Florida this year. You didn’t make the travel roster.”
My heart drops.
“That’s just fabulous, Coach. I think I better go.”
“Oh, what happened? Thought you wanted to chat?” he jokes.
I leave, because if I fly off the handle right now, I’ll give Coach Johnson exactly what he wants. A Grant Taylor flip out, which almost never happens.
But when it does, it’s a sight to see.
Later that night, Maya and I meet up in the library to study together.
As usual with us, we distract ourselves pretty well.
“You’ve got the red notebook out again. Are you taking notes from our last hook-up?”
I grin at her. “Yep. It’s definitely moving forward the debate on sex versus connection.”
“Do you feel more connected to me now?” she baits, then unscrews a bottle of Gatorade.
“Knowing how our bodies can make each other feel? Well…yeah. I do. I don’t know what to do with the feeling.”
Maya leans in on the table we’re sitting at and whispers, “I just want to reiterate that we should keep this thing just between us for now.” She looks at me to gauge my reaction.
“You mean the part about us having hooked-up during this term?”
She nods. “We both know how gossip spreads like wildfire on the Greene State campus. Donnie was practically accusing us of being together just from seeing you touch my back. We can consider this…like a trial run as more than friends, but without the gossip.”
I nod. “Makes sense.”
Maya turns and softly bites my shoulder through my shirt. “Right. I’d rather not spend a bunch of time fielding questions about if we’re a couple or not. And then when we break up it’ll be this whole thing. Which is ridiculous to think about right now. We’ll always be friends no matter what, right?”
I run my hand slowly through strands of her hair, then crumple a tuft of it and inhale her vanilla-y fresh scent. I wasn’t thrilled at her choice of the word “when” because there is no timetable for this relationship. Was she already planning a “when”? Or was she not confident we could end up being like Violet and Johnny, something real, maybe even forever.
Wow, sometimes I go deep and even scare myself.
“As far as I’m concerned, no one has to know what we’re up to until we want people to know. I feel something when I’m with you and I want to explore what that is. The feeling is just between you and me though. No one else needs to know until we’re ready to tell them.”
She laughs and cocks her head.
“What?” I ask.
“Something silly I was thinking about Jude…he would take pictures with me in them whenever we hung out and tag me on his Instagram profile,” she says. “One night he was drunk at a party and I overheard him bragging to other guys, saying, ‘Yeah, that’s her. I’m hooking-up with Maya.’ Which wasn’t even completely true at that point. Well, we had rounded first base or whatever. Other than that, we’d done very little.”
“He was using you as a status symbol to his bros because you are the most gorgeous girl ever.”
She nods again and runs her hand over my knee, her face wearing a suspicious smile, “So you’re okay with not being able to use me, the ‘most gorgeous girl ever’—thanks, by the way— as a status symbol for your bros?”
I laugh. “Yeah, I’m not really worried about that. Everything we have is completely between you and me. We’ll keep it on the down low. Also, never speak Jude’s name again.”
“Done. He’s dead. And thank you for keeping this between you and me for now.”
I chuckle. “So, I’m just your little non-committal booty call, am I?”
Maya smirks and leans into me, whispering in my ear. “I didn’t know it was possible to have that many orgasms with a man. If you keep that up…yeah, Grant. You can be my booty call.”
My eyebrow raises. “With a man. Do you mean…you’ve been with a woman?”
She laughs. “I just