Page 11

violet

“You’re a judgy thing, aren’t you?” he says, breaking the awkward silence between us.

“Was that being judgy?”

“You’ve made it abundantly clear that you think we’re some group of pampered assholes paying Lucia pennies, but I’m not sure why you think we’d do that,” he says after swallowing his last bite.

“I don’t know.” I shrug my shoulders. “Because you can?”

“You’re an interesting one, Grinch.”

“Hey, I just confided in you why I don’t care for all the Christmas hoopla and you call me a grinch?”

“It doesn’t matter much why you’re a grinch, it just matters that you are.” A slippery grin spreads across Neo’s stern jaw. “You want to go for a swim? It’s hot as balls out here.”

I still haven’t found a decent hair salon that knows how to work with my hair texture, and I’m not trying to ruin my blow out which took me over an hour and Kennedy’s very expensive Dyson blow dryer, so my answer is an emphatic, “No, you shouldn’t swim right after eating.”

“Okay, then, do you want to watch me swim?” he asks with another one of those smirks that sends a jolt of something surprising straight to my core.

“I can.”

He stands and I swallow thickly as I try my best not to ogle the well defined six pack that ripples underneath his tank top. I’m sure he gets enough of that from students on campus.

“Just come sit by the edge of the pool and put your feet in,” he tells me.

“Fine,” I mutter to myself, knowing full well this is turning into something more than just lunch.

I’m already sitting at the edge of the saltwater pool with my drink in hand when Neo unceremoniously flings off his tank, then pulls his gray sweatpants and black boxer briefs down. He is splendidly butt ass naked and I almost choke on my mocktail.

“What the hell are you doing?” I protest, quickly lowering my eyes as he dives perfectly into the water, causing only a momentary ripple of the water. When his disappearing body reemerges right between my dangling legs, I’m startled.

“I’m swimming.”

“Naked?” I swivel my head around to see if anyone else in the house is witnessing this spectacle.

“It’s the only way I like to swim.”

“You’re so inappropriate.”

“People all over the planet swim in the buff all the time.”

“And you’re making stuff up. That’s not true.”

I find myself completely mesmerized by how the sun bounces off his slicked back, water soaked hair.

It’s disturbing.

I love Henry Cavil and that guy who starred in The Kissing Booth. I don’t even like blondes.

“I promise you I’m not making it up.”

“This is definitely not what most people in other countries do. They make bathing suits and swimming trunks for a reason. It’s a billion dollar industry.”

Neo chuckles at me as he pushes off with his feet onto his back in a floating position. I do my best to keep my eyes on his face and not on any other obvious part of him, but it’s difficult when it’s right there in my line of vision.

Don’t let him see you watching, idiot.

“I’ve never met anyone like you, Violet.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“Are you going to keep staring at the mountains and not at me while we talk?” he mocks.

“Are you going to keep purposely trying to embarrass me?”

“Fine,” he huffs. “That’s not what I was doing, but I’ll keep everything waist down below the water if it will make you feel better.”

“It will.”

“I bet you don’t act like this when you stare at Greek statues in a museum.”

“The last time I did that I was eleven-years-old, on a class trip, and you best believe I giggled the entire time.”

Neo proceeds to swim a few laps along the other side of the pool, first freestyle, then butterfly, then the breast stroke. Watching him swim is like watching a work of art glide through the water, except nothing about what I’m seeing makes me want to giggle.

I’m not eleven-years-old anymore.

He finishes by swimming back over to me and treading water between my legs.

“You’re beautiful under this light,” he says to me, the sun slowly setting behind us.

“Just in this light?” I jest, my stomach fluttering.

“Ahhh,” he smirks. “I knew you were funny, too. I wonder what else you’re good at?”

“Keep wondering, Cap.”

His smirk turns into a full-blown smile I can feel straight in my chest. I shouldn’t have used his nickname like that. I’m blatantly flirting with him. Anyone with half a brain can see that.

I shouldn’t even be here.

What I should be doing is sitting at the dining room table inside the apartment, taking advantage of the fact that Kennedy isn’t here to drag me to every Christmas event in the city, and studying. My executive functioning issues are no excuse for failure. If I blow my scholarship, I’ll probably have to leave school, and my father will probably never forgive me, not that I really care what he thinks.

“Can you hand me a towel, Violet?”

God, why must he say my name like that? V-I-O-L-E-T, like he just bit into a juicy Florida orange and the juice is dribbling down his chin all sweet and sticky.

“Where is it?”

“There’s a stack of them in that cabinet over there.” He points to an outside armoire made of heavy grade almond colored plastic. I grab him one of the thick black bath towels with the words The Suns embroidered in metallic gold at the corner.

“Wow, you even have custom towels at casa de la Valencia Suns.”

“Eh, we’ll have to work on your Spanish,” he teases. “Now you can turn your head or you can watch.”

“I bet you’d like that.”

“I would very much fucking like that.”

I almost choke on my own saliva.

“I’ll just, um, give you your privacy.”

I turn my head as he steps out of the pool while he wraps the towel around his waist. But thanks to my peripheral vision, I can’t help but notice one of his muscular calves, so I shut my eyes to avoid any more accidental glances.

“You can turn back around now.”

But him wearing a towel doesn’t matter much. In fact, it might just be making things worse. Just looking at his perfectly sculpted body dripping in pool water is enough for a dull ache to build between my legs.

I’m not a virgin, but it’s been quite a while since a guy has touched me. Elijah was the last one and that’s been well over a year.

Since my mom’s death, I’ve been in a dark place and haven’t felt sexual. But right now, my vagina is paying for all of that antisocial behavior. It feels like it’s in starvation mode and fighting for her life. She’s looking to be fed, or more like stuffed, especially if the meal is from this statuesque hockey god.

Perhaps because of a timer set to sunset, the pool lights suddenly turn on, creating a warm and romantic illumination of the yard that only petrifies me. And when I’m afraid, I run.

“I think I should head back to my place now. Give Lucia my thanks for the delicious meal.”

“It’s getting dark.”

“Exactly my point. Shouldn’t some of your teammates be home soon?”

“They are home.”

Oh my god! “They are?”

“What are you so worried about? Lucia probably told them that I have company, so they wouldn’t bother us.”

“So they think that I’m what…one of your puck bunnies or something?”

“Does it matter what they think, or are you more worried about what they’ll tell Shane?”

I notice how Neo’s left hand flexes again when he asks the question. When he walks toward me, I take a careful step back, recognizing that any proximity to him is unnerving for me and my vagina, but my backward movement seems to annoy him further.

“Are you afraid of me, Violet?” he asks, perhaps concerned about what my response will be.

“No, what I was trying to say is that this is a men’s hockey house and I’m a new transfer student with a reputation to think of,” I tell him.

“A reputation? This isn’t 1955, Violet,” he says straight-faced. “We’ve got girls in and out of here all the time and nobody is on campus calling them whores or pinning them with scarlet letters.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not one of your hockey bunnies or whatever they’re called, and I have no interest in becoming one. I don’t know what you want from me, but I’m at this school to get my degree and then get the hell out of Nevada with zero drama.”

“No drama here.” His face softens a bit, and he throws his hands up in a motion of surrender. “This was just lunch and all I want is to be friends.”

Just lunch.

Just friends.

Of course, that’s all this is.

Seriously, what was I thinking? I’m a bit embarrassed, implying that this impromptu lunch might have been more than what it was…just lunch. Neo is just a flirt. I think he may even still be with Vikki and even if he isn’t, he can have any woman he wants on this campus. In fact, I’m beginning to think that the only reason why he invited me here is because Kennedy told him to stay away from me.

“Good, so I’m free to leave?” I ask, feeling a little stupid about the last ninety minutes I’ve spent over this house.

“Absolutely, but I’ll walk you home.”

My first reaction is to protest the escort back to my place. I’m already mortified that I was even having some of “those” thoughts, but I have a feeling that Neo would never go for it, so I simply agree to get this evening over faster. Then I’ll never have to see him again, at least not on purpose.

Our walk to my apartment is mostly quiet, and it leaves me feeling more uncomfortable than I was fifteen minutes ago. It’s a complete 180-degree turn from how he was acting earlier–friendly. Have I made a complete fool of myself tonight?

When I can’t stand the silence anymore, I decide to fill it with words because that’s what I do sometimes when I’m nervous.

“Are you going home for Christmas?” I ask, realizing that I don’t even know where home is for him.

“I don’t go back to Ohio much.”

“You’re from Ohio?”

His head tilts to the side and his mouth forms a half smile. “I keep forgetting you’re new around here. Yeah, I’m from the Columbus area.”

“Why don’t you want to go back and see your family?”

He stops walking for a moment and so I stop too.

“A drunk driver killed my brother when I was in high school. I don’t like to go home much.”

His revelation shocks me, and instantly I feel horrible for asking him about home at all. I know the pain of losing someone close to me and how I don’t like to talk about it…ever. Neo clearly doesn’t like to talk about it either.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say, because what else do you say to something like that?

We start walking again and I decide that it’s probably best that we walk the rest of the way in silence. Once we arrive at my building, Neo leans against the stucco wall near the main entrance, one leg bent with his foot flat against the wall as I dig inside my handbag for the key.

“They really should put a keypad lock on that door,” he says.

“I found it,” I say excitedly, pulling it out and raising it in the air, but he doesn’t lift his head. “So, thank you again for the food–”

“I thought about something on the way here,” he cuts me off.

“What’s that?”

“You lost your mom during Christmas and I lost my brother. What are the odds of a coincidence like that?”

“Your brother’s accident was during Christmas time?”

“The day after Christmas.”

“And you still celebrate?” I ask, somewhat outraged, but then quickly catch myself. “I’m sorry. Occasional verbal diarrhea is an affliction of mine. That was insensitive of me to ask.”

“Christmas reminds me of all the good times we shared, not the pain. It was Jake’s favorite holiday, so when I celebrate it, I feel as if he’s still with me. I’m not going to let what happened ruin those memories. It was just fucked up timing.”

“I hear you,” I respond, remembering that Christmas was my mom’s favorite time of year, too. “I guess I’m just not there yet.”

The walk to campus from my place is relatively short, but the distance from Neo’s house to mine is further than I thought it would be as I look up at the darkening sky. Hockey bad ass or not, I don’t feel right about him walking home by himself. If it wasn’t for me dropping by his practice unannounced, he wouldn’t even be here, so I offer to call him an Uber, even though my credit card may laugh hysterically when they try to charge it for the ride.

“Let me call you a ride,” I offer. “The walk back home is entirely too far at this time of night.”

“Thanks, but I’m not going to just let you call me a car. I offered to walk you home. I knew the distance here. It’s fine.”

“But–”

“Plus, I don’t do Ubers in Vegas. Half of these drivers are tweaking on meth of fentanyl. I don’t trust them and you shouldn’t either.”

“Can one of your teammates pick you up?”

One of those pampered princes must have a car.

“I could call someone, but knowing them, they’re already a few beers in at this time of day.”

His reluctance makes sense now that I know a drunk driver killed his brother. He’s probably super sensitive to people driving under the influence and rightly so. I would be too. I’ve never understood why someone would get behind the wheel after drinking. If they don’t have the capacity to care about the safety of other people, they should at least care about whether they harm themselves.

I have an inner debate with myself. Should I just let Neo walk home? Yes, I should. It’s not that late out and he’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. But there’s another option that my damp panties are in full agreement with, which I know is a bad idea, but I voice it anyway.

“Then why don’t you stay and leave in the morning,” I suggest, stunned at myself for making the offer, knowing full well the risk it poses for my growing attraction towards him.

Neo pushes off the wall, walking toward me. His icy blue eyes hold me in place with a look so fierce that it sends a volt of electricity straight to my weeping pussy, kick starting the fucker like the sputtering engine of a car that’s been sitting unused in the garage too long.

“Offer accepted, Grinch.”