Page 7 of Try Me
“Target acquired,” Amanda hissed, elbowing me in the ribs and not at all subtle when she inclined her head in the direction of a crew of frat boys on the other side of the kegs.
“Which one?” I’d considered skipping our mutual friend Eric’s shindig celebrating the new apartment he’d moved into with his boyfriend, Nate,but Amanda had convinced me she needed a wingman:We’re entering enemy territory. I need backup if I’m going to be poaching.
She meant the fact that most of Nate’s friends were his fraternity brothers. Amanda hated frats, conceptually speaking, but she relished sleeping with their members for reasons that eluded me. It might have been as simple as the randomI want to collect allllllll the letters, alpha through zetacomment she’d trilled at me one time when we were both hammered.
Goals were good, right? Andwe’d both managed to collect our fair share of letters over the last few years.
So, since she was one of my best friends along with Eric, I’d let myself be suckered in and planned to keep to the fringes. I tried like hell to avoid trouble these days. It didn’t always work, but I tried. And there was a small part of me that held out hope that despite Mark Farrow being Nate’s closest friend, maybe he wouldn’t show up and I’d be able to relax.
Maybe I’d even do some poaching myself.
After a hard-core week of spring finals, a mutual jerk or a sexy-sloppy, no-strings beej in a bathroom to help christen the new digs would be totally in the spirit of things, considering Eric and Nate’s well-known predilection for fucking basically anywhere.
But any hope I’d had of avoiding Mark had died as soon as Amanda and I had walked around the corner into the small backyard of the apartment. My gaze had landed on him like lightning drawn to the lone tree in a field, complete with a concurrent crackle of electricity that arced through me.
I jerked my attention away from examining the even line of mahogany hair kissing the back of Mark’s tanned neck in favor of the tall blond hockey-player type Amanda was whispering about.
“Look at that ass. Sweet baby nutcrackers, I’ll bet there’s hardly any give when you squeeze it. I’ll bet he could keep a sheet of paper trapped between those cheeks.” Amanda made a noise like she was sucking saliva back into her mouth. “Oh my God, okay, definitely adding that to my CEO fantasy: underlings who deliver files to my office clenched between their asscheeks. I can see it perfectly.” She made a frame with her hands. “Me kicked back in my chair in front of a huge oak desk. A line of naked asses to my right, each clenching a color-coded file folder.”
I wondered if I should take her beer away. “What if one of said underlings isn’t particularly…hygienic?” I asked, then ducked away from her swat with a laugh.
“Stop ruining the fantasy.” She pondered for a second. “Okay, mandatory showers at the entrance to the building. With”—she held up a finger—“viewing windows.”
“Pretty sure that violates every workplace harassment policy in existence.”
“That’s why it’s a fantasy. Duh.” She perked. “Plus, I’ll just keep you on retainer as my lawyer.”
“Might want to wait until I actually apply and get accepted to law school first.”
“Shhhh.”
She continued undeterred down that twisty road of consent while my gaze strayed, once more, to Mark.
It was the first time I’d been within a football field’s length of him in over a year, since weeks before Cameron Taylor had overdosed and been rushed to the hospital. Mark apparently blamed me for that. No fucking clue why. Okay, maybe I could guess at some of his reasons, and maybe some of them weren’t completely illogical, but I didn’t owe him any answers—especially since he’d never asked me any questions. After my dad had been sentenced, I’d gotten used to people making assumptions about me, and maybe it irked me a little that Mark had become one of them, but I had bigger fish to fry. If he wanted to jump to conclusions, that was on him.
“Let’s get a fresh beer, then I’m gonna go in for the kill,” Amanda said resolutely as she tugged me toward the keg.
“Can I suggest not opening with a question about whether or not he’s ever tried to clench a piece of paper between his cheeks?”
“You can suggest, my friend, but that doesn’t mean I’ll listen.”
“No doubt.” I was almost certain she’d be feeling up the guy’s ass within seconds.
She grinned back at me. “That guy over there’s been checking you out.”
“The curly haired one?” I’d noticed. I’d been considering how those curls would feel sliding between my fingers.
“Yeah, he’s cute.” We both observed him for a few beats, before Amanda flipped her hair. “Onward.”
“Let me,” spoke a low, honeyed drawl, and I forgot curly boy in an instant as my gaze made a hard left to the keg, where Mark lifted the tap from the icy bed it was nestled in. He held it out toward Amanda’s cup.
“Oh! Okay.” Amanda’s lips formed a moue of surprise, and then she extended her cup. “Thanks.”
Mark angled the mouth of her cup carefully to keep the foam at a minimum and began filling it. “How d’you think you did on Keshner’s final?” he asked amiably. Apparently I didn’t exist.
“Oh God, that was brutal, right? I’ll be lucky if I get out of there with a B, I think. You?” Amanda shot a flustered, slightly apologetic glance at me. She’d never mentioned having a class with him.
Mark returned Amanda’s cup and seesawed his hand. “I think I’ll manage a B, too, but the essay portion sucked.”