Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Still… this was why Ryan and I couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. I’d lose any and all respect I was trying to build for myself. Imagine if news got out that Jane Goodall had been sleeping with someone like Rupert Murdoch? Not that the queen of conservation would ever stoop so low, but still, it would completely tarnish all the work and effort she’d done to make a change.
That couldn’t be me. My dad would be so disappointed in me if it was.
“I’ve got to go.” I closed my laptop and unzipped my bag.
“What? Seriously? Dude, I just got here.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I realized I have a, uh, an appointment.”
His lids turned to slits. “An appointment? For what?”
“It’s private,” I said, thinking that the appointment was with me and my hand inside of the shower. Sure, I couldn’t actually be with Ryan, who happened to be a man plucked straight out of my wettest dreams, but at least I could fantasize about it in the shower. The crotch grab he gave himself revved me up way more than I had realized. Especially considering how much of a handful Ryan appeared to be packing.
Besides, maybe all I needed was some post-nut clarity to realize that Ryan wasn’t good for me. It was pretty wild how clear a man’s thoughts could become after he jerked one out and stopped thinking with the wrong head.
“Fine,” Ryan said. He leaned back, resting an arm on the chair. It propped his bicep up, making him look even more muscular. He had a thin golden necklace that matched the golden bracelet on his wrist, which I realized was likely as expensive as the entire four-year tuition at Franklin U. “But before you go, there’s an event happening tonight at Shenanigans. Wanna come with?”
“What is it?” I asked, silently cursing myself for showing my interest.
“Beat the Clock. Pitchers of beer start at twenty-five cents and go up every fifteen minutes.”
“Sounds like a great way to get sloshed.”
“Duh,” he said, giving me a wink. “And getting sloshed with you sounds like a sloshing good time.”
I gave him a smirk and shook my head. “That was nearing Dad joke territory.”
“My favorite territory.” He winked at me and shrugged. “I tried.”
“I’ll think about it,” I relented.
He gave me another confident smile. As if he knew I’d already thought about it and come to a resounding “fuck yeah” as a conclusion. Which, to be honest, wasn’t entirely far off. Beer for pennies sounded great. I could bring Maddy as a buffer. We’d talk to Ryan for a couple of minutes, then drift off to another side of the bar and playfully read each other to filth at the same table we had first met.
“See ya later,” Ryan said. I couldn’t help but notice his hand was still casually cupping his crotch.
How was someone so unobtainable and so damn hot at the same fucking time?
As I walked out of the library, I pulled out my phone. I opened the web browser and went back to Google, wanting to finish the search I’d been so rudely interrupted from earlier.
Outside, without needing to connect to the Wi-Fi, my phone loaded up the results in an instant.
I scrolled through the first page, then the second. That was all that showed up, and none of the news articles mentioned anything about Redpine Global being attached to the offshore drilling project.
Alright. That was a good sign, at least. One less thing to worry about.
Chapter Eight
Ryan
Beat the Clock night at Shenanigans was lit.
It felt like the entire school was here, crammed into the beachside bar that served as a kind of watering hole for the campus.
I stood by the pool tables with Colton and a couple of guys from the rowing crew: Travis, Lenny, and Marco, who was coming back from the bar, holding two overflowing pitchers of beer. It looked like piss and probably tasted like it too, but whatever. They were still a quarter each. Not that I was ever one to keep an eye on a budget, but the novelty of it was fun, and so was the atmosphere.
“Yoooo,” Marco said, setting the two pitchers down on a high-top table between us. “Gwen totally wants to bang.”
Lenny laughed. “Gwen totally wants to bang your head against the wall, yeah, probably.”
I looked over at the full bar, manned by Gwen and a couple of other students I didn’t recognize. Everyone knew Gwen, though. She was the lead bartender and a sort of legend around the FU campus. She had dyed her hair a dark purple since the last time I’d seen her, which was when she had sported a cool-as-fuck blue-and-black ombre style.
She glanced over at us. Marco blew her a kiss.
She flipped him off and continued pouring vodka shots.
The group of guys started cracking up. “Told you,” Lenny said.