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I almost declined, but he was such a nice guy. I know Callum was a bit jealous of him at times, but there was no need. It was strictly a platonic friendship. Remembering that, I smiled brightly at him. “I’d like that.”
He smiled back, and I had to admit that he was quite handsome. This was the kind of guy my father would love for me to become involved with. Instead, I chose to carry on a salacious affair with my professor who was also a Titan. Both my father and uncle had always steered me clear of those types of men, and I knew why. Their reputations hadn’t been the best, and if the others acted like they once had, I could definitely see why they wanted me to look elsewhere. Callum seemed so different, though. I was sure they’d like him if they got to know him better. After all, many of the other Titans I’d heard about were married, and some even had children.
The bell rang and we quickly stood up. I went to grab my bag, but Travis took it from my hands. “I’ll carry this for you.”
“I appreciate it, but it’s not really necessary. I—”
“I want to,” he interjected, and I smiled again.
“Okay. Thank you.”
We left class and headed across campus to the library. It’d do me good to put some distance between Callum and me so I could stop thinking about him for two minutes. I still had a few more classes to go today, but we’d made plans to meet at my place later for dinner. The way he’d mentioned dessert made me think he intended to eat me, and if so, it would explain why I was still aroused twelve hours later.
We arrived at the library and found a table away from everyone else. I needed to catch up on what I had missed out on when I was daydreaming, so I grabbed my bag. When I pulled out my binder with Travis’ notes, my pencil fell onto the floor. He immediately bent down to pick it up and once he did, he didn’t hand it right over to me. In fact, he picked it up and stared at it for a few long seconds before I gently grabbed it from him.
“St. Thérèse Prep School? Isn’t that in Pacific Palisades?” he finally asked and his interest was now understandable.
“Yes. How did you know?” I was sure there were many Catholic high schools with the same name across the country, so it was amazing that he knew which one I had attended.
“I was born and raised south of there in Santa Monica.”
“I love Santa Monica,” I told him, which was the truth. The pier was one of my all time favorite places. “I used to go all the time.”
“It really is a small world,” he said, and as I copied the notes he had taken into my own notebook, we talked about the two neighborhoods and our favorite places to go. He liked the pier but having grown up near it, I could understand why he wasn’t as enthralled with it anymore. He humored me anyway, and told me some stories about friends he had that worked at Pacific Park, and the stories they’d told him about tourists and even some locals.
“Oh God, I hope my friends and I never became one of them.”
I wasn’t wild at all. In fact, I was always well behaved in public because I knew the Courtland name was scrutinized heavily. At times, I felt a lot like a sample in a petri dish with so many interested in photographing me and my friends. I wasn’t famous, but on a slow enough day in Hollywood, I was treated like some reality show starlet. I could only imagine how hard it was for people like my father, Uncle Jonas, and even Callum. When I realized I’d inadvertently thought about him again, I pushed all thoughts of him away and focused on my friend.
“So what brought you here to Chicago?” he asked me.
“I didn’t have the most low-key of lives back in California, so I transferred from Stanford. The company I hope to work for has an office downtown, so it was a way for me to get some much needed breathing space.”
“Do you have famous parents?”
That was something people asked me often. “My father’s a very powerful man in Los Angeles’ high society, so his children are often fair game. I have an uncle who’s equally as sought after in New York City, but neither of them are in Chicago.”
I went on to tell him about my brother, and how he ate up the attention, but not me. When he asked about my mother, I could barely hold back my tears. I hated whenever someone would mention her because things were still so uncertain where her cancer was concerned. I didn’t want to go into a lot of detail with him about it, so I mentioned her having a long-term illness, and that not being there with her was the only unfortunate part of being so far away from home.
Travis shared a lot about his own family. His father had passed away in a boating accident during his freshman year of high school, and his mother remarried by his junior year. I listened as he talked about lashing out at her, and others, so much that once he’d graduated, he’d moved to Chicago and began taking classes here. Like me, he had forged a path on his own, and I knew he was on the Dean’s list, so he was doing something right.
“California. I still can’t believe it,” he said toward the end of our study hall session.
“Why is that?”
“It’s crazy how much we have in common with one another. I’ve met a few others from back home, but none of them are as down to earth as you. Have you had a chance to see much of the city since you’ve moved?”
I shook my head. “Sadly, I haven’t. I hope to get out and do some exploring soon, though.”
“Do you remember a taco place out in Mission Hills? It—”
“The place that made the tortillas by hand?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” he replied. “I know the owner and he has a cousin who has opened a similar type of place here in Chicago. It’s off the Magnificent Mile. Would you like to check it out with me sometime?”
Travis was asking me out, and as nice of a guy as he seemed, I’d fallen into a relationship with Callum. I couldn’t tell Travis that, especially since the two of us sat right next to one another in the professor’s class. We also shared marketing together and he’d been nothing but great to me since the very first day of school. I decided that maybe a few tacos one day wouldn’t hurt. If nothing else, we could talk about school and our similar upbringings in California.
“Sure,” I finally told him, then got up. The bell rang and Travis followed.
