Page 10 of I Want to Know What Love Is

She made it clear she has a boyfriend. Paul. She wasn’t wearing a ring, so she’s not engaged or married. He’s probably some professor. A nerd with narrow shoulders and a weak chin. That would explain why she was staring at me the way she did. Don’t be an ass.

Double fuck. What do I care? There’s no way I should pass another second standing here looking after the heady wake of Amanda fucking Lake too many minutes after she’s been gone. Even so, moving my feet in the direction of the front door and back to the party is harder than it should be. A couple of guys come banging through the door and down the steps in my direction, forcing me back to my reality, to my life, to where I belong.

“Dylan—you still here?” Jasper shouts, my number-one offensive lineman and protector of my blindside. He and Shelby head toward me. “I thought you were taking off with the hot coach—what’s her name?”

“Coach Lake,” Shelby says, eying me suspiciously. “Of course he didn’t take off with her. He’s not a self-destructive dick-brain.” He shoves Jasper, who shoves him back, and they join me at a random spot on the lawn. Jasper throws a massive arm over my shoulder.

“Spill it, Jones. You wanted—”

“Nothing. She’s off the table. For all of us.” Jasper shakes his head, his smile undiminished, telling me he’s unconvinced, but I don’t mind. He’s harmless. It’s Shelby’s frown that concerns me. I raise an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“What was she doing here? What did she want with you?”

“She doesn’t want anything with me.” I’m too quick to speak. Taking a breath, I start walking back to the house, judgment weighing on me. It’s not Shelby’s judgment that has me knotted up though, it’s my own conscience. “Coach Radz sent her. To tutor me.”

“Tutor you?” The incredulous high note Jasper hits could make dogs sit up from miles around. “What the fuck?”

“In finance, asshole.”

Jasper cackles. I quicken my steps. The guys follow.

“You taking finance again after last semester?” Shelby says. “I thought you learned your lesson—you and finance don’t get along.”

“I need it to graduate. Besides, I’m not an idiot. The reason I failed last semester was because I missed the last couple of weeks.” I don’t want to talk about grandpa’s death—the reason I had to go home--and he doesn’t do more than nod in acknowledgment. “I’ll get a B-plus minimum and Amanda—Coach Lake is going to help me.”

“Wow. This just got very interesting,” Jasper says as we reach the front steps.

“Sounds more dangerous than interesting,” Shelby says.

“That’s jealousy talking,” Jasper says, punching Shelby’s shoulder, his grin wide and infectious.

Shelby gives up the conscience act and shrugs. “You’re not all wrong.”

Walking past a small crowd of drunk party-goers on the front porch, I open the door and head back inside where the noise has risen to conversation-forbidding levels. Fuck finance. And every other problem on my plate. I find my guys in the main room.

“Let’s get this party to the next level,” I say to the guys, my housemates. Jasper’s smile explodes and Shelby wiggles his eyebrows and looks to the heavens, making the sign of the cross over his sculpted chest.

Trey Eagleton, the hockey player in our small circle, says, “Does this mean what I think it means?” I nod, letting go of a half-smile.

“What are you going to do?” Bane scoffs, staring at the other guys and looking like he knows he’s missing something. Because he is.

Grabbing a chair, I shove it past some couples dancing and into the center of the room and then I jump up on it, commanding the room’s attention. “Laissez les bons temps rouler! For all you unsophisticated and language-challenged people, translation: Let the fucking good times roll!”

The crowd’s into it, yelling an answering chorus. My guys hoot and whistle and step up the energy because even without the fuel of alcohol this team knows how to roll.

“Music, maestro!” I point at Shelby, who starts the song list specially put together for the occasions when I go Cajun, when we turn the place into a real party, a Fais do-do dance party. The volume goes from moody to blasting in the next second and people flood from all corners of the house, come in from outside and crowd the room as it roars to life like a spark catching fire in a cotton factory.

I jump off the chair and Bane grabs my arm. “What the fuck is this shit? I thought we were—” He’s shouting in my ear, but I wave a hand, pretending I can’t hear him. Now’s not the time to explain about the party tradition at BMOC House, about our responsibility to have fun, to provide fun, with a minimum of alcohol. A tradition started by Brick Blanick out of necessity to drag our rep out of the gutter where it landed the year before courtesy of a social media blackmail campaign. Now we’re under Dean Lassiter’s microscope, a twenty-first century Animal House under the constant threat to be shut down or expelled.

Bane frowns and I pull my arm from his grasp to head in the direction where I last saw

the girl I flirted with earlier. When I find her, I swing her into a twirl and dip. She seems a little scared by the sudden uptick in crazy—couyon, so I take her aside.

“What’s the matter, sha? You afraid of a little Cajun dance?”

“Of course not. You’re so, so…”

“Magnificent?” I suggest. She laughs, but I can see she’s thinking couyon. She’s not all wrong.