Page 13 of One Bet

Oh, well now I knew how it could get worse. A bar fight wasn’t expected or acceptable behavior for a professor at Glouster University. Although it wasn’t spelled out in the handbook as more than an obligation to maintain upstanding behavior consistent with Glouster's values, I was fairly certain a bar fight might violate my contract.

“I don’t know.” Of course, I would be in trouble, Beth Cooper was an alumnus revered by the regents for her successes. She was the pride of the school, right behind Keaton. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that the cosmos probably had it in for me because I’d gone above and beyond to keep the pretty people apart.

“She attacked you.” He shrugged. “There are probably twenty videos…” He paused, and I would have thought he forgot his train of thought if I didn’t know exactly what it was he was thinking of.

I chuckled at the absurdity of this whole thing. “Wow. You know how to make a bad day really bad.”

But what happened a decade ago couldn’t hurt me anymore, even if the video had somehow managed to survive the test of time.

And his smile was as potent as ever when he aimed it at me, my heart did a quick thump-thump as the nurse whipped back the curtain to hand me a set of discharge papers. She tilted my head and surveyed the doctor’s work.

“Make an appointment for six days with your regular doctor, he can take those out for you.” She tilted my head further. “You might have a little scar, but he did good stitches, so I think you’ll be pleased with the result. You can take some over-the-counter pain relief if you need it.”

I nodded and hopped off the gurney as Keaton stood. “Okay. Thanks.”

As we walked out, I kept my head down. I made it to the door and waited for Keaton who’d been held up by a nurse who wanted his autograph. She snuck in a selfie, and I laughed as he shrugged. When he joined me outside, he dropped his hand to the small of my back and guided me toward the parking lot.

“Are you okay to drive if I take you back to your car or do you want me to take you to Brighton?”

Since he’d been drinking beer and I’d stuck to soda, I’d driven to the hospital. I would’ve happily come alone, but he insisted and hopped into the car before I thought to hit the lock button. “Do you have anyone to stay with you tonight?”

I chuckled. “It’s four stitches. I didn’t hit my head or blackout. I think I’ll be okay.”

But a little part of me poked her hopeful little head up and smiled that he wanted to stay.

“You’re always okay.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned his back against my driver’s door. “I always admired that about you.”

If he knew me at all, he would’ve known that I was hardly ever okay. I was just good at pretending. And thank God for it. “Everything isn’t always what it looks like, Keaton.”

I could have told him stories that would make his hair curl. Especially after everything that went down senior year.

“I always thought it was with you. You want something, you figure out how to get it. I spent so much time sitting on my hands and not doing anything. But you…,” He shook his head. “You get what you want.”

And I shouldn’t have asked. I knew it as soon as I spoke that I shouldn’t have. “What do you want?”

Long seconds passed, might have been minutes, before he pushed off the car and stood in front of me. His fingers threaded through my hair and he leaned in, slow, steady, gaze never leaving mine right up to the minute my eyelids fluttered shut and his kiss transported me back to another time and place.

One Decade Ago

Trash, charity case, the words rang through my head as I walked home. During my bath and when I curled up in my bed and tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes, I saw Keaton standing on the sidewalk telling her we were just studying. Somehow, I’d convinced my stupid self that it was more. Fuck, I was stupid.

This whole thing had spun out of my control, I wasn’t supposed to like Keaton. I wanted Ryder. Since I first walked onto campus and saw him. But Ryder didn’t have icy blue eyes that made me want to melt when he looked at me, he didn’t smell like cinnamon and spice and his hand didn’t fit at the small of my back. Well, it might’ve but I wouldn’t know because he’d never looked at me, never touched me, never spoken to me and now, he wasn’t the one whose hands I wanted on my skin.

My tiny apartment was nothing more than one room and a bathroom over a garage that belonged to the Glouster University chaplain and his family. But it was my space, and if I wanted to cry my eyes out here, at least I didn’t have a roommate to watch me do it. Of course, I didn’t have a roommate to commiserate with or cry to or to keep me from checking my phone 79 times because I hoped he would call and reassure me that her words were hers and not his. That he didn’t care how Beth Cooper felt, that I wasn’t trash.

Around midnight, I sat up and walked to the mini-fridge. If I couldn’t sleep, I could at least eat a bowl of cereal and maybe skip breakfast in the morning. My dishes, two bowls, two plates, a pot, and a skillet, were on shelves lined over the small sink that doubled as a food prep area thanks to the board that usually laid on top. I pulled down a bowl and poured from a box of Cap’n Crunch, added milk, and took a spoon from the single drawer in the “kitchen.”

As I walked the three steps from the sink to the bed, someone knocked on the door. Since it didn’t happen very often, I jumped, sloshing cereal and milk down the front of me. “Shit.”

But I reached to twist the knob as I set the bowl on the dresser and used my now free hand to brush the streams of milk from my shirt. And it was his voice that made me look up. “Hey.”

Keaton stood in the doorway, hair mussed, hands in his pockets. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry.” His voice was soft, pained. “So sorry.”

I couldn’t fault him for being who he was, much the same as I couldn’t fault me for being who I was. It was just sad that the me I was wasn’t good enough for the him he was. “Okay.”

I turned away and brought my cereal back to the sink then used the towel I kept for dish drying to dry the front of my shirt. Looking at him hurt me. Made Beth Cooper’s words louder in my head. Trash, charity case, bitch.