Chapter 142
Riley
I couldn’t get enough of Leslie’s body. And not just while we were joined together in sexual bliss; now, in the calm moments after our coupling, I ran my fingers over the curves of her body and thought about how I never wanted to leave this bed. All I wanted to do was touch her smooth skin, and squeeze her warm body, and run my fingers through her silky blonde hair until we both fell asleep.
“I wish we had done that Saturday night,” she finally breathed.
“Me too,” I replied. “But it was worth the wait.”
A smile flashed on her face. “Maybe the wait is what made it so good.”
I rolled over until I was on top of her. My cock was already halfway hard again. “Something tells me it would have been amazing even without the wait.”
I kissed the smile from her lips. For a few moments, it felt like we might start round two quicker than I had expected.
“Aren’t you going to that party?” she asked, rolling over.
I curled my body around hers and wrapped an arm over her chest, holding her tight. “Nah, I don’t really feel like it now.”
“Sorry.”
I kissed the nape of her neck. “It’s not just you. I wasn’t really in the mood before.” I wondered if she would ask me why not, which would require me to tell her about the baseball team. Or it would require me to lie. Fortunately, she asked a different question.
“Now what do we do? We’re roommates. This is definitely a bad idea.” She hesitated. “Right?”
“Right,” I replied, even though it was impossible to think of it as a bad idea while Leslie was in my arms. “Harper is going to be pissed. We all agreed not to hit on you.”
“Was that before we made out at the party?” she asked. “Or after?”
“Definitely before. I wouldn’t have been able to keep that promise after meeting you.”
She made a happy little noise in my arms. I squeezed her tighter. Her body was as hot as a furnace, but I didn’t mind.
“So back to my original question. Now what do we do?”
“We make a list,” I replied. “Top five hookups that ended badly. I’ll go first: Romeo and Juliet.”
“I’m definitely not drinking poison because of our hookup,” she said with a laugh. I liked the way she shook in my arms. “My turn? Umm. That British king and his American lover. The one who abdicated.” She snapped her fingers as she remembered their names. “Edward, and Wallis Simpson.”
“Her name was Wallis? Yeesh. With a name like that, I hope she was hot.”
“You would hope so, for a prince to give up his birthright. And along those lines: Helen of Troy and Paris. You know it’s bad when a hookup starts one of the most famous wars in history.”
“Good one. My turn. Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd.”
Leslie twisted around and scrunched up her face at me. “I don’t know that story.”
“It’s a good one,” I explained. “Eric Clapton was best friends with one of The Beatles, George Harrison. George was married to Pattie Boyd, a famous model. Eric fell madly in love with Pattie, and even wrote a song about her while she was still married to George. It’s that song with the kickass guitar riff at the beginning.”
“Layla?”
“That’s the one.”
Leslie gasped. “That song is about a dude fantasizing about his best friend’s wife?!”
“It sure is!” I replied. “The story gets crazier. The song worked. A few years later, Pattie divorced George and married Eric. And then George was the best man at their wedding.”
“That’s insane,” Leslie said. “I can’t imagine bouncing from one best friend to another. Let alone them remaining friends.”
I thought about Jess, and an ache formed deep in my chest. The memory didn’t hurt as much as it used to. But it still stung.
“That’s four,” I said. “Last one is yours.”
“Um.” She stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. “Beauty and the Beast.”
“That doesn’t count,” I replied. “They’re fictional.”
Leslie sat up in bed so quickly I thought she was angry. She pulled a handful of her comforter up to cover her chest. “You started the list off with
Romeo and Juliet, two people who are extremely fictional.”
“Okay, but at least they’re people. Belle and the Beast are animated characters. And one of them is an animal. Sort of. Oh! And the most important part: it didn’t end badly. They got a happily-ever-after.”
Leslie gave me a disapproving look, then another grin lit up her face. “Want to know something funny?”
“Always.”
“Belle didn’t know Beast would turn back into a human when she kissed him. She was fully prepared to get down with a fur-covered monster.”
“Hey, don’t kink shame Belle,” I teased. “If she wants to get down with the furry kidnapper, that’s her business.”This is the property of Nô-velDrama.Org.
Leslie laughed, a rich sound that made my soul relax. She laid back down next to me and sighed. “Okay, making that list was fun. But now it’s time to get serious. We got it out of our system. It’s probably best to just be roommates now.”
I sighed with her. “Are you cool if we keep this a secret? I don’t want Harper and Avery on my case about it.”
“I don’t want them to know either!” she said. “I just met them. I don’t want them judging me for this, either.”
“Then it’s settled.” I extended my hand. “Roommates?”
She shook my hand. “Roommates.”
We stared at each other. Neither of us made a move to leave the bed. I felt my cock stirring under her lusty gaze.
“Roommates… starting in five minutes?” I suggested.
Leslie snorted. “Make it thirty.”
“Thirty? Okay, needy.”
She threw a leg over my lap and straddled me. “Not needy. Just a girl who knows what she wants.”
She lowered her lips to mine, and whatever teasing retort I had prepared disappeared from my mind.
*
Leslie and I tried to keep our distance from each other as the week went on, but it was tough when our bedrooms were next to each other, and we shared a bathroom. We exchanged flirty smiles and winks whenever Harper or Avery weren’t around. Even when they were around, we stole looks from across the room. It was tough not to after the sizzling night we shared together.
But she wanted to go back to just being roommates, and deep down I knew it was the right call. So we tried to keep it to a minimum. That worked for about three days.
Then we hooked up again in the kitchen after class.
We both agreed that this would be the last time, but there was a smile in Leslie’s eyes when she said so. I knew how she felt. It was fun having a little secret like this. Making love to Leslie was already amazing by itself, but when you added a layer of forbidden desire? It cranked everything up an order of magnitude. Soon, I was sitting in class daydreaming about the next time I could get Leslie alone.
Despite these distractions, I was able to focus on my own classes. Nobody from the school disciplinary office contacted me about drinking underage. I knew guys who were never disciplined for such infractions, and I began to hope that maybe I would be let off the hook too.
Because of this, my guard was down on Friday. I left my Environmental Law class and walked outside to a beautiful sunny day. I was done with classes for the week and was beginning to daydream about how I would spend the rest of the day.
“You look like a fucking hippie.”
The voice cracked like a whip, stopping me in my tracks. Coach Boothe was leaning against the wall, wearing the same Three-C sweatshirt he always had on, whether it was a game day, practice day, or neither. He pushed himself off the wall and sauntered toward me like he was in no hurry. It reminded me of the way he approached the mound when he was going to take a pitcher out of the game.
“So that’s it?” he drawled in his Louisiana accent. “You’re just done?”
I started walking again. “Good to see you too, coach.”
“I can understand skipping the summer wooden bat league,” he said, falling in beside me. “But you’ve missed every fall ball practice this week.”
“Wouldn’t say I’ve missed them.”
“Cut the shit,” he snapped. “What’s going on with you?”
“I told you already. My shoulder is messed up.” I rolled it in the socket and feigned a wince. “I can barely raise my arm.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth,” I replied.
Suddenly, Coach Boothe produced a baseball from the pocket of his sweatshirt and tossed it toward me. I instinctively reached up and snatched it out of the air.
“Yeah,” he said sarcastically. “Your shoulder is real messed up.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I tossed the ball back to him and kept walking.
“This is about what happened in the spring, isn’t it?” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Look, I get it. Taking a line drive off the side of the head would freak anyone out. There are plenty of major leaguers who never come back from that. But you’ve got to at least try, son. Don’t let an accident potentially ruin your life.”
I snorted. “My life isn’t ruined. I’m doing just fine. I’m graduating in the spring, then I’ll find a job in environmental science.”
He laughed. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
“It is,” I said heatedly. “I don’t know why you think that’s so funny.”
“Because it’s tough to graduate when you’ve been expelled.”
I missed a step, and almost fell. Coach Boothe just kept on walking beside me like he didn’t notice.
“You think I wouldn’t hear about the party? Drinking underage?”
“I got busted,” I said calmly. “That’s practically a rite of passage for college kids. No big deal.”
“Underage drinking is a big deal,” he replied dramatically. “The school has been cracking down on it since that kid died of alcohol poisoning last year. One of the administrators in the disciplinary office came to talk to me.
Asked my opinion about the situation. She wanted to go easy on you.”
“And?”
“And I told her you’re not on my baseball team,” he said slowly for emphasis. “At least, I don’t think you are.”
I wasn’t surprised by any of this. I had even expected it. But I still felt my blood boil as he blackmailed me in broad daylight.
“So that’s how it is? You’re threatening me?”
His laughter held no mirth. “Athletes get special treatment. But if you’re not an athlete… there’s nothing I can do to protect you. Take another week to think it over. These early practices are mostly for the underclassmen. A veteran arm like you can skip them. But next weekend, I had better see your ass on that pitcher’s mound. If I don’t…” He shrugged.
“And cut your goddamn hair,” he said, cracking the whip again. “In my day, you’d get your ass kicked for being a hippie if you let your hair grow that long.”
Coach Boothe peeled off, leaving me to walk alone. Any happiness I had felt about the beautiful day was long gone.