“This—what did you call this?” Spencer points at the screen. I haven’t been watching, staring instead at his forearm, slung over the back of the couch.
I look where he points. The two main characters meet on horseback. The hero, distracted by the heroine’s beauty, is smacked off his horse by a low-hanging tree branch. “That’s the meet-cute.”
“Yeah, that bullshit,” he says. “That doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Sure it does,” I tuck my feet under his thigh. “My parents met in their middle school gym class. My dad threw a football at the back of my mom’s head.” I hold up a finger. “Accidentally, he claims.”
I wiggle my toes, and Spencer grabs my ankles, laying both my legs over his lap. He takes one foot and presses a knuckle into the arch—Lesson #I’veLostCount: Trained masseuses couldn’t give better foot rubs than Spencer—as he says, “We didn’t meet like that. You were just a fucking snooty Busy Beans barista.”
“That’s not how we met.”
He stops. Glances up. My gaze stays rooted to his hands on my foot. “Freshman year. Last game of the season. I…” Face flushing red, I grab the pillow propped behind me and hug it as I confess, “I was a huge fan. I watched you each game, followed every touchdown, all your wins and loses.”
“Yeah?” Spencer’s grin grows wide, and he looks so flattered, so pleased, that I almost don’t have the heart to tell him the rest of it.
That our meet-cute had been more meet-ugly.
“You made Ashton jealous,” I tell him, and that grin turns smug. I roll my eyes. Boys. “I asked him to get me your autograph, but he said no.”
Because I’d been too intimidated at the thought of meeting Spencer face-to-face. Worried I might faint or lose my ability to speak or embarrass myself in front of a rising football sensation.
How legitimate my assumption was. Since, when Ashton said no, I’d hiked up the courage to do it myself. I’d approached Spencer after that last game, and immediately, standing in front of him for the first time, I’d been struck with awe. Awe and breathless fascination and a sudden rush of guilt. Because even though I’d been with Ashton, I couldn’t ignore that Spencer Armstrong was just so impossibly handsome.
So good looking, in fact, I’d stood in front of him with my mouth hanging open, starstruck. And he’d turned that dark scowl on me and said—
“You called me Brace Face,” I tell him now, and his smile drops in an instant. I’d told him already, shown him pictures, of freshman Kennedy with those braces she’d been so self-conscious about. It had been after he’d mentioned how cute he thought it was that my retainer, which he’d seen me in all week, made me slightly lisp.
Spencer sets my foot down. “What else did I say?”
Because he knows. Knows that I would never remember our first meeting so clearly had he not said anything more than a cruel name. “You told me to get the eff lost because you’d never let that much metal near your dick.”
“Fuck.” He groans, running both hands over his face. “Kennedy, I’m—”
“I know.” I don’t need him to apologize. He’d just spent a whole week repenting for his offenses against me. Besides, “I know it was right after… everything happened. Natalie said you had some bad times then.”
He nods. Neither of us had brought up his history with Meegan since my birthday. Or what had happened after. The drugs and drinking and all the women he’d practiced with. We chose to keep conversation light, our week together happy.
“What snapped you out of it? Morris?” Natalie said he’d almost been kicked off the football team. Had that been enough to knock sense back into him?
Spencer surprises me with laughter. “Rowe.”
“Grayson?” I sit up.
“Yeah,” Spencer resumes my foot rub. “You know he keeps these stats? That dick studies everything. He tracked all my bad habits after I broke it off with Meegan. After one particularly rough night, he sat me down and said at the rate I was going, I’d drop out of college in a year. Be dead in less than five.”
“What? He predicted your death?”
“Had a line chart and everything,” and even though it’s a grim topic, Spencer keeps grinning. “It made me think ‘If I die, I can’t prove this little shit right’. Kid hadn’t even touched a tit yet. So I got my shit together.”
I smile into the pillow in my arms. Spencer jokes, but I’ve seen him on his phone this week. Ordering delivery for Gray. Calling his roommate to make sure Main Desire hadn’t caught on fire. Sometimes, Spencer brings coffee and breakfast sandwiches to our biology lecture, complaining that the dining hall messed up his order, so he’d hand it off to Gray.
He might shrug off Grayson as an insufferable know-it-all, but there’s feeling there. Gratitude that Gray helped him through a dark time? Or just that he’s taking care of a friend, like he’d taken care of me all week? Because despite that no one had done it for him, Spencer Armstrong looks out for the people that need him.
“How’d you guys even become friends?” I ask him. “Obviously, you, Levi, and Morris met through football. But Gray doesn’t play.”
“Morris,” Spencer says. “They were freshman roommates.”
“And Natalie?”
He shrugs. “Fuck if I remember. She was always just there.”
I note to ask Natalie, though I’m not sure if she remembers, either. I wiggle my other foot, and Spencer switches to that one. “So… What other things does Gray study?”
“No fucking clue,” he answers. “I know he’s got one for Hart and how often he walks around without a shirt. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you. He does it for everyone, though. He’s probably tracking something for you, too.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Probably your shitty taste in movies.”
I scoff, kicking my feet at him, until he laughs and lunges at me with
