Forcing Gravity (14 page)

I didn’t think he was arrogant, but there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that reared its ugly head from time to time, making me doubt what I thought about him. Ethan’s dislike of him was so intense that I was afraid I wasn’t seeing something that was truly there or that Jase hadn’t showed me that side of himself yet. I was a little fearful that suddenly his asshole side would come out and catch me by surprise. Then I would be kicking myself and wishing I’d listened to my best friend.

But for this same reason, I hadn’t exactly told Ethan about the frequent phone calls and text messages I’d been engaging in with Jase. I was hoping to avoid the subject for as long as I could.

Jase
laughed
at my response
, but it was a nervous laugh. “
That’s good to know. I like those adjectives, but,
um, do you maybe think I’m cute
also
?”

Hell yes!

My cheeks flushed, and my stomach clenched at the idea that he was flirting with me, but d
id he really have to ask that? Was there anyone on the planet who didn’t think he was gorgeous?

I sighed. “I don’t really remember what you look like.”

“Well, let me remind you,” he said, right before my phone beeped.

I looked at it and saw that I had a new text message. I opened it
to see a picture of Jase lying i
n bed in
his hotel room in New Orleans
, one arm tucked behind his head, and, dear God, he was shirtless. I couldn’t see much of his chest, but I could see enough. My heart started vibrating in my chest, and I felt that familiar tingle in my belly
that showed up
when I thought of him.

“You’re not bad on the eyes,” I responded. “I guess you’re kind of cute.
”

“Yes!” he said, in mock celebration.
“So, is it safe to assume that you might, maybe, perhaps
want to go out with me when I’m back in town?”

I sighed loudly, as if it were a chore for me to think about going out with him. “I think I could clear a night for you.”

Or the rest of my life.

“Good,” Jase said. “Because I haven’t been able to get you out of my head, Logan, and I definitely want to see you again.”

There was no joking tone to his voice. He was dead serious
, and it just about disarmed me.

“Okay,” I sa
id, my words sounding strained.
“Then we should definitely go out.”

“Definitely,” he breathed, and I squeezed my legs together to compress the feelings he was
triggering
down there.

Even from
thousand
s of
miles away and through the phone, he could get my blood pumping like no one else.

“So, can I secure September
fifth?
”

“Um, sure.
Any particular reason why you want to go out that night?”

He hesitated for a moment. “It’s the first night I’m back in town. I figure if I get on your calendar now, you’ll have to tell all those USC guys who are bound to ask you out for that night that you have plans.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be knocking down my door.”

“I’m sure they will,” he said seriously. “I just want to make sure they know I asked first.”

“Okay, I’ll be sure to spread the word that September
fifth
is secured for a certain green-eyed guy just because asked me first.”

“That’s the only reason?” Jase asked with mock disappointment in his voice.

“No, it’s not the only reason,” I said coyly, not giving him anything else. I think at that point
I was too
embarrassed to list all the reasons
why
I’d said yes, because the list was
ridiculously
long.

“Well, girl with the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen, I look forward to taking you out next week.”

Damn, he was good.

-
7
-

“This is charming,” Ethan said, as he followed me into my dorm room
and set
down the vintage surfboard I asked him to carry with the utmost care
.

I had to agree with him.
My roommate hadn’t arrived yet, and the stark university-provided mattresses
and furniture
looked utterly depressing.

“It’s not that bad,” I said, hoping I could convince myself of that fact, but truthfully
, between the concrete walls,
the bland furniture and
the
one window, I was cringing.
Decorations and personal touches were
definitely
in order.

“There’s room at my house,” Ethan offered, as he poked his head into the bathroom my roommate and I would share with two other girls in the adjoining room. He made a face and turned around to
appraise
me.

“Where would you like me to sleep?
In the workout room or in Garrett’s office?
Last time I checked, there wasn’t a lot of
extra space
.”

“You can sleep in my room with me,” he offered, and although we’d shared a bed plenty of times throughout our lives, I wasn’t about to do it on a permanent basis.

I shook my head and walked over to the window. “You kick in your sleep.
No way.”
I turned around to see Ethan open his mouth to protest
my accusations
. “Besides, what would you do with me when you brought a girl home?”

“With you around, I don’t need any other girls,” he insisted, and I just rolled my eyes
and
gave him a look
that told me I didn’t believe that for a second.

“Or you could just join us,” he said, shrugging in nonchalance, so I threw my pillow at him.

“Knock, knock,” a female voice said, and I wondered if it was my roommate. A tall
brunette
popped her head into the
room. “Hi, are you Logan
Kessler
or Henley
Hill
?”

“
I’m
Logan,” I said, crossing the room to shake her hand.

“Well, I’m Riley, your R.A.,” she said warmly. I looked back to see Ethan staring with his mouth open when she directed her next question to him. “And you are?”

He closed his mouth and cleared his throat. “Ethan Lewis,” he said, puffing up his chest just a little. “Logan and I are just friends.”

Riley smiled. “That’s nice. It’s good to have a friend on campus. I came here from Iowa, so I didn’t know anyone.”

Ethan just stared, and I smiled, not sure what else to say. I wasn’t a big fan of meeting new people, and I wasn’t great with small talk.

“Alright, well, it was nice meeting you. I’m down the hall, room 412. If you need anything, just knock, and if you see a big, sweaty football player walking around, don’t worry, that’s just my boyfriend Troy.”

“Duly noted,” Ethan muttered, as Riley closed the door.

“Well can you blame her?” I asked, as I walked over and smacked him on the back of his head. “You were practically drooling. You’d better not do that to my new roommate.”

“
O
w
w
,” Ethan said, rubbing the back of his head. “I can’t make any promises, especially if she’s hot.”

I just rolled my eyes
, turned up a song I liked by The Gaslight Anthem,
and got to work unpacking. I put Ethan in charge of hanging things on the wall, even though it wasn’t really a manly job since I was just using wall putty. But he did a good job of hanging my iconic poster of the movie
North Shore,
a cheesy eighties movie about a guy who wins a surf contest in Arizona and goes to surf the big waves of the North Shore in Hawaii. We’d watched it countless times growing up.

Then he arranged my vintage surfboard in the corner by the window so you could see it when you walked in the room and lined up all my pictures of my family and friends on my desk and set up my TV, DVD player, laptop and printer. So I figured he’d earned the lunch I promised to buy him if he helped.

Then
I turned my back for a second, and when I turned around, I saw he had put a framed copy
of one of the full-page pictures
of Garrett and me from
Celebrity Weekly
on top of the mini fridge I’d put at the head of my bed
. It was of
the two of
us sitting on our boards in the ocean in Ft. Lauderdale, talking and laughing as we waited for a good wave.
It was actua
lly a good picture, but
the words around it that talke
d about our ‘relationship’
annoyed me.

“You
asshat
,” I said to a laughing Ethan who thought he was just hilarious.

“Hey, I figured you’d want a picture of your boyfriend by your bed.”

“Screw you,” I said, throwing the pair of jeans I was holding at his head.
They hit him in the face just as the door to my room opened.

“Hello?” a very southern-accented voice called out, and we both turned to see who it was. “Hi! Are you Lo
gan? I’m Henley!”

She flashed
a wide smile
at us
as she entered the room with a wicker laundry basket filled with bedding.

“And I’m in love,” Ethan murmured, just loud enough for me to hear. I elbowed him
in the ribs
and stepped forward.

“Let me take that,” I offered.

“Oh, you are so sweet,” she gushed. Her accent was so thick, but it was adorable.

“Henley?” a
booming
southern-accented
voice rang out, just outside our door.

“In here, Daddy,” she called back, as she opened the door that had swung closed behind her. By the time her father entered the room, he was red-faced and panting. “Daddy, this is my roommate, Logan and her male friend, whose name I don’t know yet.”

“Ethan,” Ethan said, stepping forward to take the box Henley’s father was carrying. “I’ll take that
,
sir.”

I wanted to laugh. I’d never heard Ethan call anyone sir in all my life.

“You
gonna
be hanging around here a lot?” Mr. Hill asked Ethan as he narrowed his eyes. I co
uld
see
distrust in them
.

“Um, I guess,” Ethan said,
as he set the box down and stepped back beside me.

Henley’s dad was a
big man, both in height and
weight. He looked like one good whack from his hand would send Ethan flying across the room
, and Ethan recognized that
.

“Stay away from my daughter, you here?”

“Daddy!”
Henley cautioned
,
shaking her head as her father left the room. She turned to us. “I’m sorry. He’s a sweetheart, really. He’s just a little
over
protective of me.”

She smiled as she followed her father out the door.

I’ll say,
I thought, but I just stood there a little overwhelmed by the personalities that had just swept into my room and left in a matter of five minutes.

“So that’s
your roommate,” Ethan
finally said once the door had closed firmly behind Henley.

“
Yes,
and please don’t sleep with h
er,” I begged
. “I
really
don’t want that man to send you to an early grave.”

“No problem. I won’t,” he said
seriously
, seeming
just as terrified as I was.
He valued his life more than sex with a hot girl any day.

My phone chose that moment to break the tension by dinging loudly. I picked it up and smiled
as I read the text message. I responded almos
t immediately
.
Then it
dinged again, and Ethan tried to
peer over my shoulder to see the screen
.

“Who’s Jase?” he asked, and it seemed I hadn’t pulled my phone away in time.
I strategically hadn’t entered
Jase’s
last name into my phone for this exact reason.

“Just a
guy I met,” I s
aid, smiling at the picture Jase had
sent me of the Empire State Building. He’d taken it from the street, looking up at the assuming tower.

“When did you meet a guy?” Ethan
asked, and I looked up at him with raised eyebrows.