Out on Good Behavior (Radleigh University Book 3) (13 page)

“I can’t think of any foods I know you don’t like,” says Sam, cutting a piece of chicken into even smaller bits.

“That’s because there aren’t any,” Lizzie assures her before I can say a word, and it’s true; I’m not exactly a picky eater. “Unless you count Cait’s healthy shit.”

“Oh my God, must I always be a target?”

“Yes.” Now it’s me and Lizzie who are a chorus. Cait sighs.

“Food tastes is definitely one measure of coupledom,” says Connor, “but I’ve always thought there was something so official about knowing each other’s middle names for some reason.”

“I love how confounding that made it for you that I don’t have one.” Lizzie’s smirk is the dictionary definition of smug.

“Of course you do.”

“Hey, I learned how you take your coffee. That’s a pretty big relationship step,” she counters.

“Yes!” Cait squeezes Mase’s arm. “The first time Mase brought me my exact regular smoothie order in camp, that was totally my ‘oh my God, he is really my boyfriend’ moment.”

Mase laughs and shakes his head. “Man, I wish I could stop ruining these memories for you, but it was that kid who made the smoothies who knew your regular order, not me. You know he had a huge crush on you, right?”

Her affectionate squeeze turns into a whack on his biceps. “Seriously? First the stars and now this? I swear, our whole relationship is a lie.”

“Oh, come on. Isn’t it the thought that counts?”

“It totally is, man,” Connor agrees.

“Thank you.” Mase fist-bumps him across the table, and Lizzie and Cait both roll their eyes.

“Thank
you
, Frankie,” Lizzie says, looking from me to Samara, “for not adding any more testosterone to this group.”

“I’m guessing the training sessions aren’t helping with that particular problem?”

She snorts, and Connor pouts, earning him a kiss on the cheek.

“Feeling a little left out here,” Samara declares. “There are training sessions available for significant others of the three musketeers? I want in.”

“Oh, it’s just weightlifting,” says Connor. “Nothing remotely as strenuous as dealing with these three all together.”

“Lord, if only there were such a class,” Mase adds, then ducks as I pretend to throw my lumpia at his skull. As if I would waste it. I take a huge bite instead.

So good.

Conversation turns to Mase and the basketball team, and since I know less than nothing about sports, my brain tunes out again. As I stuff my face with chicken, pork, vegetables, and rice, the earlier conversation drifts back to me.

Samara doesn’t like: coffee (too bitter), black licorice (same), Jell-O (the consistency weirds her out), bananas (literally anything about them), or alcohol (doesn’t like feeling fuzzy-brained).

Her middle name is Jane. She doesn’t take coffee at all (see above); green tea is her caffeinated beverage of choice. Tea, period, is probably her favorite thing on earth, and lately she’s taken to drinking it with one orange teabag and one vanilla teabag, because she read it in a book she loved and thought it sounded delicious.

I love that I know all this.

I hate that I know all this.

I hate most that I’m still having these arguments with myself in my head.

Fuck this.
I can worry about the future later. I’m here with Samara now, and my friends—our friends—now, and I’m being a selfish asshole, all because…what? Because an incredibly sweet, smart, gorgeous girl and I might like each other too much? Yeah, my life is really terrible.

I turn back to my plate, and realize it’s empty. I’m not usually a stress eater, but it helps that the food was seriously kickass. “Hot damn, Lizzie B. That was
good
. I really wish I’d known to wear sweatpants to this dinner.”

“Oh, you better not be done, Missy. Any of you.” She glares around the table at everyone’s empty plates. “I busted my ass on dessert.”

“There’s dessert?” Cait groans. “Do you not even care about lacrosse season?” She pauses for a beat. “Wait, don’t answer that.”

“I can’t imagine eating any more this week,” says Mase, which earns him a withering glare from Lizzie. “But, uh, obviously I’m gonna.”

“She’s going to kill me if I don’t, right?” Sam whispers in my ear.

“Oh, yes. Surrender is not an option.”

“I might need to borrow a pair of those sweatpants.”

Fucking A, the image of her swimming in my sweats is so cute. She may be a little taller, but I’m considerably curvier from top to bottom. Much as I love her form-fitting yoga wear, there’s something way too irresistible about the thought of her in my clothes. “You are more than welcome to my pants anytime,” I tell her, my lips close enough to graze her earlobe.

Her responsive flush turns me to liquid. Everywhere.

I need to get up from this table before I say and do things to her Lizzie and Cait have told me repeatedly should not be done in front of others.

Presumably, Samara has the same idea, because we both get up at that moment to clear the table. Everyone pitches in, and in minutes, the sink is full of dishes, and the table’s covered in paper plates and plasticware (we only have so much of the real stuff), awaiting the final course.

Dessert, it turns out, is basically an entire other meal in itself. There are more lumpia—sweet ones this time, filled with banana and dusted with sugar, and apparently called turon—and a pudding of sorts she calls maja blanca, which looks to be coconut and corn, among other things. “There’s also ice cream to go with the turon,” she adds, reaching into the freezer, “but I wasn’t feeling that ambitious, so, you guys better like Ben & Jerry’s.”

“Who doesn’t?” asks Sam, and I know she’ll happily eat scoops of it plain, since there’s no way she’s touching banana. (No pun intended.)

“Will you still kiss me after I eat this?” I ask once we’re all seated with dessert on our plates, tapping the crispy wrapper.

She pretends to think about it while she digs a spoon into the maja blanca. “That might depend on whether I’m even able to move after I finish.”

“Fair point.” Like everything else, dessert is delicious, although Connor was right earlier that it was the toasted coconut that got a little charred. By the time we’re all done, everyone is groaning out their compliments to the chefs, and I’m feeling endlessly grateful that I’m already home and don’t have to roll my ass outside right now.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to offer Samara the same fate, and then I remember: be good. I may think I’m too full to fool around right now but I suspect that can be far too easily fixed by a single flick of her tongue over my bellybutton ring—something I learned the hard way the other night.

Luckily, Mase saves the day. After everyone’s lingered for a while, polishing off the wine and cider and cleaning as much as can possibly be done without actually doing our dishes, he offers to walk Cait and Sam home. I’m surprised when Lizzie sends Connor with them, but then I see her make a subtle head tilt in my direction, and I realize she wants to talk. I cheek-kiss everyone goodbye except Sam, who gets full-on mouth-to-mouth once everyone else is out the door, and head back to the kitchen.

“So?” Lizzie asks.

“So, that was truly excellent. You guys seriously outdid yourselves.”

“Not the food, you dork.” She tosses me a dish towel, then runs the sink and grabs the first plate. “Look, I know you think I’m totally chill about my relationship and everything, but I have moments of terror too.”

That genuinely
does
surprise me. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.” She scrubs at the first plate hard enough to take off the glaze. “I think…I think Connor’s it for me. Like, I actually think this might be forever. And that scares the shit out of me.”

I exhale deeply. “Oh, thank God. I mean, not about the forever part—I’m just gonna pretend you didn’t say that—but the scared part.”

“You know me, Frank. You really think I planned to find my life partner at nineteen? You don’t think I expected to be sowing my wild oats alongside you until my tits lost their perkiness?” She hands me the dish she just cleaned.

“You do have great tits.”

“Why thank you.” She takes another towel and snaps it at my ass, then picks up another dish to wash. “It’s normal to be nervous. But you seem to really like her. And more importantly,
I
like her.”

I know she’s joking, but the truth is, it does make me fizzy with happiness to hear that. I know how much it means to me to like Connor and Mase, not just for my best friends but on their own. The fact that Lizzie and Cait like Samara
is
a pretty big deal.

“I
do
really like her,” I admit, and it feels good to say it aloud. “I’m pretty fucking crazy about her, in fact. I don’t know why that doesn’t make me feel more settled.”

“You’ll get there,” she says, giving my shoulder a squeeze with a soapy hand, then handing me another plate. “You guys are really good together. The more time you spend with her, the more you’ll realize there isn’t an alternative to being with her that’s better than the reality you have.” The corners of her lips twitch. “Unless the sex sucks.”

My heart thuds. “Do you think it will?”

“Jesus, Frankie, I was kidding.” She pauses. “Wait, do
you
think it will? Is that why you’re so freaked out?”

“Maybe? I don’t know.” I put the dry dish on the counter and take the next one she hands me. “Judging by the stuff we’ve done so far, hell no; I have zero complaints. But sex changes things. Sex with a virgin
definitely
changes things. It’s been a long time since I was someone’s first.”

“Well, then, don’t hang too much on the first time. You’ve got as long as you need to get it right. Who has a great first time, anyway?”

“Uh, you said your first time with Connor was the best sex you’d ever had.”

“Hello, I’m trying to be sympathetic here?” But a goofy smile steals over her entire face, and she washes the next plate with a little swing to her hips.

I throw my dishtowel at her face.

There’s a week and a half left until the thirty days are up, but that’s not the countdown my art history class is interested in. With midterms behind us, the trip to the Met in three weeks is pretty much all anyone can talk about. Including Abe.

“We’re rooming together, yes?” he whispers to me as Professor Richter switches on the projector to show us a series of slides featuring the work of female manuscript illuminators from the 11th and 12th centuries. Excited as I am for the trip, I also actually want to pay attention to this lecture, because this work is cool as hell, especially for the time.

“Yeah, of course. We’ll talk about it later.” I nibble on my pen cap as I wait for the first slide to show up, wondering if I should’ve brought my laptop in for this instead. I generally keep it old school so I have the freedom to doodle in my margins or whatever, but unfortunately, I don’t write nearly as fast as I draw.

“I think we need two more people if we want one of the cheapest rooms, right?” he continues as if I haven’t said a word about tabling this. “Who else do you wanna add?”

“Not sure,” I mutter, scribbling down whatever I can about Ende and the Gerona Beatus; Professor Richter will make the presentation available after class, but she always says far more in class than she ever puts on the slides. I learned quickly that her forgiving my lateness that first day was a minor miracle; the woman takes attendance—and punctuality—seriously.

“What about—”

“Abe, seriously, not now, okay? We can get coffee after class and talk about it then.” Shit, I missed whatever Richter just said and now she’s moved on to Diemud.

He groans, and I honestly can’t believe Richter doesn’t hear it, because he sounds like a fucking earthquake to me. “Tell me this isn’t because you’re bringing your
girlfriend
along.”

He says “girlfriend” how I imagine a normal person might say “syphilis,” but even more appalling is that fact that I definitely did not tell him about Samara; as per our rules, I haven’t told anyone at all, other than the obvious. “What are you talking about?” I mutter, keeping an eye on the slides.

“Oh, please—you haven’t been showing up to XO or any parties in weeks. I got curious. So sue me.”

“You got curious so you
what
, Abe?”

Whoops—
that
might’ve been a little loud. Richter stops talking and her gaze flickers up in our direction. She doesn’t need to say a word; her glare speaks a thousand. Thankfully, Abe finally learns to shut up and opens up a new document on his laptop instead.
God, nothing as creepy as you’re making it sound. I saw your roommate and pretended I knew something was going on between you and someone, and she assumed you’d told me. JUST LIKE I WOULD HAVE.

The all-caps are a nice touch.

FYI, that’s still creepy
, I scrawl in my notebook, pissed now,
and if there was something to tell you, I would have.

So the girl’s not coming?
he types, completely ignoring everything else.

Of fucking course not.

I don’t even hesitate before writing the response, but it does make my stomach churn a little. It’s been a couple of days since the dinner party, and between how well it went (minus my own freakish panic) and my conversation with Lizzie afterward, I’ve been feeling surprisingly calm about my relationship—or almost-relationship, I guess—with Samara. So much so that I actually have imagined inviting her along once or twice. She mentioned having been to New York City once in high school and having loved it, but not having had a chance to go to any museums. I have no doubt she’d love the Met, and maybe the Frick even more so. It’s shockingly easy to imagine walking through the galleries with her, hand in hand, talking about the different paintings and sculptures, seeing her face light up the same way it did at my art show.

But with all the other upheaval, the last thing I need is some shitshow with Abe. Sam and I still have another week and a half to get through, anyway, and who knows where we’ll be by the time the trip hits. Inviting her is dumb; if things go south between now and then, this will just make it a million times worse.

At any rate, Abe seems mollified, which means he’s finally quiet and listening to Richter. I turn back to the presentation, only to see that a slide about Herrad of Landsberg is now up on the screen. Fuck. What happened to Diemud? And did I miss anyone in between?

All I can say is we better find more people to room with for the trip, because at this point, leaving me alone with Abe might be a recipe for murder.

• • •

For all that I’m kind of a mess about the Samara stuff, I’ve also learned nothing soothes me faster than curling up with her and watching something mindless on TV. I hadn’t planned to see her that night, but with the stress of my argument with Abe weighing on my shoulders, I knew she’d be exactly the fix I need. Month-ago Me is laughing her ass off at how content I am right now in another girl’s bed, all our clothes on and a movie we’re actually (mostly) watching on the screen. But I feel good. Happy.

Which makes it a good time to finally take a little baby step forward.

“So, thirty days is coming up,” I say, toying with her fingers as I try to ignore the familiar pressure in my chest. “What should we do to mark it?”

The slightest smile plays at her lips, and she bites one to stifle it. Winged creatures that could devour butterflies whole take flight in my insides. What I wouldn’t do to take the hand currently in mine and put it where I could get a little relief from what that smile does to me. “Besides that,” I say, knowing it’ll make her blush. It does.

“I was thinking dinner, maybe,” she says, her eyes fixed on our hands in my lap. “Kind of a redo of our first date. There’s a Middle Eastern restaurant in Meadowbrook that I’ve been wanting to try—it looks like the closest to Armenian food I’m gonna get around here, and Lizzie inspired me to want to show you my food. I’m pretty hopeless at cooking without my grandmother, though, so this is the best I can do. And I know you have to work the next morning, so maybe we wait one more day and do Friday night instead?” Her face takes on that pretty pink flush I love so much. “For, um, sleeping-in purposes.”

“I love that idea,” I tell her, leaning over to kiss her on the nose. “It’s a date. I’ll ask Lizzie for her car.”

She snuggles in even closer, and I kiss her again, this time just behind her ear. Then at the curve of her jaw. I love the way her inhalations go shallow as I suckle gently down her throat, nibbling and tasting her smooth skin until I reach the neckline of her tank top, and then I kiss along that, too.

“You are really good at that,” she breathes, her nails digging into my back.

I tug down one of her tank top’s straps with my teeth. “Just you wait.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

I freeze, my lips still pressed to the fine bone of shoulder. It’s an easy question, despite the slow and steady throb between my thighs. I slide up on the bed so I can look her in the eye while I cup her cheek. “Then we won’t. Not until you’re ready, Sam, okay? However long that takes. You are so worth waiting for.”

“I appreciate that,” she says, grazing her thumb over my bottom lip before leaning over and nipping it between her teeth, “but I meant what if I don’t want to wait anymore?”

She closes the distance between us before I can manage a response, her warm mouth sealing over mine while her cool hand slides up my T-shirt. I instinctively wrap a leg around hers to pull her close and slip my hand beneath the waistband of her yoga pants to cup her ass. I’m surprised when my fingers encounter nothing but skin, meaning she’s wearing either a thong or nothing at all. Both possibilities are hot as fuck.

She moves to lift my shirt over my head and I let her, then do the same with her tank. The little green lace bralette she’s wearing underneath doesn’t leave much to the imagination, but it
does
bare a whole lot of smooth golden skin. I retrace my path down her jawline, her throat, her collarbone, but this time, I don’t stop. Her breath hitches as my mouth grazes a nipple through the lace, and I linger there while my fingers go back to teasing at her waistband.

Thong.

Desperation to see her in nothing but these little scraps of fabric washes over me, and I kiss my way down to my fingers and sit back on my heels to tug her pants down.

And then the sound of banging at the door startles me off balance, and I topple off the bed just as Sam’s RA’s nasal voice calls, “Hall meeting in five minutes!” through the door.

“Frankie!” Sam gasps, and I mutter out a curse and rub my bruised butt. When I look up at her, she’s trying not to laugh. She fails, but so do I. “I’m so sorry,” she says, offering me a hand. “I completely forgot that was tonight.”

She pulls me back onto the bed, and we’re both still laughing as we find our shirts in the tangled sheets. “It’s probably for the best,” I say as I pull mine over my head. “We’re still not at thirty days.”

“This is true.”

I brush my lips over her forehead. “But good to know you’re ready.”

She smiles sheepishly. “You too, I guess.”

As I watch her fix her hair into its default smooth ponytail, I can’t help feeling grateful for the interruption. Yes, physically I am so, so ready to have sex with Samara, my clothing is about to spontaneously combust. Any concerns I might’ve had over whether it’ll be good seem like the worries of a very, very silly girl.

Emotionally, though…I still wanna wait. I know it’s just a week, but it’s the principle of the thing. I want to know I can do this; no, I want to
have done it
. For maybe the first time since we got together, my hesitation isn’t because I’m afraid I can’t commit.

It’s because I finally believe I can.

“I’m gonna see if Sid and Lili wanna have dinner, but I’ll text you later.” I kiss her again, full on the mouth this time. “And I’ll see you bright and early in the Psych building.”

“The last time there I won’t be able to kiss you hello,” she muses as she slides her feet into flip-flops.

I imagine it—a good-morning kiss to start my day twice a week—and I really, really like the way it looks in my head. “The very last,” I say as I give her one final kiss goodbye and slip out the door.

• • •

As day thirty nears, then passes, my confidence remains blissfully intact. Admittedly, I owe that in part to none other than romance guru Elizabeth Brandt, who’s been giving me pep talks on demand. For the big night, she goes a step further and gives me a Xanax, just in case there’s any lurking creature of panic somewhere in my brain.

With an hour left to dinner and the pill working its magic, I’m pretty calm…but I’m also dressed with nowhere to go just yet. Sam’s study group went late, and she asked if we could meet here to drive over at eight, instead of seven as we’d originally planned. But in the interest of keeping my shit together, I’d already mentally arranged my whole day for being ready now, and an added hour alone with my thoughts is not what I need.

A walk
, I think in a flash. Perfect way to clear my head, take in the changing leaves and whatever instead of the fact that I’m turning in my bachelorette card. I know the fresh air and some time alone will help, so I double-check my makeup, throw on a coat, and head outside.

There’s no particular destination in my mind, but out of habit, I find myself wandering toward Greek Row. Given how many times I’ve forgotten my troubles in one of the fraternity or sorority houses, it’s only natural that’s my compass’s True North. But it’s confirmed that I made the right decision when I get to the actual street and sniff.

Barbecue.

I fucking love barbecue.

Best part? It’s clearly coming from the Sig Psi house, where I happen to have an in.

“Frankie! Long time no see.” Doug Leach’s smile when he sees me picking my way up to the front porch in my boots is big and genuine and at the sight of it, I’m reminded of all the fun, casual, no-strings-attached times we’ve had in this house. How weird to see him and have him be off limits. And how do I tell him that I am? Especially after over a year of telling him I’m not interested in relationships or anything more than a good time?

“Hey, Doug.” I accept a kiss on the cheek hello. “I was passing by on my way to dinner and saw the house was hopping. Figured I’d come say hi and see if I could mooch a bite of your hot dog. And no, that’s not a euphemism.”

He grins. “For you? Always. You can have a whole one, if you’d like.”

I should definitely say no—I’m going out to dinner—but they smell so damn good. “Just one,” I say, but then I quickly amend it to half; I know it’s important to Sam that I eat at the restaurant tonight, and I need to make sure I have room.

“Tell you what—I’ll split a hot dog with you if you buddy up with me for flip cup. I need your magic hands.”

I know he’s flirting, but flip cup sounds like the perfect thing to soothe my addled nerves. Plus, Doug is an actual good guy, not the type who thinks he’s automatically entitled to my body because he’s been granted entrance before. “Deal, but I have to be in Meadowbrook by eight. Do not let me lose track of time.”