“Seems to me that hitting on my girl was bound to give me and her a hard time. Not you,” the guy argued.
“And I totally understand why you’d see it that way, but he’s my best friend and he knows that I’m having a hard time adjusting to being single again after so many years. Sometimes, he just doesn’t know when to stop when he’s trying to get me to go with the flow, man. That’s all,” I explained.
“Dude, you don’t need to step between me and danger,” Jason said as he shoved around me to look the guy in the eyes. “No offense meant. I’m sorry.”
“C’mon. Leave them alone. No harm, no foul. I’m perfectly safe,” the girl said as she walked towards us and grabbed his hand.
I jabbed Jason in the ribs and gave him a look as I nodded towards her meaningfully.
“I really am sorry,” Jason said to her. “I’m usually not a douche. Especially not to my neighbors.”
“See? He apologized to both of us,” the girl said to her fiancé. “So how about we let these guys get on with their night out?”
He glared at both of us before pulling her towards their apartment. “I’ll have my eyes on both of you,” he threatened before they walked inside. “Fucking hell. Why do our neighbors have to be single guys, baby?” I heard him mutter before the doors closed.
“And you guys used to call me pussy-whipped,” I joked.
“Fuck, man. That was nuts,” Jason grunted as the elevator doors opened again and we got stepped inside. “That was a buzzkill.”
“Like you’d let anything kill your buzz when tonight’s one of our very few nights out when you can drink until the season is over,” I pointed out.
“Damn. You’re right,” he agreed. “I guess I’ll just have to drink some extra shots to wipe that from my brain.”
I laughed, thinking that Jason was joking, but he proved me wrong that night. We got trashed, he picked up some chick who he brought back to the apartment, and I wondered what the hell was wrong with me that I just wasn’t interested enough to put in the minimal effort that would have been needed to do the same.
chapter 3
aubrey
A couple of weeks had passed and I still hadn’t met any guys who’d tempted me to get back into the dating game. I figured that moment at the elevator had just been a fluke. And it was probably a good thing because I needed to focus on school. My statistics class was kicking my ass. Big time. Since I hadn’t had much luck finding a tutor, I’d been working with my professor whenever he had open office hours. But it just wasn’t enough, so I finally asked him for advice about what to do seeing that eI couldn’t afford to bomb this class.
Luckily for me, he said that he knew a guy who might be able to help me out. An accounting major who was really good at math but only accepted one tutoring student a year because he was on the hockey team and didn’t have very much free time. So the prof usually found someone willing to pay a bit more and work around his scheduled. He figured I’d be open to that, and I definitely was if this guy was as good as my professor promised.
So here I was, heading over to the library to meet math tutor number five. Otherwise known as Luka Ivanovich. Really, how cool was that name? It certainly didn’t sound like the name of someone who tutored math students. I could only hope that he would be my last one, too. We were supposed to meet upstairs in one of the private study cubbies that was reserved for the hockey team. The school was really big on making sure athletes had whatever they needed to focus on their studies because they never wanted anyone to accuse them of letting the guys float through school. They were really proud to have one of the highest grade point averages for varsity athletes across the country while still being competitive in many sports.
I was curious about the cubbies because I’d never had reason to use one before. Drake had access to them because he was on the rugby team, but he never really took advantage of them since he studied at home with Lexi. I’d heard they were pretty cool though. As I scoped them out, looking for my new tutor, I noticed that they had comfy chairs and plenty of outlets. Those two factors alone made them way better than the rest of the library considering I usually had to fight for somewhere to plug in my laptop and nobody would ever describe the regular chairs as anything other than uncomfortable. My ass usually fell asleep before an hour even passed.
As I turned the corner to where the ones assigned to the hockey team were located, I saw the lights were on inside one of them. That must be where I was supposed to meet Luka. I knocked on the door lightly before stepping inside.