Slammed #4 (The Slammed Romance Series - Book #4) (2 page)

“This is just some bullshit about them wanting to
suspend
me,
it’s no big deal,
Evie
—”

I let out a little shriek. “I don’t care about that!
If you get suspended it’s your own fucking fault!” I pointed at the picture
hard enough to almost rip the paper. “That. That. What is it?”

Zack looked at the picture and frowned. “
Evie
, this is from a long time ago, I don’t even know…”

I closed my eyes. I was shaking with rage, my eyes
stinging with tears that I couldn’t let myself shed in front of half the
school’s athletics department.

“You don’t even know who she is, do you? Do you even
care? Is that all I am to you too—just another girl to grab and fool around
with?” Zack’s face got redder and redder and I saw him looking around at his
teammates, at the members of the basketball team watching avidly.

“That’s not what I was going to say and you know
it,” Zack said, his voice dropping low. “I don’t know who took this picture, but
it’s from forever ago.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. I thought you
were different! I thought you gave a damn—I thought…” I shook my head again.
“You’re just a stupid asshole like every other guy I’ve ever dated. Well, I
hope you enjoyed it, because I’m not going to be your piece of ass anymore.”

I turned around quickly. My heart was pounding and
my eyes were burning, and all I could think of was getting out of there before
someone saw me breaking into tears. I hurried out of the weight room and
through the rec center, swallowing down the tightness in my throat and trying
to keep my trembling to myself.

I nearly ran across campus, slowing down only when I
started to get a stitch in my side, avoiding looking at anyone that might be
around as the tears started falling from my eyes before I got to the safety of
my room. I couldn’t believe that I had actually thought Zack thought I was
special, that I had let myself get suckered into falling for another guy who
was just going to take whatever piece of tail came his way without any concern
at all for my feelings. My hands shook as I tried to swipe my card to get into
the building; it took me three tries before I was finally able to get the
reader to scan my card properly.

I stepped onto the elevator and hit the door close
button over and over again; the last thing I wanted was to have to deal with
someone riding with me, watching me as I tried to hold myself together. I
sagged against the wall of the elevator, against the railing, shuddering and
still angry, still hurt. I tried stalling the tears that were already starting
to spill out of my eyes. When the elevator finally managed to make it up to my
floor, I hurried off, towards my room, not even bothering to tell Jess what I’d
done or that I was back—she’d hear the door. I threw myself onto my bed and
gave into the sobs that were pushing up through my chest, burying my face in my
pillow. Hot tears flowed into the fabric and I shook with anger and depression,
not quite wanting to scream in my frustration.

I lost all track of time, lying there and sobbing my
eyes out, punching the mattress and grabbing at the pillow I’d buried my face
in
. After a while it finally started to dawn on me that
before I had seen the newspaper article featuring Zack, I had been waking up,
getting ready to go to class. I had class to get
to
.

 
I pulled
myself up and looked at the clock; I had been crying for almost an hour, and
now I only had ten minutes to get to class, all the way across campus. I had no
time to get dressed. I sighed, grabbing up my backpack and shoving my
journalism textbooks into it. At least, I thought, half the student body went
to class in their pajamas, especially the morning classes; no one was likely to
notice that I wasn’t fully dressed.

I hurried across campus, trying to focus my thoughts
down on the class I was going to; I had missed my window for grabbing
breakfast, so I would have to hope I had a little bit of time to get something
to eat from one of the vending machines between morning classes or by the time
lunch rolled around I would be totally useless. I hoped against hope that my
face wasn’t too red, that my eyes weren’t too obviously bloodshot. My little
spectacle in the weight room would already be making the rounds among the
campus gossipmongers—the last thing I needed was for everyone to see me cried
out, panicking that I wasn’t getting to class on time, and thinking that the
whole reason for my upset was Zack.

I took my usual seat in class, feeling oddly
conspicuous in spite of the fact that half the people in the room with me were
also in their pajamas. Professor Grant came in a few minutes late, apologizing
and looking around with a faint grin curving his lips.

“I can see that everyone’s starting to get a little
less formal now that we’re past midterms,” he said, looking at the other people
in the room, but not—fortunately—at me.

During the lecture, I tried to take notes but my
mind kept going back to Zack. Why had I thought that he was any different from
any of the guys I had ever dated?
Because he’d been my first?
I was an idiot. I should have known that Zack didn’t belong to the Phi Alpha
Kappa group for no reason—he had loved to party even when we’d been in high
school together, and clearly he’d just gone on doing that, getting more and
more outrageous as he went. Hooking up with an ex-girlfriend wasn’t going to
change that about him. I remembered Jess’ advice that I should figure out what
kind of person Zack really was and decide if I was okay with it. I thought to
myself that I had been acting like an idiot the whole time leading up to seeing
that picture. I had believed that sure, Zack was rowdy and liked to get drunk
and hang out with a bunch of guys who viewed women as conquests—but why would
he hang out with people like that if he didn’t agree?

Zack had never really seen me as anything other than
another girl to get with. The thought of it made me sick. I had let myself
start to think of Zack as really special—as someone who wanted me because of
who I am, who knew me and who wanted me. In reality he was just the same as any
guy; he just wanted a girl he could convince to sleep with him on the regular,
who he could toss aside when it was inconvenient. How much longer would I have
kept going with him if I hadn’t seen that article and that picture?

I thought about everything that Zack and I had been
through in the previous weeks, and I couldn’t make sense of it. If he really
didn’t care about me, why had he performed so poorly when I had ignored him? He
could have easily just moved on to someone else. But what if it was just a
coincidence?
If he had performed poorly because he’d had some
other girl distracting him—and not because of me at all.
Part of my
brain argued that he had tried really hard to get in touch with me even when I
was ignoring him, working hard to avoid even seeing him on campus. But had he
really? He’d sent me some texts and made some phone calls, and had left a note
on my door. I’d been avoiding him, but I had still kept to my usual routine; if
he had wanted to find me, he could have gone to the Library, or the dining
hall, any number of times and tracked me down.

I didn’t know how to feel about the weird mixed
signals in my mind. I was glad I’d remembered my recorder; I kept it on my
desk, knowing that I wouldn’t remember a damned thing about Grant’s lecture
with the situation with Zack at the top of my mind, consuming my thoughts. I
was barely even able to keep up with the notes on the board—I wondered at one
point what I was even doing in class when I wasn’t getting anything out of it
at all. But I was present.

I managed to grab a bag of chips from the vending
machine on my way from Introduction to Journalism to English Literature; my
stomach was twisting and grumbling inside of me, uncaring about the fact that I
was trying to cope with the confrontation between Zack and me. I didn’t even
taste the chips as I brought them to my mouth, pretending to pay attention to
the discussion about Jane Austen, but still dwelling on the details of
everything that had happened. I thought about how good the sex had been, my
insecure jealousy at the thought that Zack had to have been with other women to
have improved
so much since we’d been together. That
should have been my first red flag—the fact that Zack had gotten so much better
at sex itself.

It seemed like I had been getting cues, hints,
indications all the time about what Zack really was, and totally ignoring them
in the face of what I wanted them to be. I had to face facts: Zack didn’t have
any special attachment to me and he didn’t particularly care about keeping me
as a girlfriend. I didn’t even know if he actually saw me as a girlfriend. I
had been fooling myself all along and I should have stayed away when his team
mate suggested it—even if his teammate had the interests of the team in mind
instead of my own.

I decided after class that I didn’t want to see or
talk to anyone. I went to the dining hall and scanned my card and took to-go
containers, making a minimum of eye contact as I got into the line. I got a
bowl of soup and a sandwich and then found myself loading brownies, cookies,
anything remotely sweet and fattening into my box to take with me. I would have
to make it to my afternoon classes, but I was going to stay in my room until
the last possible moment and no one was going to stop me. I kept my head down
all the way to the dorms, cradling my food close to me and not responding to
anyone who seemed like they were trying to get my attention. I could only
imagine what the team had said about my appearance in the weight room. I could
only imagine what everyone on campus was saying about me—how stupid I’d
been,
what a crazy fool I was to think that Zack was
anything other than a partying frat boy. I decided that I was going to stick
with eating in my room, going to the
library
 
and
my classes and otherwise just
avoiding anyone. And if Jess tried to convince me to go to any more parties, I
was going to tell her to go to hell.

CHAPTER
TWO

After a few days, I managed to calm down. I was
steadily miserable, but at least I was able to focus on my classes and my life
once more. I was actually almost grateful for what had happened; it would have
been really easy for me to totally and completely be distracted by Zack in my
life if I hadn’t found out the kind of person that he was. I would’ve mooned
along, totally wrapped up in him; having great sex, for sure, but probably
missing deadlines and losing the quality of my work.

Jess had been keeping a wide berth around me—or
maybe, I thought with grim humor, she was just too busy to be in the dorms very
much. In the bottom half of the semester, everyone was focusing down more on
their studies, trying to pull their grades up or finish strong. I had competition
to book a private study room in the library every morning, but I hated the
thought of being out in the middle of the room where Zack could see me and try
and talk to me—if he dared. I didn’t want to have to listen to the murmurs
around me either; so I kept my headphones on and just went straight to the room
I booked for studying and stayed in there as long as I was allotted and came
out with my headphones on. It would boil over in time, and someone else would
do something humiliating to take the attention off of me. It was just a matter
of getting through it.

I had somehow managed to get through all of my
classwork—I even got ahead a few chapters on the American History syllabus and
read ahead in the assignments for literature and Intro to Journalism. With
nothing to do, I decided an afternoon of watching TV, eating snacks, and just
letting my mind drift was the best possible use of my time
.
 
I popped cheese-flavored crackers into
my mouth mindlessly, staring at the TV and relaxing, not thinking about
anything in particular.

My vegetation was interrupted by the sound of the
dorm door opening. Jess came into the room quickly, grinning as she threw
herself into a chair. “Gotten over Zack yet?” she asked me.

I scowled.

“Come on, Jess, don’t be a bitch.”

Jess sighed and rolled her eyes, reaching over and
snatching the box from the coffee table and dumping out a handful. She popped a
few into her mouth, chewing and swallowing before she spoke again.

“Well, I mean, it’s been a few days since you kicked
him to the curb. So I figured you wouldn’t mind doing me a favor.”

I raised an eyebrow and snatched the box of crackers
away from her, pouring some into my hand and putting the box back onto the
table.

“Oh, so not concern for my well-being, but my
ability to help you out.”

 
Jess grinned
broadly. “Well, see, it’s not just helpful to me, but it could be helpful to
you, too!” I was suspicious of the chirpy tone of her voice.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Tell me what this is about.”

“Well you know how I’m having a bit of trouble in
Economics?” I had heard Jess moaning from her room over how difficult her
Economics class was—and how little hope she had of finishing with a decent
grade.

“Yeah,” I said cautiously. What did her problems
with Econ have to do with my single status?

“So there’s this guy in my class, Derick.” I pressed
my lips together.
Of course.
“Trust me,
Evie
, if I could have convinced him to help me by giving
him a date with me, I’d have done it. But he’s not into me. He’s into you.”