For Real

  For Real (Rules of Love, Book One)

  Copyright © 2013 Chelsea M. Cameron

  www.chelseamcameron.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are use fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. All rights reserved.

  Edited by Jen Henricks

  Cover Copyright © Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations

  Interior Design byNovel Ninjutsu

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but can you watch my computer?”

  “What?” I pull my earbuds out and look up to meet a pair of astonishingly golden-brown eyes set in a chiseled face under a head of black hair shaved short on the sides and left long on top and gelled to one side like a wave. From the top of his shirt peek several tattoos and both arms are also covered, but I don’t have a chance to see what they are, as my eyes are drawn back to his eyes and I’m left momentarily without words.

  I fish for something in my brain to say and come up with two words.

  “Yeah, sure.” Brilliant.

  He flashes me a quick smile, pulls his ringing cellphone out of one baggy pocket, and dashes out of the cafe. I’ve been so immersed in working on my paper that I hadn’t even seen him come in, even though he’s been sitting at a table right behind me.

  Outside, he’s strolling up and down the sidewalk in front of the cafe, talking on his phone, a smile on his face. I turn in my chair and sneak a peek at his laptop, which is open to Facebook. I’m too far away to see anything, but I know the page layout well enough. He also has a stack of books, and a notebook open with some scribbles in it. A cup of black coffee steams next to the computer. I turn back around so he won’t catch me being a total creeper. Plus, I need to get back to work. I can’t get distracted now.

  I’m just starting the second semester of my junior year, and I can almost taste my degree. It tastes like victory and thick paper. In less than two years I’ll have a bachelor’s of science degree in business and be well on my way to an MBA. It makes me shiver inside just thinking about having my own office at the top of a glossy skyscraper, sitting at my mahogany desk and crossing my nylon-clad legs as I sign a corporate merger with a pen that probably costs more than the car I currently drive. Utter bliss. Yes, I want to have money when I’m older. I’ve lived twenty-one years without it. I know it can’t buy happiness, but my family was pretty miserable without it.

  My phone buzzes with a text from my roommate, Hazel. I open it to find a picture of a penis.

  I’ve never sexted with a boy. Just Hazel. Maybe I should look into the lesbian thing.

  Shut it down, Shannon. Shut it down and focus. I breathe three times, in and out, closing my eyes and emptying my mind. Every thought drains out and I lock my eyes back on my computer screen. My paper isn’t due until next week, but I never wait until the last minute to do a paper like everyone else. You never get anywhere by procrastinating, as has been proven by both my parents and my older brother, Cole, through the dizzying array of semi-failed jobs and careers they’ve had. My brother can’t even make it as a pot dealer, his current occupation. Probably because he smokes too much of his product.

  Sometimes I’m convinced I was adopted. Even though I look like the rest of my family, with dishwater blonde hair (that I cover up with highlights) and blue eyes, I don’t act like a single one of them. I’ve heard my parents wonder more than once if I was possessed. They were joking, of course, but it still stings when they point out what I’m already painfully aware of, that I don’t fit in. I’m the black freaking sheep.

  “Thanks.” The laptop guy is back. He braces his hands on my table and leans down so his face is close to mine. Dude, invade my personal bubble much? “I don’t normally trust strangers with my stuff, but you look . . .” his eyes skim their way up and down my body, and I shift under his scrutiny. “Trustworthy,” he finally says.

  Well, I probably do. I have to go to work in the operations department of a local bank later, so I have a black pencil skirt with a white blouse tucked into it and my cute-but-comfortable tan pumps on. In contrast, his shirt has a cartoon robot splashed across the front and his jeans are really baggy, but not sagging too much. It would be clear to anyone looking at us side-by-side that we have next to nothing in common.

  “I think that’s a compliment,” I say as he straightens up and starts moving back toward his table.

  “That’s up to you,” he says, walking backwards and finally sitting back down. I turn back around, shaking my head. Whatever.

  I start putting my earbuds back in, but stop when someone taps me on the shoulder.

  “For your trouble,” he says, as I slowly turn around to see him standing right behind my chair, holding a plate out to me with a scone on it. “Raspberry scone?”

  “Uh, no. Thank you. I’m good.” I just polished off a blueberry muffin and I’m on my second cup of black tea.

  “You sure? This is a really good scone. You could wrap it up and take it home with you.” He waves the plate in front of me, as if that’s supposed to entice me.

  “No, thanks.” I turn around again and hope he’ll go away.

  “Fine, then I guess I’ll just owe you one.”

  I turn my music back on and ignore him. Saint-Sens fills my ears and drowns out the rest of the noise in the cafe as I pull my focus back to my paper.

  An hour later, I type the finishing touches and start packing my things up. The guy is gone, and I’ve been too absorbed to notice when he’d left. My chances of seeing him ever again are slim, since Central Maine University has nearly ten thousand students, and most of them are commuters.

  I say a quick prayer before turning the key on my Crown Victoria (which I got dirt cheap because it was a former police car), hoping it’ll start. Thankfully, the engine engages with a minimum of sputtering and I drive from downtown Hartford to the next town over, Deermont, where my job is. I park near the back of the building and swipe my card in the door. I have just enough time to get to my desk, turn my computer on and clock in. So far, I have never been late. Not only because I hate being late, but I’m also terrified of my boss.

  My cubicle is near the back of the building, in the “farm” as everyone calls it. I say hello to a few of my coworkers, most of whom are fellow students. My favorite coworker, Amelia, isn’t working today. Bummer. Nearly everyone else’s cubicles just has a few papers or photographs, but hers is covered with her drawings and positive notes and pictures of butterflies. Amelia’s the sunniest person I’ve ever met. Sometimes she’s too much, but things never seem too bad when she’s around.

  I have a stack of loan files that need to be scanned, so I start with removing the staples from all the pages. Yes, it’s as boring as it sounds, but at least I can listen to my music. I put my earbuds back in and get to work. This is what I need to do to get where I want to be. Everyone has to start somewhere. I have to pay my dues, even if that means removing staples from a two-hundred page appraisal.

  Three hours later, I am ready to go back to my apartment and get busy on more homework. I’m fishing in my purse for my keys when my hand closes on something. It’s a paper crane folded out of notebook paper. What the heck? I don’t know where it came from, but I know that it wasn’t in there this morning. My mind drifts back to the café, and the guy with the laptop. Maybe he dropped it in there?

  It’s a weird thing to do, so I hope it was by accident. He’s Asian, so maybe it’s just a thing that he does to celebrate his culture? God, is that racist? I don’t mean it to be.

  I turn it over in my h
and as I walk to my car, my heels crunching on the pavement. Cranes are supposed to be good luck or something, so I set it on my dashboard. I don’t really believe in superstition, but you can never be too careful. I don’t want to risk any bad mojo.

  “I’m baaaaack,” I say as I unlock the front door to my craptastic apartment. I shuck off my heels and sigh in relief. There is nothing quite as nice as taking your heels off at the end of a long day. Except maybe taking your bra off. Men could just never understand that.

  “How was work?” Hazel, my roommate, is hovering over a pot of something in our microscopic kitchen. This could be bad.

  “Fine. What are you making?” I say, setting my bag down and trying to avoid the kitchen, in case this turns out to be one of her experiments.

  “Relax, it’s from a box.” She holds up an empty box of mac and cheese. I don’t breathe easier, because she’s definitely messed that up more than once. “And I bought a pre-made salad and there is ice cream. So we’re good.” Only then do I let out a breath. She holds the spoon out and I take a bite. Phew.

  “I swear, every time I cook you act like I’m feeding you poison.” Hazel and I had become friends two years ago when we’d lived next door to each other in the dorms. She’d had issues with her roommate, I’d had issues with mine, and we’d ended up moving in together halfway through the year. We’ve lived together ever since. We were both poor as all get-out, but we’d managed to find an apartment in Deermont and it hasn’t fallen apart yet, although it’s held together with duct tape and staples.

  As much as we get along, Hazel and I are visual opposites. Her skin is gorgeous and dark and she tans within twenty seconds of standing in the sun. Her dark hair curls in perfect rings, unlike mine that tends to do its own thing and be curly on some days and not so curly on other days.

  With the kind of figure that made guys eyes pop when she dances, she definitely gets more attention from the opposite (and sometimes the same) sex than I do.

  “You going to work?” A few months ago, Hazel had gotten herself a job as a bartender at the campus bar a few nights a week. It’s a little bit classier than some of the college establishments, but the tips suck, so it’s a tradeoff. At least, if one of the patrons gets rowdy, she can call campus security and they actually show up.

  “Yeah, in an hour. Remind me why I didn’t sell my organs online to pay for my education?” I grab a fork and start stealing bites of mac and cheese from the pot. I’m starving, so I’m willing to take a risk.

  “Because it’s illegal?”

  “Right. That. They might frown upon that at law school, yes?”

  I nod and she gets a fork, too. We often eat dinner like this. Less dishes to wash.

  “Usually.”

  We finish off the pot and then share the salad from the plastic container as we sit on the couch and work on our various never-ending homework assignments.

  “So it’s going to happen tonight,” Hazel says as she puts on the tight shirt she always wears to work. It shows a lot of cleavage, but she gets better tips that way. I don’t hate the player, I hate the game in this instance.

  “What’s going to happen?” I already know the answer.

  “I am going to find a nice young man to pop that cherry of yours.” She jabs her fork at me and I back up so she doesn’t stab me with it.

  There it is again. The reminder that I’m a card-carrying member of the Virginity Club. I wish I had some good reason, that I was saving myself for Jesus, or my parents had put the fear in me, or told me that if I had sex with a boy that my ears would fall off and I’d gain forty pounds, but I have no such excuse.

  The truth is, boys are just gross. Part of me is still semi-convinced they have cooties.

  I’ve sort of dated, but every time I think about getting physical, or close to a guy, he smells weird, or has hair on his knuckles, or burps or does something else to completely turn me off.

  I’ve been on a few dates here and there, but usually I have to send out an emergency call to one of my friends. In high school, rumors went around that I was a lesbian, and I went ahead and let them spread. Of course, then girls started hitting on me, but they were easier to fend off.

  I thought that in college, I’d have the chance to maybe meet someone. But, here I am, well into my junior year and that fellow hasn’t shown up yet. Sure, there are plenty of guys on campus, but a lot of them are taken. Or gay. Or taken and gay. Or total and complete douchebags. Or budding alcoholics. Or gay, taken, douchebag alcoholics.

  Since my friends have always struck out when it came to setting me up with a boy in order to make him my boyfriend, they’ve lowered their expectations to just getting me laid.

  I don’t exactly advertise my virginity, but it always seems to come up when people are drinking and swapping stories, and I get red-faced and run away to the bathroom when everyone starts talking about their first times.

  “How many times have I told you I’m set? It will happen when it’s supposed to happen.” This is always my response. Even though it’s probably bullshit.

  She shakes her head, her curls bouncing. “Don’t give me that fairy godmother, dreams come true shit. We don’t need to find your prince charming. Just a non-skeezy guy to do you a service. Think of him as . . . a plumber.” She scrapes the bottom of the salad container for the last few croutons.

  “A plumber? Have you ever seen a sexy plumber? Outside of a porno?” One of the other things my friends have done to try to make me want to have sex is make me watch it. I’d only lasted about five minutes when I had to run away and beg them to shut it off. Seeing other people . . . doing things like that? I don’t understand how anyone can find that sexy. Plus, the girls were like, unbelievably flexible. No way I can contort myself like that.

  I’d been branded as a prude from then on.

  “Why are you so hung up about it? I know you have a little battery friend.”

  “Yeah, so? I’m a virgin, but I’m not supposed to know about my own body?” Hazel has also surprised me a time or two when I thought I was alone. “I have a sex drive, Haze. Being a virgin doesn’t stop me from having sexual feelings.”

  In fact, I probably have more than the average girl, just because they are so . . . pent up.

  “We just need to take those sexual feelings and transfer them to something with a penis. A real penis. With a boy attached to it.”

  I shake my head and go to take a shower.

  When I get out of the shower, Hazel yells to me that she’s going to work. I change into my favorite sweats and start on some more homework. I’m NEVER done with homework. Or maybe it’s never done with me.

  As soon as I finish everything on my To Do list, I finally allow myself a reward: a few chapters of the book I’d gotten last week. It’s a heart-wrenching contemporary, and I know it’s bound to make me cry. Hazel is always telling me that I’m missing out on the college experience, but I’d rather not wake up on the floor of a strange apartment, under a strange naked guy, not knowing how I’d gotten there. If that makes me a loser, then I guess I’ll wear that label proudly. I can party when I’ve gotten what I wanted.

  I plug my phone in, making sure the alarm is set for seven, and shut the light off. I try to go to sleep, but my mind is busy and chattering in my skull and making it difficult. I don’t like to dwell on negative thoughts, because they’re rarely productive, but tonight they seem especially loud. I blame it on the encounter with Laptop Guy.

  Maybe the reason I haven’t found a good guy is that he doesn’t exist. That there’s something in me that’s . . . allergic to them. I’m attracted to them, sure, but the moment things get close, I just . . . can’t go any further. I find flaws and they turn me off.

  I’m a control freak. No one needs to tell me that. I’ve known it my whole life. Ever since I freaked out when my mom didn’t put the crayons in the box exactly the way they’d been when we’d opened it. I’ve always needed order, and things to be just so. It’s a wonder I don’t have Obsessiv
e-compulsive disorder. Hazel is always telling me I should get tested when I spend fifteen minutes rearranging the plates the right way after she’s unloaded the dishwasher.

  Sex is one of those things that’s a complete loss of control. You give yourself up, in your most vulnerable state, to another person, and they give themselves to you. I don’t think I’m ready for that. For the . . . intimacy. I mentally gag on the word.

  I spend the rest of the night tossing and turning and thinking about sex until it’s too much and I have to get myself off a few times just so I can sleep. Can you be a nymphomaniac if you only have sex with yourself? Finally, I fall into a semi-restless sleep, and I’m grumpy when I get up the next morning.

  Hazel’s passed out in her room, so I make sure I’m as quiet as I can be while I get ready and drive to campus for yet another day of my undergraduate career. I’m setting my travel mug in the cupholder when I notice the paper crane. Shrugging, I toss it in my bag. It can keep my pens company.

  I end up carrying the crane with me for the rest of the week, but I don’t see Laptop Guy again. Hazel also hasn’t been able to find me a guy at work, so on Friday night I’m told, for the thousandth time, that I must get myself ready to go on the prowl. Fun, fun, fun.

  Sometimes, I wonder if I should just tell my friends to go fuck themselves. To leave me alone about it. I can picture how that would go, and it wouldn’t stop them from continuing to try. It would probably make them work even harder, actually. So, I curl my hair, put on my “going out” make-up, which is a little sexier than my normal make-up routine, and make sure that my boobs are boosted and show to good advantage. There aren’t a whole lot of social options around, and the local bars are more than happy to cater to the collage populace. Despite the fact that Hazel works in a bar, the only thing she seems to want to do with her time off is . . . go to a bar.

  “Are y’all ready yet?” Jordyn, our resident Southern Belle (who completely denies it, despite the overwhelming evidence), stands in the kitchen and taps her heel on the floor. A South Carolina girl at heart, she’s somehow convinced that her upbringing left no impression on her.