“Why didn’t you swallow it?” Dean swore again and Henry lifted his head to see him standing behind Elaine. “They’re supposed to test the water tomorrow!”

  Henry half-sat up on his elbows, seeing his waning cock, trapped by the elastic edge of his boxers, and Elaine’s wet face, covered and dripping with his cum.

  “I couldn’t swallow it all,” Elaine panted, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “It was too much!”

  That’s when Henry realized he couldn’t see Libby. He heard something behind him, a shuffling sound, and when he glanced back, he saw her almost fully dressed, pulling on her jacket.

  “Hey.” Henry sat fully now, shoving himself back into his boxers and standing. He glanced back once guiltily at Elaine, but he couldn’t just let Libby go. “Wait. Libby, wait!”

  She didn’t look back as she opened the French doors and went through them. He swore, grabbing his clothes and going after her, not thinking twice, but stopping every few steps to pull something else on—jeans, shirt, shoes. He shoved his socks in his jacket pocket as he shrugged it on, hurrying out of the front door of the frat house.

  She was already almost to the end of the block.

  “Libby!” He called after her, breaking into a run. His phone rang in his jeans pocket and he swore again, pulling it out, sure it was Dean.

  It was his mother. He shoved it back into his pocket, still running toward Libby, almost there now. She was walking fast, but she was only walking.

  “Libby!” He grabbed her arm, whirling her around. “I’m sorry. Libby, I’m so sorry.”

  “Whatever.” She waved him away, turning and starting to walk again.

  “I’m drunk.” Some excuse, he thought, glancing over at her. Her head was down, her wet hair stuck to her cheeks. “It was stupid. I didn’t...”

  “Henry.” She stopped. “Just don’t.” She blinked at him, her mouth working, as if she was looking for something to say. “I should never have…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes looked wet in the moonlight. “Let’s just forget tonight, okay?”

  “But—” His phone rang again and he dug it out of his pocket and flipped it open. His mother again. Damnit.

  “You should answer that.” She turned and started walking again. “See you around, Henry.”

  He took a deep breath, turning from Libby as she walked away and answered his phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Henry!” His mother’s concerned voice came through the phone so loudly he held it away from his ear. “Are you okay?”

  He glanced back and saw Libby turn the corner. “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all week!”

  “Sorry. I was…busy.” He started walking back toward the frat house, realizing for the first time how cold it was—and he was still damp.

  “I got a call from your professor.”

  Henry froze on the frat house steps, his breath gone. “You did?”

  “You’re one lucky young man.”

  “What?” The word barely made it out of his mouth.

  “Not many students get to be personally tutored by their professors.” His mother sounded smug.

  Henry sank to the steps, sitting. “What are you talking about?”

  “Toni’s agreed to tutor you.” He could hear the satisfaction in her voice. She got that tone whenever she felt she’d solved a big problem.

  “Toni…who in the hell is Toni?” He was drunk, but he had a feeling this conversation should still be making more sense than it was.

  “You didn’t recognize her?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Recognize who?”

  “Toni Franklin. Don’t you remember?” His mother laughed. “She and her husband have lived around the block for years. They used to come over and play cards.”

  “No…” He frowned, blinking up at the stars. Toni Franklin? Why did the name sound so familiar?

  “Well, you were pretty little…” His mother conceded. “Anyway, she thinks she can help you bring up your grade.”

  Then it dawned on him. Toni Franklin. The name stenciled on her office door—Antoinette Franklin. Professor Franklin.

  Just what were the odds on that? Henry gulped. “What did she say?”

  “Just that you were having trouble and she was willing to tutor you.”

  “Mom, I don’t need a tutor.” I need a fairy fucking godmother.

  “Well you’ve got one, young man.” He hated when she used that tone. It meant she’d solved it all and there was nothing more to be said about it. “I made an appointment for you with her tomorrow at two. You don’t have a class then, do you?”

  “No.” He had hockey practice at noon, but all morning classes. What the hell was he going to do now?

  “You’re supposed to meet in her office. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yeah.” The door opened behind him and he glanced up to see Elaine coming out. For a minute, he thought she might be crying. “Hey, listen, I’ve gotta go.”

  “Henry, you’d better show up,” his mother warned. “I mean it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay, I will.” He hung up on her, getting up as Elaine rushed down the stairs, headed the way Libby had gone. He called after her, but she ignored him, practically running down the block. Henry sat back down on the steps, his head in his hands.

  There was only one thing he was sure of now.

  Life couldn’t get any more complicated than this.

  But he was wrong.

  Chapter Five

  Henry knocked, barely getting out the words, “Professor Franklin?”

  “Come in!”

  It was like déjà-vu, a replay of the events of last week. He didn’t think he would ever be able to face her again, let alone be standing across from the woman actually asking for help.

  “Hi Henry.” Professor Franklin stood, coming out from behind her desk to shut the door behind him, gesturing toward a seat. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Not likely, he thought, sitting stiffly in the chair. His hair was still wet from the showers—hockey practice had gone long, and although the coach had warned him he’d be off the team if it happened again, he’d managed to smooth over his absence the week before.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Professor Franklin didn’t sit in the chair behind her desk this time. Instead, she came to lean against it, half-standing, half-sitting on the surface, right next to him. “Can we start over again?”

  “Sure.” Henry focused his attention out the window. It was cold and windy, dead leaves chasing each other out on the lawn. “I guess so.”

  “I’d like to do an assessment with you.”

  He frowned, glancing up at her. “You want me to take a test?”

  “No, not a test,” she assured him, her eyes softening. She really was a very pretty woman, although Henry couldn’t remember, for the life of him, anything about her coming over to their house like his mother indicated she had. “It’s just an assessment. It will give us an idea where you are and what you need to work on.”

  “I can’t read.” He’d never said those words out loud to anyone, ever, and he didn’t even know how he’d managed to say them now. They made his breath turn shallow, his stomach flip. But there was something about the way she looked at him—understanding in her eyes, but strangely, no pity.

  “That’s the first step.” Her smile made her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Admitting you have a problem.”

  He shook his head and gazed back out the window. “You can say that again.”

  “How did you make it this far, Henry?” She sounded both incredulous and sad.

  “The truth?” He watched a black squirrel scurry across the quad and up the nearest maple.

  “The truth,” she insisted. “It’s safe with me.”

  He met her eyes, leaning back in his chair. Why not spill it? What did he have to lose? “Sometimes I cheated. Sometimes I lied. Sometimes I paid people to write papers or essays for me. But mostly, I just played hockey.”

  “Hockey?”

  He continued, “I went to a private school and they guaranteed me a varsity spot before I even tried out for the team. It was all about hockey. They even cut the budget for the football team my senior year so the hockey team could go to the International tournament. We were state champions three out of my four years. College and NHL scouts were around year long. They kept a count at the local Best Western. And I had my pick of colleges.” He said it all matter-of-factly, without any hint of arrogance.

  “Hence the scholarship.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged, as if it meant nothing, but it meant everything to him. Everything.

  Her lips were pressed together in a line, an expression Henry had come to recognize as annoyance or anger. “So your coach and your teachers had an arrangement?”

  “Something like that.” He looked back out the window. The squirrel was down on the ground again, digging. “I never really asked. They just…passed me.”

  “And your parents have no idea?”

  He glanced up, panicked. “You can’t tell them.”

  “I should.” She pulled herself up onto the desk fully and crossed her legs. She was wearing a skirt of course, a white one with brown spots, and Henry couldn’t help but admire her legs, even in his sudden state of panic. “I called your mother with every intention…”

  “Please!” Henry reached out, grabbing her wrist, the touch startling them both. He took his hand away, trying to breathe. “You can’t. You just can’t.”

  “My father was illiterate,” she explained, one of her feet swinging. She always wore heels and today was no exception—soft brown pumps—and one of them hung precariously from the end of her toes. “He spent his whole life unable to read. It’s no way to live.”

  Henry stiffened. “Don’t feel sorry for me.” Now he understood how she had known, why her thoughts had immediately jumped to the conclusion she had when he sat there, frozen, staring dumbly at the paper she had given him, unable to read it out loud.

  “I don’t,” she assured him. “My father was born in an era that didn’t even have names for learning disabilities, let alone ways to test for them. You don’t have that luxury.”

  “I…I guess not.” He blinked at her, trying to remember a time, way back in elementary school, when he’d first started having trouble. He’d been so embarrassed by his affliction that he’d convinced his older sister to read to him from his school books over and over, thus memorizing the text, and when he was “tested,” he passed with flying colors. That was just the beginning of his ruse.

  “I’m angry that someone didn’t notice before this.” Her eyes narrowed at the thought. “That you were able to slip through the cracks simply because you were good at some stupid sport.”

  Henry narrowed his eyes right back at her. “Hockey means everything to me.”

  “Well, if you want to keep playing, and you want to stay in school, you’re going to have to learn how to read,” she said simply.

  She had him there.

  “I got a book,” he admitted.

  “What book?”

  He flushed, remembering the snafu of checking it out, meeting Libby. “Phonics for Dummies.”

  The professor smiled. She had a dimple in one cheek when she did that he’d never noticed before. Maybe because, in class, he didn’t really see her smile very much. “Decided to start at the beginning?”

  “Where else are you supposed to start?” He shrugged helplessly.

  “Here.” She leaned forward and he caught a whiff of her scent, something flowery, when she got near. “With me. Are you ready?”

  “I guess.”

  “No guessing.” She was the professor again, all-business. “You either want to work or you don’t. I’m more than willing to give up my time to help you learn, but you have to be committed. Can you commit?”

  Henry watched the squirrel holding onto his found nut for dear life, peering from side to side, as if something could take it away at any moment. He knew exactly how the little guy felt. “I really don’t have much of a choice.”

  “Of course you do,” she countered, still in business mode. “You always have a choice. My father had a choice. He died still not knowing how to read, but at any point in his life, he could have chosen differently.”

  “It’s so hard…” Henry blinked, willing tears not to fall. Christ, he couldn’t believe he was letting himself get emotional about this in front of her. “You have no idea.”

  “Yes, I do.” She leaned toward him again, her eyes on his, steady. “You walking in here today and telling me you can’t read may be hardest thing you ever have to do, but it was also the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He couldn’t answer her and if he’d had a voice left at all, it would have disappeared completely anyway when she lifted her hand and ran it tentatively through his still-wet hair.

  She laughed when she saw the bemused look on his face. “I’m sorry. You really don’t remember, do you?”

  “Remember?”

  “Well you were young…my ex and I used to come over and play cards with your parents…” Her voice trailed off, as if she was reminiscing, but Henry couldn’t recall a thing about it. “You were such a sweet little blonde boy. I wanted to steal you and take you home with me.”

  He shrugged, offering her a lopsided smirk. “What happened, huh?”

  “Well the little towhead disappeared, that’s for sure.” She laughed, a sound he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard, her hand still moving in his now-dark hair. “But I think you turned out all right.”

  “Except for the whole reading thing,” he reminded her, frowning.

  “We’ll work on that. Yes?” She stood, going back behind her desk to sit and pull out some papers.

  “Yes,” he agreed. He still had a rock sitting in his stomach, but at least it didn’t feel quite so heavy now.

  She was like a different person when she smiled. “Let’s get started.”

  * * * *

  “Come on!” Dean slammed his fist on the table beside him, jarring the cups and bottles of beer sitting on it. “That was the worst fucking pass I’ve ever seen!”

  Henry sank back further into the low couch in the fraternity common room, grabbing his beer off the table just in case Dean decided to pound on it again.

  “Dude, what the hell did you bet on the Lions for anyway?” Cody nudged Dean’s shoulder.

  “Long shots pay off big.” Dean scowled. “Fucking pussy!” he yelled at the wide screen. “Can’t hold onto a goddamned football?”

  “Butterfingers,” Henry observed, hiding his smile against his beer bottle as he took a swig.

  “Dick,” Dean growled, glaring at him. He was practically foaming at the mouth.

  “So Henry, guess who I saw in the kitchen?” Cody dropped his voice, leaning in to make himself heard over the music and the television.

  “I have no idea.” Henry tried not to snicker when the Lions fumbled yet another pass and Dean jumped out of his seat with a string of profanity, starting to pace in front of the couch like a caged lion.

  “Val.” Cody laughed when Henry nearly let his beer bottle slip from his hand.

  “You’re kidding me?” Henry hadn’t seen her—hadn’t ever expected to see her again—since that night. Although, he had to admit, he’d had a few Fleshlight sessions replaying the whole thing in his head. “Is Marcus here?”

  Cody shrugged. “Didn’t see him.”

  Henry still couldn’t figure that whole thing out. If she was Marcus’s girlfriend, as Dean claimed, then why in the hell had she volunteered to do what she did? Dean said she was just kinky like that, and it had actually all been her idea. He didn’t know if he could believe it, though. Dean liked to tell tall tales, and it was often hard to know when he was telling the truth or pulling your leg. He still didn’t know how they’d managed to get the girl out of there without it all degenerating into a gang rape, considering the energy in the room that night, but Marcus had ushered her out pretty quickly afterward.

  Now she was here? How in the hell could she possibly walk back into the place, knowing that most of these guys had seen her in such a compromising position?

  “Speak of the devil.” Cody gestured toward the door and Henry caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. It was her all right, no mistaking those big, darkly made-up eyes. She was wearing more clothes tonight, though—a short black and red checked leather skirt and a red sweater that all matched her red and black streaked hair.

  “Hey, boys.” The sound of her voice made Henry’s mouth go dry. It brought that whole night back into focus, which was both exciting and embarrassing at once.

  “Hey, Val.” Cody tipped his bottle at her. “Want a beer?”

  “No thanks.” She plopped down onto the couch next to Henry, sitting close enough that her thigh brushed his when she crossed her legs. “How you doing, Henry?”

  “Fine.”

  Dean swore again, stalking away from the television, and Henry glanced at the score. The Lions were down by twenty-one and it was only half-time.

  “I need more alcohol,” Dean grumbled, walking by them.

  Val crinkled her nose. She had a diamond stud in it. “What’s his problem?”

  “I think he bet on the wrong team,” Cody piped up.

  “I hate it when that happens.” Val’s reply was directed at Cody, but she didn’t stop focusing on Henry. He could feel her gaze on him.

  “So where’s Marcus?” Henry took a swig of his beer, pretending to be interested in the half-time show. Cheerleaders—what was there not to like?

  “He’s on a date.”

  Henry startled, glancing over at her. “A…date?”

  “Yeah.” Her smile was slow, her mouth curling at the corners, and he couldn’t help but remember how it felt when she kissed him. “We’re not exclusive. We have an arrangement.”

  “Ah.” Henry looked back to the television.

  “Besides, I’m tired of being a sports widow,” Val pouted, crossing her arms and pushing her not inconsiderable breasts up. He could remember every luscious inch of them. He tried to distract himself with the television, thinking about Libby. She wouldn’t call him back. He’d even tried going through Elaine, but she wouldn’t call him either.

 

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