The Learning Hours (How to Date a Douchebag 3)

Girls come back to the house all the damn time.

I don’t get it.

My phone chooses that moment to go off like a bell for a five-alarm fire, and Johnson practically vaults himself over the table, grabbing at my phone, holding it out of my reach.

“I know you’re holding out on us, dude. Let’s see some of these messages.”

It takes him a less than a second to access my texts, his eyes growing wide as his finger moves up and down the screen.

“Holy shit. Gunderson, listen to this one: I’ll blow you if you let me record it.” He looks up from my phone. “Here’s one that just came through—it’s a crotch shot.”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting lots of those.”

His fingers scroll over my screen, eyes wide as saucers. “Dude, fuck yeah you have. Look at this girl’s tits! They’re huge!”

“Are you putting any of those in your spank bank?” Gunderson wants to know. “Please tell me you’re at least yanking it to some of these.”

Not that I’m going to admit it to them, but yeah, I am.

I take my phone back just as it pings again.

And again.

I look down to see a text from the same girl who’s been texting me for hours.

Alex: On a scale of one to ten, how bad do you blush when you get a new message?

Me: 8

Alex: That’s kind of cute.

“Who’s texting you and why the fuck are you smiling like that?” Gunderson interrupts with his loud, irritating voice and nosy questions. “It’s weird.”

Jesus. He’s so fucking annoying.

“None of your business.”

“Is it some girl you’re chatting with? Come on, there has to be at least one.” He’s cackling. “Does this mean you’re finally ready to fuck the butt-hurt out of your system?”

“No.”

No.

Maybe.

My guard is coming down, so I’m not going to stand here and say the idea hasn’t crossed my mind since I started texting Alex. She may have messaged me under false pretenses, but…

I feel like her intentions might be changing the more we message. She texts cute, sounds sassy. Plus, she already knows what I look like and continues to flirt with me.

Bonus.

My phone dings with a new notification and I palm it, walking away from the table, toward my room. I enter and toss myself on the bed, lying on my back, staring at the ceiling.

.

Laurel

“I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t bore me to death,” my roommate Lana announces, popping a pretzel in her mouth.

It’s movie night at our house—Wednesday—one of the few days of the week none of us has a class, and as luck would have it, tonight, none of us have to work either.

Well, my roommates don’t have to work tonight, and I don’t have my job at the coffee shop anymore because as my parents put it, my new job is to “study and get good grades with the intention of graduating in four years.”

I have no break in my academic schedule, taking four extra credits and still two classes behind my goal to graduate on time. Playing catch-up with summer classes is going to suck.

“Tell me about it,” Donovan says, sticking his giant hand into the popcorn bucket perched on my lap, the three of us side by side on the couch, binging on butter popcorn, gossip, and chick flicks. All three of us are single and looking for a serious relationship.

I’m a junior now.

I’m done messing around with frat boys and one-night stands. After dating man-children who care only about two things—sex and themselves—I’m ready to find something more meaningful.

Don’t get me wrong—I love sex, I do, and I love guys; I just haven’t met one who’s wanted more from me. At the end of the day, they’re all just boys, really.

I’m tired of being used.

“The guys out there are nothing but fuckboys,” Donovan muses with a pout, popping a kernel and chewing. “You think you girls have it rough? Girl, please, the gay dating struggle is real.”

I snuggle deeper into his large body. “You’re all the man we need, Donnie.”

“Donnie.” He snorts, shoving me off him. “God I hate when you call me that. It makes me sound so suburban.”

I grin knowingly. “I know.”

We hunker down for the next few minutes, quietly watching the movie, a silly romantic comedy about a girl who writes a how-to column for a magazine and spends the entire movie trying to get the guy she’s fake dating to dump her.

It’s old, but one of my favorites.

Lane peels her eyes from the TV. “What’s that cousin of yours up to? Haven’t seen her around lately.”

I shrug, hug the popcorn bucket, and reach in for a buttery handful. “You know Alex.”

Lana twists her torso to study my face. “Why are you saying it like that?” Narrows her eyes. “Did she do something?”

Lana, Donovan, and I met our freshman year, when Alexandra was my roommate and I hid in their dorms as a means of escape when she had guys over, or any of her ridiculously catty friends.

Over the past few years, through honest late-night life chats and plenty more drunken ones, Lana and I have formed an unbreakable bond. An only child, Donovan and I are the siblings she’s always wanted, and for her part, Lana sometimes knows me better than I know myself. She knows what’s best for me, and I should be listening to her more often, not my damn cousin.

“She hasn’t done anything.” Not technically.

“Did you?”

Shrug. “In a roundabout way.”

“Stop vaguebooking and spit it out.”

“Can you actually use that term if you’re not online?” I ask skeptically, evading the subject, tapping my chin because I know it’s cute.

“Stop stalling and just tell us.”

I take the braid hanging over my shoulder and pick at the ends, avoiding both their curious glances. “Have either of you seen that flyer around campus? It’s green and has a guy’s face printed on it?”

“A guy’s face?”

“Yeah. His face, and his phone number.”

“Is this going to be a long story? Like, should I pause the movie?” Donovan asks, already pointing the remote at the television. “Tell me now or forever hold your peace.”

I nod. “Okay, so, there are these athletes playing a prank on one of their teammates. They hung these horrible posters around campus—I’m not sure how many, but there’s a huge caption above the photocopied face that says, Get Rett Laid.” I cringe. “They’re so bad.”

Lana furrows her brow, repulsed. “It doesn’t surprise me that someone would do that. People are so freaking rude.”

I ignore the dig. “Like I said, the posters have his phone number on it…” My voice trails off, gets small. I bury my face in the blanket that’s on my lap. “So I texted him.”

They both stare at me. Blink.

“What did you just say?” Donovan pokes me. “You’re mumbling.”

“What do you mean you texted him?” Lana narrows her eyes. Out of the three of us, she’s the only one with a strong moral compass. “Why would you do that, Laurel? It’s mean.”

I lift my head, continue picking at my braid.

“What was the point of the posters?”

Do I seriously have to explain it to her? “To get him laid, just like it says.”

“You’re not having sex with a stranger! Or did you become a prostitute overnight and didn’t tell us?” Lana fires off without taking a breath. “Why would you do that, Laurel? Why?”

Donovan holds up his hand to stop us both from talking. “No, no, don’t tell us, let us guess—Alex made you do it. Your cousin and that stupid-ass voodoo ball dared you to text the poor guy.”

“Something like that.” I laugh into my shoulder. They know her too well.

Lana nudges me with her pointy elbow. “So? Aren’t you going to tell us what happened?”

“So I texted him and it was fun.”

They look disappointed. “That’s it?”

I shrug.