Bad Boy Hero - Tanglewood Academy

7

The meager social life I’d managed to scrape together has vanished by the next morning. Leah and Sara mumble awkward excuses, then beeline past me in the dining hall at breakfast to cluster with Yvette, none of them willing to meet my gaze. A minute later, all three of them take seats beside Bette, who beams, reaching over to squeeze their hands like some sort of benevolent queen.

As if sensing my stare, she turns and catches me watching. Bette smiles like a cat with a canary in its mouth, and I turn away, suddenly no longer hungry.

My phone buzzes with a text halfway through my morning classes.

When can I see you again? There’s no name attached, but I can guess who it must be. Keanen walked me back to my dorm last night after our hookup on Senior Row, and wouldn’t let me close the door until I gave him my number.

Working tonight.

Then I’ll be there, he replies simply. At least that puts a small smile on my face, in spite of the rest of the drama my life has become.

And he shows. That night, and several other nights of the rest of the week—all the nights he doesn’t have football practice or other activities keeping him busy. Most nights, he brings his homework to do in the corner of the pub while I joke around with Henry on slow nights or rush around filling orders on busy ones. Sometimes I’m able to duck away and sit with Keanen for half an hour or so, curling up beside him on the bench while we talk.

After work, we can’t keep our hands off each other. One night after I finish locking up, he pins me against the wall outside the door, right where he nearly had me the first time. This time, I let him finish the job. Kissing his way all the way down my shirt until he peels it up and off, then licking his way up to the strap of my bra. We wind up naked in the alley, him fucking me up against the wall so hard that the next morning, it’s a struggle to walk across the quad to my first class.

The only sour note is that aside from Keanen and Henry, I don’t have many people to talk to anymore. I manage to work out from Yvette eventually what happened at the party after Keanen and I left. Bette told Leah and Sara that I’d gotten her brother into trouble with their whole family, and that I was just using him for his money. That I’m a scammer and a grifter. Yvette had the grace to look guilty, at least, while she explained it. But that still didn’t stop her from sitting with Leah, Sara and Bette the next day in the cafeteria, all bright smiles and happy laughter as they likely made plans for all the parties I’d never have been able to attend with them anyway.

I try not to let it bother me, but it does. I wanted my first year at college to be… I don’t know. More than this.

“You need cheering up,” Keanen tells me one night, after yet another dragging shift, as he’s walking me back to my dorm—ever the protective gentleman. I’m not letting what happened to you that first night we met ever happen again, he told me, and I remember him attacking my would-be assailant, winding up with a black eye in the fight. My stomach does a little flip.

It helps, to have him on my side right now.

“I guess,” I murmur.

“When’s your next night off?” he presses.

“Monday again,” I say. “But don’t you have practice that night?”

He waves my concern away. “I’ll figure it out.”

So, on Monday night, I get a text at half an hour to seven. Check your room.

On my bed, I find a large square box wrapped in a red ribbon. I don’t even ask how he got in here. Keanen has resources I can’t begin to understand, I’m realizing. Still, my heart jumps into my throat as I undo the ribbon and rifle through the paper inside. Nestled at the bottom is a little black dress that instantly makes me understand how Bette was able to pick out my cheap online outfit from a mile away.

This one looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The fabric is silky smooth, but not cheap feeling. It pours from the box like liquid. I strip to just the cute panties I wore for this occasion, and pull the dress over my head. It falls to my hips, clinging in all the right places. I understand now what the saying fits like a glove means.

When I glance at myself in the mirror, my breath catches.

This. This is what Tanglewood girls look like. And it makes my chest tighten to realize it. Is fitting in really this simple? All it takes is a beautiful outfit?