He laughed and extended his arm. “I’m Nick.”
I stared at his offered hand for a moment before reaching out and placing my hand in his. His fingers wrapped around mine easily, his grip firm, yet gentle.
“Do you honestly think I don’t know who you are?” I smiled as I tried to pull my hand from his, but he only tightened his grip on me.
“It would be rude of me to assume. And how else would I get to know your name?”
Smooth.
“I’m Jess Michaelson.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, his voice low. He brought my hand to his lips and planted a kiss on top of my knuckles.
I pulled my hand away and couldn’t help but scowl. “Are you for real?”
Who kisses someone’s hand? I can’t believe I thought he was charming two seconds ago.
“Do I look imaginary? Wait, don’t answer that,” he said with a grin, holding a hand in the air to stop me.
“You do seem like sort of a nightmare, now that I think about it. Those come from your imagination, right?” I pointed at my head, my tone playful, even if my words seemed otherwise.
He leaned back into his seat and grinned. “I like you, Jess.”
I wanted to play hard to get, but I couldn’t find the strength. I shouldn’t have been so willing to feed Nick’s ego, but I couldn’t stop myself from doing it. The guy was hot, I was attracted to him, and I clearly didn’t care if he knew it.
“The feeling’s mutual, Nick,” I said, falling into his eyes.
They were so blue, they looked almost black in the lighting of our classroom, but I knew the truth—they were dark blue with a ring of lighter blue in them.
He smirked, and my cheeks warmed as I looked away.
Here’s what I knew about Nick Fisher. He was a serial dater, the type of guy who always had someone vying for his attention. He wasn’t the typical type of player who only screwed a girl once and then never spoke to her again. No, Nick actually dated girls. The “relationship,” if you could call it that, never lasted longer than a month, but still, you had to at least give the guy props for trying.
Props for trying? What the hell was I thinking? This guy turned me into a complete traitor to my gender in two seconds flat.
Nick was currently in a “single” phase, but according to my roommate, those never lasted very long. Rachel had made it her mission to know everything about the guys worth knowing on campus. She called them GIMS, which stood for Guys I Might Stalk. She had a file on her computer with detailed notes and everything.
Poor Rachel, the girl would never have a chance with Nick. Apparently he lived by a set of rules, and one of them was that he never messed around with a girl who used to date one of his fraternity brothers. Rachel had dated Trevor for six months last year, and since he was in the same frat as Nick, she was now off-limits.
Much to her displeasure.
One night when she was drunk, Rachel told me that if she had known about Nick’s stupid rule, she never would have dated Trevor in the first place. Then she asked me how any girl in her right mind would willingly pull themselves out of Nick’s dating pool, muttered something I couldn’t understand in Spanish, and then puked into the sink.
My roommate was all class, but at least she was honest. And I loved her for it.
She Wants Me
Nick
Jess Michaelson was hot as hell. How I’d never noticed her before was beyond me.
She sure seemed to know me, which wasn’t unusual, but the fact that I didn’t know her . . . well, that was. I prided myself on knowing as many people as I could on campus. It was part of what I deemed my job to get to know my fellow students and make them feel like they mattered to me, that I cared. It was part of what made me so good at what I did, and how I earned the reputation of being the go-to guy on campus for all things.
I was a marketer by nature, bred into the business by my old man. I could sell anything to anyone. Literally.
Anything. To anyone.
Selling shit seemed to come naturally to me, so it only made sense that I would major in it at State. My old man was a marketing genius too, but he was old school and refused to adapt to this century. He hired people to handle certain aspects of the business instead of learning it himself and saving a bundle. Where he failed, I excelled.