Page 30 of College Boy

Chapter Sixteen

Mitch

“You can just let me off here, Em.”

Mitch fiddled absently with the passenger door handle, nodding at some random street corner across from the Economics Building as Emma steered her sleek sedan straight down College Lane. “The fuck I will,” she grunted back at him, hands tight around the steering wheel as she glared over at him comically. “What’s gotten into you, anyway?”

Their eyes met as she paused at a stop sign, littered with racy bumper stickers and no less than three actual bullet holes. Mitch had shrunken down into his seat, feeling—and no doubt looking—a good four inches shorter in his now faded souvenir Flamingo Shores t-shirt and radiant beach tan. “Sorry, I just, your place is so nice and mine’s so crummy.”

Emma pulled away from the stop sign and drove onward, toward Academic Avenue where Mitch’s shady little off-campus apartment was located. “Baby,” she said in a comforting tone. “We’ve already agreed it’d be too hard to say goodbye if I go upstairs with you, so what’s to worry about?”

He sank even lower into his seat, if that was humanly possible. “I mean, even the parking lot is crummy.”

“Mitch!” Emma blurted, sounding surprised. Mitch couldn’t blame her. After all, he’d been so cheery that morning, tossing his new, vibrant colored beach clothes into his single roll bag and hoisting it over one shoulder as she waited by the car to drive him back to college. Suddenly, he was acting like a kid about to be dropped off at kindergarten.

“Well.” He even whined like one! “It is.”

Mich saw the sign for College Park and, despite wanting to be let out at the corner so his high-class hottie girlfriend wouldn’t see his deplorable living conditions, pointed toward it. “Take a right here,” he instructed woefully.

“Listen, Mitch,” Emma assured him. “It’s only temporary, right? One more semester and who knows? A summer job on Snack Street awaits?”

He glanced over as she pulled into the objectively shabby parking lot of his off-campus housing. “Why are you using all those question marks over there?”

She snorted. “You noticed that?”

“I’m sad and lonely, Em,” he confessed woefully, heart pounding—and not in the usual, about to have sex with the hottest cougar on the planet way. “Not deaf. So ... spill.”

Emma’s face was soft and nurturing, the way it had been on their way out of Flamingo Shores that morning. “I just, a lot can happen in a semester, Mitch.”

“A lot can happen over spring break,Em.”

There was an empty spot near the front entrance. Emma pulled into it and put the car in “park.” The engine idled. The radio played quietly, the same chill lo-fi BS that had been the soundtrack to their incessant lovemaking ever since the first night Mitch had drifted over, half-naked and already hard. Hard for her. As he had been every night, and twice each day, over spring break.

“A lotdidhappen,” she reminded him, turning in her seat to face him as the rich leather of the driver’s seat creaked gently beneath her shifting weight. “And I’m grateful for it. And foryou, Mitch. Your desperately in need of fresh pavement parking lot isn’t going to change that, okay?”

“Promise?”

“Only a hundred times already,” she whined as he unclipped his seat belt. “I’m yours, desperate and alone back in Flamingo Shores.”

“And I’m yours,” he murmured, leaning forward to kiss her senseless. He leaned back, licking his lips as if to remember her by. “Desperate and alone in my crummy little apartment until spring semester ends next month.”

“And then?”

“And then,” he reached for the door, swinging it open before giving her a frisky little wink. “You get your newest Snack Street employee for ten whole weeks.”

She squealed and hooted and golf clapped, making Mitch blush as he unfolded himself from the passenger street in record time, reaching behind the seat to drag out his roll bag before swinging the door gently shut behind him. She rolled down the driver’s side window as he shambled toward her, homesickness flooding his very soul with every fresh step.

“You sure about that?” she asked uncertainly, leaning her elbow on the open window.

“About working with you all day and railing you all night?” he teased, admiring the fresh shade of blush on her sexy little face. “Oh, yeah, babe. Can’t wait!”

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