Page 8 of Love Me Boldly

“Unless you also gave him my class schedule.”

“Like I have that memorized.”

“Then how’d he get it?” I grabbed a paper clip off the counter in the university’s bookstore and started unbending it.

Tracey and I met on our dorm floor freshman year. Back when Dad was still able to occasionally hold down a job and help me with tuition so my loans weren’t sky high. I’d lasted in the dorms for a year, then had to move back home by sophomore year, and by the end of my junior year, I was alone.

Back when we shared a wall in the dorm, we’d known everything about each other. Since then, that’d become more difficult but given that I worked two jobs and her propensity to spend the majority of her non-class hours either sleeping or partying, that was understandable.

“Have you talked to his friend at all?”

“Tucker?”

That was a no. “Wasn’t it Tanner?”

She giggled. “Probably. So no, obviously.”

I wasn’t surprised. She tended to pick up strays but discarded them just as quickly. Given how quickly and abruptly that night ended, I suppose I wasn’t surprised they didn’t exchange numbers or snaps or whatever. Which meant Graham couldn’t have easily reached out to Tracey, anyway.

“It’s so weird,” I muttered.

“What’s weird?”

We both jerked at the new arrival, and this time Iwassurprised. I hadn’t seen Graham come down the stairs to the bookstore, and I was usually pretty alert.

“You,” I said, but there was a tease to my tone. “You know my work schedule?”

He gave that same shameless shrug. “Maybe I’m here for school supplies.”

“By coming to the bookstore”—I glanced at the clock at the top of my laptop—“exactly two minutes before I get off shift?”

“Coincidental.”

Sure it was.The look I gave him said it, but his smirk turned into a grin.

“You can go,” Tracey said, nudging me. “I’ll clock you out.”

I faced her. The traitor. She knew I’d been blowing him off.

“Go have fun,” she whispered, but I had no doubt he could hear even as he turned toward a nearby shelf and flipped through packages of pens and pencils. “You’ve earned it. Take the free meal if that’s all you want to do.”

“Classy,” I muttered, and from his profile, Graham’s lips lifted a smidge.

Graham dropped the pretense of shopping and glanced at me. “Ready for your free meal?”

Tracey chuckled.

I rolled my eyes, and then I grabbed my coat and backpack, because Tracey was right.

A free meal never hurt anyone.

“Fine. But I’m driving.”

A girl needed to have some boundaries.

“Perfect. Because I don’t have a car.”

Wonderful.

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