Page 24 of The Girlfriend Goal
"Shit! Fuck! Hot coffee! Hot coffee on my—" He grabbed a dish towel, missed the spill entirely, and somehow made it worse.
The newcomer surveyed the chaos with raised eyebrows. "And here I thought hockey players were supposed to have good reflexes."
"We do. You just surprised me!" Matt's voice had gone up an octave.
"By using a door? How very threatening of me." Fashion Magazine Guy stepped delicately around the coffee puddle. "I'm looking for Lance? Rachel said he lived here, and I need to return her advanced stats notebook before she has an actual breakdown."
Of course this was connected to Rachel.
"I'm Lance," I said, noting how Matt had frozen at the mention of Rachel's name. "And you are?"
"Jared. Rachel's roommate, best friend, and designated keeper of her sanity." He gave me a once-over that felt like being scanned by a very judgmental TSA agent. "So you're the hockey player she's been—"
"Tutoring!" I interrupted. "She's been tutoring me for our project. Nothing else."
"Uh-huh." His tone suggested deep skepticism. "Well, she left this in my car after her 'definitely not a date' coffee run yesterday, and apparently the world will end if she doesn't have it for her 10 AM class."
"I can give it to her."
"I'm sure you can." He turned that laser focus on Matt, who was still standing in his coffee puddle like he'd forgotten how legs worked. "And you are?"
"I'm Matt. I live here. In this house. Where I live."
"Fascinating." Jared stepped closer to Matt, who actually took a step back and slipped in the coffee. I caught his arm before he could completely eat it. "You're the one who never cleans the kitchen."
"Rachel talks about me?" Matt straightened, trying to recover some dignity.
"She mentions that her project partner lives with a walking disaster who once tried to cook pasta in a coffee maker."
"That was an experiment."
"An experiment in what? Food poisoning?" But Jared was smiling now, the kind of smile that made Matt's brain cells collectively abandon ship.
"I'm actually a good cook," Matt protested. "I was just making eggs. Before you gave me a heart attack with your dramatic entrance."
"Dramatic? That was barely a six on the drama scale. You should see me during finals week." Jared finally seemed tonotice the state of the kitchen. "Dear god, is that mold or modern art on that plate?"
"It's unclear." Matt grabbed the offending dish and shoved it in the sink. "We have a very relaxed approach to housekeeping."
"Relaxed is one word for it. Biohazard would be another." But Jared was grinning. "You have coffee on your shirt, by the way."
Matt looked down at the spreading stain. "Fuck."
"Such eloquence. Do all hockey players have such extensive vocabularies?"
"I know lots of words," Matt said defensively. "Big words. Words like..." He panicked. "Refrigerator."
I covered my laugh with a cough. Watching Matt, who'd never met a flirtation he couldn't master, completely short-circuit was better than cable.
"Impressive," Jared said dryly. He turned back to me. "Anyway, make sure Rachel gets this. She has a very specific organizational system, and disrupting it causes chaos."
"I'm familiar with her systems," I said, taking the notebook. "Thanks for bringing it by."
"Oh, I had ulterior motives." He gave Matt another appreciative scan. "I wanted to scope out the hockey house. See what kind of influences our dear Rachel is exposing herself to."
"We're not that bad," Matt protested.
"There's literally a tower of pizza boxes in the corner."
