Page 9 of Pick One
2
JOHN
Almost one yearlater
Teagan:This is your friendly reminder that it’s Friday night, aka NETFLIX NIGHT, aka The Best Night of the Week.
Teagan:If you get home early enough, we can watch the last five episodes of Knightfall before we crash, which MUST HAPPEN, because I will not be able to sleep until I know that Abe is happily in love.
Teagan:Also, just to say, if I don’t get proper sleep, I will never finish my degree, and I might go full-on Ophelia from the strain of it all.
Teagan:I’m not saying my tragic descent into madness will be entirely your fault, John…
Teagan:But I’m also not saying it’s NOT your fault.
Teagan:Did you leave yet?
Teagan:Or are you and the other math dudes busy watching multiplication porn and jerking off?
I snorted. When the texts from Teagan came through, I’d already grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair and had my laptop bag in one hand and my travel coffee mug in the other. I shut off the light with my elbow, shut my office door with my foot, tucked the empty coffee cup under my chin, and typed.
Me:Your fantasies about life in the math department are always so spot-on.
Me:Also, you made me mess up my seventeens tables and threw off my rhythm. I’m limp now. Thanks a bunch.
I could hear the laughter in Teagan’s voice when I read his reply.
Teagan:True fact, Johnny:just KNOWING your seventeens tables is the leading cause of erectile dysfunction in men over twenty-eight.
Teagan:(I’d make up more fake stats on that, but then you’d get hard again and I’d never get to finish our show. Hurry up!)
I groaned.
The real true-fact was that I hadn’t had a problem getting an erection since I’d meet my very-platonic best friend, Teagan. These days, my problem was trying to hide it, and that grew harder (no pun intended) all the time.
I’d been head over heels for the man for three hundred fifty-five days (yes, I was counting), and since then, I’d found myself doing all kinds of shit I never would have fathomed before. Like moving a random stranger’s couch, yeah—because when the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen turns to you with his big eyes and needs a favor, you fucking do it—but also participating in Karaoke Saturdays, and Philosophical Conundrum Taco Tuesdays, and all the other random days of the weeks that Teagan turned into holidays, complete with sacrosanct festivities and, almost always, special holiday foods.
Maybe the craziest of these, though, was Netflix Night every Friday, when I sat in the semi-darkness for hours in what had become “John’s spot” on Teagan’s beloved sofa and pretended I felt nothing but warm friendship for the sexy-as-fuck man sitting two feet away.
Weirder still, I somehow looked forward to this torture.
Teagan Donahue had made me a masochist.
“I am not going to have sex with my roommate,” I whispered aloud, willing myself to believe it. Then I adjusted myself quickly, locked my office door, and texted back.
Me:I believe you believe that. FYI,smartass, I’ve already left the office.
There. I smiled a little to myself. This technically was not a lie, and I prided myself on being as honest as possible.
About most things, anyway.
“Professor Curran?” a voice called from an office on the left as I hurried down the hall. “John?”
I winced but quickly turned it into a smile as I turned around and doubled back to talk to the older blonde woman who’d been my mentor since I’d been here. “Marie. Hey,” I said from the doorway. “Working late?”
“A little.” She sat back in her desk chair and gazed at me impassively across her messy desk. “I got an interesting phone call that derailed my afternoon a bit.”
My heart beat faster. “Oh?”
