“Cherry,” he said, making her giggle. She pulled a manicured finger down his chest and I thought for a moment there he might have actually hired a stripper to come make out with him in his class today. He dropped a thick arm across her shoulders. “I take it you’re a TA.”
So he noticed the stack of syllabi in my hands, a real genius this one. “Correct and it’s neither the time nor place for you both to be doing that. This is a classroom. Not a brothel.”
My back straight, I felt a little empowered telling this guy off. Especially considering how he’d embarrassed me and Sinclair last night. My boyfriend wasn’t one to just be put in his place, and for whatever reason, he let this asswipe talk to both of us the way he had, even after LJ had kissed me. The whole thing was terrible, and even worse once I recalled what Sinclair did say to me before finally going to bed last night.
“Stay away from that guy if you know what’s good for you,” he’d said, not offering much more after that. He’d shaken his head. “He’s trouble, and believe me, you don’t want any more of that. I mean, considering all that with your dad.”
He’d been right, of course. My dad completely betraying my mom and me and making our whole family basically a laughing stock amongst our friends. People didn’t get divorced in our circles, and if they did, everyone knew and talked about it. People were well aware of the Coventrys and their dirty laundry.
Again, Sinclair hadn’t offered many more words after that and the thing with LJ I was going to let go. I figured he was a problem nothing but some good earplugs couldn’t correct, but if he was in this class, I figured better to nip this disrespect right in the bud.
He didn’t say anything after what I said, eerily silent with his arm around his girl, but I figured he’d gotten the point since he had ears and appeared to have more than two brain cells. I tossed two syllabi his way, one for him and one for his friend on their lap desks. I turned but shifted back following a throat clear.
“You gonna pick that up?” LJ asked, removing his arm from his Cherry. Blue eyes shifted down and I noticed the syllabi I placed on his desk was now on the carpeted floor.
My eyes narrowed. “You dropped that.”
“I didn’t.” And then he lifted a hand. “And I got about a dozen witnesses that saw you throw it at me. It fell to the ground…”
And suddenly, we did have witnesses, all suddenly completely aware of LJ, me, and this situation. He had the whole top row looking at us, like a conductor with an orchestra and though I found that unusual I didn’t step down. I shook my head. “You pick it up. You dropped it—”
“Is there a problem here?”
I turned to find Professor Douglas, his hands in his pockets. All students had resumed their attention back to their syllabi. All but LJ and Cherry, of course. Relief that Professor Douglas was here and could put this guy in his place I looked at him. “Professor…”
“She threw your syllabus at me, Professor,” LJ cut in, his blond eyebrows dashing up at me once before facing Professor Douglas. He grinned a little. “Have no idea why. I was just sitting back here.”
The audacity of it all made me want to slap him across his face again. Though I obviously couldn’t this time in our new environment. It wouldn’t be appropriate. My heart charging, I opened my mouth to plead my case. “That’s not exactly true. He…”
“Just pick it up, Ms. Coventry,” Professor Douglas said to me, though he was looking right at LJ. Quickly, the man scratched his neck, making eye contact in my direction. “And do it quickly. I have a class to begin.”
And with that, he was going and stalking back down the steps. I stood there, frozen until a giggle behind made me look. There had been a few there, Cherry and a couple other girls surrounding LJ as they watched me pick up his syllabus and slam it on his desk.
“Thanks, gorgeous,” he said, winking at me before throwing his lengthy wingspan across two girls this time. Not just Cherry. The pair of us were in a stare off, but not long as the professor took the mic, and I was forced to retreat. I got up front, and Professor Douglas proceeded on as if nothing had happened. He spoke as if one of his students wasn’t back there with his mitts all over the girls he hugged between his biceps, and I got to watch as LJ exchanged kisses between both his conquests all period. All the while, he made more than one notice of me. Something I was well aware of…
My sight caught his on me often.
Chapter Four
LJ
I kept an eye up as Niko made his way over to me from across the student union, my hand ready and waiting for the cash when he delivered it. I pocketed it quick, lounging back into the couches. My buddy was gone for a long time, and when I asked him about that, he smirked.
“People aren’t too happy about how much cash they gotta part with these days,” he said, and by people he meant drug dealers.
I’d be the first to say it wasn’t cheap to sell on campus, my campus, and if these dealers wanted any piece of the action at all, they’d keep their mouth shut and keep that money flowing mine and Niko’s way. I was the middleman between them and the product, and though I wasn’t a greedy motherfucker, I took what was mine. I earned it. Niko and I both did as he helped.
I filtered through the cash in my pocket before shrugging and throwing my arms back behind the couch.
“Well, they don’t have much of a choice now, do they?” I had people to pay too, making sure these bright-eyed and promising collegiates had access to all the drugs of their heart’s desires. Nothing came through this campus unless I knew about it, pharmaceuticals like Adderall and the like a hot commodity around here. The forbidden fruit didn’t come without a cost though, and my supplier also got what was theirs. If they were happy, everybody was happy, especially Niko and me since we could set the terms after that.
Things hadn’t always started this way for me. Fuck, I’d arrived on campus a bright-eyed student just like everyone else. Unlike a lot of these Ivy Leaguers, though, I’d been a scholarship kid and hadn’t had daddy’s personal pocketbook to pull from wherever I liked. I was used to that shit, though, considering where I came from. I always hung with the rich kids from my small town Maywood Heights but never actually could call any of those spoils my own.
When I came to college, I knew I had to be scrappy, and even though my degree in architecture would help my single-parent household and siblings after I graduated, I needed a way to provide for them while I was in school. I was pretty much my mom and sisters’ everything back in high school. Sometimes working up to three jobs just to help, and the only way I was even okay with going away to school was knowing I had a means to provide while away. That means started as small stuff, promoting parties and shit, but quickly, I found my way in with the real moneymakers. The hustlers and guys and women who knew what they were doing. Through those contacts, I gained access to where I needed to go, and I brought Niko in along the way. We started as roommates freshman year but quickly came up to rise together. He shared a similar story to me, smart but on the bottom of this place.
Needless to say, we didn’t stay there long.
Niko grinned his big-ass teeth, everything about this guy huge. He split out his shirts like my high school buddy Knight with the way he lifted and dropped weights in the gym. He took up like two cushions for my one, and with him hanging out with me, one might mistake him for a flunky. We were partners in this game, though. We rose from those depths together, took over the motherfucking campus, and nothing happened around here without either one of us knowing about it. He tapped my fist, watching me as I pulled out my phone and scrolled my social media.