“You have great hair,” my sisters would tell me. They had dainty features and long, lithe bodies, and spent their days perfecting themselves.
“Good thing you don’t want to do TV,” Clara had told me. She’d always towered over me, and now had eight inches on my five foot three. She was my older sister and the nicer of the two, but she could be a bitch when she wanted.
“No, I don’t want to be on TV, Clara, because that would mean the women voicing their concerns wouldn’t be anonymous. And yes, no one wants to look at fat little me for an hour,” I’d told her one day in the room we shared back home.
She’d been posing in the mirror, turning and twisting and looking at herself in every which way, her dark hair sleek and straight, thanks to one of those crazy-expensive treatments. I’d been stretched out across my bed in lounge pants, my hair tied on top of my head, reading a romance novel stuck inside a biography. The heroines of my secret steamy novels were to be admired; they found men to love them and support them.
I hadn’t even asked Clara’s damn opinion. I always wished I could have been the one to have my own room. Cedes, the baby, got it. She was the perfect one, Mom’s favorite, a size four even at five foot nine. She was smart too, but not “too smart.” Whatever that meant.
Rinsing my hair, I inhaled and took stock of my situation. Why the hell was I using something advertised as seduction in a bottle?
But more importantly, how did I get stuck working for a prick? A guy who made me so nervous, I capitulated to his ludicrous demands. I needed to drop that shit.
Even worse, I had Clara to partially blame for my wishy-washy behavior. She’d instructed me to act more demure, like a damsel in distress. Based on her work experience, she’d said, “a little giving in” went a long way.
Why the hell did I listen to her? For one thing, she hated me, and more importantly, I wasn’t a natural capitulator.
Sebastian Jones might be a legend, a Twitter phenomenon as Sonny Be Knocking Boots, and my only ticket to getting my own show here at Hafton. But that didn’t mean I had to bow to him. Like Blane said, Sonny had been an intern once too. When that ass-wipe was finally gone, I planned to clean up the station. We could bring on a legitimate sports person and do some fun bits, ones not reminiscent of Howard Stern.
Except now Blane was involved, and he was privy to what hoops Sonny was making me jump through. If any of the women in my major found out, they’d banish me. I’d be exiled from the program, the women’s studies community, and would be the laughingstock of campus—and my family—for that alone.
If they knew I’d flirted with a jock? Ugh.
But everyone calls me Catie?
It had been the most flirtatious line of my life. I laughed out loud in the shower at that. I was so lame when it came to men, and that was normal men, not perfect guys like Blane who were also campus legends.
I’d seen him play, and now I’d breathed the same air as him. Both his athleticism and sheer presence made my heart race. I knew one thing for sure—no matter how handsome I thought Blane Steele was, I wasn’t the kind of girl for him.
Although he did seem sort of kind, the way he stopped to chat with me and asked me my name.
Oh God. But everyone calls me Catie?
I could just hear my sisters now. Clara and Mercedes would roll their eyes, batting their fake eyelashes and howling with laughter over what a mess I managed to make before I even finished my sophomore year. My outspoken Cuban mom, Glory, would pretend to reprimand them, but would then turn and laugh behind my back. As usual, I’d land on the doorstep of my dad, looking for warm affection and homemade Italian comfort food.
The water began to run cold, so I turned it off and grabbed my towel before shutting down my music.
As I walked back to my lonely single dorm room, I decided to find Blane Steele and offer him whatever he wanted—especially since he’d gone celibate—to keep the humiliating details of my internship to himself.
I couldn’t bear the thought of this all falling apart. I had big plans, and I couldn’t fail. Plus, I needed this internship. It was part of my financial aid package.
I could always be a coffee girl.
Maybe Blane would take pity on this desperate shrimp, and I wouldn’t have to beg him—or bribe him—to keep his mouth shut.
My alarm shrilled, forcing me to get up and turn it off on my dresser. I hurried to use the bathroom, washed my face, and rushed back to my closet. After pulling on a thong and leggings, motorcycle boots, and tossing a bulky, tattered, off-the-shoulder gray sweatshirt over my camisole and bra, I was ready for class.
After all, I was the one who chased after Professor Cora Stanwick all of last year to let me into her senior lecture, An In-Depth Look at Pornography and Its Ill Effects on Women of Every Age.