I hadn’t been joking when I had told Jason that I didn’t have to worry about being backed up because I took care of myself in the shower. I’d never had a problem with that because I’d gotten used to the need to blow off steam when I was dating Kat long distance. What I wasn’t used to was only being able to get off by thinking about one woman. Back then, I’d had plenty of visions float through my head. Now, it was like I was fucking obsessed with thoughts of Aubrey.

“Dude,” Jason said, interrupting my line of thought. He nodded down to the obvious boner in my pants. “Just ask her out already.”

“Who?” I played dumb.

“You damn well know who.” He rolled his eyes at me. “Aubrey.”

“Shit, man. I don’t know if it’s that great of an idea,” I answered.

“Look. I’m not saying you have to marry the girl, but I haven’t seen you so much as look twice at another chick since school started. But every day when you have a tutoring session with her, you walk around the apartment in the morning with that waving around”—he pointed at my dick—“and then you come back later looking like someone kicked your puppy.”

“You’ve heard the rumors, Jason,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, and I fucking wish I hadn’t shared them with you now. But you know what I haven’t heard?” he asked.

I shook my head, not sure where he was going with this. “No. What?”

“We’ve been back for two months and I haven’t heard of a single guy she’s even been on a date with. What does that say to you?”

Jason was right. As far as I knew, Aubrey wasn’t dating anyone now and hadn’t at all this school year. And I sure as hell would know if she was because it seemed like all the guys were keeping tabs on her for me now even though we weren’t together. They’d mention seeing her on campus just to get a rise out of me.

“Maybe she just isn’t interested in dating,” I argued.

“Or maybe there’s a certain guy she wants to date and she’s waiting for him to pull his head out of his ass and ask her out,” he countered.

“But what if she hasn’t changed?” I worried aloud.

“Luka. Man,” Jason said as he grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “You’re judging this girl too harshly. So what if she’s dated a bunch of guys on campus? That was her decision to make at the time. The same decision that a shit-ton of single girls make every day. None of the gossip ever mentioned one-night stands or friends with benefits. And it sounds like she always broke up with one guy before moving on to another.”

Just the thought of Aubrey and other guys, even in the past, made me see red. It wasn’t fair, but it was the truth.

“I know,” I growled in response.

“I’m serious, man. I get that you and Kat were high school sweethearts and she didn’t have very much experience before you guys hooked up. But that sure as hell didn’t stop her for from getting that experience while you were her boyfriend. Don’t make Aubrey pay for Kat’s mistakes by not asking her out,” he cautioned.

His warning stunned me for a minute as I realized that that’s exactly what I was doing. I had no idea where this thing with Aubrey might go, but I would be an idiot to not even try with her because I’d been burned by my ex.

“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what you’ve got me around for. Besides which, if you don’t get off your ass and ask her out, then I might have to because she is seriously hot,” he threw in, taking the conversation to a place he should have known better than to take it.

I grabbed him by his shirt collar. “Don’t even think about it, Jason. I’m not fucking with you on this.”

He had the nerve to laugh in my face. “And there you go. If our serious conversation didn’t knock some sense into you, then now at least you’re wound up enough that maybe you’ll do something about it today.”

I pushed him away, not appreciative of the fact that he could read me so easily. And I sure as hell didn’t like the idea of Jason with Aubrey at all.

“Yeah, well, watch out or what I’ll do is bash your head into the ground.”

“How about you ask your girl out on a date instead?” he suggested.

“Yeah, I just might do that,” I answered with a smile on my face as I walked out the door to go to class.

****

By the time Aubrey showed up at the library for our tutoring session, I was strung tighter than a wire with tension. I couldn’t get Jason’s taunt out of my head. Although she wasn’t dating anyone else now, there was no guarantee that wouldn’t change unless I did something about it.