Bo remained silent for a while. He rubbed his hand across his chin and his lips were sort of pursed, as if he was thinking.

“What? You scared of me now?”

“No, I just don’t get how that is embarrassing. You fell for the first guy that made you feel good. He was a dick to you.”

“How is stalking my hookup not embarrassing?”

“Because it just isn’t. I feel like I deserve another story.”

“That was a good story,” I replied, miffed he didn’t appreciate the confession I’d laid out. While it didn’t involve Viagra, it was mortifying to me.

“If you were with the right guy, it wouldn’t be stalking,” Bo mused. “It’d be flattering and even welcome.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t flattering or welcome. After the third visit to the dive where he ate Italian food, the waitress told me she didn’t think he was interested. Trust me, it was embarrassing.” I turned my head away, not wanting to see his expression or for him to see mine. “You ever see that girl again?”

“Yup. I saw her later my senior year at a party. She was with some guy, and when she saw me she turned fire engine red, like that was the most humiliating night of her life. She took off before I could say anything.” Bo cleared his throat. “I just want it to be clear that all my equipment is in working order.”

“Thanks for the update.” I smirked.

The silence fell again. Whatever plans I had for getting an early jump on our lab assignment were over for today. I moved toward the exit, not interested in hearing the video. The strange spell that the dark and the close space had held over us seemed to dissipate when I stepped outside into the still abandoned hallway of botany with Bo following close behind. I felt embarrassed that I’d revealed something so personal to him yet again.

“Let’s go have dinner,” Bo invited, placing his hand on the small of my back and leading me toward the bench where my notebook and his sketchpad rested.

Taken by surprise, I could only answer dumbly, “Dinner?” I hadn’t realized it had gotten so late, but when I looked at my watch it seemed that Bo and I had spent quite a while sitting, sketching, and telling embarrassing stories to each other.

Chapter Fifteen

AM

AS I STOOD NEXT TO BO in line to order a bowl of chili at a deli about two miles from campus, I wondered if Bo had magical powers. My list of reasons why I should remain aloof, which I’d enumerated on the way to the museum, seemed to have been left on the marble floor.

He did provide a reasonable justification. We could talk about the lab projects and how we would finish them. It was a flimsy excuse, but I held on to it like it was the last tissue available during allergy season.

“I’m paying for my own meal,” I told him after we had both placed our orders and moved to the cash register with our trays. He gave me a slightly amused glance and shook his head.

“I asked. I pay.” He leaned past me and handed his debit card to the cashier. “You ask. You pay. But thanks for offering.”

Short of causing a scene, there was nothing to do but accept the free dinner. The cashier goggled at Bo’s tray, laden with three bowls of chili and two bottles of milk. You’d think he was working hard labor, given the amount of food he planned to put away.

“It’s difficult for the male to navigate the waters,” Bo complained as we sat down. “Do I hold the door open and stand until you’re seated?”

“Why not just treat women like you’d treat a guy? You don’t ever hold a door open for a pal, do you?”

Bo contemplated this for a moment, untwisting the top of one milk bottle. “I have, but generally my momma taught me that you stand when a woman enters a room, you open her door, you carry her bags. I’d have wrestled the tray away from you if I’d thought I could’ve gotten away with it.”

“Good thing you didn’t try. I’d have stabbed you with a fork.”

“This is why I like you, AnnMarie. You speak the same violent language.” Bo gave a shout of laughter, drawing the eyes of the patrons nearby. I saw a couple of older ladies’ eyes linger on Bo’s expressive face. I wouldn’t blame them if they were thinking naughty thoughts about him. Bo looked like a walking sex machine. He had large hands and muscular arms that looked like they could hold you up against the wall, if you liked that sort of thing.

His whole face was engaged when he talked. That damn indent on the left side of his mouth deepened when he laughed and I itched to press my finger against it. I wondered if you hit the right place, you could jack into that smile and capture the owner of it. But for all his easy smiles, sometimes his blue eyes would flatten out and the ocean there would look stormy and dangerous. Those moments were transitory, but they were part of the package that mystified and intrigued me.

“How old are you, Bo?” I asked, suddenly realizing how little I knew about Bo outside of class.

“Twenty-three,” he said. “You?”

“Twenty,” I replied. “Where’re you from?”

“Is this twenty questions?” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Asking where he was from was out-of-bounds? I raised my eyebrows at him. He sighed. “Little Oak, Texas. If we’re playing the get-to-know-you game, I can hurry it along so we can get to the good stuff. I’m twenty-three, born August fifteenth, of Beauregard the Second and Sarah Beth Randolph. I’m an only child and said to be a sore trial to my momma. Your turn.”

I twisted my lips up on the side and contemplated asking another question, but Bo shook his spoon at me. “Don’t be a welsher.”

“I never agreed to anything,” I protested.

“It was implicit, now go.”

“Fine,” I huffed with mock indignation. “I’m twenty, only child, born June tenth, of Roger Price and Margaret West.”

“Your parents divorced?” Bo asked.

“No,” I said with finality. I didn’t want to talk about Roger and my mom’s relationship.

Bo nodded at me and didn’t press, for which I was grateful.

“What else do you want to know?” Bo asked. He leaned forward. “You can ask me anything.”

“Would you rather fight one hundred ducks or one horse-sized duck?” I asked, determined to keep our conversational topics as light and impersonal as possible.

“One horse-sized duck. He might be big, but he’d be ungainly. A hundred small cuts could take you down better than one large one,” Bo answered promptly.

Didn’t I know it. It wasn’t one big scene that had driven me into off-campus exile. It was the culmination of weeks’ worth of insults, both whispered and baldly stated. Mostly it was the general feeling that I wasn’t safe half the time when I went out after dark, as if I had some sign saying “open, all hours” on my back.

“How come you aren’t on campus much? Ellie says you’re a campus vampire.”

“Meaning do I drain the blood of coeds? Because that only happened once and it was totally an accident,” Bo quipped.

“You drank the blood of some chick even by accident? Does Health Services treat for that?” I gaped at him.

“I’m not sure what Health Services offers and I didn’t realize I drank her blood. I said it was an accident.”

“I can’t keep up.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You really drank some girl’s blood?”

“It was an accident. I keep telling people that, but no one believes it.”

I must have had a horrified expression on my face because Bo hurried to add, “I’m joking. I know that there’re any number of rumors out there, so I make a few up, just to see how far they spread and how many people believe in them.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“I’m disappointed. I thought this story would include alcohol, maybe a broken beer bottle or a tequila body shot gone wrong.”

“Sounds like you could make up a story that’s better than any real event that could have occurred.”

“I disagree. When there’s accidental blood-drinking involved, surely the potential for hijinks is enormous.”

“Sometimes rumors start from the most mundane events and what was actually drinking a Bloody Mary the morning after homecoming becomes drinking blood from a co-ed at midnight during a fraternity orgy.”

Yup, the germ of a rumor was like the magic beans in the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Planted at night and by morning, the stalks of the plant reached the heavens.

“Still disappointed.”

Bo laughed and threw his arms wide. “You make up whatever story pleases you. Spread it around.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Resentment was starting to overtake the want. It was so unfair that Bo could be so casual about his reputation, because no matter what the rumor was—whether it had to do with how many women he’d slept with or that he sucked blood from some chick’s neck—he was always, always the hero. I knew it was wrong of me to be angry at Bo, but he made a big and convenient target.

“Oh no, I can’t promise that. Tempting you is becoming a new interest of mine.” Bo didn’t even look at me when lobbing that grenade. His delivery was perfect. Throw out an incendiary statement and act perfectly nonchalant. I adopted his mien and pretended that he hadn’t meant anything by it.

“Be prepared for disappointment when your temptations go unnoticed,” I replied.

“Ah, a challenge. I like it.”

“I think at this point I could act the clingy, needy woman, and you’d still give me the same response,” I sniped.

“Probably.” He appeared unruffled by my tone and my rejections.

“I’m not a challenge, Bo. I’m just your lab partner and your classmate. Nothing more.”

He simply shrugged again, as if my protestations were meaningless. They probably were. After all, we had slept together. That seemed to have created some sort of intimacy even if it hadn’t been repeated.

“Besides,” I said, “I’ve heard you’ll nail anything that moves.”

A flash of something flickered across his face, an expression that on anyone else I might have interpreted as hurt. But this was Bo. Rumors about him only made him more appealing.

“While my reputation as a good-time guy isn’t all wrong,” Bo replied slowly, “I’m surprised that you would buy into it so readily when the rumors about you have been so inaccurate.”

Shame flooded me. God, I had been doing what I hated most about my classmates, imputing characteristics and behaviors based on things I’ve heard.

“AM, ask me anything,” Bo invited again.

“Do you nail everything that moves?” I said quietly, still not looking at him, still upset at myself but wanting desperately to know what his intentions were toward me.

“I’m not going to lie to you, AM, so yeah, I’ve had my share of hookups. All the girls I’ve been with have wanted the same thing that I was looking for—a temporary hit off the endorphin bong. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be enough for me anymore. Not since I’ve met you.”

I did finally look up at him, and he stared back steadily, not hiding from me, willing to expose himself, or at least part of himself.

“Rumors are the very devil, aren’t they?” I said, avoiding his opening. Bo looked disappointed, and this time I read the emotion on his face correctly. It was hurt. I’d patted myself on the back for being so strong that I could withstand the rumors at school but I wasn’t, not really. I was soft and weak inside. I was too scared to take a chance with Bo even though he was opening himself up. I wanted to take up his offer. I wanted to so badly, but I couldn’t. Not right then. Maybe not ever.

“Tell me this. Is Clay Howard the Third the only laxer who spread the rumor?” Bo asked.

“What does it matter?” I wanted to leave. I had ruined the evening, and if Bo even talked to me after this, I’d be lucky.

“It doesn’t, really, I guess.” He polished off his first bowl of chili. He leaned toward me. “I just want to make sure that when I make it so the guy has to eat through a straw for the next two weeks that I’ve got the right person.”

BO

BY THE LOOK ON HER face, my last statement caught AnnMarie by surprise. I was frustrated that she wouldn’t let me in, but someone—maybe it was Clay, maybe it was someone else—had hurt her, and she was scared.

I didn’t know how to break through to her. Maybe if I could eradicate this one problem on campus, she’d be ready to trust me.

“I don’t think violence is the answer to everything,” AnnMarie muttered finally.

Aggravated, I barked, “You threatened to stab me in the eye with a pen and skewer me with your fork.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Like you said, it’s not like I was going to be able to actually carry it out.”