All Chapters of A Deal With The College Playboy: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

ELLIEWhen I woke up the next morning, I had a plan for the day, and it was to look cute as hell and hope that Beck Ryder would notice. And before you judge me, yes, I know it’s crazy to already start thinking about how to impress him. For all I knew, the kiss probably meant nothing to him. But it meant so much to me, and I just couldn’t stop smiling at the memory. So yeah, maybe it was a little bit selfish thinking that made me want to dress up all cute and sexy so I would catch his eye, and hopefully earn another make-out session today. I didn’t care where or how, but I just wanted him to kiss me, and I was willing to take anything at this point. So, instead of my usual routine where I just throw on whatever didn't smell like armpit and hope no one noticed, I actually put effort in. I stood in front of the mirror holding two different tops deciding which one would look more flattering for my figure. Being a skinny girl with double-d boobs meant I needed to plan every outfit around

ELLIEThere's no handbook on how to prepare for your first time. Nobody hands you a laminated checklist titled ‘How to Lose Your Virginity Without Humiliating Yourself’. Which is a shame, because I really could've used one right about now. I thought I knew what I needed to do. But as the hour drew closer and I looked up at the clock and saw what time it was, I started to worry that I was going to completely embarrass myself tonight. Maybe there were some helpful videos online. I could try to figure out what I needed to do. One thing I knew for sure was that I shouldn’t emulate whatever it is they like to show on porn videos. That stuff is not realistic, and there’s no way I will be bending that way. If that’s what Beck had in mind, then we were going to have a serious problem. I needed help, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I should have scrambled to find something that would fix my predicament. Instead, I was standing in front of my mirror like a dumbass, tearing apart my

ELLIEI don't know how long we lay there after. Long enough for the candles to burn lower and the music to fade into something quieter, some slow instrumental thing that drifted through the room like it had nowhere else to be. Beck's arm was still around me, his thumb tracing lazy patterns up and down my arm, and I just lay there with my cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat slow down.I kept waiting for the awkwardness to arrive. I'd heard enough stories to know that the aftermath was usually worse than the thing itself. Somebody always ended up staring at the ceiling, and somebody always ended up reaching for their clothes too fast. But Beck just lay there like he had all the time in the world, and his hand never stopped moving."You're quiet," he said after a while."I'm always quiet," I muttered."No you're not," he said. "You're usually three sentences away from telling me what an asshole I am all the time."I laughed despite myself, and I felt him smile against t

ELLIE Here’s something nobody tells you about cooking salmon: it’s a lot more complicated than it has any right to be. It’s a fish. It lives in water. It shouldn’t require this much concentration. “You’re holding the knife wrong,” Aunt Carol said. “I’m holding it fine,” I said. “You’re holding it like you’re terrified,” she said, reaching over and adjusting my grip. “Hold it like this, and curl your fingers under so you don’t take one off.” “I’ve had all my fingers my entire life,” I said. “I think I know how to keep them.” “You also thought you knew how to bake cookies last week,” she said pleasantly, and I had absolutely nothing to say to that. We were standing side by side at the kitchen counter, with a fillet of salmon between us and Aunt Carol’s ancient recipe book propped open against the backsplash. She’d decided after we got back from Henderson’s that tonight was a cooking lesson night, which apparently was not up for debate. I’d been forced into this the moment she’d un

ELLIEI'd been sitting on my bed for forty minutes staring at the same spot on the wall, which was a completely normal and healthy thing to do on a Monday afternoon.The spot was just above my desk, where the paint had this tiny scuff mark from the time I'd thrown a textbook at the wall in freshman year after failing my first anatomy quiz. It had been there ever since, and I'd never bothered to paint over it because it felt like evidence of something. Proof that I'd been frustrated and alive and had bad days before, and had gotten through them anyway.Right now I was using it as a focal point so I didn't have to think about Salma's arm through Beck's, or the way I'd cried on the bus like a complete idiot, or the fact that I'd told him it was fine approximately three times in a row which was two times too many for it to actually be fine.The thing was, I didn't even have the right to be upset. That was what made it so infuriating. I'd written the rules myself. I'd sat in his car and ne