Dare You to Hate Me

I guess it makes sense that sports teams would flock to classes like that since their GPA is required to be over a 2.5 to stay on any team here, but their presence makes it harder to concentrate. They’re all stupidly attractive and considering their cocky smiles and flirty winks at the females (and males) who notice, they know they are too.
I’ve seen some of the players use the attention to their advantage, making me scoff every single time they convince some poor victim to help them with homework, papers, or buy them something here at Bea’s.
Maybe if I were any other person, with any other experience, I’d succumb to their looks as well—give them free things when they approach me at the counter, agree to study and wind up with my shirt up and jeans down in the stacks at the library or pinned between a wall and bulky body in the locker room. Attractive people make you do stupid things out of human need, but it’s the ones who have the whole package that are the most dangerous.
Especially the one stopping in front of the cash register right now.
According to ESPN, the man towering over my five-nine stature is close to six-six. Tall. Powerful. Authoritative. I’ll never forget the day he walked into Bea’s with his normal group of friends all bellowing over something stupid. His head was down, his shoulders hunched, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his red Lindon U sweatshirt like he didn’t want anybody to bother him, but somehow I knew.
I knew I’d be met with electric blue eyes when he looked up—the kind that’s impossible not to be enamored with. And if I looked close enough, I’d see a formation of freckles on the right side of his face that resemble the big dipper.
What I didn’t expect was how defined his jaw had become, slightly squared and clean of any scruff most of the time, a patrician nose free from any breaks despite his aggressive sport, and a set of lips that are enviously fuller than mine.
He’s the perfect type of football player in my eyes. Tanner from the summer sun, built but not overly so despite all the training he does, and a smile that’s so white I hear Crest reached out to him on his Instagram to be featured. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. I don’t have social media these days, just housemates who love to gossip. Especially about the football players who have made a splash on ESPN and local news stations with talks of going pro.
“Your usual?” I greet him with, careful to keep my tone even despite the way my skin tingles as he towers over the register.
One of his brows, dark brown like the hair on his head, quirks. “Am I that predictable?”
It’s Elena who chirps out a “Yep.”
He chuckles, swiping one of those huge hands through the tresses of thick hair that’s longer on the top versus the sides. “The usual then.”
I try not to focus on the low, husky tone of his voice that causes bumps to rise over my arms. He’s twenty-one, but he doesn’t sound it. Before I settled for a half-renovated basement, I couch-surfed with strangers. Most of them who were men older than my twenty years with every intention of making me pay them in some way, and usually not with money.
Aiden Griffith doesn’t give me the same vibes those guys do, though. I’ve had limited interactions with him since the day he walked in and stared in my direction until every inch of me felt the lick of flames from his burning blue gaze. He’ll order, I’ll tell him it’s ready, and he’ll give me a generic “have a good day” knowing I’ll never offer opportunity for more. One time he told me my shoe was untied, which I’d already figured out after almost falling on my face with a tray full of breakfast for table three—who happened to be his buddies. Most of them besides Caleb and DJ, a guy from my anthropology class, laughed at my clumsiness until Aiden shot them a look. They shut up quickly.
It makes no sense to me why someone who’s as sought after as the university’s famed football player is would be at a school like Lindon. We’re not division one. If anything, we’re the misfit college—once thriving, now barely making ends meet if not for the championships the football team wins. I’ve heard people say that athletes who blow it at other schools come here to redeem themselves. Some of them make a future for themselves in the pros after their second chance, and others fizzle out.
I wonder which the man in front of me is.
I’ve been to a few games in the last year when I was squatting near campus and checking out my financial options for enrollment. Thanks to having nothing to my name, and a decent GED score, financial aid pulled through for me when I was accepted. I know a little bit about the game, but not what each position is called or what the scoring system is like. Most of what I do understand comes from the sixteen-year-old I work with who feels the need to read out sports stats from online that’s more like code to me than English. But because I want to understand, to learn after he walked in the first time, I try piecing together the little tidbits she always babbles about. Who’s the best, who’s going pro, who won’t get the chance—Lena and her grandmother have predictions for the entire team, and like most of Lindon, they’re in agreement that Aiden Griffith can make it to the top.
Elena is the conversationalist in this transaction as I prepare Aiden’s coffee because my tongue is too heavy. “Grandma Bea said the Dragons are going to kick butt all the way to the championships.”
From the corner of my eye, I see the tight end’s lips twitch upward like he doesn’t want