Not Another Bad Date Read Free Page B

to have a mental defect, perhaps the result of too many hits to the helmet that made all that physical perfection a total waste and a damn shame. Why else would a guy like Zach date a heinous bitch like Devon Hamilton? Sure, Devon was gorgeous, but there were a lot of gorgeous girls at UT. Obviously, he was retarded or just superficial. Maybe both.
    Then one day he plopped down in front of her and turned in his chair. If suddenly looking into Zach’s dark brown eyes surrounded by long thick lashes hadn’t been shocking enough, he’d said in an easy drawl, “I’ve been wonderin’ how you get your hair to do that.”
    “What?” She’d been so stunned, she’d actually looked behind her to see whom he was talking to. There hadn’t been anyone but her, and she’d turned back, and asked, “Are you talking to me?” Because jocks like Zach, with beautiful cheerleader girlfriends, didn’t talk to girls like Adele. She was into theater and hung out with people who debated interplanetary teleportation.
    Not that she thought she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough, she just didn’t live in the same privileged sphere, where everyone kissed your ass because you could throw a football or execute a perfect back handspring into an equally perfect Herkey jump.
    His soft laughter had filled the silence between them. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you. Do you get it permed?”
    Was he making fun of her? Before the days of Carrie Bradshaw and Shakira, she’d always hated her hair and had never understood why anyone would get a perm when they could have straight hair. “I don’t do anything to it,” she’d answered, waiting for the punch line. Back in junior high, she’d been called pube head. Usually by his cheerleader girlfriend.
    “It’s just naturally like that?” His gaze moved across her face and touched her hair.
    “Yes.” He had the longest lashes of any guy she’d ever seen, and yet he was the most masculine guy she’d ever seen.
    “Hmm. It’s really pretty. I like it.” He looked back into her eyes, and said through a flash of white teeth and perfect smile, “I’m Zach.”
    Had he just said her hair was pretty? Shocking. “Adele.”
    “I know.”
    Shock number two. “You do?”
    “Sure.”
    Then he’d turned back toward the front of the class, tossed a notebook and pencil on the desk in front of him, and she’d been left staring at the back of his football player’s neck and wondering what the hell had just happened.
    The next scheduled class day, he’d sat in front of her again. And once again, he’d turned around. This time he asked about her silver cuff bracelet engraved with three Celtic knots.
    “This symbolizes the interdependency of nature,” she’d explained, while wondering why he was talking to her again. She didn’t even go to football games. “This, the relationship of man and Earth. This, the unity knot of lovers.”
    He looked up from her wrist and grinned. “Unity of lovers, huh?”
    She pulled her hand back and shrugged. “That’s what some archaeologists believe. The Celts left very few records, so no one really knows for sure.”
    He reached across the desk, grasped her fingers in his warm palm, and lightly tugged her hand toward him. “I’ve never seen a knot of lovers that looked quite like this.”
    She tried to pull her hand free, but he’d tightened his grip. “You won’t find it in Penthouse or Hustler. ”
    He chuckled deep in his chest and let go. “I guess that explains it.” He looked into her eyes for several long seconds, then turned around as class had begun.
    Her fingers still warm from his touch, she’d grabbed her pen and pretended an interest in the professor at the front of room. But in order to see the teacher, she had to look past Zach’s wide shoulders in the T-shirt that hugged his muscles and fit tight around the bulge of his biceps. She gave up and studied the back of his head and his golden hair.
    Zach didn’t seem slow, like he’d