Score (Skin in the Game Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

tittered.
    “Yes,” I deadpanned. “Oh, wait. I’m sorry. That’s just my ass.”
    “Oh, come on,” one of the girls piped up. “You’re not even close to being fat, Bee.”
    Maybe true, but I wasn’t skinny, either. Not like these girls. I had curves, something most of my sorority sisters wouldn’t know a thing about. But that was my defense mechanism. I hid in humor. I made fun of myself before anyone else could. It was part of my charm, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was also one of the only reasons they even put up with me at all.
    I spotted Flora lying upside down on the sofa, holding her cell phone over her face and scrolling through it. If I had the skills, I’d program that sucker to play Britney Spears’ I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman every time she breathed. I snapped my fingers at her and motioned her into our bedroom with an urgent wave of my arms.
    To her credit, she hopped right up and trailed behind me without a word.
    I shut the door behind us and she launched herself onto her daybed before squinting at me.
    “Do you know you still have Pop-Tart crumbs on your chin?”
    I did?
    I raced to the mirror. Sure enough, there they were, plain as day.
    Kill me now.
    I mentally replayed my movements of the past couple of hours. Who’d witnessed my Pop-Tart beard? Professor Maxwell. Dr. Sanders. Coach Beal.
    And Callum Samskevitch.
    Oh, God.
    I collapsed face forward on my bed, wondering if I could bury myself in it and die there. Might as well give it a try. I wiggled myself deeper into the mattress like a pathetic caterpillar, silently praying for it to swallow me whole.
    Ten seconds later, I looked up. Flora was still paging through her phone, waiting patiently for my internal crisis to either pass or become external.
    “You also have, like, all this white stuff on your ass, too…”
    Of course, I did.
    “I fell down the steps on the way to class. Must be salt.”
    “Oooh,” she murmured with a sympathetic wince. “So your day isn’t going well, I guess?”
    Understatement of the century.
    “Well. Let’s see.” I rolled up into a sitting position and tucked my knees against my chest. “I took a header down the stairs in front of the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. After which, he assumed I was only coming out of Kappa house because I was there tutoring one of you guys. I subsequently missed all of class and got a bullshit clinical assignment—a football player— from Maxwell. On the way over to the locker room to meet my new assignment, I stepped in a slush puddle and ruined my brand new sneakers. Then I got there only to realize that the hottest guy I’d ever seen—the one who witnessed my graceful face-plant— was my new assignment.”
    She cringed and set the phone on the bed beside her. “And he saw you like…that?”
    “Oh, yeah,” I said with faux-brightness. “And it gets better. I whipped out my phone to take down his number and what song comes blasting out of it? I’ll give you three guesses.”
    Flora burst out laughing. “Come on. That’s hilarious.”
    Maybe in a month…or a year, I’d see the humor in it. But he’d looked at me like I was a dying gnat on his windshield. Pathetic. I’d gotten so flustered, I had to run away with my tail between my legs like a pre-pubescent teen in the face of Justin Bieber.
    “Who was this hot specimen of manliness who witnessed your shame, anyway?” she asked, not bothering to hide her perma-grin.
    “Callum Samskevitch.”
    Flora’s jaw dropped and her dark eyes went wide. “Get. Out.”
    “You know him?” I don’t know why I asked. It was obvious from the way she was practically salivating that she did.
    She nodded. “I mean, I don’t know him, but who doesn’t know of him? Tight end, right?”
    “Wide receiver.”
    “Oh, God, you poor soul. He’s fine . Those eyes! I know why I thought he was a tight end. Did you ever see that ass of his in those little pants the football players wear?”
    Flora was so