Deep End: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (8 page)

But she doesn’t
even meet my eye
s
. She’s got her head down and jotting notes onto her reporters’ pad with her little stubby pencil.

I can’t help thinking how cute she looks, with the fire of co
ncentration about her. Another part of me
,
though, feels hurt, which surprises me. When’s the last time a girl has made the famous Anchor feel hurt?
Probably never.
Well, maybe back in second grade once, when I pulled my crush’s hair, and she told the teacher about it, landing me my first of many after school detentions.

Coach is there, coming out of the
locker room
behind the guys, who have already dived into the pool.

“Way to go Anchor,” says one of the guys, seeing me standing near Allison. He makes a crude gesture with his hands that I hope Allison doesn’t see.

Coach catches my
eye, giving me a look that clearly says, “You better not be putting the moves on her, kid.”

“I’m going to get changed,” I say, to Allison, making sure coach can here me.
“I hope you got the
details
you need. I hope it was helpful.” I’m trying to sound professional, but it comes out somewhat awkward. I’m just gla
d I don’t already have my swim briefs
on, since I still have an erection.

She just gives me a little grunt and a
nod, not really looking up from
her notes. What happened? Just a minute ago, I could have sworn I felt something from her, some powerful interest.
And now, nothing.

Wow, that was intense.

I’m sitting up on the swim balcony again, practically choking on the ch
lorine smell that’s wafting up.
The heat and
humidity
is intense, and it seems like the pages of my notebook are growing wetter by the minute. Down below,
Anchor and the rest of the swim team
are splashing around, doing laps back and forth, as both the coach and the
assistant
coach bark seemingly
contradictory
orders at them.

I’m not concentrating on the swimming at all though.

All I can think about is Anchor.
Anchor’s body, to be precise.
But it’s something a little more than that. It’s a feeling. Some kind of magical electrical feeling that felt like it wa
s
pulsating
through me, pulsing through both of us, binding us together in an
inexplicable
way.

I wonder if he felt it too.

My plan was just to flirt with him a little. I can tell he’s attracted to me. I
c
an tell he wants me, although I should know better t
han to think it’s for anything
more than another notch, another fuck. He’s probably just turning on his animal charm for me, to draw me in.

I wonder i
f I can even execute
my plan. A
fter all, real reporters don’t
hook up with their inside
sources
, no matter what. I’ll never m
ake it at a paper like The Journal
if I’m falling from every guy with a decent body that I try to turn into my inside source.

Can I continue flirting with Anchor, drawing him in closer, in order to extract juicy dirt on the swim team, without actually falling for Anchor?

If I do fall for Anchor,
despite
myself, Beaumont will somehow find out. I know it. He has a way of finding out everything that’s happening on campus. He was a damn good journalist back in the day for a reason—he seems to al
ways have his ear to the ground, and he can
distinguish
between the rushing buffalo and the lone detail that he needs.

I look down at the
swim team
. Somehow, I spot Anchor first. It’s like my mind is zoomed onto his body.

He’s doing the freestyle, moving powerfully
through
the water.

He does seem graceful on land, but it’s nothing compared to how he appears in
the
water, as if he can move through it without any effort at all.

His
muscles
are moving in perfect unison. It seems like he’s doing what he was made to do, what he was destined to do.

I can’t
help admiring his body and his
muscles
, his
chiseled
face that’s turning just slightly to the side to come up for air every other stroke or so.

But I catch myself.

How can I be admiring this idiot?

He may be good at swimming. He may be good at moving through the water, but that’s probably the only thing in life he’ll ever be good at. When my damning article eventually comes out, and attaches itself like a plague to the
swim team
, I doubt Anchor will even be capable of reading it or understanding it. No matter what I write about him, his head is so swollen, that he’ll probably take every word as a compliment. He doesn’t seem to understand that people might not like him
, or might not think he’s God’s gift to
mankind
the way he apparently does.

I’m spen
ding too much time stari
ng at Anchor, and not enough
time
writing or watching what’s going on with the
swim team
. Whatever, I
think,
these are
n’t
the important details anyway. I
really
don’t care what the swim team’s tactics and
strategies
and training practices are. What I care about is exposing their
dirt,
the dark underbelly that I know exists.

Better just to get started writing, I think.

I get up and leave, walking down the stairs, hoisting my heavy bag as
always
.

I go home to my dorm room, walking through the campus dusk by myself, like I’ve done so many times before.

I open my laptop and open up a b
lank word document that I stare
into for a good twenty minutes, my mind racing with
possibilities
. But I have the feeling that it’s impossible to actually commit a word to the page. After all, I think to myself, I don’t really know anything yet about the
swim team
. The only things I know are that A
nchor is an arrogant womanizer,
and that he stole a
famous campus statue, seemingly without any
repercussions
.

My phone buzzes on the desk next
to
me. It’s a text message. The vibrating buzz breaks me out of my trance.

I take my phone. It’s a text message from Anchor. We exchanged numbers earlier today.

“Swim party tonight,” he writes. “Swim house at 11pm. I want to show you the fun side of the
swim team
. It’s not all boring practices and laps at the pool.”

I smile to myself. Then I catch myself wondering why I’m smiling.

Am I falling for Anchor? Am I smiling just because a hot jock is texting me, inviting me to a party? Or am I smiling because this is what I’ve been waiting for: Anchor might call it the “fun” side of the swim team, but I’m going to call it the demented, perverted side, at least if half the
rumors
are true, that is.

The party starts at 11pm. I’m a classic night owl, but I haven’t been out that late since I was a freshman. Normally at 11pm, I’m here in my dorm room studying, reading, or writing, living my monastic life style that’s gotten me so far
academically
.

“Meet you there,” I write, with my fingers actually trembling against the cell phone screen.

I look in the mirror, somewhat nervously. I’m a mess. I’ve got to look better if I want to extract any good information out of Anchor.

As I frantically go looking through my closet, tossing clothes around, trying to find something suitable for the party, something hot, I make mental notes of my plan for tonight.
I’m going to flirt a little bit with Anchor again, make him really think he has a chance with me. By doing so, he’ll tell me everything. There’s no
way a guy like that, who’s
so full of
himself
, could ever think that
a girl is
just tricking him. He’s simply not going to be mentally
capable
of believing a girl isn’t in love with him. And I’m not in love with him. It bothers me that I have to remind myself of that fact.

So, go to the party. That’s step one. I’ll hang around the party long
enough
to see what it is the swimmers get up to the there, but I doubt it’ll be a big surprise. Then I’ll get Anchor alone, and start the extraction process.

I’m surprised how cold and calculating I’m being.
Or at least trying to be.

It’s been a long, long time, since I dressed up and tried to look sexy. I think I’ve lost my knack for it, or maybe I never had it. I normally wear simple clothes and my hair up in a
ponytail
,
walking
around campus without makeup or
jewelry
.

Tonight, I put on
mascara
, lipstick
,
and a light layer of foundati
on, along with a dab of concealer
here and there to hide the blemishes and
inconsistencies
that I’m
acutely
aware of as I stare at my face in the magnifying mirror my Mother bought me during my first
semester
at college. I don’t think I’ve glanced at it since she bought it for me, and it’s spent most of its life in the back of my dorm room
closet
.

Tonight I’m wearing a short skirt that I’d never be caught dead in normally, and a tight top that shows an ample amount of cleavage. I
justify
this all to myself by thinking of the famous reporters who did similar things to get the story: Erin
Brokovich
, for instance.

My hair is down, falling around my shoulders. I take one final look in the mirror before grabbing my purse and cell phone and leaving.

As I walk across campus, I take my smallest recorder
from my purse and stick it inside the waistband of my skirt. The way my shirt
bunches up down there, I don’t
think it’s
noticeable
. I make sure it’s on and running, so that I won’t miss anything from tonight. I also have my pad and pen, but it might impede
the flow of the night if I whip it out during the party, or when I’ve got Anchor all alone.

Anchor. I can’t believe I’m calling him Anchor to myself! What an idiotic nickname. I resolve here and now to call him Matt, his real name, both to myself, and to his face, no matter what the circumstances. Calling him Anchor makes me feel
more
like a fan than a reporter.

Every
single
light is on in the swimming
house
. It’s just off campus. It’s kind of a run down neighbo
rhood, but the swimming house
is
particularly
run down. It looks more like a crack house than a
house
for college
athletes
.

There’s a
hip-hop
song blaring fro
m inside, but it can be heard clearly out on the dark street.

I stand there for a minute, surveying the whole thing, the bass line from the
hip-hop
song practically making my hair move and sway.

Suddenly one of the upstairs windows is flung open, blasting light and more music into the street.

Th
ere’s excited yelling coming fro
m upstairs, as a naked man start
s to climb out the window. What
he’s trying to do I can only guess. He seems to be trying
to
get
on top
of the porch roof, but it’s many
feet away, and he can’t possibly
make it.

The front door bursts open, and swimmers pile out, many of them shirtless, and apparently covered in beer, holding red plastic cups, and shouting up at the guy, who’s half out the window, moving his foot around wildly and blindly as if any second he’s going to touch the top
of
the roof. It’s clear he’s gone out the wrong window, and is too drunk to realize it.

“You’re almost there
,
man,” yells one of the
swimmers
. I recognize as Anchor, I
mean Matt’s, friend from a couple nights ago.
Dave.
He’s the guy who accosted me on campus, the guy that
Anchor,
I mean Matt, tried to “defend” me against.