Chapter Three NICO

Chapter Three

NICO

“This is a crazy idea,” I announce the moment I shut my bedroom door.

“What’s so crazy about it?” Cooper leans against the wall, crossing his bulky arms. “She seems nice enough.”

“But do you really think we should rent the room to a girl?” I sound like an asshole. I feel like an asshole for even saying it, but damn.

I’ve never lived with a woman before, beyond a relative, and that doesn’t count. Wouldn’t she encroach on our stuff? Our personal lives? Would she try to turn this place into a pink palace? Would she have all her friends over under the guise of a study session, but really they’re all there trying to check us out? What if they’re boring or nerdy or flat-out awful or worse .?.?. active fangirls who won’t leave us alone?

Yeah. I’m a complete asshole sometimes. I can admit it.

“What’s the problem? You think she can’t handle us?” Cooper’s brows lift.

“Handle us how?” Dollar asks, sounding confused.

Typical. The guy can be kind of clueless.

“I mean, do you think she’s aware of .?.?. who we are exactly?” I sound like a jackass, but come on.

We’re on the Dolphins football team, and for the last couple of seasons, we’ve been the hottest shit alive. The love and adoration we get from everyone on campus and in town is fucking crazy. Last season they had to hire security guards just for us to safely exit the stadium after games. It was completely out of hand.

While it freaked us out some, truly?

We pretty much loved every minute of it.

This season is predicted to be even wilder, and I’m ready for it. National championship, here we come. I’m tired of the South or the Midwest always seeming to have the advantage. We’re bringing the trophy back to California again. We have to. It’s my senior year.

I’m ready to go out with a bang—and plan on finding plenty of women to bang along the way.

Cheesy segue, but I made it work, I think.

“Give me three reasons why you think this idea is crazy,” Dollar retorts, looking pissed—specifically at me. This guy. He always seems frustrated with me since we moved in with each other over the summer. Even a little on edge, though I know why. He’s been dealing with a shoulder injury that keeps him from playing, and he hates it.

“One, we don’t even know her name.” I hold out my hand, my index finger up. “Two, we should probably run a credit check on her. She freaked out over the rent amount. What if she stiffs us and we can’t kick her out because the laws are so crazy here?”

I watched that nineties movie with my mom back in the day where this couple fixed up their house in San Francisco and rented out the rooms. One of the tenants was a nightmare, and they couldn’t evict him. It was like a legit horror movie.

I’m not about to get us caught up in something like that.

“She wouldn’t do that,” Dollar says with a finality that makes me wonder if he’s hot for her.

I mean, I’d get it if he was. She’s cute. Great legs that are on full display thanks to the denim shorts she’s wearing. Long dark hair that’s pulled into a high ponytail, and big blue eyes that seem to eat me up every time we look at each other.

But yeah. I can’t think of her like that because if she was to move in with us, I wouldn’t mess around with her. I’m the type who hooks up and moves on fast. I don’t have to keep facing them days or weeks or months later. The one time I did that—and it was only last spring, so not too long ago—it ended in utter disaster.

If I hooked up with this girl and we lived together? I wouldn’t be able to escape her.

“You don’t know that,” Coop says, sounding levelheaded, as usual. “Nico’s right. We don’t know her.”

“What’s your third reason?” Dollar asks me, completely ignoring Coop.

Here’s where I reveal my biggest fear.

“What if she’s a secret fangirl who’ll make our lives absolutely miserable?” They’re out there, the secret—and not-so-secret—fangirls who try to chase us down every chance they get. Last season we had a few who sneaked into our apartment. Gav found one naked in his bed. They get a little wild at bars and try to get us to sign their tits after games, and their antics are .?.?.

A lot.

It’s a little calmer around town since school hasn’t officially started yet. Orientation for the incoming freshmen is being held early next week, so things are pretty quiet around campus and Santa Mira in general.

But the majority of students are moving in over the weekend, and come Monday? It’s balls to the wall. Students everywhere. Fangirls lurking at every corner.

All right, maybe not every corner. Not every woman on campus cares about the football team, but a lot of them do, and some of them come on really strong. Too strong.

“Oh, what, you’ll be miserable because some cute girl wants to suck your dick on the regular? What a hardship.” Dollar shakes his head. “I’m not even interested in her like that. I just want someone around to cook us meals on occasion. Like I said, I’m tired of the fast-food runs or DoorDashing everything. It gets expensive. I want a home-cooked meal.”

“She could be lying.”

“I don’t think so.” We both swivel our heads in Cooper’s direction when he speaks up. “She seems .?.?. nice.”

“But you don’t know her,” I remind him. “Anyone can seem nice when you first meet them. Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors always said he was a nice, quiet dude.”

“Bro, they said that but also complained about his place stinking. They just didn’t know he was cooking up body parts.” Dollar mock shivers. “She’s not a serial killer, Nico. She seems like a girl who’s in a shit situation and desperately needs a room. We have a room. Why wouldn’t we help her?”

“What sort of discount should we give her for the cooking deal?” Cooper asks, changing the subject. “Four hundred off? Five hundred?”

“Five hundred? That’s a lot.” I got almost a complete full ride when I came to UC Santa Mira, but I still have some minor expenses. And since football and school don’t allow us much time to have a job, I’m lucky that my parents help me out with those expenses.

“Split three ways it’s not so bad. Like a hundred and sixty bucks or so.” Dollar shrugs. “The money we save from not going out to eat all the time will pay off in the long run.”

“He’s right,” Coop adds quietly. I turn to look at him, remaining quiet because I want to hear his opinion, which I respect more than Dollar’s. “If she feeds us three days out of the week, in the end, we’ll be better off, money-wise.”

“We’ll have to pay for the food,” I point out.

“And it’ll still be a significant savings over going out all the time.”

“How do we run a credit check on her?” Dollar asks.

“If we’re going to do this, we should at least ask her for a deposit. Like five hundred bucks. She can Venmo us,” Cooper says. “And we charge her nine hundred dollars for rent up front. What do you think?”

This is crazyis what I want to say. Again. We don’t know this woman. What if she’s a complete psycho? Unfair of me to think, but hey. It could happen. The idea of having a stranger move in with us—a female stranger—and change the dynamic in this house .?.?.

Can’t lie. It makes me uncomfortable.

“I don’t know—”

Cooper cuts me off. “I’m all for it.” I send him a questioning look, and he shrugs. “I’m tired of rooming with dickfaces who bail on us like Sampson just did. I agree with Dollar. Let’s rent her the room.”

“We don’t know her—”

“We can get to know her,” he says, interrupting me again. “Maybe she prefers to keep to herself. We won’t be around much, anyway. Football is going to keep us busy the entire semester.”

“Think she’ll lose her shit over us being on the team?” I’m repeating myself, but I don’t care. We need to make sure we’re not getting tricked. “Or maybe she already knows we’re on the team and this is all a ruse for her to move in? She could be a clout chaser.” Saying it out loud sounds ridiculous, but hey. Weirder shit has happened.

“Doubtful. She seems pretty oblivious about who we are. Even a little naive.” Cooper shrugs. “I’m thinking she’s probably a transfer student from who knows where and has no clue who we are.”

“I don’t care if she knows who we are or not. I say we just do it,” Dollar says.

A ragged exhale leaves me as I scrub my hand along my jaw, rubbing the stubble that’s already growing there. “I’m getting outvoted on this one, huh?”

“Yes,” Dollar and Cooper say at the same time.

“Fine.” I drop my hand. “Let’s go tell her.”

We exit the bedroom, entering the living room to find her—Jesus, we should at the very least know her name—perched on the edge of the couch, wringing her hands together with a stressed-out expression on her pretty face.

The chick is clearly sweating over our decision.

“Before we give you an answer, we need to know one thing,” I say, making her sit up straight, her wide blue eyes meeting mine.

I immediately feel like a shit for doubting her. For thinking she’s a psycho or a clout chaser or anything like that. Her expression is downright angelic, with an ounce of fear added for good measure.

That’s the part I don’t like. The fear. I’m a big guy. So are all my friends—and teammates. But she has nothing to fear from any of us. Well, Dollar always crushes on random girls, so that might become an issue, but he’d never harm a fly. He’s a little too persistent and annoying about it, but that’s it.

“What is it?” she finally whispers.

I flash her what I hope is my most disarming smile. “What’s your name?”