19

Adam

Not Nearly As Satisfying

The sex ed presentation was actually pretty good. It wasn't anything I hadn't heard before but even if Piper kept her paper gripped in her hands the whole time and her eyes planted firmly on the floor, it was still informative. Pretty well-researched.

She clicked through her PowerPoint one slide after another, just like she must've rehearsed.

Maybe that was why I was so pissed off when the assholes in front of me weren't paying attention.

If the class was full, that'd be one thing. But there were fourteen people in the room, including Piper and me. It wasn't hard to zero in on the only other person making noise in the room.

My eyes flickered back to the guy in the blue baseball cap again, with his phone hidden under the table. With a nudge, he showed something to his buddies.

"It can be a…" Piper stammered at the front of the room. "It can be a great idea to do a floor event and give out con—condoms. It's a fun way to give a prize and to make sure everyone has enough on your floor—"

"I knew I recognized her," one of the guys in front of me muttered, leaning back to chat with his buddy.

Piper clicked the keyboard again and a new screen flashed up. "Even just keeping up posters can be—"

"Do you think she'd sign it?" the guy in the blue cap chortled.

I squeezed my hands into fists on the table. This was Piper's presentation. But as much as I wanted to punch this guy in the back of the head, I resisted the temptation. This wasn't a vacation. My coach would be looking for updates, and hitting a guy on the head wasn't a great one.

Quickly, I leaned over. "Hey. Can you shut the fuck up?"

That was about as nice as I could make it.

The guy to the left snuck a look back at me. "Okay, man. Whatever."

"Yeah." The guy in the blue hat nodded and the silence between them lasted for a good two minutes before he crept closer to his buddy, careful to keep his voice low. "You know what they say about football girlfriends. They just swap them around. It's a train station. She's only mad because he got to do it."

That's it.

I reached forward and grabbed the back of his chair. The dumbass had five seconds to realize what was going on. A shout tore out of him. I didn't do anything crazy. Just tilted him back with a snap of my hand and he crashed to the ground.

He stared up at me, stunned. I shoved myself out of my chair and grabbed his shirt collar.

" Adam! "

I glanced up from teaching the asshole a lesson to see the entire workshop, all on the edge of their seats, watching us, a few people whipping out their phones as fast as they could. They were all animals at the watering hole, as far back as they could be from the fight, but close enough to watch the action.

And there was Piper at the front, stricken.

I suddenly realized exactly how Piper saw the situation. Me, with my hands around this dumbass's shirt collar. My fist slackened and the guy hit the ground again. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as it'd been thirty seconds ago.

"Outside," Piper blurted out and hurried to the door. A flush crept up her neck and she ushered me out of the classroom, away from the cameras. She yanked the door closed after I stepped out with her.

My stomach was in knots for all the wrong reasons. I'd never done that before. Sure, I'd thrown a punch or two at a party when things had gotten out of hand and I'd watched over the hotel room last semester when Ryan had gone apeshit on the guy who disrespected Kassie. But this was different.

It'd given me a taste of sharp metal when they laughed at Piper. If I could've gone back in, I'd do something really stupid. The disrespect—

"What was that?! " Piper demanded.

I stood there, surprised. "What was what?"

"What did you do?!"

"They're being assholes," I said. "They were being dicks about—uh—"

Piper threw up her hands, watching for an explanation.

"About…uh…" My gut twisted again. "About the…bleacher bunny picture."

"That's it? "

I frowned, gazing down at her. How could she say that? Those shitheels were making a mockery of her workshop. How was that supposed to help her with her stage fright?

Piper put a hand to her forehead. "Adam, everyone has that photo." Shaking her head, her stutter reared itself, but not in embarrassment. She was dumbfounded with me. "Why do you think I left KYU?"

I stared at her. "What?"

"You know what I keep thinking about?" Piper said, searching my face while hers practically dripped with disbelief. "I keep thinking about how for you, that picture must've been super funny. Just hilarious. And for me? It ruined my life."

"I—"

"Did you think that's the first time I've had to ignore that?" she snapped.

"They wanted you to sign it."

"So did everybody else!"

I shifted back, shocked. The bleacher bunny photo had gotten me a strict conversation with Coach Lawson and Cleo, but the photo's momentum fizzled after that. I thought it did for everybody.

"Are you serious? That's not even the worst part of it." Piper put a hand on her hip. "People mined through my social media, making these huge videos laughing at me. That was worse." She sucked in a breath. " All of his teammates marching into my classes because of how embarrassed he was? That was worse. My face photoshopped on that picture? Even that was worse!" She stepped away from me, crossing her arms over her chest. Not out of frustration, more like…she was holding on to herself. "My job couldn't handle the harassment. That was done! And the moment I broke up with him over the photo, everyone blacklisted me. All the friends I thought I had, gone! After he kicked me out."

I felt…horrible. In the last ten parties I'd hosted, there was a whole list of things I could've had shame over, but I'd never bothered with that. Shame never mattered to me. I honestly never gave a shit. But with Piper, I couldn't think of anything else that weird, awful feeling was.

"This is my presentation," she said simply and her hands dropped at her sides. "I worked…I worked hard on this. It's the one thing I wanted to do right. I don't need you to ruin it."

Guilt caught in my throat. "I didn't mean to."