“Can you do this for my date?” Reagan makes a circle in front of her face.

“Absolutely, but you don’t need my help to look gorgeous.” I grab my stuff and wave as I head out.

Maverick is already at Adam’s apartment when I get there. He’s on the couch with Charli next to him. Rhett and Heath are playing video games.

“Did I miss Adam?” I sit in the chair next to Heath.

He bumps my shoulder. “Yeah, he left for Taryn’s a few minutes ago.”

“Does she ever come here?”

“Nah, not really.”

I get up and haul my backpack to the table and pull out my laptop and a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets I borrowed from the library. Maverick follows and takes the chair across from me. Charli lies at his feet.

“Do you want me to take a look at your notes or should we jump into the study questions?”

He heaves a dramatic sigh. “My notes might be shit.”

He hands over a notebook filled with three pages of his small penmanship.

“Did you write down everything the professor said?” I ask, baffled as I scan over them. The amount of detail he’s captured is crazy.

“Uh, yeah. I wasn’t sure what was important and what wasn’t, so I wrote down damn near everything.”

“I’m not sure either. Wow okay. The test is an essay?”

“Yeah. Payne, phone’s going off in your room,” Maverick calls to him.

Heath stands with the controller, backing out of the room. “Ah, ah, fuck. I’m cornered. Pause, one second.” He rushes into his room and out of view, but I hear him answer the phone.

His voice lowers and softens, that tells me immediately he’s talking to a girl. A surge of white-hot jealousy heats my face. He comes back out, phone to his ear, and tosses the controller on the couch.

“Sorry, man, gotta take this,” he says to Rhett and then disappears back into his room, shutting the door behind him.

“So, what do you think?” Maverick asks, bringing me back to the present.

“These notes are great.” We spend the next fifteen minutes picking out things we think he can use. Maverick is detailed and thorough in his studying. It surprises me he’s failing actually. At least until I start asking him questions about it and his attention is about as focused as Charli’s.

“What was the question again?” he asks.

I laugh and he gives me a sheepish grin. “I really fucking hate this class.”

“Why are you taking it?”

“I thought it would be an easy A. I breezed through American Literature.”

“Okay, well, how did you study for that class?”

“I don’t know.” He leans over and pets his dog and a smile pulls at his lips. “Heath and I read the books out loud to each other in funny accents.”