Darkroom: A Moo U Hockey Romance, Kate Willoughby [best books to read for young adults .TXT] 📗

that was labelled with alien markings. If that box held something explosive, he could take out all of them. AJ kept playing until he ran out of ammo and weapons and got torn apart limb from limb.

“How did you find that grenade?”

“While you were gone, I spent about seventeen lives just searching the room for something, anything we hadn’t found before.”

“Go ahead. Finish it.”

He picked the controller back up and restarted the level. I leaned back on the couch and watched him move through the rooms, systematically taking down the aliens with moves we’d perfected from repetition. When he got to the big warehouse with the pillars, I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. This was it. He could do it.

Once again, he edged toward the pillar and picked up the grenade, but this time, he waited until the aliens formed a cluster near the mystery box.

“Now!” I urged just as he threw it.

The explosion was three times as big as before. Smoke billowed and the music hit a crescendo as bodies and shrapnel flew through the air. AJ had his shields up, so he was unharmed.

I gave him a high five and he grinned as he set the controller down. “That was epic.”

“Yup.” He turned the TV and the console off. “I’m going to bed.”

“Hey, hold up a second. We need to talk.”

“Ya think?”

I looked him in the eye. “I’m sorry for that shit with Kurly earlier. I shouldn’t have called you out on it in front of the team.”

“Damn straight you shouldn’t have. I mean, what the fuck? I’ve supported you the whole fucking time, telling everyone who’d listen you’d be a better captain than those two seniors. I defended you when Kurly called you an entitled piece of shit.”

“I know. You’re a good friend. You’re my best friend and I’m really sorry. Tell me how I can make it up to you.”

It took him a moment to realize I was using the relationship re-boot on him but when he did, he laughed. There was a hint of evil in that laugh.

“What can you do to make it up to me? Let’s see. You can clean my fucking bathroom.

“Oh, fuck you, man.”

“Okay. I guess you’re not as interested in redemption as I thought you were.”

I sighed. AJ wasn’t a slob and our bathrooms had handheld shower heads, so it would be relatively easy to sponge down the walls, door and floor with cleaner and hose it clean. I just needed to block out the fact that those walls probably had dried jizz on them. And the toilet…Fuck. I didn’t even want to think about it.

“Oh, all right. I’ll clean your bathroom,” I said. “Will that square us up then?”

He met my eyes. “Yeah.” We shook hands and he said, “For the record, you were right. I did put you on the spot, and I’m sorry about that.”

“Sorry enough to let me out of cleaning your bathroom?”

“Hell no.”

A week later, I met Indi at the photography studio at seven a.m., which was hella early for me, especially considering the fact that I stopped at the Green Bean on the way to school and picked up lattes and croissants for us.

“You got me an almond croissant?” she said, delighted when she opened her pastry bag.

“I remember you said that was your go-to.”

“It is. I love the filling and the toasted nuts on the top.”

After breakfast, we got down to the business of shooting the photos. There was a stool, a background and lights already set up for us. We were supposed to be capturing an aspect of the person that we’d discovered during the interview. I wasn’t quite sure how to do that, so I just made a game of it, pretending that she was a high fashion model. There was one of those wire things that allowed you to click the shutter by pressing a button in your hand, so I didn’t have to glue my eye to the viewfinder.

“Show me happy. Sexy. Pouty. You’re a goddess. You’re a vamp. Now you’re contemplative…now, calculating…”

And she did the same when it was my turn to pose. We laughed a lot and by the time our allotted studio time was up, we’d used up two rolls of film.

The darkroom was not the little closet-sized space I’d expected. It was almost the size of the photography classroom. There were six machines called enlargers along one wall and the same number of developing stations. It smelled weird and I wondered briefly about the effects of inhaling the fumes of the chemicals we would be using.

To our surprise, there was a darkroom assistant named Randi there to develop the film on a giant machine and guide us through the rest of the process—using the enlarger, the three-step process for developing, adjusting contrast and making the final print. While this made our work a hell of a lot easier, I wasn’t getting the alone time with Indi that I’d hoped for. So with the third wheel in the darkroom, I had to get creative.

As Randi demonstrated how to adjust the enlarger to ensure the proper print size, I stood very close to Indi and placed my hand on her ass. She turned toward me, one questioning eyebrow raised, but I maintained a look of innocence as I slowly squeezed. Her eyes widened as Randi droned on about refocusing or something. I wasn’t paying that much attention. I was too busy enjoying the luscious handful I had in my hand.

Indi tried to listen to Randi, but, bad boy that I am, I persisted. I slid my hand down and between our bodies. She was wearing jeans, but I could tell she liked what I was doing by the way she subtly arched her back to give me a little more access.

Then, I felt her hand on me, which wasn’t something I had anticipated when I’d started this. Shit. My jaw clenched as her fingernails scratched their way from the bottom of my