The Studying Hours (How to Date a Douchebag, #1)

by Sara Ney

Our eyes meet. Gazes connect. Heartbeats pound. Whatever the fuck cliché you want to throw out there—they’re all annoying, but there you have it.

The universe is a bitchy, relentless mistress indeed.

He’s not my type. He’s… A long, blissful sigh on a cold spring night. An incredible moment I won’t soon forget. A vain, stubborn ass with deplorable taste in company. He’s everything I don’t want. And yet… Somehow he is.

“I’m sure you google yourself enough for the both of us.” Shit, she’s right. I do google myself a lot.

“You’re an asshole.” “So you keep saying.” The smirk returns. “It’s like looking in the mirror, isn’t it?”

Fine. I might have accidentally google stalked him. Accidentally.

“Go to sleep, Oswald.” He gives my hand another squeeze. “Sweet wet dreams, Jim.”

There was a time I used to worry about never finding the one. Worry I was going to be alone forever with no one to come home to at night but the dog. Or cat. Or fish.

Be my calm.” Be his calm? Be his calm.

I sit up straighter in my chair, a little more cocksure than I was ten seconds ago. I mean, it’s not like people aren’t telling me on a regular basis how fucking amazing I am, but a compliment coming from Jameson Clark somehow feels like winning at life.

I wonder if life is going outside to have a smoke right now, because it just got done fucking me.

“You would go running with me to be supportive?” “Um…no, but I would hold the stopwatch while you ran around the block, throw a cup of water on you when you ran past?”

We’re friends and anti-lovers, with sexual tension chucked into one fucked up non-relationship relationship that’s all my doing because I said I couldn’t commit.

“Why aren’t you looking at me?” Because you make me feel things I don’t want to feel. Feelings I don’t know how to manage, don’t know how to deal with. Get rid of. Keep.

“Brace yourself Jim; I’m going to date the shit out of you.”

There’s no shame in my game: if a guy can get laid whenever the hell he wants, with whoever the hell he wants, so can I.

So please, just shoot me now and put me out of my passive-aggressive existence because I do not want to hurt my friend.