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“I never said you were fat. I know it’s muscle.” She rolled her eyes.
“I was kidding, Hazel, you don’t have to keep defending yourself.”
She blew out a breath and relaxed her shoulders.
“But seriously,” he lifted the front of his shirt. “This is all solid.”
She diverted her eyes. “I’ll take your word for it.” She nodded toward the dining hall doors. He was having fun teasing her and if he wasn’t starving, he would be disappointed they’d arrived so soon.
He opened the door and let her walk in ahead of him.
“I’ll grab a seat and wait for you.” She started toward the tables.
“Are you not going to eat?”
“No,” she said. It shouldn’t surprise him the way she’d been making comments about the food.
Kolson went through the line, piling his tray with as much food as possible, then he made his way to the table that Autumn had already begun to make into a desk. She had her laptop open in front of her as well as a notebook and pencils.
“Tackett, man.” Ryder from the team, held out a fist. Kolson balanced the tray on one hand as he returned the fist bump on his way by.
Autumn startled when he flopped into the chair opposite of her. Her eyes grew big when she looked at his tray.
“There you go fat shaming me again,” he teased.
“Am not.” She smoothed out the paper in front of her.
Kolson shook his milk. “I burn a lot of calories at football practice and I have to keep this hulking figure to be able to tackle.”
“No judging here.” Her shoulders were perfectly straight. “Did you do your assignment?”
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” Kolson opened his milk.
Autumn curled her nose. “Have you decided on a topic?”
She was persistent, he had to give her that.
“Jumping right into business.” He took a bite of his burger.
“Technically I’m not jumping right into business. We came over here and I let you get your food first.” She looked down at her phone. “Which took away a total of twenty minutes. If you count the ten minutes you were late then we’ve lost half of the time we’re supposed to have.”
“Wow, you’re good at math, too,” he smirked. He hadn’t realized how much time had been wasted, but also wasn’t complaining about it either.
“Can you please stop deflecting and answer my question?” she sighed.
“Yeah, about that. I think I’m going to do my paper on why college athletes should be paid.”
She furrowed her brow. “Didn’t you get an athletic scholarship?”
He nodded as he chewed on another bite. Then swallowed before elaborating. “Yeah, but it doesn’t cover all my expenses. Just tuition, dorm room, and books.” Technically that was with the student loans he had taken out on top of his scholarship and Pell grant.
Autumn adjusted her glasses. “Tuition isn’t cheap.”.
“Exactly, and I’m thankful for the scholarship, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” He motioned around the room.
“This is like a glorified high school for you, isn’t it?”
Kolson wasn’t sure what to think of that. Autumn could come across as pretentious, but yet, she’d been cool with suggesting they come here to work so he wouldn’t miss dinner.
