Come on, Rand. Grow up. You can do this.
I pushed away from the wall and ran straight into PJ Roark. Along with Jesse, PJ was the other ALA human sacrifice that we’d put on the Quiz Bowl teams because Dean Robberts required two of our guys on Quiz Bowl and two of theirs on flag football. The dean thought that would end the decades-long feud between our houses. That, or we’d just kill each other and solve his problem.
PJ grabbed my arm. “We won the round! Now we’re tied with fucking Harvard to win the whole shebang, man. We’re on fire!”
“Yeah, it’s great.”
He pulled my arm. “Come on. We’ve got a little time for lunch. Right after that, the division-two team I’m on does its final, and then the final round for the div-one squad is the big finale. So we need to stuff our faces fast. It’s a long afternoon.” He laughed. PJ’s first priority was always stuffing his face.
We walked into the hall where people were rushing in every direction. As he hurried me along, I said, “You’re really into this Quiz Bowl stuff.”
PJ’s smile faded a little. “Well yeah. You work on something this hard, you figure you ought to marry it and have kids.”
I snorted and we walked into the hotel restaurant. PJ stared around, spied a waving hand in the back, and pulled me toward it. We walked up on a big round table packed with Poins plus Jesse and Bubba, of all people, and some other Madison students that had likely bought tickets from PJ back on campus and were there to see the outcome firsthand.
They’d left some empty chairs, and Jesse jumped up and pushed one out. “Rand, hi. Glad you came. Sit here, bro.”
“Thanks. You guys did great.” I looked around at all the Poins on the team. Awkward. Sitting on the other side of Jesse was Dobbs, the Poin that Jesse had fallen for while they practiced Quiz Bowl. No accounting for taste, although he was cute in a very Poiny way. Next to Dobbs sat Sean, the little redhead they called Hedgehog who played on our flag football team. Sean was a supposed genius, but somehow he’d gotten to the gooey, teddy-bear heart of giant Bubba Merkofsky, one of our key flag players, and the two were now an item too.
PJ had tucked in on the other side of the table between the weird dude who wore black leather and the uber nerd named Sai who always looked constipated. Both of them were on the team I’d just watched. I had to admit. They were damned good at Quiz Bowl.
Dobbs said, “There’s a buffet, and that’s probably the easiest way to fill up you bottomless pits in a short time, so everybody on the teams go grab a plate. The rest of you can do your own thing, but if you want to see div two, you probably need to buffet.” He took Jesse’s hand and marched toward the buffet line. All the rest of the guys at the table scraped back their chairs and followed.
I let them go first, since it didn’t matter if I got to division two a little late, plus I might bail on the whole thing, go back to my hotel room, and watch a movie. Hell, when did I ever have a chance to do that? As chapter president, living in the ALA house, I was almost never alone.
The buffet had a few too many things made with mayonnaise, but I managed to create a big green salad, add a few hard-boiled eggs for protein, concoct my own dressing from some olive oil, vinegar, and chunks of bleu cheese, and call it a meal. While the Poindexters paid for the Quiz Bowl teams, I paid for my own, walked back to the table, and stopped.
Where there had been an empty chair, Jax sat with a plate piled high with veggie pizza and salad, talking to Dobbs real seriously.
All I wanted was to turn and walk away, but how weird would that look, wandering around the restaurant carrying a plate with no place to sit. The whole place was packed with avid Quiz Bowl fans. Plus Jesse was smiling up at me, expecting me to sit down next to him—and directly opposite Jax. Great.
I sat.
Instantly, I gazed at Jesse. “Good job on that Heart is a Lonely Hunter question. I’m impressed with how you hung in there. Some of those questions, I didn’t even understand the words. Talk about specialized knowledge.” I laughed, viciously keeping my gaze fixed on Jesse. Not a hardship, since he was totally fine.
He smiled in that shy way he had. “Truthfully, I spent hours memorizing questions and answers with Dobbs.”
I must have raised my eyebrows because he barked a laugh. “I swear, that’s what we were doing—most of the time. The SMT guys have been participating in Quiz Bowl since grade school, so they’ve run across variations on so many kinds of questions. I just had to cram the best I could. I’ve learned a lot.”
I gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, man. Though I do take credit for being smart enough to assign you to the team.” I winked at him and looked across the table. “You, too, PJ.” Big mistake. Huge. Because looking across the table at PJ meant I was practically looking at Jax.
This close and head-on, I got that reaction I never liked to admit I had. One-half fury and one-half sizzling lust. I didn’t want to remember it, but there had been a time when the hipster-type with beard, beanie, and soulful eyes had done it for me down to the ground. But that was a long time ago, and now, seeing Jax’s smug, cooler-than-thou expression just made me want to smash his face.
Staring straight at me, he said, “Since I’d never be arrogant enough to imply I take any credit for the team’s exceptional brilliance, I’ll just say it’s obvious you all worked really hard. You should be proud of yourselves.”
As red crawled up my neck, Dobbs beamed. “Thanks, Jax. That means a lot to all of us.”
Jesse cast a quick side-eye in my direction. Yeah, he knew that the asshole had just thrown enough shade my way to prevent my tanning for a year. Whether anybody else got it, I couldn’t tell.
I dug deeply into my salad as Jesse and Dobbs and the other team members strategized for the afternoon sessions. It might as well have been bleu cheese-flavored plastic for all I tasted it, but I tried to raise my eyes as little as possible, because when I did, Jax wore a small, self-satisfied smile.
I could hit back. And normally, I would. But I was feeling a little outnumbered at the moment. Besides, I told myself the fucker wasn’t worth it. We were only a couple weeks from graduation, and then Jax Johnson would be a nonentity in my life.
After polishing off some desserts, the team gathered up their stuff to go to the division-two final. PJ was running off at the mouth he was so nervous. The SMT guys Jorge, Billings, and Johnson were also on the div-two team, and even they looked a little pale.
I let them get ahead of me but used their leaving as an excuse to bail. Jax stayed at the table sloshing down iced tea, and I had to go before I grabbed his glass and fucking drowned him in it.
As I followed the team through the hotel lobby, a voice called, “Rand! Hey, Rand Charles.”
I looked around and spied a bearded guy in glasses wearing a sports coat over jeans and holding a cell phone in front of him like he was videoing. He yelled, “Hey, Rand, what do you have to say about the charges that American Eagle poisoned the water in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and injured two kids?”
People around me stopped and stared, like maybe I was a secret terrorist. I held up my hands. “Sorry. I’m a student. I’m not up on the latest developments with my father’s business.” But I sure as fuck was going to find out.