“Because of the pooch?” I teased.
Her lips tugged up again. “So you admit it. You noticed the pooch.”
If by pooch, she meant her crazy hot body with all the right curves, then yes. I’d noticed. “You looked cute,” I said.
“Cute,” she repeated, her tone a grumble. “More like chubby.”
“Touchable,” I said. I didn’t even know where it came from but it was the truth. When I’d seen her—in that photo and in her backyard—all I’d wanted to do was touch her.
Her smile was slow and ridiculously sexy, whether she meant it to be or not. “Touchable, huh?”
I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, wondering how on earth I’d gotten myself into this conversation and what I could do to get out. But then again, the way she was looking at me, the way she smiled…I didn’t know if I ever wanted it to end.
I swallowed the thought and strove for a casual tone. “Yeah, touchable,” I repeated. I shoved my hands into my pockets again because she clearly expected more. “You looked…” Perfect. “Human.”
She blinked a couple of times, her brows arching up. “Human. As opposed to…what? A troll?”
I couldn’t help the burst of laughter that bubbled up. God, I was making such a mess of this, but her reactions were priceless. It was rare to see Margo the unflappable get all frazzled and bent out of shape. The problem was, she seemed intent on thinking the worst of herself…and me.
She planted her hands on her hips as she scowled up at me. “As opposed to what, Jason?”
“A goddess,” I said. Once again the words just kind of…came out.
She huffed. “Great. Just great. Now Jason Connolly, the nicest guy on the planet is making fun of me.” She was teasing but I caught a glimmer of hurt and it killed me.
“I’m not making fun,” I said. “I’m being honest.”
“Uh huh.” Her tone was dry. “You think I’m a goddess?”
I smothered a smile in the face of her disbelief. “No,” I said slowly, searching for the right words. “I think…I think you have an air of untouchability about you.”
She stared at me and I didn’t look away. I was serious. Her response was so low I almost didn’t hear her. “Maybe that’s because I’ve never been touched.”
She was so quiet for a second I thought I hadn’t heard her right, but then she ducked her head with another blush.
“What?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” When she looked up she was back to her normal forthright self. “What do you mean untouchable?”
“I mean…” Oh hell, what did I mean? I’d never tried to put it into words before, this feeling I had when she was around. “I mean, the way you keep yourself apart from the rest of us…” From me. “There’s kind of this feeling like you’re too good for the rest of us.”
Her head snapped up and her eyes narrowed. “You think I believe I’m too good for you?”
I couldn’t tell if it was laughter or anger in her voice—or maybe both.
I shrugged. “Maybe you are.”
I didn’t want her to take it as an insult. It wasn’t. But it was the truth. At some point over the years while the rest of us had joined teams and gone to parties, Margo and her friends had adopted an air of being above it all. They stuck to themselves—not that I could blame them.
She blinked and then turned her attention down to the box that was still in her hands. “Well,” she said as she shifted in her seat. “I’m still not going to eat this.”
I let out a short laugh at the awkward transition back to normalcy. “Because of the pooch?”
She looked up at me with a grin. “No,” she drawled. “Because there’s no food allowed in the library.”
“Right.” I laughed for real this time as I started to turn away. “Right. I knew that.”
I heard her soft laughter behind me. “Hey.”
I turned around and saw her tugging on a stray lock. “I don’t think that, you know.”
I arched a brow in question and saw her swallow.
“I don’t think I’m better than you or…or anyone.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I just—” She started again quickly and then let out a loud exhale. “I don’t think I’m better than anyone. I just don’t fit in.”
I had no idea what to say to that. I couldn’t exactly argue that point, and besides, I didn’t think she was looking for reassurances. “I’ll see you at the game?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Her smile was one of relief, as if she too was glad that we’d moved on to something far less heavy than the social dynamics of Grover High.
“Come say hi after,” I said. “My parents will want to see you.”
She nodded and I turned back, mentally kicking myself for taking the easy way out. Would my parents want to say hi to Margo after the game? Sure. Like I’d said, they loved her. But was that why I wanted her to come join us after the game?
Hell no.
Chapter Twelve
Jason
Later that night I should’ve been happy, I guess. After all, we won. But once again we won by the skin of our teeth. And honestly if the other team hadn’t been so far off their game, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“You guys were a mess out there,” our coach yelled as we changed in the locker room. I’d given my parents and Margo a little wave but had walked away before anyone could talk to me.
I was more disgusted than our coach because I knew we could do better. We should be doing better. But more than that, I knew that whatever was going on outside of this field—well, it was partially my fault.
I’d been playing long enough to know that if this group of guys didn’t feel like a team off the field then chances were, we wouldn’t be playing like a team at game time. I knew this, yet I’d done nothing to make things right.
That was why, when Julia cornered me outside the lockers and asked me once again if I was going to her friend Cara’s for the post-game party, I said yes even though partying was the last thing I wanted to do.
Still, the tension in the locker room had been worse than ever before the game so if a little off the field bonding could help, who was I to say no?
I guess I’d just assumed that whatever the cause of the tension in the locker room, it would be gone by the time the drinks started to flow at Cara’s.
I was wrong.
I knew something was up the moment I arrived. Joel’s crew looked pissed—inordinately pissed considering they’d just won a game. I’d like to think they were just as disappointed with the way we’d won, but I doubted it.
Besides, it wasn’t just them. It was everyone. Cara’s jet black bob bounced as she swung open the door and let me in but her lips were puckered up in distaste. Her usual charming brand of snark and cattiness was replaced with a scowling, “Hey” before she turned back around to join her friends in the kitchen.
Cara was one of those people I felt kind of bad for in a weird sort of way. By the amount of parties she threw while her parents were away, she was on her own most of the time. It was hard to feel too sorry for her because her parents’ perpetual absence gave her the kind of freedom the rest of us craved, but it was hard not to wonder how she survived on her own so often.
“Julia,” Cara called, waggling her fingers in my direction. “Your boy toy is here.”
I clenched my jaw and looked away. But then again, it was hard to feel too sorry for the girl who seemed to live to make her friends uncomfortable.
Julia seemed immune to it. As always she came over to me with a smile, but even her bubbly enthusiasm seemed muted today as she gave me a hug and led me by the hand toward the others.
Luke was sprawled out on the couch, absorbed in something on his phone as he gave me a little wave. “Good game, man.”
I snorted in amusement because Luke neither liked football nor paid much attention at the games. If he had, he’d have realized it was so not a good game. But he’d likely been too busy flirting with the c
heerleaders on the sidelines to notice that fun little fact.
I sank into a seat and accepted a beer that one of my teammates handed over.
Joel and his friends were hovering nearby around one of the counters but they too were hung up on something on their phones.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Luke didn’t lift his head but he raised his eyes to see me over his phone. “Oh dude. You haven’t heard?”
“This is war,” Joel said, his booming voice coming from the counter.
Cara snickered behind me. “My guess is Joel just spotted the picture of him in that class play we had to do freshman year.”
I turned to glance at her but Cara was already heading over toward Joel and wrapping an arm around his waist. I turned to Julia instead. “What is she talking about?”
Julia gave me a sort of apologetic wince. “You didn’t see?”
“You’re on there, man,” Luke said, sounding torn between sympathy and laughter.
“On what?”
I looked to Julia and she started slowly. “Um, it seems like, maybe someone in our school—”
“GeekBook, man.” Luke shoved his phone in my face with a smirk. “Everybody’s on it.”
It took me a few painful moments to understand what I was seeing. Luke was right. Everyone was on there—well, everyone in our crowd, at least. So many photos and not one was attractive. They were awkward or ugly or just plain nerdy shots of all the people, most of whom were at this party, and all people who were considered…well, cool, I guess. It was the cheerleaders and the football players, the basketball team, and the student council president.
I let out a long breath. There I was looking like a dork with a giant grin as I hugged Margo from the side, a giant stuffed unicorn on my head and icing all over my face.
Yup. Margo was right. It had been her tenth birthday. The balloons hovering overhead confirmed it.
Margo. I stared at her picture, at the image of the girl I’d once known. Did she know about this?
Oh hell. I scrolled through the site. Was she on it?
I sighed with relief as I realized she wasn’t featured. Thank God, that was the last thing she needed.
But then, just like that, it occurred to me. Of course she wasn’t on it. She was probably friends with whoever had created this.
“They’re going down,” Joel growled from his corner of the room.
There were more than a few embarrassing photos of Joel. And each photo had comments underneath. “Jeremiah Bunsen Burner,” I read one of the commenter’s names aloud.
“Fake profiles,” Julia said quietly beside me.
I nodded. “Smart.”
“Of course it’s smart,” Luke said, his tone lazy and his eyes lit with mischief. “Just think who’s behind it.”
“The nerds,” Cara said.
“Losers,” Joel growled.
The tension in the room seemed to grow a million times over and the only person who was amused was Luke. I turned to him. “Are you on there?”
He grinned. “Nah. But I wouldn’t care if I was.”
This was…probably true. Luke had never cared too much what people thought of him, which was probably why people always thought highly of him. He exuded confidence and didn’t seem to care whether or not he was popular.
Again, it was that indifference that seemed to make him the most popular of them all. But now his indifference was irritating. I didn’t care all that much that my photo was out there—hell, I could even ignore the snarky comments making fun of my IQ level. Whatever. I knew I wasn’t a moron, even if I did have to go to tutoring. But not everyone could shrug it off, and that was what worried me.
“I’m going to kill him,” Joel said.
“Who?” I asked.
He shrugged and gave me a look of disgust like I’d just asked a stupid question. “Whoever’s behind this.”
“It’s awfully sexist of you to assume it’s a him,” Luke said.
I shot him a glare. He was enjoying this way too much.
“Luke’s right,” Cara said. “I bet it was Margo. She’s always been obnoxious and she’s had a stick up her butt ever since the slideshow thing.”
“What? No,” I said instantly. “She wouldn’t do this.”
Julia came to her defense as well. “I doubt it. Margo and I had to build a website together last year for computer science class and…” She shook her head with a knowing little smile. “She couldn’t have done this. At least, not on her own.”
“Then it was one of her friends,” Cara said.
“Matt.” One of Joel’s friends offered his name up. It wasn’t a huge school. We all knew everybody, yet someone felt the need to accuse a guy with zero evidence.
“I mean, it was obviously someone from our school, right?” the guy said. “He’d have access to all these photos, especially because he’s on the newspaper.”
“Plus he’s a loser,” Joel helpfully added. “The guy has nothing but time.”
“Yeah, that newspaper probably runs itself. And being valedictorian?” Luke scoffed sarcastically. “That guy probably never even cracks a book.”
Joel didn’t seem to realize Luke was mocking him. To be fair, not many had the balls to mock the giant Joel behind his back, let alone to his face. Except whoever had done this…they’d had the nerve.
I turned back to the incriminating site and saw a photo of Joel and his buddies with beer cans in hand and a bong sitting between them. This was the kind of photo that could get a guy suspended…or worse. We all had colleges looking at us and something like this could do far worse damage than just cause a little embarrassment.
“I don’t think it was Matt,” I said. Maybe it was, I didn’t know. All I knew was, if Joel had a face and name to target, the tension on the field and off was going to escalate into something out of control.
Julia seemed to be on the same page as me—maybe as head cheerleader she felt the similar weight of responsibility because she stepped in. “It wasn’t Matt.”
Cara shot her a look of disbelief. “Why are you standing up for that loser?”
Julia and Cara had always had a strange sort of friendship. If I were to guess, I’d say Cara was always a little jealous of Julia. I imagined a lot of the girls on the squad were. But Julia, like me, had always been a leader, and she was one of the only girls I knew who didn’t wither in the face of Cara’s haughty, combative tone.
Margo didn’t. But then, Margo and Cara operated in separate universes most of the time.
I don’t think I’m better. I just don’t fit in.
Something in my chest grew tight at the memory. Margo’s honesty was nothing new, but her vulnerability? That was a rarity. I tore my thoughts away from that weirdly intimate moment earlier today and found Julia explaining that the photos we’d seen were all online. Anyone could have found them if they knew their way around a computer. Having access to the newspaper archives and yearbook photos had nothing to do with it.
Common sense saved the day—or, in this case, Matt’s face.
Luke got up from the couch and headed toward the kitchen, slapping Joel’s back as he went. “See, big guy? It could’ve been anyone.”
“It was someone from our school,” Joel said. “And I’ll find out who.”
“And then what?” I asked.
The room quieted and all eyes turned to me.
“What?” Joel snapped.
“I said then what?” I got up too and crossed over to where Luke was standing by the fridge. He handed me a beer bottle before cracking one open for himself.
The room grew silent, the music that had been playing in the background even came to a halt. Probably between songs, but still…it added to the suspense as everyone waited to see how Joel would handle being confronted by me—his quarterback. His team captain. His friend, if going to the same parties equaled friendship. Which, let’s face it—in our world, it did.
“I’ll take care of it,” Joel said.
&
nbsp; Luke choked on his beer beside me and it was an effort for me to keep a straight face when I knew—I just knew—that I’d be hearing Luke repeat that phrase in a melodramatic replay later tonight. I had no doubt in Luke’s version Joel would sound less like a moron and more like a mobster.
“And then what?” I asked. Quite frankly, I was running out of patience. I mean, was I the only one here with any forethought? Didn’t anyone else think about the future? I walked toward him slowly, keeping my voice low and steady, kind of like I would if approaching a stray dog. “Look,” I said. “The only person who’s going to get hurt is you if you get into a fight.”
Joel’s nostril’s flared and a muscle in his jaw twitched but he didn’t say anything. Not for a while, at least. “So what? I’m just supposed to sit back and let those losers make fun of me?”
I held back a sigh. I was here to make nice with the team, right? Joel, like it or not, was one of the guys the team looked up to. He was a hero to some of the younger guys and the macho alpha leader that most of them listened to.
I set down my beer. “I’m asking you to let me handle this. Let me look into who did this and let me take care of it.”
“What are you going to do? Lecture them?” Joel’s tone was sarcastic but he’d dropped his confrontational stance and sank down onto a barstool at the kitchen counter.
“I’ll handle it,” I promised.
How? No idea. But I sure as hell couldn’t let Joel take charge. Not if I wanted a winning team. He’d get himself and his friends suspended in record time if given free rein…not to mention the damage he could do to Margo or one of her friends.
Joel didn’t respond and he didn’t ease up with the glare and the silence grew thick with testosterone and machismo. I didn’t want this to turn into a me versus Joel thing—I didn’t want to cause a rift in the team, but I also couldn’t sit back and let Joel destroy the team with his idiotic actions.
Luke threw an arm around my shoulders, breaking the tenseness of the moment. “Personally, I blame Suzie.”
Love at First Fight (Geeks Gone Wild Book 1) Page 10
