America's Geekheart (Bro Code #2)(19)

That’s remarkably positive of them.

“You ever catch a game in person?” Beck asks.

“Every bobblehead doll game,” my best friend confirms. “And Sunday afternoon games when they’re at home.”

“They have a home series starting tomorrow,” he muses.

I stop chewing slowly—and therefore quietly—to shoot a glance at him.

Is he implying he wants to go to a Fireballs game with us?

And if so, why?

“You have any root beer?” he asks suddenly. “When I was growing up, we’d all crash in Cash’s basement with root beer and caramel corn and watch Friday night games. Man, good times.”

“Ohmygod, I love Cash Rivers,” Mackenzie breathes. “He was my favorite. I even saw him as the cheetah man in that really bad first movie he made after—wait. You’re not going to tell him I said that, are you?”

“Not as long as you don’t tell anyone Sarah got me with a taser yesterday.”

“The whole world already knows that, because it’s on your video,” Mackenzie reminds him.

“Huh.”

Great. Now she has no leverage at all for Beck not telling Cash Rivers that she thinks her Hollywood idol’s first movie sucked, which I know isn’t a big deal, but she doesn’t, and her face is going beet red.

“Airsh Ark ivva didge,” I say around a mouthful of caramel corn that I can’t chew quietly to save my life.

“Sweet,” he says, and he hops up and heads for the kitchen.

“What?” Mackenzie hisses.

I chew fast and gulp down the popcorn. “The Barq’s is in the fridge,” I hiss back.

“That is not what you said.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Oh my god, it sounded like you were summoning a popcorn demon.”

“It did not.”

“It did. And popcorn demons are not the positive spiritual energy the Fireballs need to win today.”

Okay, she has me there.

“You ladies need anything?” Beck pops his head back into the living room. “Root beer? Man, you’ve got shoestring fries in the freezer. I haven’t had those in years. Fucking road diet.”

This is getting weird. “Please. Make yourself at home.”

“Throw some bacon in at the same time,” Mackenzie tells him. “We’ll melt gouda over them and toss on bacon bits and then Sarah will pretty much be yours for the taking.”

“Mackenzie,” I hiss.

“What? I want to see you taser him again when he blatantly tries to get in your pants. Because he’s still no Trent. I mean, who can ever be Trent?”

I wince and try to give myself a pep talk. Just tell her, Sarah. Tell her why you really broke up with Trent.

She misunderstands my wince and she also winces. “Sorry,” she whispers. “But I bet he’s not.”

Beck, who of course has overheard everything, grins and shakes his head, then disappears back into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” I hiss at her.

“Testing him,” she hisses back. “I realized his PR people might have told him to schmooze you because of so many people shipping you.”

“What-ing us?”

“Shipping. Sarah. They’re fantasizing about you dating.”

“What? No. People don’t do that.”

She gives me the duh, yes they do look, and I realize I can’t actually argue that people don’t do it in general, because I can’t count the number of times growing up I’d hear at school that my classmates wished my parents would get divorced so one or the other of them could marry whichever movie star they happened to have just been in a movie with.

Okay, really, I just didn’t know it had a name.

Because fine, half the Twitterverse was speculating that Beck and I are dating. But not wishing. There’s a difference.

Also, a full twenty percent are still pissed at him and another thirty percent think I’m too fugly—yes, fugly, because ugly by itself isn’t good enough—to ever actually score a hot guy like Beck, and also that women need to stay out of science.

“Okay, fine, people ship people. But not geeks like me,” I amend.

I might look all nice and normal, watching baseball with my superstitious best friend, but I was up well past midnight last night playing Vikings in Space while checking in on Persephone, and I’m legitimately itching to get back to it, because my Viking captainess just made contact with a new species of aliens who can either bend time or hypnotize people with folk music, and I’m not sure which yet.

Also, the last time Mackenzie made me go to a wine and paint night, while everyone else was making spring flowers, I might’ve inadvertently painted a Pokémon.

“You’re a geek accidentally involved with an underwear model,” she whispers. “And you were so freaking adorable in that video. In case I haven’t said it sixteen times yet.”

“Whoa, you have real bacon,” Beck says from the kitchen. “Not turkey bacon. What other goodies do you have hidden in here?”

Mackenzie flails her fingers wide and waves her hands in the air like every excited valley girl ever depicted on TV.

“That’s not fake,” she whispers.

“Stop it,” I warn her. “Give him three weeks, and he won’t even remember my name. And, as you pointed out, he’s still no Trent Fornicus. Oh, look. Stafford’s pitching. You think his shoulder’s going to hold out for the whole season?”