Shut Out(5)

“Does it really matter?” he’d asked.

To me, a girl who had to share her boyfriend with the war every autumn, it did. But not to the players. They just knew that they hated one another. That was enough.

“Dickhead!” Randy yelled across the cafeteria as Kyle Forrester, the soccer team’s goalie, gave him the middle finger.

I cringed at the volume of the obscenity in my ear, and I tapped Randy on the shoulder. “Hey, would you mind lowering the volume a little? I’d like my hearing to last a few more years.” He flashed a quick smile at me and hooked an arm around my waist as he turned his attention back to the soccer team’s table.

I was glad he didn’t notice the way I tensed.

I sat at the lunch table, sandwiched between Randy and my best friend, Chloe. Though Chloe was too busy flirting with Michael Conrad to notice the stares we were getting from the rest of the student body. This was so not what I needed on a Monday.

I already had a headache from staying up too late the night before. That was the fatal flaw in my weekend schedule—with Randy over on Saturday nights, I didn’t get to do any homework until Sunday. With three AP classes on my plate, that meant lots of homework and late-night studying. Having people yell insults over my head the next day, while I was still exhausted? Not fun.

And also completely embarrassing. I rapped my knuckles against the table in a fast, anxious rhythm.

“Hey, could you keep it down? Seriously,” I said to Randy just as one of Kyle’s buddies yelled, “Fuck you!” back at us.

Randy shot him a glare before giving me an apologetic nod. “You okay?” he asked.

“Fine. I just have a headache.”

He put a hand on the side of my head and smoothed back my hair, pushing some of the straight black strands from my eyes. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Well, you can—”

And that’s when the glob of mashed potatoes landed in a disgusting mound on the table, right in front of me. They’d been flung, undoubtedly, by one of the soccer players at Kyle’s table.

“Gross,” I said, scooting my chair away from the table. “Randy, can you please put an end to this?”

But he wasn’t listening. He was too busy glaring at the soccer team’s table, a look of deep concentration on his reddening face. For some reason, it reminded me of a caveman contemplating how to make fire. Only Randy didn’t want fire. He wanted a way to get revenge without getting detention—or, worse, suspended—in the process.

I stood up just as his best friend, Shane, picked up an orange and pulled back his arm, aiming for one of the soccer players’ heads.

“Where you going, babe?” Randy asked, turning away from his enemies and reaching for my hand.

“Library,” I muttered, wrenching my hand from his grasp without even meaning to. I let out a breath and rolled my shoulders, willing myself to relax. It was just Randy, after all.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust at my words. “Library? Why?”

“I need to finish some homework.” I gave his shoulder a quick, reassuring squeeze to let him know I wasn’t pissed—this embarrassment wasn’t entirely his fault; Kyle had been the one to start it, really—before scooping up my tray and edging around the table, heading to the front of the cafeteria so I could dump my barely touched food and hurry away from the madness.

At least, that was the plan.

Running into Cash Sterling kind of ruined it.

One minute I was clearing off my tray and returning it to the rack, thinking of how quiet the library would be, and the next I’d spun around—without checking behind me, of course—and slammed into something hard. For a second I was totally dazed, the top of my head pounding from the impact with something very solid. When my senses came back, I realized that the thing my head had hit was Cash’s chin, and the only reason I was still standing was because one of his arms had wrapped quickly around my waist, keeping me from falling backward into the trash cans.

I knew it was him without even looking up. I blushed, embarrassed by the way I knew his scent. Hating that I remembered.

“You okay?” he asked in his bass voice.

I pulled away from him, hurriedly putting a few feet of space between us. “I’m fine.”

Cash was still rubbing his chin where we’d collided. “Sorry. I didn’t even see you.”

“It’s no big deal,” I told him, pretending I didn’t care if he noticed me or not. “But you shouldn’t stand so close behind people. Maybe remember personal bubbles next time or… or something.”

He shook his head, half laughing, and ran a hand over his buzzed brown hair. “Personal bubbles, huh?”

I almost laughed, too. That really had sounded lame. But I forced myself to keep a straight face, to stay cool and aloof. Cash Sterling would not make me smile. I wouldn’t let him.

“Yes,” I said stiffly. “It’s, like, a three-foot radius for most people.”

He smiled, his green eyes crinkling at the corners. “Would it surprise you if I mentioned that I barely passed geometry?”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, a radius is the distance from any part of a circle’s perimeter to the direct center of the circle. It’s half the diameter. So if a circle is six feet across the middle, the radius is three feet and…” And I was rambling. I shifted my feet and took a breath. “And I got an A in geometry.”