First and Goal (Moving the Chains #1) (6 page)

Disgusted, I blink slowly, exhale a long breath to steel myself, and take a seat beside him. I scoot my chair a few inches away to distance myself from what I’m sure will be a terrific stench.

“Okay, let’s just get this over with,” I mutter, pulling my calc textbook and notebook from my backpack. I can’t believe my life has been reduced to this. The universe is against me. Karma is a fickle bitch with one hell of a long memory.

He holds the half full snack bag out to me.

“You want some?” he mumbles in between chewing and swallowing.

“Eew, gross. You’re covered in sweat, and they’re probably contaminated with STIs now. No, thanks. Besides, we’re in the library, Superjock. You’re not even supposed to have food in here,” I stage whisper.

He hunches his shoulders and looks at me with a guilty expression.

“I know,” he whispers back. “But, I’m really hungry after practice.” He shoves another handful of pretzels in his mouth. “Why are you so obsessed with this idea that I’m some kind of animalistic man whore anyway?”

Like my opinion of him matters. “Oh, please. Everyone knows you’ve done the entire cheerleading squad and most of the girls in Student Government. I’m sure you’ll be working your way through the dance team next.”

He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing along his neck. “Well, I didn’t know I did any of that, and I’m me, so…” he pauses. “Where are you hearing all this crap?”

“Here and there. The usual rumor mill.” I count with my fingers as I recite, “You went down on Becky Patterson, and Jenna Levy gave you a blow job just within these first few weeks of school. And they’re juniors, so you know, kudos for breaking out of the senior class. Jackie Miller, Dara Prevost, and Lauren Anderson all lost their virginity to you, so essentially all the football girlfriends are your leftovers. Except Chelsie Stewart. You haven’t been a virgin since last year when you and Sabrina Knolls popped each other’s cherries. Which, in all honesty, I’m surprised you waited ‘til junior year. She’s been your go-to booty call girl ever since. And it’s apparently common knowledge that you’ve got Kerri Peters in your sights next. Not that she’s been a virgin for years, either, which seems strange since you have a penchant for deflowering girls. Did I miss anything? Because I know you’re a stud and all, but that’s a really long list for someone who hasn’t even turned eighteen yet, and got kind of a late start as far as jocks go.” I raise my eyebrows and shoot him a cold smile, hoping it carries enough weight to get through to him that I have no intention of joining said long list.

Rob’s eyes widen, and he chokes on his pretzels. What an actor. He certainly is putting a lot more effort into this than expected, especially for someone like me. Then again, he’s been playing the role of my personal defender since last year. This is just another obvious attempt to cash in on the rumors that I’m easy.

“Are you freaking kidding me right now?” he finally asks.

“Do I look and sound like I’m kidding you right now?”

“God, no wonder you don’t want to be anywhere near me and think I’m infected. I would too if I’d heard all those rumors about
you
.” He shoots me a pointed look.

Insinuations of hypocrisy aside, the tiniest bit of morbid curiosity piques my interest at any possible denial he can come up with. “Rumors? Are you saying they’re not true?”

“As true as the ones about you. Cheerleaders are not my thing. I told you, it’s like having a conversation with a horny moron. I have exactly two friends on the cheer squad, and they’re cool, but they’re just my friends.”

He shudders and sits back in his chair, shoving several more pretzels into his mouth. He appears to think something over when he abruptly extends his hand out to me. “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot this year. We’re gonna be bio partners for the rest of the quarter, so let’s start over since I, mistakenly by the way, assumed we were friends. Hi. I’m Rob, and actually…I’m still a virgin…” he trails off, his ears and cheeks reddening.

I throw my head back in raucous laughter in spite of myself. Because hey, the quarterback of the football team just put on an entertaining performance at the very least. His hand is still outstretched, waiting on me to do something. I daintily take his salt covered fingers with my own. “You can call me
Eva
. I obviously know who you are already. I don’t believe a word of what you said earlier in bio, or what you just said now. And I have zero desire to share any personal information about my life or my sexuality with you.”

“What’s it gonna take for me to prove to you that I’m not in this to get into your pants, huh? Do I need to stand on my head and clap my hands or something?”

I blink at him for a few moments. I actually…have no idea what to say to that.

I pull my fingers away from his hand and wipe them on my shorts, clearly making my disgust known. “Save the getting to know you stuff for biology. Can we make with the math torture now?”

He inhales sharply and pulls back his hand, then wipes the crumbs and salt on his shirt. It’s like he was raised by pigs - no manners.

“Fine.” Upending the last contents of the bag into his waiting mouth, he mumbles, “Lemme see your quiz from today so I know what you’re doing wrong.”

I pull the requested item out of my folder and hand it over to him without making eye contact.

“Do you even know what a derivative is?” He asks after swallowing the last of his food.

I gesture at the quiz with my hand, more frustrated with myself than him. “Apparently not, Superjock.”

It’s beyond embarrassing that Rob fucking Falls got a hundred percent on that quiz while I received an F. I really hate math. I guess I should just be grateful that no one besides him scored a hundred. Competition in the top five percent of our class is fierce. This single quiz could edge me out of the top ten.

He sighs, setting the test down on the table top and pulling out his own books. “That’s okay. I can work with this.”

“Well, praise God,” I drawl sarcastically. Rocking my chair back on two legs is a poor attempt to stop the tension building in my muscles. Being in such close private quarters with Rob does a number on me for more reasons than I want to think about.

His eyes slide over me as the corner of his mouth lifts. Before I can predict what’s coming, his large, calloused hand splays across my bare knee with enough pressure to return my chair to all four legs.

The sensation of his skin on mine sends goosebumps racing up my thigh.

“All right, smartass. That’s enough out of you. I think you’re just over thinking all of this.” He removes his hand and turns away from me, busying himself with flipping his text to the first chapter. He squirms a bit in his chair, seeming completely unaffected by the energy that his touch sparked in me.

Thank God.

Whether he believes the rumors or not is irrelevant. I don’t want him getting the wrong idea. Why do these infuriating boys feel it’s their right to touch whomever they please? My brain switches back to functioning mode, finally catching up to the words he said. “Wait. What did you just call me?”

He turns back to gaze at me with a patient face. “Smartass. Suits you, and since you seem to love using derogatory nicknames for me, I thought I’d return the favor.”

I scoff openly at him. “Why does smartass suit me?”

He rests his elbow on his thigh and leans closer. “Well, you treat me like you’re smarter than me, and I’m nothing but a dumb jock. You seem to conveniently forget we share nearly every AP class, and have been on the same advanced track since ninth grade. Let’s not forget the most important part of the equation. You’re the one failing calculus right now, not me.”

I am well aware of those facts. I just would rather ignore them, and I’ve been doing a damn fine job of that since his personality shift.

“I have a name, you know,” he whispers conspiratorially.

“I know your name,” I throw back at him. “We’ve gone to school together for over three years. People tend to scream it loudly at football games.”

“Yeah, but
you
never say my name,” he explains again, patronizing me like he’s talking to a child.

“I don’t have to say your name,” I argue because arguing is definitely safer territory. “It’s not like I’m a cheerleader or something.”

And oh, how the cheerleaders scream his name. The cheerleaders he’s definitely been banging since last year.

He turns back to the book calmly and retorts, “No, you are absolutely not a cheerleader. But if we’re going to be working together for the foreseeable future in two classes, I’d really appreciate it if you would use my name.”

This is not going to work. There needs to be clear distance between us. “Listen, if you’re gonna get all kinky in here with me and beg me to scream your name, I’m gonna have to cut this session short. I’ve told you repeatedly. I’m not an easy lay like the rumors claim.”

He tilts his head up and his shoulders shake with quiet laughter, ending on a sigh. “Oh, I totally set myself up. I didn’t even hear it.”

He shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts and reaches over to grab my notebook, opening it and drawing on a blank page. “Come here. This is easy, you’ll see. We’ll get you back on your ‘A’ game in no time.”

Shit, shit, shit. Nice Rob is not going to help firm up my resolve. The new and unimproved egotistical, obnoxious, Superjock Rob is the only man for that job.

Against my better judgment, I scoot my chair ever so slightly closer to look over his arm at my notebook. I expect the smell of sweat and body odor to overpower my senses, but my sensitive nose is met with a hint of a clean, masculine scent. Thank God he at least bothered with deodorant.

“So, a derivative is nothing more than the tangent of a single point. All right?” He looks back over his shoulder at me.

Forget the plan of getting something out of this arrangement. I can’t do this. I got nothin’.

He cocks his head to the side and sighs. “Let me put it another way…you know how on a big hill, you’ll see a steep grade sign for trucks, and it’ll tell you the percentage of the slope, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen those.”

“Good. That percentage is a measurement of how steep the hill is. Zero being flat and one hundred percent being vertical. We can find that slope by measuring between two points and creating a right triangle. You following me?”

Yeah, actually. I am. My mind suddenly gets on board with this lesson. Real-life examples are so much more tangible to me than rote memorization. If Mr. Smith taught this way, failing wouldn’t be an issue.

“In calculus, we want to find the tangent, or slope, of a single point. Not using two points and creating the triangle. And that’s where the derivative comes in.” He illustrates his points in my notebook with a pen as he speaks.

His handwriting is neat and concise, much easier to read than most guys’ chicken scratch. He continues explaining the basics of the first chapter to me. It would’ve taken me hours and hours to figure all this out on my own.

When he’s finished, my irritation at the piss-poor instruction in the classroom bubbles over. “Well, why didn’t he just explain it that way in the first place?”

Rob laughs. “Because he’s been doing this for close to fifty years and just doesn’t give a shit anymore.” He turns to look at me, jumping when he finds me nearly against him. “Where did you come from?”

This act of his needs to stop. As if he hadn’t noticed and been enjoying the fact that I was playing right into his little trap. “I’ve been here the whole time listening to you like a good little student.”

“Oh…uh, okay.” He shakes his head subtly and scoots his own chair over to put more appropriate distance between us. “Does that make more sense to you now?”

I sigh and fold both my arms on the table, laying my head down on top.

“Yeah,” I moan. Godammit, it really does.

“Well, why is that a bad thing?” The sound of him drumming his fingers against the desktop in a quick beat floats to my ears. He actually has a pretty strong sense of rhythm. Maybe it’s all that singing in the shower.

“Because now I know I really do need your help with calc, and you are actually a pretty good teacher,” I whine into my arms. Oh, this has the potential to turn out so poorly.

“Well, then same bat time, same bat channel tomorrow?”

Oh, hell no. I definitely do not need the old geeky Rob. I still need the asshole Rob to do this. Sort of. Maybe?

I quickly rise and throw my stuff into my backpack without looking in his direction. “Yeah, fine.”

“Sheesh, don’t act so happy about it,” he says sarcastically, packing his books into his own bag.

“I’m not.”

He rolls his eyes and stands to leave with me. “Why do you hate me so much, Eva? I’ve never been anything but nice to you.”

I’m unprepared and thereby floored by his question, so I answer with the first thought that pops into my muddled brain. “You’re an obnoxious, hulking jock, Falls. What’s not to hate?”

He studies me intently as he towers over me.

His gaze makes me feel as though I’m his own personal microscopic experiment, and he’s trying to find the only viable specimen that’s been growing for weeks amidst garbage in the agar.

“What in the hell happened to you, Evie? Where did you go? Because this…” He gestures at me with his large hand. “This is not you.”

The truth in his words, and the fact that he’s the only person to have called me out on it in nearly a year flushes my face with heat. “Oh, you’re one to talk. Nothing about you is the same, either. You don’t look the same; you don’t act the same. Hell, you don’t even talk the same. The Rob Falls I knew was a shy, smart, gangly boy. Now you’re just like all the other dumb jock football players, complete with groupies tripping all over your steroid-fueled muscles.”

“You know, we may not have been friends like I thought, but you were never mean. Never cruel. Not once.”

“People change, Superjock. You’re proof of that as much as I am. I think the reasons for my being different are rather obvious. What’s your excuse?”

For the briefest moment, a look that borders on guilt flashes through his eyes. “I have my reasons, Evie.”