Schooling the Jock (Nerds Vs Jocks #1) - - Eli Easton Page 0,33

then gave Dobbs side-eye. “Unless you’re spoken for, that is.” Again, a brief glance my way might or might not have been significant.

Dobbs laughed. “No, ma’am, not spoken for and not looking to put a ring on it. I figure you’re only young once. Right?” He flashed those snarky dimples, and she flashed hers right back.

“Just don’t wait too long, cutie, or the best ones could get away.” She rang up Dobbs’s credit card with a small self-satisfied smile while chills ran down my arms.

I didn’t exactly run out of the store, but Dobbs had to walk fast to keep up. Sucking air a little too hard, I powered toward the café. I hadn’t exactly thought about what it would look like to the town if its official loner, Jesse Knox, showed up with a guy. I took a big inhale. Come on, no one will think anything. But that glance of Hattie’s stuck in my brain.

The heat and good smells of Julie Ann’s slid over me like Eli’s weighted blanket.

A shriek came from the back of the café, and Carol Barchelor ran around the end of the long counter, threaded through the early dinner crowd and threw her arms around my neck. “Jesse, Jesse, Jesse.”

I laughed even though I could feel the blush. Carol and I had briefly been a couple in high school, but she married a local and went to work in her family business. I’d heard, however, that she was already divorced. I hugged back tentatively, then held her at arm’s length. She’d been very popular in high school, which was one of the reasons people had sort of forced us together even though I was quiet and awkward, to say nothing of gay, which she didn’t know. Poor girl, she wasn’t the only one I’d probably left feeling undesirable since I never wanted to make out.

“Hey, how are you? Uh, this is a guy from school. Dobbs meet Carol.”

She looked at Dobbs appraisingly. “Hi, Dobbs.”

He nodded with what struck me as a brittle smile. “Carol.”

I said, “We need to get dinner and then take food home to Mom and Eli.” I didn’t add, so we’re in a hurry, but it was implied.

Jim and Agatha Hertford waved at me as they rose and pointed at their table by the gas fireplace on the wall. Carol said, “I’ll bus that for you quick, okay?”

“That’d be great.” I waved back at Jim and Aggie.

Carol gave Dobbs one last smile and hurried back to the counter.

True to her word, she had us seated and staring at menus in three minutes flat after I’d said hello to a half-dozen people.

When we’d gotten our coats off, we ordered burgers and fries.

Dobbs said, “Wow, I never noticed you eat french fries. I thought you football players lived on protein shakes and fish bones or something.”

The words almost leaped to my lips—I never knew you noticed me at all—but I didn’t say it. “I don’t make a habit of it. But Julie Ann, Carol’s mom, makes the best burgers and fries anywhere. Uh not that I’ve been many places, but they’re really good.” I stared at the water glass like it was a crystal ball about to reveal the future.

Dobbs leaned in and the heat from his arms actually radiated far enough for me to feel it on my folded hands—or maybe in my vivid imagination. “This makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Being in a place with a lot of people all watching you?”

I glanced up at him, surprised. He was studying me like he was figuring me out.

“I don’t love it, no.”

He nodded sagely. “You kind of get this closed-off, pissy look.”

I glared at him. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll file that away in my fuck you file.”

He laughed out loud. It was so genuinely amused I had to smile too. I wasn’t a funny person—I knew that. Not the way Dobbs was. So it felt like a victory to make him laugh.

“Okay. I have two questions,” he said, still smiling.

“Oh joy,” I deadpanned, but I nodded my chin in a go on.

“Is Hattie’s last name really Gravy?”

I snorted a laugh. “Yep. Apparently it’s from some French name.”

He held up two fingers. “Why can’t your brothers have candy? Is it the asthma or autism?”

Whew, reality check. “Both, but mostly the autism. Sugar’s bad for them both physically and psychologically. They love it, of course. But they fixate on it and freak out if they can’t have it instead of, like, dinner.