Schooling the Jock (Nerds Vs Jocks #1) - - Eli Easton Page 0,42

don’t even want to think what would happen to the rest of us knuckleheads.” He lowered his voice. “I can’t even imagine the PJ bloodbath.”

I shrugged. Fuck, I had enough to worry about trying to wrap my brain around those questions. Let PJ fend for himself. Of course, if he wanted to practice with me, I’d agree, assuming he cooled the sass. His lip about the Poins was seriously getting on my last nerve. “I gotta get to bed. Six a.m. workout tomorrow and then a full load day.”

He nodded and stepped back to let me pass. “Glad things are okay, Jess.”

“Thanks.” Okay was going too far, but at least at home they were back to square one.

After a few distracted attaboys from my fraternity brothers, I climbed the stairs to my room. Everybody knew Jesse has a complicated family, but truthfully, at our age, a lot of guys did, so I was no Lone Ranger.

I threw my pack on the floor, went to the bathroom for a quick toothbrush and pee, stripped to my underwear, and then collapsed on my bed, nearly asleep before the covers reached my neck.

The last conscious thought I had made my lips turn up. I got to go work out with Dobbs.

“Okay, plant your feet hard into the floor, and make sure your shoulders are back on the bench.” I adjusted my T-shirt over my shorts to hide what was becoming increasingly obvious evidence that staring at the outline of Dobbs’s junk in his silky shorts as he straddled the workout bench was only improving the fitness of my cock. The thing was doing pushups. I forced my attention to Dobbs’s shaking arms as he lowered the hundred-and-fifty-pound barbell back into its cradle with a little boost from my hands. “Good job.”

He grinned. “That’s the most I’ve ever bench-pressed. Thanks for the motivation. Turns out humiliation-avoidance is a great incentive.” He sat up and swung his legs around as I reset the weights on the bar to three hundred and ten and then took my place on the bench. There was no way to disguise my dick when I was lying down in sweatpants even when I didn’t have a semi. Oh well.

He said, “I’ll spot you.” Then he gargled a laugh. “Or not. If you drop that much weight, you’ll kill us both. Sorry.”

“You don’t need to hold it all, just help me a little if I need it. But I won’t.”

I counted off my reps in my mind as I focused on breathing. Five…six…seven…

Dobbs leaned over me, the fluorescents in the gym ceiling highlighting his sharp cheekbones. “Bipedal australopithecines diverged into the genus Homo and a group of hominins described by this adjective, like Paranthropus.”

I stared at him open-mouthed. “Uh…”

“Answer!”

Numbers and words collided in my head. “Uh, robust. Robust hominins.”

“Holy fuck, you’re right!”

I laughed, the bar tipped, and began to fall sideways. “Shit!”

Dobbs’s eyes bugged, and he reached for the bar, but only pulled himself off balance and ended up in the next machine.

My arms wrenched, disaster and possibly a trip to the ER loomed, and then all at once the weight disappeared. I looked up to see all six foot seven, three-fifty of Gorzo Rondisi, one of the gym supervisors, slowly lowering the bar back to the cradle. He scowled at me. “What was that about, Knox? You know better than to goof around on the weight floor.”

I sat up, rubbing my overstretched shoulder muscles. “Sorry, Gorzo.”

Dobbs said, “It was my fault. I distracted him.” Gorzo raised an eyebrow, and Dobbs stuttered, “I mean I was asking him Quiz Bowl questions when I should have let him focus on his lift and—”

Gorzo held up a hand. “Whatever the hell that was, don’t do it again.”

Gorzo walked away, and Dobbs gave me a wide-eyed stare and whispered, “The mountain has come to Mohammed.”

I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. To keep from getting killed by Gorzo, more to the point. I said, “We better hit the showers anyway if we’re going to make it to class.”

“Yeah. I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you right then. Are you okay?”

“Just tweaked my shoulder a bit.”

Dobbs made a funny cringey face, and I just shook my head, smiling.

We walked into the locker room. My locker resided in a bank of month-to-month renters while Dobbs had a guest locker a few banks down. As he started toward his, I said, “There’s a great steam room down at the