Schooling the Jock (Nerds Vs Jocks #1) - - Eli Easton Page 0,44

two events didn’t mean they were connected. Maybe he had already had a boner, like he’d been thinking about some woman, and then he happened to stare at my dick. Or he might always get wood after the steam room, and my dick just happened to be there?

But it hadn’t felt that way. And then there were those moments of attraction at the farm I’d told myself I’d imagined. Christ, I had to get out of this steam room before my brain melted.

I slipped into my Database Management class five minutes late and sat in the back. But it was hard to focus on the lecture.

Jesse Knox was gay?

I’d never picked up on that. Like, at all. But maybe having grown up in a small Iowa town, with a masc farmer for a dad, and being the town football hero, he’d learned to present straight.

But didn’t he date women? Lots of women? And what about Carol, she-of-the-diner?

I recalled what I’d overheard those girls saying in that coffee line—that Jesse Knox was stuck up, that he thought himself too good for the girls at Madison. It wasn’t far-fetched to extrapolate that he didn’t date much or had turned girls down.

I told myself it didn’t matter, and there was no reason to obsess over it. Even if he was gay, or bi, it had nothing to do with me. It was his own damn business. But my brain refused to let it go.

Monday nights were usually quiet at the house with that back-to-the-grind vibe. I went into the kitchen to make a quick bowl of ramen for dinner and found Jax cooking pasta.

“Hey. How was your weekend?” He sounded wry as if it had to have sucked.

“It was…interesting.” I pulled a bag of ramen from my shelf in the cabinet.

“Yeah?” He stirred a pot. “What’s the great Jesse Knox’s family like? Bunch of pretentious assholes like him?”

The words hit me sideways and made me pause in the middle of tearing open the bag. They were just so wrong. Guess we’d all made a lot of assumptions about Jesse Knox. I put the bag on the counter, got out a pot, and filled it with water. I put it on one of the six burners on the stove Jax wasn’t using.

“His family was nice. They own a farm.”

“His dad’s a farmer?” Jax looked surprised.

“Yup.”

“Huh. What do you think of his chances at Quiz Bowl?”

“He doesn’t entirely suck.”

Jax frowned and stirred his pasta. “Like, we-still-have-a-chance-at-the-championship not suck? Or just he’s-smarter-than-you’d-expect-but-we’re-still-screwed suck?”

I sighed. “Dunno, Jax. Ask me after Milwaukee. Hey—” A question popped into my head, but I thought better of it and shut my mouth.

“What?” Jax asked. His auburn eyes were concerned, and he ran a hand over his beard.

I looked at him for a moment. Here was a great guy, proudly gay, cute af, totally chill, and we were already friends—and we lived under the same roof. Why hadn’t we ever fooled around? Why weren’t we a couple?

But the dull wave of wrongness that washed through my belly at the mere thought was answer in itself. The libido had its own mysterious rules. Even if I didn’t know what mine were, I knew Jax and I were never going to happen.

“What?” Jax repeated, issuing a soft kick to my leg.

I looked around the room to make sure we were alone but tried to be subtle about it.

“I was just, um, curious about Knox. Does he have a girlfriend? Has he ever had a girlfriend on campus?”

Jax frowned. “Why are you asking me? You’re the one who just spent the weekend with him.”

“We didn’t talk about that. I’m not gonna be all, like, ‘hey, who do you bone?’ As if. No. I was just curious.”

“You think since that Thor-wannabe president of theirs bats for our team, he’s started recruiting? Rainbow A-hoes?”

Jesus, change the subject. “Never mind. Isn’t there a new episode of Stranger Things hitting tonight?”

Why was my water not boiling? It was a conspiracy.

Jax continued to regard me warily. “Why are you being weird? You don’t…like him…, do you?” He looked bewildered.

“Ha ha ha. No,” I said hotly. Fuck this. My ramen could burn in hell. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said and left the room.

Obviously, Jax was not the person to ask. Who would be up on the gossip and also not make such a freaking big deal out of it?

I knocked on the door of Felix and Sai’s room. I heard a muttered Come in and went inside.