tastes like.”
Dobbs barked a laugh, and I joined him, but I knew how important this was to him. I inhaled deeply. I wasn’t going to let him down. Uh, I hoped.
He grabbed my hand and hauled me through the double doors, back into the banquet room where they were serving the buffet. At the table, Jax looked like he was modeling a calm, serene attitude—and failing, Felix’s arms were crossed so tightly he should have bruised himself, and Sai looked impatient.
Dobbs said in his best command voice, “Jesse’s in. Let’s get going.”
Sai jumped up so fast, his chair started to tip, and I had to grab it.
Jax gave us side-eye. “You two okay?”
Dobbs cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. Jesse had a family emergency, and he tried to call and—”
Oh hell. I took a quick look at PJ who stared at us with fascination. I swallowed hard, stepped up next to Dobbs, grabbed his face, and gave him a fast, hard kiss. “Dobbs and I are just fine.”
Sai’s mouth fell open so far he could have caught mammals in there, Felix tested the laws of physics and anatomy by scowling even darker, PJ muttered something that sounded like “Gag me,” and Jax barked, “Ha! Well, I’ll be damned. You two did it.”
Dobbs got that adorable, snarky smile. “We did. More than once, actually.”
PJ snorted as Jax laughed and rose.
Sai shook his head again and again. “Wait. Wait. You two are—”
Billings slapped his back. “Always the last to know, Sai.”
Johnson snorted. “Sai-Sherlock Holmes-Howards.”
“Hey! See if I ever save your ass when you hit div one next year!” Sai groused back, but he smiled.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dobbs said. “You all can rag about it later. Right now, we’re doing Quiz Bowl. Let’s go.”
Felix marched past us, arms still crossed and face like a tornado warning.
Dobbs grabbed his arm. “What’s your problem?”
“He’s your shining star, now? He just gets magically forgiven? What the fuck, Dobbs?”
Dobbs raked a hand through his thick hair. “Listen, he apologized. And our relationship is separate from Quiz Bowl. You have to admit Jesse’s worked hard. Right?” He said it into Felix’s face and glared at him until Felix nodded begrudgingly. “He didn’t volunteer for this shit, and he didn’t have to kill himself trying to meet our lofty expectations, but he did. No matter how this turns out, Felix, Jesse tried damned hard.”
Jax said, “And we get to keep our house. That’s the main thing.”
Felix scowled, “But the championship! This year is my last chance.”
I put a hand on Felix’s arm. “I want to win as much as you do, Felix. Honest.”
His frown lightened a little. “Yeah, you busted your ass.” He stared at me from under his brows. “With all the other shit you do, I don’t know how you ever found time to fuck Dobbs.”
The snort escaped on its own, and then we were all laughing, except for Sai who grabbed Dobbs’s arm. “Come on, come on! We’re gonna be late.”
Apparently, it was just the division one team that had a slot in the first round at ten thirty. Div two went off to practice. Jax went with us since he had to register as alternate, and the five of us ran through the corridors of the hotel and managed to get in the registration line just as it started to move forward. True, Sai was upset we weren’t at the front, but it only took us a half an hour to get ourselves declared the Sigma Mu Tau division one team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Like a lot of other teams, we filled the extra time until the first round started sitting at a table in a corner of the breakfast room, using a test deck and our practice buzzers.
Sectional competitions were being held all over the country that weekend. Some only had a few teams and took one day. The Chicago competition was one of the biggest with eight teams in division one and ten in division two. We did cutdowns for two full days, each team getting a minimum of nine rounds until only one team was left standing. But then, the scores and questions answered had to be compared to all the other sectionals winners in the country to determine who went to the collegiate championship in April. Hell, I couldn’t even think that far ahead. I was like a twelve-step Quiz Bowl player. One match at a time.
I’d had almost no sleep since I’d started driving at three a.m. and nearly as little