get distracted by a pair of beautiful brown eyes.
Cranking off the recorder and keeping my eyes averted, I shoved a couple mouthfuls of lettuce in, chewed, and then swallowed the vitamin pill in my pocket with some water. With a breath and one quick glance at Dobbs, I sprang up and tore toward my class.
I didn’t even eat my rice pudding.
Chapter Four
Dobbs
Jax and I laughed about the bet as we walked past the pho place back to the Sigma Mu Tau house.
“How long do you think it will take them to figure out that we had nothing to lose in that bet?” I asked Jax with a giggle. “Rand Charles, man. What a genius. The guy’s lucky he can find his own dick to aim it at the john.”
“He’s not that stupid,” Jax said sharply.
I raised my eyebrows at him in question.
Jax frowned. “Sorry. I don’t want to think about Rand’s dick. Anyway. I expect he got caught up in the moment. And maybe the bet isn’t as dumb as it looks on the surface.”
“Like, maybe they’re playing three-dimensional chess? Yeah, right.”
Jax stopped at the corner of our street and scratched his beard. His thick shaggy hair peeked out from under a gray wool beanie. That hair, his closely-trimmed beard, and his eyes were all exactly the same shade of light brown with a hint of red as if God hadn’t wanted to go back to the storage room to get more colors and decided, ah fuck it, monochrome it is. Jax had a gentle, soulful air—usually—but he had a stubborn streak and a temper. He was also hella smart. Like many of us, he’d gravitated toward SMT because he’d been a Quiz Bowl fanatic in high school. And now he was a senior and only an alternate on the team because he had so much going on.
Ah, the perils of getting old. I hoped I never outgrew Quiz Bowl.
“That bet is going to be all over campus by nightfall,” Jax mused. “Just imagine if the A-hoes win. Sigma Mu Tau has a rep for academic excellence. It’s a badge of honor being in our house, like saying you graduated summa cum laude or got on the dean’s list. If the A-hoes win the bet, they’ll be making the case that anybody—anyone at all—is just as smart as we are, that we’re not all that. Not to mention the fact that they’ll make Quiz Bowl look like a joke.”
A wiggle of dread wormed in my gut, but I shook my head. “Yeah, no. That’s not gonna happen. When pigs fly. Or, as Grammy Dobbs used to say, when toilets sprout roses.”
“Your grammy was weird.”
“Granted.”
Jax made a thoughtful noise. “But, seriously, what if their guys don’t entirely suck? What’s your priority, Dobbs? Would you rather win the Quiz Bowl championship or win the bet?”
“The championship!” I said. Duh. “Even if we have to eat crow, absolutely. Hell, serve me that crow with a pinot grigio and some foie gras. But there’s no way that’ll happen now. Their guys can’t not reek at Quiz Bowl.”
That thought made me want to puke. We’d worked so hard on the team. We deserved to win. And this year was probably my last shot since Sai and Jax were both seniors. The SMT team had won two championships, but that was before my time. I wanted to graduate having achieved a championship title more than I wanted anything in the world.
Jax looked dubious. He kept walking.
“What about on our side?” I asked. “Who, in our house, is going to be willing to go play flag football for months on end—with the A-hoes? I’d rather have my nuts frozen and served on Popsicle sticks.”
Jax glowered. “I don’t want to think about your nuts either, Dobbs.”
I snorted. “Excuse me, snowflake. Any other topics off-limit? I could tell you about that time I had a urinary tract infection.”
“You are a urinary tract infection.”
I laughed. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Jax.”
We reached our house and started up the sidewalk to the porch.
“Seriously, though,” Jax said. “We need to figure out who we’re gonna assign to the flag-football team. Because, thanks to that argument in the quad, everyone will be watching. I don’t want to lose this bet. And we can’t have our guys embarrassing themselves either. That would only prove the A-hoes point that we’re a bunch of wimpy momma’s boys. Losers.”
“Nerds,” I added. I stopped laughing.
Jax was right. If our guys sucked, the A-hoes would