Chapter 6 #2
Ashton grinned and reached across the table for a bro high five. “Yeah, that’s a good one for him.”
Kyle leaned in to give it, jostling me with the movement. Now everything definitely felt wrong. To actually throw one of our own under the bus definitely didn’t feel okay. I wasn’t sure anyone on the Top Tier had ever been on the list before.
I waited for Connor or Reed to object since they were Landon’s closest friends, but the former still hadn’t looked up from the window, and though the latter just laid his head down on his folded arms.
Jade didn’t say anything either. She was allowing it, too.
“Reed, who are you picking?” Riley asked him, propping her chin on her hand.
“Joshua Geller,” he replied without lifting his head, voice muffled. “Most Likely To: Be Forgotten After High School.”
“Who even is Joshua Geller?” Kyle asked, shifting his leg. I strained away from him. “I don’t remember him in the first place.”
“Transfer student,” Jade replied.
Riley crinkled her nose. “Boring. No one knows who he is in the first place.”
Jade’s phone buzzed in the center of the table with an incoming text, and before I could attempt to read the upside-down message bubble, she snatched it up like lightning.
“Ooh, I’ve got another one,” Riley said, sitting up straight. “Most Likely To: Never Have Her First Kiss—Babble girl. What’s her name again?”
No one replied. Two of the guys weren’t even listening, and the others didn’t know.
“Good, right?” Riley nudged Jade’s side. “With how chronically online she is, she probably will end up with some fake internet boyfriend or something.”
“Like someone else we know.” Ashton gave me a pointed look.
I opened my mouth to shoot something back at him, but he turned to Connor. “You’re up.” He presumedly kicked Connor underneath the table, because he jumped once more as his attention was pulled back to the moment. “Who you picking, then, pretty boy?”
He had his ready. “Most Likely To: Marry A Math Book,” he said, pressing his fingers into his eyes. “Maisie Matthews.”
Hearing her name jolted me, pulling me back from the uneasy fog I’d gotten lost in. “Marry a math book?” I echoed before I realized I’d even opened my mouth.
“She’s a math tutor, isn’t she?”
I sucked in a breath, but caught myself before defending her a second time. It wasn’t like Maisie and I were friends. Far from it. Her being on the list, though… It didn’t feel right. None of this feels right.
Jade’s gaze lifted from her phone, her thumbs pausing in whatever reply she’d been texting. Her lips split into a grin before she turned to me. “Witty. Don’t you think?”
“Witty,” I echoed, except the word was as heavy as a curse.
“How about you?” Jade asked, and her focus pinned me down. The door dinged. “Who are you choosing?”
I hadn’t even stopped to think about the Most Likely Tos.
I had every intention to, but Logan going AWOL had taken up most of my attention the past week, and cheer practice then homework had taken the rest. My mind suddenly blanked on every single student I knew, as well as the labels used in previous years past, especially under the weight of my best friend’s expectant stare. “Um—”
“Dude.” Kyle suddenly sat forward and nearly tossed me off his knee. “Isn’t that Jefferson’s quarterback?”
“Madison,” Jade snapped before I had a chance to look. “A label?”
“I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “What are the ones that need filled again?”
“We literally just started, Mads. We have, like, forty more to do. Pay attention.”
“I am, I just—”
“Hey, quarterback!” Ashton called, his voice echoing loudly off the exposed ceiling. The low-level hum of chatter in the café halted, and nearly every head in Expresso’s pivoted our way. “Been a while, hasn’t it? Ooh-hoo, look who looks so cute off the field.”
This time, not even Jade could keep my attention from veering toward the direction of Ashton’s catcall.
There was only one boy at the counter, wearing a Jefferson High varsity jacket.
His shoulders were broad, back to us, firmly ignoring the taunt.
Castle was scripted out on the back in Jefferson’s school font, and underneath it was the number 13.
Noah stood behind the counter, squinting at our table through his thin glasses.
“Noah’s their quarterback?” I asked them, confused.
“Not anymore,” Kyle muttered, and when I glanced, I found a smile on his face.
“Come on,” Ashton called. “Turn around for me. Let’s see your pretty face, huh? Got any makeup on today? Let’s see, pretty boy.”
I frowned. “Makeup?”
“Why are you so spacey lately, Mads?” Riley gave a theatrical sigh. “Their QB is in theater. We talked about that, like, last week.”
“Sorry I don’t store useless information about Jefferson in my head,” I threw at her, curling my hands into fists. “But it’s weird that you do.”
Riley snorted. “Oh, that’s rich.”
“What, you deaf, too?” Ashton called out, lining his arm along the back of the booth, tucking Riley closer to him. He glanced at Connor. “What’s his name, again?”
“You expect me to remember?”
“Castle,” Reed supplied. He slowly lifted his head. “Something Castle.”
Ashton rolled his eyes. “Wow, thanks, it’s not like it says it on the back of his jacket.”
“L-something. Liam?”
Kyle shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right.”
I was surprised Jade didn’t get upset that our meeting derailed, but when I looked at her again, I found her staring at the boy up front with an almost anticipatory look in her eye. Like she was ready for the showdown between Bobcats and Bulldogs that was surely to come.
Jade handed Riley her phone. “Start recording.”
“Me?” Riley fumbled with it for a second. “Okay, fine, hang on—”
“I just want to see his face,” Ashton pressed, raising his voice. “Just a glance—”
“Wow.” The response came from the counter. The boy in the varsity jacket shook his head of blond hair as if admitting defeat. He hadn’t yet turned, but his shoulders stiffened. “I’d have brought a pen if I’d known I’d meet a fan.”
All at once, the air whooshed out of me.
I expected to see an unfamiliar face. I didn’t keep up with rival team rosters the way Ashton and Kyle apparently did—not even for Brentwood’s biggest competitor.
I might’ve known some of the cheerleaders, but definitely not the football players.
So when the boy spoke, I was prepared to not know his voice.
When he glanced over his shoulder, I was prepared to have no clue who he was.
I was completely prepared to think he was ugly, even. Like all Jefferson Bulldogs were.
I definitely didn’t expect to recognize him.
But there he was, standing at the Expresso’s counter in a red and black Jefferson Bulldogs varsity jacket, fitted like it’d been made for him.
Golden hair. Blue eyes. Perfectly healthy-looking. Alive.
The quarterback of Brentwood’s biggest rival.
Logan.
Logan Castle.