Chapter Seven Keely
Chapter Seven
Keely
Keely Sinclair’s a nerd.
Sometimes, when she was having a particularly vicious case of the Sunday Scaries, she replayed that scene from seventh grade.
The one where Max Simmons, in the middle of a crowded hallway, laughed at her for liking science.
She’d been coming into herself, more comfortable in her own skin—metaphorically, of course; maybe her thesis should have focused on finding a cure for pre-teen acne—and Max, her best friend, had abandoned her in favor of the other guys who also thought PE counted as a class.
The absolute audacity of men.
Keely somehow managed to avoid him for a week, and then he moved schools, which she was glad for. She hadn’t wanted to look at his miraculously pimple-free face anymore.
She didn’t want to look at it now.
Which meant having to share space with him at the animal shelter once a week was going to be its own painful form of community service. At least she was alone for now, tucked in the laundry room.
How did an animal shelter amass so many towels? She tried not to think about what had been on them before the rinse cycle.
Being back here served multiple purposes: she could avoid Max and review the latest notes from her thesis advisor.
Something in her calculations wasn’t working, and she’d already tried two other methods.
She’d ask Zoey to look at it when she got home.
Zoey was an anatomy major and helped pull Keely’s head out of the cells-and-atoms level of detail she normally existed in to see the bigger picture.
Keely flipped the page on her notes, then cleared the lint trap again. How did the dogs have any fur left? Surely it was all in this trash can. And stuck to her pants. And possibly in her bra?
The door behind her opened, and though she wanted more than anything for it to be Tricia, telling Keely the shelter’s never seen such a wonderful first-time volunteer and offering a letter of recommendation on branded letterhead, she already knew who it would be.
“Can I help you, Max?” she said without turning.
“Yeah, actually.” His steps grew closer, and if the hairs on Keely’s arms stood on end. . . well. Static electricity, probably. She’d tell Tricia to buy more dryer sheets. “Biscuit needs his anal glands expressed, and it’s a two-person job. I’m tagging you in.”
She spun on her heel, and her shin banged the open dryer door. “What are you doing to Biscuit?”
“Kidding.” He wasn’t smiling exactly, but there was an uneven tilt to his mouth that made more than Keely’s shin throb. “I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page. Clear the air.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and held it out for her. “You can order a new laptop if you want.”
He seemed sincere, which stabbed little knives into all of Keely’s exposed skin. He was acting like their history was inconsequential.
Maybe she should do the same. Move on, focus on the community service and winning the scholarship. Worrying kept her awake at night, and she needed every ounce of sleep she could get.
“My laptop is fine,” she admitted.
He slid his wallet back in his pocket with a firm nod. “So, we’re good?”
“Whatever.” She was so, so tired. “We’ll stay out of each other’s way. That’s my best offer.”
His mouth tipped up. “Cool,” he said. “With the scholarship and everything, I figured—”
Keely’s mind skidded to a halt, and because it had been going well over a hundred miles an hour, she jolted. “Wait. What about the scholarship?”
Max took a half step back, tore his gaze from hers. But something in his posture, the way he carried himself, the strong lines of his arms. . .
He had a runner’s body.
One of the track stars, Sam had said.
No. It wasn’t one of the track stars.
It was this one.
“You?” she spat out. “You’re the jock going out for Pursue Your Passions?”
He sniffed, one corner of his mouth going up with his nose. “We prefer the term ‘student athlete.’ ”
Touchy subject, the word “jock.” She stuck that in her pocket. “There’s no way you have the grades to win.”
It was a guess, but an educated one. She knew jocks tended to skip class for practice, meets, games, and because they celebrated too hard when they won and were hungover.
Her gamble paid off.
Max pushed his shoulders back, puffing his chest. Keely cursed the part of her brain that noticed his shirt gliding over his muscles. “And you clearly don’t have the community service hours,” he said. “If you’re here.”
“You can’t possibly know that.” Can he? “And besides, I’ve got three killer extracurriculars.” Two, but what was a little exaggeration between rivals?
He shifted and looked away. “Well, then, I run four events.”
They were basically even, then.
Which meant Keely needed to appeal to a different part of his conscience.
“Max,” she pleaded. His name felt funny in her mouth when she said it that way, a familiar word in a foreign language.
“I need this scholarship.” She reached out, but what was she going to do—touch him?
She pulled back and made a tight fist behind her back, hoping it would stop the sinking in her stomach.
This was something she hadn’t planned for, something she couldn’t strangle into perfect lines of control.
Max Simmons was a variable she hadn’t considered.
“I won’t be able to afford grad school without it,” she tacked on. The tears that sprang to her eyes were surprisingly genuine. She blinked them back.
“I don’t need it any less than you,” he said. Something deep and cutting flashed on his face, before a shutter came down and sealed it away. “I lost my funding, too, in case you hadn’t heard.”
Her brows pinched, and she leaned against the dryer. “You do track, though. Not football.”
“I run track,” he corrected, his jaw ticking. “But my investors don’t care. And it doesn’t matter. If I want a shot at the Olympics, I need all the help I can get.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Do you have a shot?” She’d meant it as a jab, but she was a little curious as to exactly how good he was.
She, under no circumstances, would allow herself to look up his race videos. If his face was that well defined, with its sharp cheekbones and strong nose and brow ridge, there was no telling what the rest of him looked like. Imagining it sent something like nausea shooting through her stomach.
“I have a shot,” he confirmed. Was he being too confident, or underselling his abilities?
It doesn’t matter. The less she thought about Max Simmons, the better off she’d be.
She tried her last-ditch effort. “I. . . I want it more.”
Another beat of thick silence. “There’s no possible way you can scientifically prove that.” He tilted his head. “Can you?”
“Well, no, but—”
His mouth quirked. Was he still teasing her?
Time did not heal all wounds, because her face burned with embarrassment the same way it had ten years ago.
This feeling, she could work with. Could mold it into something useful, productive. She rearranged, sorted, and slotted details into place.
She turned back to the dryer. “This is a waste of time.”
“Agreed,” Max said, and Keely relished the uncertainty coloring his voice. After a few seconds, he leaned against the washer. “So where does that leave us?”
She shrugged, threw an air of innocence over her features. Stuck out her bottom lip the tiniest sliver. “I’m sure the person most deserving will earn the scholarship fair and square.”
Max’s gaze narrowed. “Fair and square?”
She blinked and gave him a small shrug. “May the best person win,” she said.
But cogs were already turning in her mind. After all, she wouldn’t be a scientist if she didn’t put something in place to control the variables.
· · · · ·
“Change the signature,” Zoey said through a bite of her eggplant parm. Keely had come home tonight to another family recipe, passed down from Zoey’s great-grandmother. Zoey pointed at Keely’s screen and left a grease smudge behind. “His students call him The Waz.”
Keely snorted. “That cannot be true.” She reached for a mozzarella stick (storebought, because balance) before deciding against it.
Introducing more grease and crumbs to her already precarious laptop situation was a bad idea; she had a hypothesis Max’s good will wouldn’t last past the email she was about to send.
All it had taken was Keely cashing in an owed favor, and she had Max’s class schedule. He was an exercise science major, so unoriginal for a jock.
Keely took a small sip from her water bottle. “And your brother’s sure this is untraceable?” Zoey’s brother was in grad school at MIT, and had set Zoey up with a private VPN so she could watch K-dramas unreleased in America. Keely was just. . . borrowing it.
Student and faculty emails were in an open directory and therefore public record. This sort of thing probably happened all the time.
This was harmless.
Right?
“Promise.” Zoey plucked Keely’s abandoned mozz stick off the tray. “Do it already. We need to study for the Olympiad.”
Keely sunk her teeth into her bottom lip as her mouse hovered over the send button. “But is it a good idea?”
A glob of marinara dripped onto Zoey’s thumb. “It’s grad school, Keel. Our future’s on the line.” She gripped Keely’s sleeve, taking care not to touch her with the red sauce. “The sunshine. The surfers.”
They’d had the plans to go to Caltech since freshman year, eager to swap out Virginia’s hills for California’s waters and waves. It was the farthest Keely could feasibly go to get away from her parents, and she needed that desperately. Needed to go somewhere she couldn’t hear their shouting.
Zoey was right.
“Okay.” Keely nodded. She took in a large gulp of air and held it while she pressed send, then blew it out in a single, strong gust. “Okay. It’s done.”
Zoey threw her head back and laughed, and Keely joined in. Max wouldn’t know what had hit him.
All was fair in scholarships and sabotage.
From: Angus Wazlockowski ([email protected])
To:
BCC: Max Simmons ([email protected])
Date: Sunday, February 1
Subject: Classes Canceled Week of Feb 2
All sections of class canceled this upcoming week. Bad stomach bug. As an aside, please take caution when dining from the taco truck that frequents the west side of campus.
Sincerely,
The Waz