Crash - Williams Nicole - Страница 19

“Can you believe this weather?” Jude greeted me, after nudging the student next to me off the bleachers. Looking at me, his eyes amplified before he suddenly looked away.

“No,” I chattered. “Could someone please tell the weather it’s still summer?” The rain had started first, then the wind, and then the fifty degree temperatures. In this part of the country, fifty was like below zero.

The crowd roared in anger abruptly, throwing popcorn and empty drink containers at the football field. It was Southpointe’s homecoming game and to say we were losing would be an insult to losers everywhere. We weren’t even on the scoreboard yet and the opposing team’s side of the reader board read forty-two points. And it was only the beginning on the second quarter.

“This sprinkle?” Jude said, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me against him. For some reason, warmth tingled down every part of me. “This is fine weather.”

I glanced up long enough to shoot him a quick glare. “Says the man who doesn’t own a garment unless it’s gray.”

“Are you implying something, Luce?” he asked, rubbing my arm hard.

“Who me?” I fluttered my eyelashes in innocence. “But why gray? Why not black? Isn’t that more your scene—more I-could-kick-your-ass-into-next-week?”

He bit his lip, trying not to laugh most likely. “Black absorbs all color, accepts them, takes them into it and let them define it. Gray isn’t anything but itself. It absorbs nothing but itself.”

This was clearly something he’d thought about. He didn’t wear gray because it was his favorite color; he wore it for a deep seeded philosophical reason. As I’d discovered this week, Jude was every kind of mystery that appealed to a woman and every kind she could never unveil. He was every enigma to which I wanted the answer to.

Then, a gust of wind so nasty it shot needles into my cheek cut my thoughts short. I buried my head into Jude’s chest, cursing the weather under my breath.

“Didn’t you check the weather report?” Jude hollered over the wind.

I laughed. “Does it look like I did?” I was wearing cutoffs, sandals, and a shelf bra cami. A white shelf bra cami . . .

“Good thing I did,” Jude said next to me as an old blanket parachuted around me.

I sighed relief and embarrassment at the same time. I’d been so freaking cold I hadn’t had enough brain cells working to remember I was wearing white in a torrential downpour. Now all the wide grins around me of my male classmates made sense.

“Thank you,” I sighed, snuggling under his arm again as he turned me into a blanketed mummy.

“I could say the same,” he replied, giving me an ear to ear grin.

I elbowed him, weaving out of his embrace. However, the weaving didn’t work; he only held me tighter.

“I’m kidding, Luce,” he said, through his laughter. “But come on, you’re surrounded by a bunch of jerk-offs that have one thing on their minds at all times. Having an eyeful of you like that,” he said, eyeing below my neck, “is not good for our hearts or hormones.”

I don’t know if I’d ever achieved the level of red my face was at present. “And by jerk-offs, are you including or excluding yourself in that category?”

“After seeing you like that,” he said, droplets of water running down his face from his saturated beanie, “definitely including myself in the jerk-off category.”

I tried elbowing through the blanket, but he’d bound me up so tight I couldn’t move. I was powerless beside him.

“Isn’t royalty supposed to be down front?”

I scowled down to where eight guys and seven girls sat in saggy crepe paper decorated chairs, wearing crowns and holding wands or batons or something atrocious. When Taylor had come bouncing up to me after second to announce I’d been voted one of the two homecoming queens for the senior class, I wasn’t sure if shock or mortification was my first response. First, because I was all but certain Jude had threatened loss of limb to everyone who didn’t vote for me, and second, because I was anti all forms of voting the popular kids more popular. Homecoming royalty, prom king and queen, ASB, best looking, most likely to succeed . . . cue the finger in the mouth now. Those types of titles never went to anyone other than the top tier populars whose parents and grandparents and their ancestors had worn the same titles before them.

That was, up until today. I wasn’t a popular and, given my whole opinion on the matter, having that ridiculous crown on my head and wand thingy stuffed in my back pocket just felt wrong.

“I know you had something to do with this, Jude Ryder.” I turned my most powerful glare on him. “And don’t expect this to be something I forgive and forget.”

He was fighting a losing battle to keep his smile contained. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t help it if Southpointe High has elected you their newest ‘it’ girl.”

I was tempted to tear the crown off and break it in two in front of him when Taylor waved back at me, her own crown proudly sparkling on top of her wet poodle hairdo.

“Hey, Pinocchio,” I said, inspecting his face. “Your nose just grew like five inches.”

“Whatever, princess.”

Turning an impressive glower on him, the crowd showered another string of curses and garbage down on the field. Then, whether someone with poor aim—or dead on accuracy—behind us threw a half empty bottle of orange soda, it cartwheeled right into my temple.

It surprised me more than anything, but Jude’s face did the Mr. Hyde thing. Veins were already bulging when he spun around on the bleacher, glaring up and down the bleachers before his eyes latched onto someone.

“Hey, asshole!” he hollered, shoving through the row behind us. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Shaking my head, I turned my attention back down at the game, trying to drown out Jude’s curses and threats as he shouldered through the crowd. Right then, the quarterback was sacked, sacked hard, and the ball went flying into the opposing team’s hands.

Another touchdown and our quarterback wasn’t getting up. The crowd went quiet as a couple of khaki slack wearing guys ran out onto the field. They crouched down beside him, moving and rotating a few things until they sat him up. The injured player pulled his helmet off before slinging an arm over each of their shoulders.

It was Sawyer. More like, of course it was Sawyer.

He was such the stereotypical quarterback. I almost wanted to cheer for the other team until he started limping across the field, using the guys beside him as crutches. I told myself to be nice, he couldn’t help it if he was a jackass. That degree of it was born into a man.

“OMG, Lucy,” Taylor squealed, appearing from out of nowhere beside me. Her red and gold cheerleading outfit, shimmery pom-poms, topped off with a tiara and wand thingamajig, was an embodiment of everything that was wrong with high school popularity contests.

“Please, Taylor, for the love of functional acronyms everywhere,” I smiled angelically over at her, “don’t ever say OMG again.”

Steamrolling right past my request, she repeated, “OMG, Sawyer is out. Like, possibly out for the season from what Coach Arcadia just said to Jason, who told Jackson, who told me.”

“Wait,” I said, grabbing her arms. “Coach Arcadia? As in Bill Arcadia?” From the back, I couldn’t tell if that was Coach A down there on the sidelines, but I didn’t think it was likely there would be another Arcadia who coached football in the area.

“Yeah, I think that’s his first name,” Taylor replied, looking at me like she was hoping some scandalous news was to follow. “He transferred a few years back from some yuppy private school. Apparently there’s some juicy reason why, but I haven’t gotten the intel on that one yet. You know him?”

I sighed again. That seemed to be the appropriate response whenever Taylor was around. “He was the coach at my old school. Everyone knew Coach A,” I explained, but that’s all the explaining I’d be doing. Taylor and I were casual friends, but I’d never trust her with a piece of information I wasn’t cool with the whole school finding out about.