Jock Reign (Jock Hard 5)

A few pet peeves of mine:

Talking during movies.

Anyone who is not in my party eating popcorn loudly enough for me to hear.

Gawd.

“We’re here—G5 and G6.”

She nods, trailing along behind me in this blessedly nearly empty theater.

It’s work getting adjusted—we’ve way too much shite we’ve brought along, but in quick time (just in time for the previews to start), we’re comfortably in our seats with our feet up and snacks in our laps.

“Ahh, this is the life,” Eliza mutters beside me as the screen illuminates, asking the audience to please turn off their mobile devices. Dancing hot dogs sing praises about the concession stand, which we’ve already visited. “I live for the previews—I’m glad we made it in time.”

“Me too.”

It’s loud in the theater; the surround sound is remarkable and promises to be stellar during the actual movie, and I swear my seat rumbles during a tire commercial. I feel like I’m at Universal Studios even though I’ve actually never been to Universal Studios, ha ha.

Eliza barely says another word.

We spend the next hour and fifty-three minutes in companionable silence, laughing at the same spots and flinching at the same spots.

Even better? I barely hear her chewing the popcorn! If I didn’t see her hand dipping into the bucket every few minutes and watch her pulling out entire fistfuls from the corner of my eye, I wouldn’t have known she was eating it at all.

What a bloody perfect evening.

When it’s time to pack up and head back into the real world, we stand outside debating whether we’re going to order a car or walk through the drizzly rain. I am no stranger to this kind of weather, having grown up in England where it is commonplace, but Eliza doesn’t seem eager to rush into walking through this.

“Are you sure you don’t want to live a little? It might be fun.”

She shoots me a cockeyed look that tells me she thinks I’ve lost my nob. “You want me to walk home in the rain? What about my textbooks?”

“You hold them with the spine up and wipe them off when you get home—it’s just a little condensation, it probably won’t bite.”

At least, I don’t think it’s going to ruin our books, but then I have been wrong before. Ha!

“It’ll be fun, he says. Just a little condensation, he says,” Eliza repeats with a laugh. “Fine, if you want to walk, we can walk. I have no problem with it—just cross your fingers that everything makes it back to the house intact.” She stops in her tracks. “Oh! Wait! Let me try to stuff some of these books in my bag. Hold on a second.”

She stoops to a kneel on the sidewalk and unzips her book bag, wedging the two books inside easily.

Smiles up at me. “Here, hand me your books, too. I think they’ll fit.”

We’re both pleasantly surprised when they do.

She zips up the bag—it takes a little bit of effort, but she makes it work—before standing and hands it to me. “It’s much heavier now, so can you carry it? Pretty please?”

“Who can resist a pretty smile like that?”

Her smile falters.

Disappears.

Shite, should I not have said that? Since when is calling a beautiful girl pretty a bad thing? Or maybe she’s one of those girls who can’t take a compliment?

I spend the next block wondering what is going on inside Eliza’s head, questioning what she might be thinking. Racking my brain for something clever to say and coming up with nothing. Nada.

Think, Jack, think.

She beats me to it. “So…you weren’t kidding when you said you suck at rugby, huh?”

The statement catches me completely off guard, and I look down at her, surprised. She laughs.

“Pardon?”

“I hate to admit this, but Kaylee and I were at the game this past weekend and saw some of the action—or lack of it. I know you said it was not your favorite sport to play, so I want to know how you made it through an entire match.”

“So what you’re saying is…” I begin slowly. “Is that you were at the game this past weekend?”

She nods.

Yes.

“And you saw me play like complete and utter bollocks?”

She nods again.

“So you probably saw Coach ripping me a new arsehole?”

Her sigh can be easily heard as we trudge along through the misty rain, back toward campus and her house just on the edge of it. Even with the traffic going by, I can hear her chuckling.

“Yes, Jack, we saw you running the wrong direction.”

Bloody hell. “And why were you there exactly?”

She rolls her eyes. “I shouldn’t have to tell you the reason we were there. It should be pretty obvious that my roommate has a crush on you and wanted to be there for moral support and to cheer you on.”

Moral support.

“Christ, I didn’t need moral support—I needed to be airlifted out of there.”