Page 23 of Break Points and Face Offs

He starts saying my name under his breath.

“Priestley, Priest, Rosenthal, Rosen …” He snaps his fingers. “Got it!” He’s wearing that evil grin again. I do my best to keep a neutral expression on my face. “Rosie.”

My nostrils flare and I recoil. “No.”

“What? You don’t like it?”

I learned a long time ago that if you show your weaknesses and let people know what bothers you, they have one more power to laud over you.

“I don’t care.”

“Fine, Rosie it is. I think that suits you much better anyway.”

No, he does not think it suits me better. No one on earth has ever looked at me and thought, Rosie. But if it keeps him occupied, whatever. Hopefully he’ll get bored with it before I’m inclined to bludgeon him to death with my laptop.

When I take out the book we fought over that first day and place it down on the desk, he eyes it longingly, like it’s a juicy steak. It may have been 1-0 to him with the nickname, but it’s all even again now.

The rest of our group show up and we get to work.

Will and I are obviously the strongest of the group, though Emily and Scott are capable enough to be competent deckhands to our captaining. Peter, as expected, is a liability. But any time I try to give Peter a hard time, Will jumps in to protect him or make excuses for his sloppiness.

About an hour into our session, Peter checks his watch and announces that he has to leave. Scott takes this as his cue to start packing up, too, and Emily quickly follows.

“Wait a minute, we’ve barely been here an hour,” I complain.

Emily gives me an apologetic shrug while continuing to pack her laptop away. Scott doesn’t even bother. I huff.

“Do you really want to stay bottom of that damn leaderboard?”

Scott gives me a glance that suggests he really doesn’t care and neither should I.

“Listen, man,” he says. I have to grit my teeth to stop from demanding he rescind that ‘man’ immediately. “We’re all getting a grad degree from Princeton here. Whatever happens, it’s all good.”

I splutter a response, but by the time it’s out, he’s already turned his back and is following Peter and Emily out of the library.

I turn to Will for backup.

“Did he just say we’re all getting a grad degree from Princeton, so it’s all good?”

Will just laughs.

What is wrong with all of them? “Doesn’t he understand how competitive the world of finance is? How many people have grad degrees from Ivy League schools? How much competition he’ll have out there in interviews? The fact that there’s a finite number of decent companies even hiring?”

“Relax, Rosie. Scott isn’t your problem.”

“While he’s in this group, he is.”

Will sighs. “Listen, we’ll figure it out. We can’t expect everyone to spend hours in the library, multiple times a week, when you just dictate shit to them anyway.”

“I do not ‘dictate shit.’”

“Uh, yeah. You do.”

I wait for him to start packing and leave, like the others. Instead, he leans back in the armchair and turns the page in the book he’d been reading from.

He’s manspreading and in sweatpants, that’s a seriously dangerous thing to do. I follow the view from his sneakers to the bunched ankles of his sweats, then the baggy calves and the spot where the sweatpants tighten around his thighs. My face flushes. When I glance up at him, he’s watching me with a raised eyebrow.

“Are you checking me out, Rosie?”