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“I’m going to go get a drink,” I said, and hurried away. Kiersten said something in response, but I was moving too fast to hear it. I wanted to talk to Jacob, but didn’t feel right running up to him in the middle of a party, pelting him with relationship questions.
“You again,” the bartender said as I walked up.
“Me again,” I answered. “Something that looks like it has alcohol in it, but doesn’t, please.”
The bartender’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you aren’t pregnant, are you?”
I scowled. “No, I just don’t want to drink.”
“Respect,” the bartender said, smiling and preparing me some sort of clear beverage in a rocks glass. “The only reason half the people here get drunk is so they have an excuse when they hook up with the wrong person. Which is my nice way of saying I saw Piper go upstairs with Adams, and they’re both in the wrong on that one.”
“They’re having a great time, though,” I said sarcastically, and the bartender laughed.
“That’s bold of Adams, anyway. There’s a rule about stuff like that here. The alumnus that donated this house was one of those backward conservatives— fine with drinking, but sex and drugs aren’t allowed. If anyone reports Adams and Piper, the house goes back to the school.”
“Seriously? Don’t people have sex here all the time? I saw Jacob and a girl in the back garden, the first time I was here,” I said.
“The rules state the house is to be sex-free, not the garden,” the bartender said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Oh. That’s one hell of a technicality,” I said, nodding. I hesitated. “So, you know everything, right?”
“Naturally,” the bartender answered.
“Jenna and Jacob Everett. Tell me about them?”
“Ah,” he said, looking intrigued as to why I was asking all this. “They’re both superstars at their sports. I think they sort of get one another— you know, the athletic thing, the locker room thing, the getting grass stains on your clothes thing. They were off and on a lot, but I think everyone more or less expects them to be on again at some point. Are they on again? Did you hear something?”
“Not really. I was just wondering,” I said.
“Well, let me know. If they’re on again, I want to see Piper’s face when she finds out.”
“I think she’s pretty happy with Adams now,” I said.
The bartender scoffed. “Adams is a poor man’s Jacob Everett, even if the poor man doesn’t know it yet.”
Adams himself came downstairs a few moments later, trailed by Piper, who was grinning— grinning too hard, actually, making it clearly forced. Adams made something of a spectacle of himself, like he wanted to make sure everyone saw where he’d been and who he’d been with.
“Nice!” one of the freshman players said.
“Damn, Piper, he looks like he’d had the time of his life.”
“Feeling loose for the game, Adams?”
The carousing went around a few times before Adams, drunk on alcohol and high on his own sexual prowess, lunged over the bar and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels. The bartender protested lightly, but gave up— this was Football House, after all, where football players were kings among men.
“I propose a toast,” Adams said, holding the bottle up.
“To your cock?” someone shouted.
“Already proposed that one, and she drank up,” Adams shouted back, and the room laughed. I took a step back, trying to blend into the doorway just behind the bar— despite the fact that on the surface, Adams had everything Jacob had, I felt repelled by him rather than reeled in.
“A toast to Harton football, obviously,” Adams began, and a round of cheering rose up. As it was dying off, I saw Jacob and the other people who’d been outside walking back in, empty beer bottles or cocktail glasses in hand.
Adams went on, louder now— I couldn’t tell if he’d seen Jacob or not. “And a toast to the future of it! You guys know how much this team means to me, and I’m excited to lead it to the next level. Enough with all this old hero worship and injuries and other bullshit, right? So, the future, guys. Say it! To the future!”
The freshman players cheered, as did plenty of the girls— Piper included— and a number of the juniors. But near the front door was a mass of silence where the senior players stood, with Jacob at their center. His face was all lines, hard and furrowed and angry in a way I had never seen before— a way that made him look dangerous and bestial. His hands were balled into fists, and he took three long steps forward— he was going to get in a fight. He was going to start throwing punches at Adams, and he was going to injure his shoulder worse, and everything he cared about would be over in a flash.
