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Something else was looming over us, but I couldn’t see it. That thought followed me all the way home.
Chapter Sixteen
First
Abby
STARING AT THE BLANK CORKBOARDoutside of Mr. Mott’s office, we were all in the same boat. The top two scores would automatically become Mr. Mott’s Teacher’s Assistant for the fall semester. For an aspiring mathematics professor, scoring that position would look amazing on my resume, as it would for the other fifty or so students standing with me.
The hangnail poking out from the side of my thumb was surrounded by red, angry skin from me biting at it for the last half hour. My deodorant was struggling, my neck and jaw were tense, and my back began to complain from standing in wedged booties on unforgiving tile. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, trying to ignore it.
If the other students standing with me weren’t suffering from nervous energy, too, I might have looked insane. We silently supported one another, even though we’d also been silently competing all semester.
We were minutes away from summer break, and miraculously, the Feds hadn’t been back to our apartment. Well, not a true miracle, everything had gone quiet sinceThe Eastern Starhad printed a front-page article with quotes from dozens of students, who denied Travis’s attendance at the Keaton Hall fight, that had all but exonerated Travis.
I was hoping my luck would hold out for somewhat less important matters, like an assistant position.
Mr. Mott’s statistics final was one of the last scheduled on Eastern State’s campus, evident because we were the few remaining students still on grounds. We could have waited for the grades to come out online, but Mr. Mott was old school, and he liked to post grades on printed paper before inputting them into the system. So, those of us who cared, waited.
I missed the days when Travis would wait with me, but he was at work.
He was making a killing off the fifty and sixty-year-old women in Eakins. Not as much as he made from the fights in The Circle, but as a personal trainer at Iron E Gym, he was paying the rent and most of the bills.
With my winnings from Sig Tau’s poker night, we were ahead. Travis definitely made more than I did from tutoring, though. Especially during the summer, my income would all but cease until fall semester. I tried not to feel guilty. Travis preferred to pay the bills, and except for hating his boss, he pretty much had the best job ever.
Travis worked out while the ladies he worked with pretended they weren’t watching. Basically, Travis was getting paid to do what he would be doing every day, anyway. He was getting thicker, and his already impressive muscles were more defined—only prompting more clients to sign up with him. He was making the most of any trainer at Iron E.
I refused to worry about the day Travis signed on to train women our age. It would probably happen, but I trusted him.
Mr. Mott’s door opened, and Trina, his current Teacher’s Assistant, slipped through. She held the paper with the list of grades in her hand, backward. I know. I checked.
Trina stretched her neck to make her small, squeaky voice travel farther. “Please email Mr. Mott with any questions about your grade. He won’t be taking any appointments today.”
With that, Trina flattened the paper against the cork, used a red push pin to secure it, and turned on her heels, navigating through the quickly tightening crowd.
I was being bounced back and forth like a pinball, reminding me of the first underground fight I’d attended.
Travis had pushed people away from me. He’d always protected me, since day one.
“Hey! Back up! Back the fuck up!” Travis said from behind me. He hooked one arm around my middle, using his other hand and arm to push the men away and gesturing to the women.
My stomach filled with fluttering wings of a hundred butterflies just at the sight of him, but a repeat of the night we first met—a night I’d just been recalling—was enough to make me want to pull him into the nearest empty lab and rip his clothes off.
“You came!” I said, pressing my cheek into his chest.
He held me with one arm, holding people back with the other. “Martha told me to cut out early. I was telling her how nervous you were about your grade. I also might have mentioned how shitty it was that I couldn’t be here for you.”
Sounds of disappointment snapped me back to the present, and I turned, searching for my student ID. I started from the bottom, my eyes moving up until I reached the top. “Holy shit,” I said. I turned to my husband. “I’m first.”
Travis leaned forward to touch my grade with his index finger. “This is you?”
“That’s me,” I said, in disbelief. “I got it.”
Travis’s grin spread across his face. “You got it?”
I clapped my hands together and held my fingers to my lips. “I got it!”
Travis threw his arms around me and lifted me off my feet, twirling me around. “That’s my girl! Woo!” he yelled.
