Page 1 of Betting on the Brainiac

Chapter One

Madison

I stand at theedge of the diving board in my tangerine bikini, ready to launch myself into space. My body goes still one breath from an explosion of action, my muscles coiled, ready to turn the potential energy into kinetic.

“She makes it look simple,” one of my roommates tells her boyfriend, part of the audience sitting on the sides of the pool, dangling their legs in the water. “But that’s how you know she’s super good at it. Do it, girl!”

“Drama, much?” That’s another boyfriend, sounding bored. Ironic that I’m boring him, when Niles is what it would sound like if beige Dockers could talk. Ruby shushes him. It’s practically a reflex for my librarian roommate.

I don’t acknowledge that I’ve heard him. Instead, I lift my arms, bounce twice on the board, and contract my muscles butnot too much—perfectly in control of the surface area needed to make the maximum cannonball splash.

I hear a couple of surprised cries as I disappear into the water and emerge to do a sexy hair fling to the sound of laughs. Well, and annoyed splutters from Niles.

My pink-haired lovebug of a roommate, Sami, gives me a wry smile and a headshake. “She can do actual dives,” she tells Josh, our neighbor and now her boyfriend.

He grins. “I wouldn’t doubt Madison for a second.”

“You’re prettyandsmart,” I tell him as I swim toward their side of the pool.

Sami rolls her eyes. “Can we get a real dive now?”

I surge from the water, mermaid style, and pull myself up onto the edge of the pool to tap her on the nose. “No. I am not your trained seal.” With a wink, I sink back into the water and swim toward the lane set aside for lap swimmers, ducking under the floating divider and settling into a backstroke.

The cool water feels delicious against the brutal heat of Austin in the second week of August. Even setting Sami’s welcome home pool party for early evening hasn’t helped with the temperature. So far, only being in the water has. I should get in my exercise this way more except I pay way too much for my balayage to subject it to chlorine too often. The price of beauty and whatnot.

Still, for this moment, everything is exactly right. The rhythm of my body and the water I displace, the contrast of the setting sun and cool pool temperature, the sounds of my roommates—my favorite people in the world—laughing and talking in the background. It hasn’t been the same with Sami gone on tour with her band all summer. Now we’re whole again, and even though changes are coming based on the heart eyes two of my roomies are getting from their boyfriends, that’s later. Now is . . . now. And I’m fully in it.

Eventually, we eat all the delicious things Ruby’s brother has grilled, but as full night falls, the boys all remember their roles and disappear back to their own houses, leaving the four of us besties to stagger into our place, heavy with soaked-up sun, smelling of Coppertone with a whiff of charcoal briquette smoke for earthiness.

The other three girls sprawl across the living room furniture, and I choose to snuggle with Sami, who has claimed the sofa, picking up her legs and settling them across my lap while I nestle into the cushions.

“Hey, besties,” I say.

They each give me a mellow “Hey, Madi” back, the specific kind of mellow that comes from hot August nights.

I loll my head to smile at Ruby, then sweep my eyes over Ava and Sami, and give a contented sigh. I’ve known these girls since we were in the freshmen dorms. That’s eight years. Eight years in which we haven’t been apart much. We each did our own thing for a year or two after graduating, but when Ava got her job at the genetics lab and bought this condo two years ago, the rest of us moved in within a few months of each other.

“This is how it should be,” I say aloud. “My girls back home with me.”

“We missed you, Sami,” Ava says. “I’m glad your tour is over.”

“Me too,” Sami says. “I really missed Josh.” I pinch her thigh, and she laughs. “Fine, I missed your annoying faces too.” She does an awkward wiggle to crane her neck and look over at Ava, finally deciding it’s easiest to hang her head over the edge of the sofa and study Ava upside down. “I especially missed all the hot Joey action unfolding. It wasn’t the same getting Madison’s play-by-play via text.”

Ava blushes, something she does easily. I’d feel sorry for her if I weren’t so jealous of her beauteous red hair. She and Joey haveonly been an official item for a couple of weeks now, even though their feelings had been brewing since early summer.

“Ew,” Ruby says without any real disgust. “Could you not talk about my brother and hot action in the same sentence?”

“Your bet, your fault,” Sami says.

I pinch her again. “Didn’t hear you complaining when you lost to Ruby. Are we going to have to go next door and drag you back from Josh’s any time we want to see you from now on?”

Sami narrows her eyes at me. “Speaking of bets, isn’t it your turn?”

“Yes,” Ava says, clapping twice. “It is one hundred percent Madison’s turn to get Rubied.”

“I’m down,” Ruby says, sounding more alert. “And I’ve got ideas.”

Sami hoots and Ava snickers, but it doesn’t rattle me. Ruby had bet us on New Year’s Day that she could find us all true love by the next New Year.

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