Page 54 of Don't Hate the Player
“It’s still there. We’re not number two anymore, but we’re on the leaderboard. Like, eight or something.”
I sputter with indignation. “Who the hell stole our spot? Jake, wehaveto—we gotta—What the hell is that noise?”
There’s a beeping coming from my dashboard. When I look down to check it, an indicator light is on. I don’t need to check what it is, because two seconds after the beeping starts, I have my answer. My car’s trunk pops open and starts flapping in the breeze as I make a hectic turn onto a highway off-ramp.
“The trunk!” Jake exclaims. Yes, thank you. I saw it too.
“I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” I reply. “Just give me a second to find somewhere to pull over.” We’re about twenty minutes from the arena, on a smaller road that still has a decently wide shoulder. I remember to put my emergency lights on before pulling over (rather smoothly, I might add).
“Let me help,” Jake says and swings out of the car before I have a chance to tell him this is clearly a one-woman job. I don’t remember putting anything in my trunk this morning, so I must have closed it over the strap on my field hockey bag or something equally innocuous. I hop out to join Jake, careful to walk around the side of the car that isn’t flanked by the right lane.
“You have a bag or something; it kept the trunk door open,” Jake says when I catch up to him.
“Let me move some stuff around so it doesn’t get stuck again. You can get back in the car, it’s fine.”
“Nah, I’ll stay out here with you. Feels weird sitting in there by myself.”
Can’t say I mind the company as long as it’s freely offered. I start shuffling stuff around in my truck. There are a couple of five-subject notebooks, a bunch of books from sophomore year that I never took out (Jake could probably use a few of those, now that I think about it), and the offending hockey bag with its thick plastic strap. I don’t like field hockey enough to forgive the bag for being annoying; if I had my way, I’d chuck the thing into the Schuylkill and be done with it. I’m still rummaging when Jake taps me on the shoulder.
“Em, someone’s pulling up.”
Great, a Good Samaritan. Does he want my field hockey bag? He can have it.
When I turn around to see who our would-be rescuer is, I spot a tall, good-looking black guy with a shaved head, a Volvo, and—now that he’s out of his car and walking toward us—an uncomfortably familiar shirt. Blue cross. Black shield.
“Is that—”
“Bob. That’s Bob,” Jake says nervously.
“Bob’s cool, though, right? He won’t mind that I’m driving you?”
Jake looks from me to Bob and back at me. “I mean we’ll find out.”
I’m gonna go ahead and say that Bob minds that I’m driving Jake today. Once he gets close enough to identify both of us, his eyebrows shoot up toward a hairline that does not exist, and he stops in his tracks.
“Jake, what’s going on?” Bob shouts over the roar of traffic.
Under his breath, I hear Jake mutter the word “language.” Who is he, Captain America? I feel like this isn’t going well already, so I step up and try to introduce myself.
“Hey, you’re Bob, right? I’m Emilia.” Shoot. He didn’t know my name before, but he sure does now. Here’s hoping Bob’s as good a guy as his teammate is.
“I know who you are,” he snaps. I’m not sure I deserve that tone, but if Bob is anything like Byunki, I’m not interested in taking his flavor of shit before I even get to the arena. “You’re one of Byunki’s. KNOX, Team Fury. Did he put you up to this?”
Jake intervenes before I can ask Bob what “this” is. “No. She’s just giving me a ride so I don’t have to take the bus.” He waits a moment before seemingly deciding to go balls out on the truth. “She also gave me a ride back from the arena last weekend.”
I admire his desire to come clean, but his timing could be a lot better. My trunk is still open, and there are cars whipping by us on the highway. I tell myself it’s the setting that’s making me nervous or the fact that Jake and I have been caught red-handed doing . . . nothing, honestly.
Problem is that with Jake, doing nothing has increasingly begun to feel like doing something. Something I shouldn’t be doing. From the look on Bob’s face, it’s something Jake shouldn’t be doing either.
“You neglected to mention that to the team, or to me,” Bob says with fury, ironically, in his voice. I thought Bob was supposed to be nice. Wasn’t Bob Unity’s dad or whatever?
I steal a glance over at Jake, and the confusion on his face points instead to this kind of vitriol being massively out of character for Dad-Bob.
“I know. I’m sorry. Em was being nice, and I didn’t want you guys to worry about me.”
“I wasn’t worried about you because I thought you were smarter thanthis,” Bob says and has the gall to point to me when he says this. Excuse me, I’m right here. I’m aher, not athis.
“Hey—” I begin. I’m not going to let this bald-ass rando talk to me or Jake like that. I’m beginning to think all tanks are assholes. Thank god Jake’s a healer.
