Page 53 of Don't Hate the Player
“Whoa.”
“In court. Not, like, the backyard. She lost custody on all kinds of technical stuff; I don’t know. We lost the house. And my dad hates me even more now for telling him. Or maybe for keeping it from him? Probably both.”
We’re on the highway by now, and a siren from somewhere behind my car begins to whoop its way through to the fast lane, getting closer and louder as Jake finishes his story. That’s not a metaphor, but it sure feels like one.
“So yeah, he wasn’t going to give me a ride to the tournament or the parking lot. I walk everywhere.”
I genuinely don’t know what to say to any of that besides what I’ve already said (because, wow, that’s fuuucked up), so instead of being smart or comforting, I just tell Jake that next time, I’ll pick him up at home.
“Next time?” he asks. “There’s only a next time if we win today. Both of us.”
“Right, and I’ll pick you up in front of your place.”
“And then play me in the finals?”
Yes. No? Shit. I was so focused on Jake being Jake that I once again forgot that he’s right. If we both win, we’re going up against each other in the finals. Byunki seems sure that we’ll beat Chronic today. Unity has as good a shot as anyone at beating Beast Mode after their payload win last week. I want to win today more than anything, but would that make it impossible to keep talking to Jake?
“Oh,” I say. “That might be a bad idea.”
“I bet Fury wouldn’t be happy.”
“If Byunki could see me now, I think he’d transform into Klio and decapitate me, so yeah. Next week would be worse. Would Unity be mad?”
Jake breathes in deep. “Maybe. Probably. They kind of know I know you.”
He hadone job.
“Jake! I asked you not to tell anyone!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I told them I knew you before I ran into you, though. I haven’t told them your name or anything, and they don’t know about this.” He starts gesturing something between himself and me, then seems to second-guess whatever idea he’s trying to convey and not very smoothly pretends he was trying to grab his coffee from the cupholder. “We all saw you onstage when you played Vulcan and . . .”
“And what?” Jake telling his team he knew me before I asked him isn’t as bad as I thought. It’s not the greatest, but it’s not as bad.
“And I’d already told them about you. Before we even heard about the competition or got to the tournament. I was surprised to see you and told them you were the girl I was talking about.”
“Why were you talking about me before the tournament?”
Jake’s hand flies to the back of his head. I find it substantially less cute than I did in our previous conversation.
“They’re my best friends, Em,” he begins quietly. He doesn’t want to say whatever he’s about to say. “When I transferred to Hillford West and I saw you on the first day, they were the first people I told. I was excited to see you, I guess. I thought we were going to be friends.”
What is it about Jake that makes me feel like a huge jerk for assuming the worst of him? He’s not the only person to surprise me with hidden depths in the past week, but for some reason he’s the only one who makes me actually want to question what a cynic I can be.
To be clear, I feel fully justified in being a cynic. Between my first time onGLO, Connor, my mom, and everyone else in my life that wants a piece of everything I can give them, I haven’t met that many people who won’t punish me for slipping up and trusting the wrong person. Or doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong words, acting the wrong way. My walls are here for a reason. Jake just keeps popping up inside them with zero effort, which raises some serious questions about the integrity of my defenses.
“So when you told them you knew me . . .”
“They only know you as K-O-D. It was a jokey codename, really stupid.”
“Knights of Darkness?”
Jake looks at me like I just sneezed out a tiny, nostril-sized unicorn. The look of disbelief on his face should make me feel worse, but it pleases me to know I can surprise him too sometimes.
“Knights of Darkness. You remember,” he confirms. The smile on his face is so beautiful it melts away any anger I felt thinking he’d already betrayed me to Unity.
You really think his smile is beautiful?a voice in my head asks. The voice sounds exactly like Penny.
“I wonder if our high score is still there. It’s been, what”—I do the mental math in my head quickly—“five years?”
