The QB's Nerdy Addiction novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Rule Two

The first session in the library stacks: he follows the lines with a finger, she reads aloud, and his hand lands on hers. He says he'd give anything to meet the account he listens to every night.

The third floor of the library was empty at nine o'clock, which was why I had picked it.

I took the table at the back of the stacks, the one under the broken light, and set out my rules before he arrived.

A textbook. A highlighter. The notebook, closed, with a pen on top of it.

Gage Sullivan came up the stairs at five past nine with a heavy bag on his bad shoulder.

He sat across from me, and the table suddenly looked small.

"Rule one," I said. "We work here, nine to eleven, and nowhere else."

"Okay."

"Rule two. No touching."

He lifted his eyebrows. "You think I'm going to grab you over a media law textbook?"

"I think you're going to lean over to see what I'm pointing at. Don't."

"Noted," he said. He was almost smiling.

I pushed the book across to him. "Chapter four. Read me the first page, out loud, and then tell me what it says."

He opened it and laid one finger under the first line.

He read it slowly. At the end of the line he went back to the start and read it again.

On the second paragraph he stopped moving altogether.

I watched his finger sit there on the page.

He was not lazy. A lazy man would have skipped ahead, and he was fighting for every word.

I didn't say that.

"Give it here," I said instead. "I'll read it and you teach it back to me."

"That's not tutoring. That's you doing my homework."

"It's you doing it with your ears. You're allowed to."

I read him the page.

It was about when a public figure could sue for being written about, and I kept my voice flat, because that was how it sounded best.

When I finished, I closed the book.

"Go," I said. "Pretend I'm your father."

Something crossed his face and was gone.

"Public figure can't sue unless the writer knew it was false or didn't care," he said. "So if I'm famous and somebody says I'm a coward, I'm out of luck unless he lied on purpose."

"That's the whole page."

"That's the whole page?"

"You got it in one try. Read me the next one."

We did four pages that way.

He got every one of them, and each time he looked a little more surprised at himself.

At ten, I reached over to turn the page, and he reached at the same moment to hold it flat.

His hand landed on top of mine.

It was warm, and so much bigger than mine that my knuckles disappeared under it.

Neither of us moved.

I told myself it was because the book would slide if I pulled away.

His hand was not quite steady. I noticed that, and I decided the library was cold.

"Rule two," I said.

"Right." He took his hand back slowly and put it flat on his own knee. "That was the book's fault."

"Turn the page yourself."

He turned it.

I wrote a note in the margin of my own notebook so I would have somewhere to look.

My ears were hot. I did not give that a reason.

At ten forty he packed his bag, and the stacks went quiet.

He stood there with the strap over his shoulder.

"Can I tell you something?" he said. "It's not about law."

"It's your last twenty minutes. You can tell me whatever you want."

"Every night before a game I listen to an account online. It's called SnapCount."

I looked at my pen.

"It breaks down our offense," he said. "Short posts. Somebody who sees every play and says it plain. I put in headphones, because the phone reads it out to me, and I listen to the whole thing."

He looked shy, telling me that.

"It's the only reason I made it through last season. It's also the thing that hurt me worst."

"Both?"

"Both." He shrugged. "I don't know who writes it. Nobody does."

I kept my pen on the paper. If I lifted it, my hand would shake.

"If you ever find out," Gage said, "tell me. I'd give a lot to meet that person."

"I'm a statistics major. I don't follow football."

"Sure." He gave me a nod and went down the stairs.

I sat alone under the broken light and waited until I couldn't hear his footsteps.

I had been that person for two seasons.

I was supposed to be afraid of getting caught, and I was.

But what I felt was worse than that.

For the first time, I wanted him to know.

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