Page 39 of Falling Into You

“Oh no, he didn’t,” Layla said loudly.

In the front row of the bleachers, Cody hung his head so low it was practically between his knees.

“One, two, three, go!” Jacob yelled.

“You! Need! Jacob!” The crowd got louder.

“One more time! One, two, three, go!”

“You! Need! Jacob!”

There was a whistle on the field, and play came to a stop for halftime. Everything went silent. The words of his chant seemed to hang in the air. Coach Fitz was clearly trying to ignore him and everybody in the crowd. He was as stiff as a board on the sidelines, working hard not to turn and look at him.

“You hear that, Coach Fitz? The people have spoken!” Jacob shouted. “You clearly need me out there!”

Behind him, someone cleared their throat. Jacob turned, his chest heaving, his lungs burning with cold.

Rory, Layla, Gwen, Carlos, Maya, Dahlia, and the rest of the squad stood, arms crossed, staring him down. All the adrenaline rushed out of him.

Then the soccer team jogged past on the way to the locker room, every last one of them staring him down.

“Proud of yourself?” Rory asked.

“Yeah, kinda,” Jacob replied, which wasn’t untrue but was definitely the wrong thing to say.

“You can go home now,” Rory said. “We don’t need that kind of energy on this squad.”

Rory

Rory couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this angry after cheering.

Was it last season, when the football team coughed up an idiotic turnover and lost its chance at the playoffs by one point? No. Nope. She distinctly remembered being able to laugh on the bus home after that game, and she couldn’t fathom laughing right now. She didn’t even change out of her uniform like she normally would have. While the rest of the team went back to the locker room, she stormed straight through the school and out the front door, her ponytail swishing behind her, to wait for Tucker at his car.

“Rory! Wait up!”

She flinched at the sound of Jacob’s voice. Did he really think that coming after her right now was a good idea? Why hadn’t he just gone home at halftime like she’d told him to?

“Come on! I know you hear me! Just wait up.”

She walked faster, knowing he could catch up to her easily if he really wanted to. But she wasso madat him. So disappointed. Just when she’d started to trust him, just when she’d started to think that maybe he could take cheerleading seriously, he had to go and prove two-weeks-ago Rory right.

Her body gave a violent shiver. The temperature had dropped continuously throughout the evening, and she was seriously regretting not changing into her leggings. She shoved her hands under her arms and watched her breath come out in cloudy bursts.

“Rory, please stop.”

Jacob finally caught up and skidded to a halt in front of her, his face flushed.

“Why? Why should I stop for you?” she shouted. “You clearly have zero respect for me or for the team or for what we do, so I don’t see why I should spare you even a moment of my time!”

“I’m sorry, all right!?” He straightened his arms in front of him, palms up. “But what did you want me to do? That was torture out there!”

“Torture?Getting through one ninety-minute soccer game without being a jackass is torture?” she shot back.

“For me it is!” He paused. “Wait, I mean, not the jackass part. I can go sixty minutes without being a jackass. I think.”

Ugh. Was he trying to be charming?

“Look at it from my side of things,” he pleaded. “Two weeks ago, I was one of the stars of that team, and now I’mon the sidelines shaking pom-poms!”