Adam

After lit class, I waited outside the door, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. Max approached the door a few moments later, and I followed him into the classroom.

“Were you waiting for me?” Max asked. When he turned to look at me, I felt a strange buzzing in my chest. I would’ve assumed since we’d been in school for a little over half a month, I’d get used to seeing him around. But even though the logical part of me knew it, my body was having a much harder time getting the memo. No matter how much I reminded myself that he was just Max, there was something about him I couldn’t help but be fascinated by.

“Yes,” I said, pushing all the thoughts I was having down. If there was one thing I could do, it was fight through my emotions and after a slight internal battle I was ready with a steady, confident front. “I emailed over some initial thoughts on the Frankenstein project. I thought we might as well get started. We could each do a character study and then go over it with each other before moving on to the plot.”

“That’s a great idea,” Max said, sparking that annoying buzzing feeling in my chest again. I hated that I felt the desire to smile at his praise. “Thanks, Adam.”

I shrugged, looking away from him. “I don’t have your schedule, so it seemed like the right thing.”

If Max was annoyed by my words, he didn’t take the bait to start bickering. “I’ll read it tonight and let you know my thoughts. I might not have time to type up anything significant until this weekend, though.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I got a little bit of a head start on it—we still have time.”

“I can drop it by the bookstore maybe, if that’s better for you?”

I recognized what he was saying for what it was—an olive branch. Max didn’t want to fight about his schedule. He was doing the best he could to accommodate me—or, realistically, make it easier for us to accommodate his insane schedule. I was admittedly kind of relieved he was making an effort to thaw the ice between us. It’d felt weird having the lingering feeling of a fight between us for the last couple of days.

“Careful, I have a reputation to keep up. I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we are getting along,” I teased.

Max’s lips perked up in a small, amused smile. I could see the relief on his face that our last conversation was water under the bridge. “That would be a bad idea.”

I nearly stopped in my tracks. Did hot Max just make a…joke? Was he teasing me right now?

I immediately put a halt on any thoughts that started coming to mind about how charming that was and how much it made me like him. I did not need to get myself caught up in any sort of complicated feelings for the enemy.

“Hey, do you play pool?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said cautiously. “Why?”

“You should—”

“The bell rang—what are you two doing not in your seats?” Duffy chided us, gesturing for us to get moving. The moment—and me being just seconds away from inviting Max to join me for a game of pool—disappeared in an instant.

***

Max

As I walked to my seat in the back of the class, I puzzled over Adam’s out-of-the blue pool question. It hadn’t seemed like there was any relation to anything else we’d been talking about. From school project to joking about getting along to…pool?

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to read too much into it. I wasn’t even sure how much there was to read into. Why would he ask to hangout? It seemed like all we ever did was butt heads on everything.

I shook the thoughts out of my head. It didn’t matter. Maybe there was another reason Adam was asking; I was just assuming he’d brought it up because he wanted to hang out.

My eyes drifted to the back of his head. His friend Miranda had been cool. Maybe he was inviting me out with his friends; I didn’t think I’d mind it that much. I had a feeling all of the rest of his friends were probably pretty cool if he was. Were they all as cool and charismatic? Smart? Driven?

Maybe it would be a good idea to hang out with him and get to know him better. I didn’t know if that was really Adam’s implication, but it didn’t seem like the worst thing to initiate. He wasn’t uptight at school by any means, but I had a feeling he was even more relaxed with his friends.

And pool was a good game. It was strategic, smart. It was another avenue into exploring how Adam’s brain worked and how he approached problem-solving. It was an easy, low-key way to figure him out and learn what made him tick.

I thought about what my dad had said about Adam being competition. I didn’t know if he really did have the chance to knock me out of my number one spot, but I did know that he was good. And even if we were on the same team, debate was mostly individual. Your ability to succeed was entirely based on your own intelligence and skill.

And your confidence to be number one was also based entirely off of those same skills.

On the flip of that, it would also potentially make us better teammates to learn how we worked together. Good communication, talking strategy together.

I smiled a little bit to myself, satisfied with the plan I was concocting. I was glad Adam had put the idea into my head. I never would’ve thought of it on my own, but it was actually pretty genius. The more I knew about the guy, the better I’d be able to compete with him.

And the better I’d be able to compete against him.

***

Adam

Class seemed to move by at a snail’s pace. I kept flip-flopping in my head about whether or not I should ask Max again or if it was divine intervention that the teacher had stepped in before I could ask. I wasn’t even totally sure why I’d asked him. I felt dumb and then felt bad about thinking I was dumb. I hated that Max had the ability to make my confidence waver in that way.

When class wrapped up, I gathered my things and decided to just push through. I wouldn’t bring it up immediately again; maybe I’d give it a second to breathe.

But as I turned the corner to leave the room, Max walked over to me.

I looked at him, surprised.

“You mentioned pool?” he asked.

I was actually speechless for a second—something that I wasn’t sure had ever happened before. “I did,” I said. “My friends and I like to hit the pool hall on Lake, but I figured you’d be too busy to ever join us. Given your schedule and all.” I hoped my comment came out as charming as I’d meant it to. I was so thrown by Max approaching me about it that my typical demeanor was faltering slightly. I really didn’t like it.

Max’s lips turned up into a slightly amused smile. I squared my shoulders to keep myself grounded. I pushed away all of Miranda’s comments about how hot Max was, intentionally avoiding the sharp line of his jaw and the slope of his nose and the sharp, attentive look in his eye.

“Good point,” Max finally said. “How about after you work on Saturday? I’ll come find you.”

“It’ll be about ten,” I said. “Just letting you know since I know that’s pretty late. I don’t want to throw off your schedule.”

“I don’t have a bedtime, Adam,” he joked, and my chest fluttered at him making yet another joke. It seemed that the more I was getting to know him, the more of his personality was showing. And unfortunately for me, hot Max was also very, very charming.

“How would I know? I don’t have a schedule,” I joked back, forcing myself to be cool. If I could handle debate competitions, I could definitely handle a conversation with the guy who was supposed to be my immediate academic and debate rival. He was just competition to me. That was it. “You’ve played pool before?”

“Yes, plenty of times,” Max said. “We have a table at our house in Aspen.”

I’d been at Cypress just long enough to no longer be caught off guard by casual rich people things like that. Here, money and symbols of wealth were just par for the course. “Sweet. So, would you say you’ve played a lot?”

“Enough. Why?”

“You think you’re good?”

Max smirked at me, amused. “I know I’m good.”

I grinned back. “That’s nice—because I know I’m better.”