Ace's Wilder

Han Solo

"Oh Graci, come sit with us today!" Briley called across the cafeteria as Ace and Jase made their way out of the lunch line.

"So help me, if hanging out with you means I have to be actual friends with Briley Scott," Ace said under her breath as Jase widened his eyes comically.

"Oh she's not so bad," he tried. "Well, I mean she is, but I'll sit between you two like your bodyguard."

Ace laughed.

Mission accomplished. He lived to make her laugh.

"Sorry Briley, I've got work to do, but you can have Jase on loan today if you want," Ace ever-so-nonchalantly told the most popular girl in school.

"Is he your property now?" Briley sneered, albeit she probably didn't mean for Ace to hear her.

"No, but that's how you always treated him. Just speaking your language, you know?" Ace shot back quickly, never turning her eyes toward the popular table.

Jase, though, caught eyes with Justin, who raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together sarcastically, as if he were mega-impressed. Jase had to cough to cover up his laugh.

"I want to high-five you so bad right now," he told his girlfriend of two weeks, sitting down across from her at their usual table.

Ace smirked. "I don't think that would go over real well."

"I don't know, I think the rest of that table is about to form a clandestine Ace Love Fan Club." He had upped his vocabulary game, thank you very much.

She rolled her eyes and nudged his foot under the table. "How did your quiz go this morning?" she asked.

Jase cringed. He really hated Trig. "I'm not sure."

"It would probably help if you had a better teacher," she groaned. "Last year I had to get up and explain one of the chapters to the class."

"You what?" Jase laughed, incredulous.

She shrugged. "Yeah, Coach Waller wasn't making any sense, and he had no idea what he was talking about. He'd do the work on the board and then have to backtrack to figure out where he'd gone wrong himself...It was painful. So I asked if I could show him what happened, and then I ended up teaching that day. It was stupid."

"Are you sure math isn't your thing?"

Ace wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, just because I can do it doesn't mean it's fun. It just makes sense to me."

"Maybe you need to find a different context for it," Jase offered. "So if you're taking Calc this year, what's next year? Stats? Comp Sci?"

"Stats, yeah. I would have taken it this year, too, but the guidance department wouldn't let me take two year-long AP Math classes," she explained, slightly annoyed.

Jase laughed in disbelief. "Only you would find that to be a problem."

Ace shrugged again. "You're probably right about that."

"Anyway, stats. Yeah, I might be able to find some better context for you there," Jase narrowed his eyes, watching her pick at her cafeteria salad, as if she was going to find anything other than lettuce and cheese.

"Ok," she agreed, quickly moving on. "Who you got in the game tonight?"

Tonight was Game 1 of the MLB post-season. Yankees-Rangers. Unrelated to Game 1, Jase told her "I'd fucking love to see Boston break the curse. What a wild story that would be, right?"

"Oh god, yes," she agreed, eyes going wide at the possibility. Jase wasn't sure he'd ever known another girl as into baseball as Ace. Again, he wondered how he'd missed that. "I don't really care. I just want the Yankees to lose. Any time that happens, it's a good day."