Zoey 101: All Or Nothing ☑

Chapter 26

Chase POV Continued

"And you dropped your hot dog,” she finished for me.

“Yes! And you would not let me forget it because I —”

“Still ate it!”

“Yeah!” I said a little louder than I intended, mostly because I was excited to remind her about a fun time we’d had. “But!”

“There’s no buts about it. It was disgusting.”

“It was only —”

“ ‘On the floor for five seconds.’ ” She repeated what I kept saying to her that day in a low voice, the one she always used when she imitated me. Usually, it annoyed me when she did that. I was ecstatic to hear it from her now.

“Remember, I hadn’t put anything on it yet.”

“Which would’ve been better because then you could’ve at least wiped the dirty ketchup off.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t stop teasing me about it.”

“Because it was disgusting.” She said this slowly, like she was talking to a toddler.

I started laughing. For the entire game, anytime something happened, the Brewers struck out or the other team scored, Zoey had leaned forward and said, “Well, they may be losing the game, but at least they didn’t eat a dirty hot dog.” Or “Wow, that must be tough to swallow, although not as tough as a dirty hot dog.”

Zoey studied me. “Well, what about it?”

“What about what?”

She wrinkled her nose. “What about that game?”

“Oh,” I said, disappointment seeping through. “It was fun.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. One of her timers went off. “Well, I think I need to ask you to leave. I don’t serve dirty food, and with your luck …” She let the words hang there, but I was grateful to have her say something teasing to me. Zoey didn’t waste her time, or her barbs, on people she didn’t care about.

Now that I think about it, having Zoey as my best friend prepared me for all the trash talking that can happen in the locker room. And the weight room.

“You call that a rep?” Logan taunted Michael as he pushed up the weights on the bench press a week after Thanksgiving.

Michael got up and sat down on the mat next to me while I did leg lifts.

“Let me show you how it’s done.” Logan laid down on the bench press and started easily pumping the weight up and down.

“Yeah, you only weigh fifty pounds more than me, dude,” Michael reminded him.

“Dude, I can’t help it if I make everything look good.”

I stayed quiet as I worked on strengthening my lower body. Michael started stretching, and asked, “You want to go run some suicides on the court?”

The weather had gotten even colder as Christmas approached, so we’d taken to staying inside to work out. We’d hit the weight room above the gymnasium after Michael was done with basketball practice.

“Yeah, man, sounds good.” I got up and grabbed my gym towel.

“That’s right, you skinny boys can’t handle the pressure, so get out of the kitchen,” Logan grunted as he finished his last set.

“That didn’t even make any sense.” Michael laughed.

“Hey, I’m pumping a lot here. Gotta save everything for the game.”