The Hookup Pact

3| Evelyn

The look on Atlas's face was absolutely priceless. The way his dark eyes bulged out with his mouth ajar was comical enough to tempt me into taking out my phone and clicking a picture as memorabilia. It almost made waking up early and getting ready for the meeting worth it. Almost.

Atlas blinked at me a few times, slightly shaking his head as if to get his bearings back. He tilted his head to the side, scanning me from head to toe while a slow smirk formed on his lips. "You missed me so much that you came all the way here, Rosy? How sweet of you."

I clenched my jaw and glared at him. Of course, nothing could shock the arrogance out of him. And for some reason, he just had to say a few words to rile me up which was damn annoying. I needed to stop letting him and his presence affect me so much or else I was doomed.

Shutting my eyes, I exhaled a deep breath and took my sweet time to keep the notepad in my hand on the podium before turning to him with an identical smirk. "Sorry to break your bubble, your majesty, but the campus is paying me hefty bucks to stay in your vicinity," I said. "But on a second thought, even that isn't enough for tolerating you."

He hummed, his smirk widening as if I hadn't said anything offensive. "Should I add more for your reimbursement amount then? To make up for the deficit?" he asked, raising a perfect brow. "It won't make much of a difference to me. You didn't tell me how you want to receive the payment though? Should I Venmo it to you?"

That was it! All I wanted to do was scratch that smirk off his face. But that would lead to assault charges and I had too much potential to spend the rest of my life with a criminal record and doing odd jobs. So instead of that, I settled for glaring at him while imagining myself tackling him to the ground like Hulk. I was about to put him in his place using multi-colored vocabulary when the rest of the guys walked in. Deciding to be the bigger person, I ignored him and smiled at the others as they took their seats.

Once everyone had settled, I nodded at Tyler, signaling him to start the projector. After introducing myself and Tyler, I briefly explained what the project was and what my team had planned so far. As we moved on to answering any questions anyone from the team had, I quickly realized how true the saying 'one bad apple spoils the bunch' was.

The more Atlas Griffin spewed his nonsense, the more I could see the stark differences between him and the rest of his team. Leaving His Majesty aside, the rest of the guys were pretty normal. Pleasant even. Sure, their goalie, Dylan was a tad bit eccentric with his over-the-top personality, but none of them were outright douchebags.

"Are you sure you can get all of that on camera? Sports videography is quite different than taking still shots of random people on the college campus for the university's website. It's not for amateurs," Atlas said in his condescending tone.

Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes and counted backward from ten. This was the fifth time he had questioned my plan and the ability of my team. I saw right through his tactic of looking down at us under the guise of innocent curiosity.

He was testing my patience. And I wasn't about to give him the pleasure of getting a reaction out of me.

So, I straightened myself and smiled at him sweetly. "No need to worry. We have some of the best cameramen. And Tyler here had done his summer internship at a local sports channel. He knows the ropes," I said, patting Tyler on the back.

Tyler looked down at me and smiled gratefully. Of course, I wasn't going to let someone whose only experience in photography was taking blurry, emo selfies with his phone look down on my guy. He might be the captain of his team but so was I for mine.

"Anything else, your majesty?" I asked, raising a brow.

His teammates snickered and my smile widened when I saw his jaw tick. But still, he dared to look smug. "That'll be all for now."