The back door swung open, flooding the room with light, and Gavin strolled in. “Ooh, is that Mom’s famous popcorn?” He reached for the bowl, and Darlene smacked his hand with the wooden spoon clenched in her fist.
“That’s it! I ask for help making the treats, and so far, all I’ve gotten is help eating them.”
“I spun the bowl,” Julie countered, and Gavin snickered behind her.
“Wow. MVP, right there.”
Instead of backing away from the scowl Julie fired his way, Gavin reached around her and grabbed a handful of popcorn. His mom charged, wooden spoon wielded high in the air, and her supposed best friend gripped her hip with his sticky hand and used her as a human shield.
“If this is you being overly protective”—Julie dodged Darlene’s light swing, and fortunately, she could tell Gavin’s mom was doing her darnedest not to laugh—“I think you need a vocabulary lesson.”
“Pfft, that’s just with men.” He ducked his head against her shoulder. “I figure you’re tough enough to handle yourself with everything else.”
Julie looked to Niki. “Um, a little help. You ratted me out, so you owe me.”
On cue, Niki grabbed the giant bag of M&Ms and shook them at Darlene, who hollered for Rashad to come handle his unruly children. As Darlene closed in on Nikita, Gavin’s little sister launched the entire bag of candy in their direction.
With Gavin’s right arm still anchored against him, Julie panicked, afraid if she didn’t catch it, the three of them would be attempting to share the doghouse tonight.
“I got it!” She whirred around, accidentally head-butting—well, technically chin-butting—Gavin with her forehead in the process. His left arm shot up, and while he managed to easily catch the bag, without the use of his other hand to steady it, several of the hard-shelled candies pinged the top of her head, shoulders, and chest before coming to rest on the floor.
“What’s going on in here?” Rashad asked as he entered the kitchen, and then his brown eyes lit up as he spotted the bowl of popcorn. “Ooh, my favorite.” He scooped out a giant hunk of the magical mixture and shoved it in his mouth.
Darlene turned her attention on him, fists on hips, and Julie shouted, “Quick. Run while you can!”
Niki darted in the direction of the living room, and Gavin grabbed Julie’s hand and sprinted toward the staircase.
“Sorry, Rashad,” Julie yelled as she climbed as fast as her short legs could go, although Darlene would undoubtedly go easy on him. One of the things she loved most about being at the Frosts’ house—as well as her parents’ place—was how much the couples loved each other.
At the top of the stairs, Julie stepped left, gaze on the open door to the office, but Gavin yanked her toward his room on the opposite side of the hallway. She stutter-stepped to correct her out-of-whack balance, the rug sliding along the floor with her, and then they were safe inside Gavin’s bedroom.
Her breaths sawed in and out of her mouth like she’d run a 5K, and meanwhile, her best friend wasn’t even winded. She bent halfway over, hands braced on her thighs, and worked to slow her rapid pulse. “Between your long legs and all that stupid cardio you do, I would’ve had to tell you to leave me behind if we had to go much farther.”
“I wouldn’t have listened—I’m a firm believer in no man left behind.”
Julie huffed a laugh, dug a hand into the stitch in her side, and slowly straightened. She hadn’t been in Gavin’s room in years. The place appeared to have been frozen in time: the same posters on the wall. The bedding that didn’t match. A picture collage she’d put up for him senior year, since she thought it was lame he didn’t have any photos of non-famous people in his bedroom.
She stepped closer and studied the pictures. “Here I did all this work to give you ordinary people to look at, and then you had to go and ruin it by getting super famous.”
Gavin leaned closer to study the wall along with her, grinning at the various pictures—mostly of them being goofy. There they were with the team, celebrating football victories with milkshakes at the local diner. Various snapshots of their trips to the lake and the hot springs. The night he showed up in his football uniform for her academic banquet, since he didn’t have time to change after the game and her parents had been out of town.
Warmth flooded her chest. No matter how busy or difficult, Gavin had always shown up.
But then she noticed he was eyeing the pictures of him and Kristin back in the day.
“Sorry. Guess I should take those down.” She reached for the corner of one of the photos, but he waved it off.
“Don’t worry about it. We argued a lot that last year, but it’s not like things ended badly. Taking our pictures off the wall doesn’t change the past, or how impossible it is not to relive high school memories whenever I come home.”
Did that mean he wished he and Kristin hadn’t ended? To say he’d been vague on the details would be a huge understatement. At first, she’d been giving him time to grieve the loss of the relationship and heal, but the more time that went on, the stranger it seemed to bring up their breakup.
“Do you miss her? Have you thought about trying to see her while you’re here?” Julie held her breath, afraid of the answers for reasons she didn’t entirely understand.
“I miss home sometimes,” he said, irritatingly ambiguous on the subject as usual. Then he jabbed his elbow into her side. “And you, of course. Along with my family, and how nice it used to be when we all lived in the same city. But honestly, I’d rather be sacked ten times in a row than deal with an uncomfortable run-in over the holidays. Especially with my arm in a fucking brace and my entire future up in the air.”
So, he was worried Kristin would see him as weak, or…? The remark at the end conveyed that his main focus was his career, but his not-so-funny-under-the-circumstances joke about being sacked that many times left Julie wondering if there were some unresolved feelings for his ex in the mix.
Perhaps she should pull a move from their parents’ playbook and attempt some matchmaking of her own. Selfishly, she didn’t want to. Her time with Gavin was far too limited.
His gaze drifted higher, to the sophomore year compilation. “I never thought much about it in high school, but you were the only girl not coupled up in our group most of the time. Do you ever feel like you missed out?”
Try as she might, she struggled to connect the dots. Did he mean because she didn’t have a boyfriend? Surely not, since she’d been painfully clear about her lack of expertise in that area last night, and that’d be like pouring lemon juice on an open wound. “Missed out?”
“On having female friends?”