“What are you talking about?” Riley asked.
“I saw them together on Sunday. They were at the coffee shop.” I swallowed. “He was hugging her, and she was staring up at him, laughing.” I paused. “As she should be. I want her to be happy.”
“Oh, cut the shit,” Riley said, abruptly standing. “She’s not with Shawn, you dummy. She met up with him to tell him everything that happened. She needed some sort of closure — and she knew it wasn’t coming from you.”
Zeke and Holden stood with her as I shook my head, confused. “How do you know this?”
She tilted her chin. “Don’t worry about how I know it. What you need to worry about now is how you fix this.”
My head was spinning, and I stood to join them, carefully maneuvering the towel so it stayed covering me until I could tie it around my waist.
“I… I can’t.” I said. “I fucked this up beyond repair.”
“Ugh, you are infuriating,” Riley said, hanging her hands on her hips. She looked at Zeke next. “Were you this stupid, too, when we were broken up?”
“Worse,” he answered.
Riley rolled her eyes, then turned her focus back to me. “You read her books, didn’t you?”
I narrowed my gaze. “How do you know that?”
“Answer the question.”
“Yes, I read her books.”
“Okay, well, did you only pay attention to the sex scenes, or did you read the end?” She threw her hand out at me, as if the answer was floating in the air between us. “She’s waiting on you. She’s waiting for you to tell her the truth — which is that you fucked up, that you love her, that you’re stupid and you’re sorry and you can’t live without her.” She smiled. “This is the part where you get the girl, you idiot.”
“The grand gesture,” Zeke added, and my eyebrows shot up as he shrugged me off. “What? I know how to romance,” he said in defense.
I shook my head, running a hand back through my hair as hope flitted dangerously in my chest. I wanted to snuff it out like a flame not meant to be started, but it grew and grew, raging into a full-on forest fire as an idea bloomed under the smoke.
“Your wheels are turning, aren’t they?” Holden asked on a smirk.
I looked at him, at Riley, at Zeke — at my friends, who had essentially run into a burning building to save me. And the amount of gratitude I felt was too much to hold, too much to speak into life — but I hoped they saw it. I hoped they knew.
“What do you have in mind?” Zeke asked.
“And more importantly,” Riley added. “How can we help?”
Giana
“Leo, I need you in the press room — now,” I said, tugging him by his grass-stained jersey.
He made a joke that I didn’t quite hear, because our intern was screaming into her headpiece about how Holden was being surrounded on the field and couldn’t break loose.
“I’m on it,” I said into my mic, and then I released Leo, hoping he would make it the rest of the way down the hall to where we’d set up our press box before I was jogging out onto the field.
It was complete madness, the kind only a Thanksgiving Day game can bring.
The kind only a bowl-clutching game can bring.
It was like we’d already won the championship, how confetti of our school’s gold and brick red colors littered the field. I weaved through the still-buzzing crowd on my way out to the fifty-yard line, where an extensive group of cameras and reporters were gathered around Holden.
“Yeah, we’re just staying focused and keeping our eyes on the next game,” he answered as I pushed through the wall.
“You’re not thinking about the playoff bowl game against the Huskies?” a reporter asked, shoving the microphone back in Holden’s face.
“We’ll worry about that when we get there. For now, it’s on to North Carolina.”
I stepped in-between him and the crew. “If you can all please make your way to the press room, we will have full interviews with the players, including Leo Hernandez who is setting up now. Holden will be in later. Thank you.”
I didn’t wait for them to start shouting more questions despite me telling them we were done on the field before I was ushering Holden away — which was comical, since he towered over me and was at least twice my mass.
“Thank you,” he uttered as we moved through the crowd.
“You know, you’re bigger than me. You could have stopped that way before I did.”
“I don’t want to be rude. I’m captain. If anyone needs to field the rabid reporters, it’s me.”
I smiled. “You’re too good for the world, Holden Moore.”
When we finally got to the tunnel that led into the stadium, security warded off anyone not on or with the team. Holden ambled toward the locker room while I set straight for the press room.
It was only maybe sixty seconds, that walk of quiet, but it was just enough to let my mind drift to Clay.
A month.
It’d been almost a month since we broke up, and I still couldn’t think of him without my entire body curling in on itself. I wasn’t lying around broken and pathetic, but I was certainly far from moved on, far from forgetting him or even so much as thinking about trying to date someone else.
Every time I saw him out on the field, my heart warmed with the desire to cheer him on, to be the one he ran to after the game, the one he swept into his arms. Then, I’d hate myself for it, and do everything I could to avoid him — only to be sick when I didn’t see him even more than when I did.
I pretended like I didn’t notice him when my every sense was tuned into him, so much so that I had more than a few questions burning into my brain. One of the most pressing was why I hadn’t seen him with Maliyah in over a week now. She no longer hung onto him after every practice, or tried to suck his face off after a game.
They seemed friendly, cordial, but… not romantic.
Why I was so engrossed in the details, I didn’t know. Masochism was something I was becoming well-suited for, I supposed.
But today, it had been especially impossible to ignore him.
He’d had quite possibly the most monster game of his career. He had not one interception, not two, but three — and one of them he ran back for a touchdown. He was on fire, and I knew the reporters would be clamoring to talk to him after that.
I just didn’t know how I would find enough professionalism to talk to him without bursting into tears.
I shook my head, deciding I could deal with it later. Right now, I had Leo to wrangle, and then an exclusive interview with Riley and Zeke that they’d promised me if we won today.
“Oh, perfect,” I said as I rounded the corner into the press room, finding Zeke and Riley already standing back behind the logo wall we’d erected. I could hear Leo answering questions, making the entire room laugh as always. “Now I don’t have to hunt you two down. Are you both ready to go on next?”
“Born ready,” Riley said, and she and Zeke exchanged a look that made my smile slip.
“What was that?”
“What?” Zeke asked.
I pointed between them. “That… look you just gave each other.” I balked. “Oh, my God. You’re not about to drop some crazy bomb on live television, are you? Are you engaged or something?” My heart dropped as I looked at Riley. “Fuck, are you pregnant?”