Quinn came bolting into the room in only my t-shirt and started swatting at the man in the doorway. “Stop it. Get out. Get out.” She finally managed to back him out and slammed the door after him. She turned around and looked at me with a grimace on her face. “Sorry. That’s my brother. He’s…unique.”
“That’s okay.” I smiled at Quinn in my shirt. I couldn’t remember much of our drunken tirade, but I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful she was. I sat up in the bed and looked around. “We did have sex, right?”
“Either that, or we decided to redecorate my room with condom wrappers,” she said, picking a few gold foil wrappers up off the ground and dropping them into a nearby wastebasket.
“Wait, wrappers? We did it multiple times?” I only remembered the first one.
“Evidently,” she replied, letting me know that she had blacked out, too.
I hated myself. It was the first time I got to sleep with Quinn, and I didn’t even remember most of it. She came and sat down on the bed, and it took everything in me not to pull her against me and work on something we would remember, but I could only imagine what time it was, and I still had a car to collect.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Nine-thirty. I’m officially two and a half hours late for work. How bad off are you?” Quinn asked.
I flopped back against the bed, and my head felt heavy, like it immediately wanted to fall back asleep. “Well, considering I was supposed to be there at eight and still have to go get my car, I’m thinking I’m gonna come out about the same.”
“Shit, I forgot about that! I can drive you to get it.” She was already up off the bed and heading into her closet. I wished I could see her undressing, but it was probably good that I couldn’t. She returned a few minutes later in leggings and a hoodie. She set my shirt down on top of my face. “Come on. You can’t go anywhere like that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I responded. “They’ll be fine for a few hours. Besides, you’re late. I’ll have one of the guys come grab me and then bring me to get it after practice.”
She looked down at me. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” I forced myself to get out of bed and tried to ignore the feeling of Quinn’s eyes on me as I got dressed. When I looked back at her, her cheeks were a light shade of red, and her eyes were a little darker. I pointed at her. “Stop it, or neither of us is making it to work today.”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. “Right. Sorry.”
She opened her bedroom door, and her brother, who she’d told me was Alec, looked up from the kitchen. “Oh, hi.”
“Stop it. Now,” she warned, but he didn’t seem to listen.
“How was your night?” Alec asked. “Did you two have fun? You sure know how to hate each other.”
“Shut your dumb mouth,” Quinn growled, but Alec pressed on.
He walked around the kitchen counter that acted as a dividing wall and walked up to me. “Were you good to her? You better have been. What are your intentions?”
“Oh my god.” Quinn reached down and grabbed my shoes, then put a hand on my back to push me out of her open front door. She shut the door behind us and groaned. “Sorry about him.”
“It’s okay.” She held out my shoes to me, but instead of taking them, I wrapped my hands on either side of her neck and pulled her into a kiss. When I pulled away, she was blushing again. “God, I wish I could remember more.”
She smiled. “Me too.”
I wanted to say something else, but I was afraid of how cheesy any of it would sound, so I settled for a simple, “See you soon?”
Her smile grew as she nodded. “I hope so.”
I took my shoes, and she opened the door. She gave me one final sweet look before closing the door, disappearing behind it. I gave myself a few moments to stand there and think about what had just happened. Even with my fractured memories of the night, there was no denying that was the best sex I had ever had.
18
Zeke
I walked into Daniel’s house and dropped down onto the living room couch. I didn’t want to go to practice, but I wasn’t feeling up to the hour-long drive home yet, so I settled for catching an Uber to his house. He’d given me a key a long time ago and told me to help myself whenever I was in Montpelier and didn’t want to head home. A dizzying, drunken night with Quinn that I hadn’t fully recovered from felt like a good enough reason. I sent a quick text to Tyler, letting him know that I wouldn’t be in for practice, and then laid my head down on the arm of the couch.
I had nearly faded from consciousness when I heard a yelp behind me. I looked up, and there was a guy with long, blond hair waterfalling down one side of his head, looking down at me. “Who the hell are you?”
I pointed at myself. “Brother, not boyfriend.”
His look of anger faded in an instant. “Oh, great.” He leaned over the back of the couch. “Hey, has Danny talked about me much?”
To dash this poor guy’s dreams or lie straight to his face—I was honestly too tired for either. “Sure, loads. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m very hungover.”
“No offense, but I can smell it,” he responded.
I grinned. “Well, it was good to see you, Jack.”
His smile turned into a frown. “My name is Blake.”
“Oops.”
“Screw you, Daniel,” Blake barked before storming out, slamming the door behind him.
I started to drift again when a pillow slapped me in the face. I looked up, and Daniel was standing above me with his arms crossed. “That was petty.”
“He said I stunk.”
“You do.” He walked around and slunk down into the armchair that faced the couch. “This is a walk of shame if I’ve ever seen one. One of your stress relievers?”
I smiled, drawing on what little bit I did remember of my night with Quinn. “I hope not.”
Daniel sat up a bit straighter, and his eyes lit up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I looked over at him. “Quinn.”
“Oh, Daniel, you are so smart,” Daniel said out loud to himself. “Why, thank you, Daniel. I think so, too.”
“Shut up.” I closed my eyes again, but after two failed attempts, my body was no longer willing to try to sleep for the moment.
“When are you guys going out again?” Daniel asked.
I shrugged. “We didn’t really talk about it.” I hunched my brow. “We didn’t even exchange numbers.”
Daniel scoffed. “Well, you’re going to need to fix that. You don’t get like this about anyone. She’s clearly special.”
He was right. It wasn’t just sex that I generally avoided, it was dating altogether. When most of my attention needed to be on football, dating and being in a relationship was simply too much extra work. I’d never met someone who felt worth it to me. I dated a cheerleader for almost a year in high school, but that was mostly for the optics. I was the typical jock, and she was the typical captain of the cheer squad, so the cliche forces of the universe pushed us together. When I got my letter of acceptance to college, I broke up with her the next day. I didn’t want my attention divided between my true love and some girl I didn’t even really like all that much. Suddenly, I didn’t have to divide my attention. Quinn was football and an amazing woman, all wrapped up and tied with a bow. I had the best of both worlds.