Thank god I don’t have silverware on my plate, it’d be rattling like crazy with how much my hands are shaking.
“You are the most interesting, insanely beautiful woman I have ever met.” He inches closer, eating up the small space that separates us. “I haven’t pushed anything because I just love having you in my life, in whatever capacity you wanted. You make me forget about football and remind me of who I am outside of it and that sometimes, the best part of life is sitting on the couch and laughing with your best friend.”
I don’t know when I stopped chewing on my lips, but now I’m staring at him with my mouth hanging open. “Wow.”
Wow?
I never stop talking, and in the moment where I really need to say something beautiful and poignant, all I can say is “Wow.”
FML.
“It’s not that . . . I mean—I . . .” I stop and take a deep breath, trying to find an ounce of composure inside. “I care about you, too. It’s just, I’ve never done the relationship thing before, and after seeing what being attached to an athlete has done to my friends, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me nervous.”
There.
I said it. Like a fucking adult woman who knows how to communicate.
“I’d have to be intentionally obtuse not to see that a relationship was not on your to-do list.” He pulls my plate from my shaking hands and rests it on the counter, wrapping my hands in his. “You are the most fiercely independent woman I’ve ever known. It’s both intimidating as fuck and the biggest turn-on. I’ve been around for those relationships as well, and I’ve watched and learned from them the same way you have. If you give us a chance, I’ll never make you choose. I would never test your independence or dedication to your career.”
He keeps causing my mind to go blank. How do you respond to that? Nothing I can say can measure up to the words this man—who honestly might moonlight as a poet—says to me.
So with my mind blank and without overthinking it, I don’t say anything. I roll onto my toes and touch my lips to his.
“I want to give us a chance,” I tell him before I pull my hands from his and wrap them behind his head. I kiss him deeper this time, hoping I’m not contagious anymore, but not caring that much because for the first time in my life, I have a boyfriend.
Twenty-four
“You look like the heart-eyes emoji,” Charli says.
I do.
“I do not!” I shout anyways. Gotta keep my street cred and all that.
“You kind of do,” Jacqueline pipes in quietly. “But it looks good on you.”
“Whatever,” I mumble. I’m physically unable to yell at Jacqueline the way I do the rest of the girls, she’s just too sweet and I’m already afraid we’re going to break her.
“I’d look like the heart-eye emoji too if I had Max in my bed,” Vonnie says.
I look at Vonnie, my eyes wide in horror that she would say that in my bar packed to the brim with strangers just waiting to hear the newest bit of gossip to take home and bring to the Love the Player blogs and chat rooms . . . if chat rooms are even a thing anymore. “Jesus, would you like a megaphone so you can announce my business to the entire world?” The only saving grace is that the film crew isn’t set to get here for another hour, so at least it won’t end up on TV.
“I don’t know why you haven’t,” Vonnie yells. “Maxwell Lewis is your man. I’d be shouting that shit from the rooftops.”
“Is he as sweet in bed as he is out of it?” Aviana asks, clearly ignoring my wishes not to discuss this in public. Not that I’m surprised it’s coming from her. The girl has absolutely no boundaries, it’s why she’s reality TV gold.
“I don’t know,” I whisper yell. “We haven’t . . .” I look around to see if the group next to us is paying attention. “We haven’t had sex yet.”
All four women in front of me fall back into their chairs with their jaws in their laps, staring at me in silence until I start to fidget.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You . . . ,” Charli starts but just shakes her head, not finishing her sentence.
“You mean to tell me”—Vonnie leans forward, finally whispering—“that you’ve spent the last . . . what? All this time together and you haven’t slept together?”
I learn that’s a rhetorical question when I open my mouth to answer but she screams out over me, “What the fuck have you been doing?”
This time when I look at the groups surrounding us, they don’t even pretend not to be listening, they are all turned in the seats, eyes focused directly on me.
Rude.
“I told you, we watched Netflix and talked.”
“You said you guys Netflix and chilled,” Charli says.
“Well, yeah.” I shrug, not understanding the disconnect. “We would chill and watch Netflix . . . well, Hulu, but same thing.”
“Oh, sweetie. No.” Aviana shakes her head. “‘Netflix and chill’ means you turn on a movie you don’t actually care about and fuck.”
“What?” My eyes bulge out of my head and my cheeks heat. “Why would it mean that?”
Dear god. I’m the most celibate I’ve been in my entire adult life and I’ve been telling people the polar opposite. Now I know how my dad felt when I used to judge him for not understanding what I was talking about.
Aviana shrugs, her long beach-waved hair bouncing along her shoulders. “I didn’t come up with the term, I just know what it means because I’m not eighty-five.”
I flip her off. “Shut up.”
The most professional decision I’ve ever made? No. The most satisfying? Pretty close.
“Whatever, that’s not even the important topic of this discussion,” Aviana says, not fazed by my irritation. “You’re seriously telling us that you and Max are officially a couple and you haven’t even had any nookie? How’d you manage that?”
“For real,” Vonnie chimes in. “If I was alone with that man, I’d be all over him.”
“Okay, first of all, Vonnie, you talk a big game, but I don’t believe you’d do any of the shit you say,” I say.
“Hmph.” Vonnie rolls her eyes. “You want a character witness, you can call Justin. I did not tiptoe around wanting him, hence our three boys and this rock on my finger.”
I don’t respond to her. Vonnie chose being a lawyer for a reason—I know I’m not likely to win any debates with her.