“Oh, my God — please show me how you do that,” Giana said after I lined my left eye.
“Do what?”
“That perfect cat-eye thing. Mine always goes up too high or angles out too low and I can never get them even, either.”
Riley popped open her tube of mascara. “That’s why I skip eyeliner altogether.”
“Yeah, well, not all of us can look as effortlessly golden and gorgeous as you without a single ounce of makeup on, Riles,” I pointed out.
“Shut up, you’re both gorgeous,” she shot back, but I didn’t miss the way her cheeks tinged pink with a little blush. Something told me that being the only girl in a male-dominated sport probably meant she didn’t get compliments on her feminine energy much, but she radiated it, and deserved to know.
Giana smacked my arm and held out her liner with a look that said back to the subject at hand, please.
It was Chart Day, which I had zero knowledge about other than apparently it was the day Coach announced who was playing what position. Riley kept saying something about a depth chart and Giana had been up to her nose in media work all week. But tonight, they were dragging me out along with the rest of the team to celebrate the true kick off of the season.
Part of me had wanted to argue, but it was so quiet compared to that part of me just two months ago. Yes, I was tired and really just wanted to smoke a bowl and watch a movie, but at the same time, I was excited to go out with everyone.
I was happy that I had girlfriends who wanted to drag me out of the house, that I had the obnoxious yet somehow adorable roommates who treated me like a sister, that the team as a whole had embraced me. For the first time, I felt like I had a community outside of the tattoo one.
I felt like I belonged.
The fact that I hadn’t really felt that comfortable at the shop ever since what happened with Nero also added to my excitement to go out and blow off some steam. Nero hadn’t tried anything weird since, but I felt the difference, the way he watched me less with guidance and more with expectation. I swore I felt the other girls in the shop watching me differently, too — like they thought I was excelling too fast or getting special treatment.
That was supposed to be my home, my refuge. That shop had been my source of comfort for years.
Now, it had flipped, and my comfort came when I unlocked the door to this house at the end of each night.
That thought struck me, and a little smile spread on my lips as I talked Giana through winging her eye.
“What are you smiling so goofily about?” she asked.
Before I could answer, there was a soft knock on the door.
“Come in!” Riley called without hesitation.
The door opened slowly, and I peeked out of the bathroom just in time to see Leo hesitantly lean his head in.
My stomach flipped at the sight of him, especially once he saw that no one was indecent and let himself the rest of the way in. He wore a cream button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing off those forearms I swore were the source of every fantasy I had. The neck was unbuttoned, his necklaces visible through the V of the collar, along with the muscular swells of his pecs. The jeans he’d paired with the shirt hung deliciously off his hips, and I followed the line of them down to his bare feet.
Fuck me… why is him barefoot wearing jeans so fucking hot?
I took my time slowly trailing my eyes back up, and my gaze snagged on his dark hair, on the way it framed his golden eyes, and the devilish smirk he wore so well.
“I just need to grab some shoes,” he said, and it was then that I realized he’d been busy checking me out while I was pretending not to take in every inch of him.
For a moment, we just stood there, eyes locked on one another while I held that stupid tube of eyeliner in my hand. There was a fuzzy memory in the back of my brain, one of him being in this room two weeks ago when I was drunk and half-asleep midway through Holden’s preseason game. I couldn’t remember what was said, but my body viscerally reacted to the memory, like it would always remember even if my brain never did.
Shaking it off, I cleared my throat and pointed toward his closet.
“Of course, go ahead.”
He nodded his thanks, but his eyes didn’t leave me until he dipped inside the closet to grab the shoes he was looking for.
“I think we’re going to call an Uber soon. Are you girls about ready?” he asked when he was upright again.
“We’ll meet you there, just finishing up,” Riley said, and I hadn’t even noticed that she and Giana had both been standing in the doorway of the bathroom.
“Cool,” Leo said to her, and then his eyes were on me again, his smile slipping. He swallowed, gaze washing over the length of me. I tried not to cower under the heat, focused on squaring my shoulders as he took in my favorite, earthy-green dress that made my tits look incredible and showed off all my thigh tattoos, too. I’d found it at a thrift store while shopping with Julep, giving up seven of my hard-earned dollars to buy it. I hadn’t even added the leather jacket or my favorite black boots yet. It was one of my favorite outfits to go out in, one that made me feel like a bad-ass bitch.
The way Leo was looking at me, I knew I’d landed the look.
He coughed a little before heading for the door. “Alright, well, we’ll see you there.”
When he was gone, I squeezed past Riley and Giana into the bathroom and went back to my lesson on the perfect cat eye. But I barely got two words out before Riley cut in, smacking the tube out of my hand.
“Bitch, we don’t care about the eyeliner. What the hell was that?” She pointed to the door Leo had just exited out of.
“What?” I asked with a shrug. “He needed shoes.”
“Oh, I think what he needs is a healthy dose of you in that dress,” Giana argued.
My cheeks flamed so fast I hoped my makeup hid at least a little of the red I knew was finding my skin. “Shut up.”
“You shut up and tell us everything,” Riley said.
I screwed up my face at the paradox of what she’d said, but they were already dragging me to the bed. They sat me down and stood above me, arms folded and waiting.
“You guys are being so weird, nothing is going on,” I said.
“Bullshit,” Riley shot back. “You can’t have one of my teammates look at you like that and feed me the lie that it’s nothing. Zeke and I kept our shit hidden for weeks before anyone knew. I know what hiding it looks like.”
“Ditto,” Giana said, holding up one finger. “And you don’t even have the guise of pretending you’re dating to cover you.”
I sighed. “It’s… nothing. Really. We haven’t done anything.”
Riley arched a brow. “But you want to?”
My heart squeezed. ”It’s complicated.”
“Welp, no time like right now to unravel it,” Giana said, and she hopped into the bed with me. “Spill.”
I was already opening my mouth to make up some lame excuse or brush them off again when something kicked me hard in the chest. It came from the inside out, like the very essence of who I was refused to let me flee.
And I realized that I wanted to tell them.
I’d never told anyone — mostly because I didn’t feel close enough to anyone to tell. But here were two girls who’d become my friends — my best friends — and they were asking. They wanted to know what was going on. They wanted to help.
So, I took a deep breath, and I told them everything.
I told them about that summer, about how I’d fallen so hard and completely for the version of Leo I knew online. I told them about his texts and our late-night phone calls, about the times he wished so badly to know who I was. Then, with a tight throat, I told them about the day I revealed myself, how he’d rejected me, and finally, how I’d blocked him and killed any connection we had left. My voice grew a little shakier when I told them he had no idea who I was now, that my appearance had changed so much thanks to braces, my skin clearing up, and how I’d grown into my curves.
Various reactions crawled across their faces as I spoke, from shock and excitement to anger and hurt and everything in-between.
When I finished, Riley took a deep breath as Giana hopped up from the bed. “Okay, wait, so let me get this straight.” She held up her hand and ticked off fingers as she said, “You two were basically in love as teenagers, you told him who you were and he rejected you, then the dummy didn’t even remember who you were when you moved in across the street, then you ended up becoming roommates, and now he’s been being nice to you, giving you his jacket to wear and buying you candles and looking at you like he wants you so bad he has to sit on his hands to keep from acting on it, and through all this,” she said with a wave of her hand around the room. “He still has zero idea who you are?”
I shifted on the bed. “I mean, I think love is a strong word for what we had when—”
“Bah,” Giana said, waving me off in a huff. “Whatever it was, it’s strong enough that it’s had you in a grip all this time. And maybe Leo, too.”
“I’ve never seen him date anyone seriously,” Riley added.
I snorted. “Yeah, but that’s because it’s Leo. He’d rather bang anything with tits and legs than be locked down.”
“You sure about that?” Riley asked, and the three of us fell silent, considering.
After a moment, Giana clasped her hands together under her chin with her lashes fanning over her big eyes. “God, this is like—”
“Do not start listing off your smutty book tropes,” I warned her.
She pressed her lips together, face turning red like she would burst if she couldn’t get them out.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” Riley said with an incredulous smile. “When are you going to tell him?”
“I’m not.”
They both balked at that. “What the fuck do you mean, you’re not,” Riley said, and Giana shook her head with the same notion.
I stood and brushed my hands over my dress. “Look, he doesn’t remember who I am, which just shows how insignificant I was to him. And even if he did remember, he was a complete asshole to me and ruined my entire high school experience.”
“It sounds like his friends did that,” Giana pointed out.
“Yeah. And he stood idly by and let them. He didn’t stand up for me. And when he saw what I looked like in real life, he decided I wasn’t worthy of his time anymore.” Just remembering it had me seething, and I was thankful for that anger, because it had been so absent lately that I wondered if it had evaporated altogether.
That anger was a blessing. It saved me from being stupid.
“He’s a prick and I’m over it,” I said with finality I only half felt.
At that, Riley and Giana folded their arms in sync. “Sure, sure, that’s why you two were all eye-fucking just a second ago,” Riley said.
“Don’t you think he’s changed since then? Grown up a little?” Giana added. “Maybe he deserves a chance to explain.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek as that foggy memory of the preseason game surfaced again. I knew we were talking about something when I climbed into bed, when he was about to leave the room…
God, what was it?
For the life of me, I couldn’t remember.
“Look, things with Leo are just too complicated and hold too much pain for me to rehash. Okay? It’s a lot easier for me to remind myself of all the reasons I hate him than it is to think of how he might have changed.”
Giana’s face crumpled at my admission.
“For now, we have a good thing going. We’re friendly and cohabitating. That’s all I want. And,” I added, swiping my jacket off the back of Leo’s chair. “To go out and have a good time with my girls tonight.”
They didn’t look pleased with my insistence to drop the subject, but fortunately, they did.
And after quickly applying lipstick and last-minute touches, we were out the door and on our way to the bar.
