“I swear to God, there’s nothing better than Cheetos when you’re drunk.”
Giana punctuated that statement by shoving a complete handful of the orange chips into her mouth, half of which landed in her lap and the floor around her. She crunched and groaned her approval with a smile.
We’d slammed shots at a night club until we all realized we’d rather be back at the hotel in our pajamas, which was where we were currently, sucking down a bottle of tequila and devouring the various snacks we’d had brought up.
Well, all of us except Riley, who chose to stay sober only because she didn’t want to die at practice the next day. Giana was able to get the day off and so was I, and Julep didn’t fly back to Charlotte until the following afternoon, but Riley couldn’t escape Coach’s wrath with the season starting up, and therefore was our sober spirit guide.
“I don’t know, I think this pizza wins my vote,” Riley argued as she twirled a hot piece of cheese dripping off her slice around one finger before popping it in her mouth. “I’ve been eating so clean all through camp, I forgot what a good greasy slice tastes like.”
“You look fucking insane,” Julep said in the way of a compliment. “Like, more ripped than I’ve ever seen you.”
“Well, I am insane,” Riley said. “Because I thought if I could put on some weight, build muscle, and level up my kicks, I’d have a shot at the draft.” Her eyes softened, losing focus somewhere beyond her slice of pizza. “What a fucking joke.”
She took a bite while the rest of us offered her sympathetic looks of understanding.
“They’re idiots,” Giana said.
“Is there any other way you can play?” Julep asked. “Like a women’s league or something?”
I smiled a bit at Julep offering a solution, because this time last year, that girl was a walking rain cloud with no optimism or silver lining to be found. Holden had changed that.
“Actually, kind of,” Riley said with a shade of hope. “The Women’s Football Alliance. It’s a minor league, and the pay isn’t great, but… the Boston team is really good. They’ve already reached out with some interest.”
“See!” I said, nudging her knee.
Riley smiled on a nod. “Yeah. It’s cool. It’s just…”
“You should be able to play in the NFL,” Julep finished for her. “You should be able to at least have the chance.”
Riley shrugged, but we could all feel her agreement in the air. It was a tricky situation. To play on a field full of massive grown men could be dangerous for her. But as a kicker, would she really have that much contact anyway? And she wasn’t just a good kicker, she was the best one playing college ball right now.
But because she was a woman, she didn’t even have the chance to prove she could handle it.
I couldn’t imagine her frustration.
“Anyway, how’s the wedding planning?” Riley asked Julep.
“It’s great,” Julep said with a bright smile as she picked up a piece of chocolate. “If spending hours on seating charts and flower arrangements is your cup of tea.”
“Sounds fun!” Giana said, which made us all snort.
“It’s fine,” Julep added, without the sarcasm this time. “Mom has been helping a lot — which is… weird,” she admitted. “And also nice. I just wish Holden could help, too. And he wants to, but even riding the bench, the team gets ninety percent of his time. And I’m happy for him. He’s living his dream. And I know it’s just the season where he’ll be like this. I’ll have a little more of his time come February.”
“That’s why you planned the wedding for April, right?” Riley asked.
Julep nodded. “Yeah. And he helps when he can, but he’s tired after practice or games, and let’s be honest — what little time we get together, we’re not spending on filling out our registry.”
Giana waggled her brows at that.
“Does it ever freak you out?” I asked, trying not to project my own insecurities but failing. “Him on the road, all the women throwing themselves at him both in person and online…”
“It’s hard sometimes,” Julep admitted honestly. “I mean, any woman who says it’s not is lying. It doesn’t matter that I trust him, that I know he’d never do anything with anyone else. It’s still sharing, even if he’s not a participant. He’s part mine, and part the rest of the world’s, too.”
I nodded, a thick lump in my throat at the fact that it would be the same with Leo. Then, I mentally slapped myself for even thinking that far ahead when we’d literally just slept together. But I couldn’t help it. He’d been so engrained in my past, threaded through the very fabric of my being for so long… and now, he was in my present, saying things and touching me in ways that made me think he wanted me.
That was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.
“I’m excited for you,” I told Julep. “It’s going to be perfect. And tag us in if you need us. We’re here to help.”
She smiled her agreement, and after sucking a shot from the bottle of tequila, she handed it to me. “Okay. We’ve got the feelings tunnel lubed up. Are you finally going to tell us why you sent an S.O.S. text or are we going to have to hold you down and tickle it out of you?”
I winced as I drank from the bottle, even though it was nice tequila. We didn’t have a lime to polish it off with, so it burned every centimeter on the way down.
“I wish it was easy to explain. I feel like a crazy person,” I admitted.
“Why don’t you just start talking and see what comes up?” Giana offered.
So, I did.
I had to fill Julep in on why I had spent the last seven years hating Leo, since the other girls had heard the backstory before we went out the other night. Once she was caught up, I proceeded to tell them about the bar, about the scene he made with Nero and the blow up that followed when I chased him outside. When I told them about the tattoo, they freaked out and demanded photos, and then, I told them about what happened when we got home.
Although, I left out all the details, because my friends didn’t need to know I peeled a Magnum off Leo’s gargantuan cock and licked him clean.
“And then,” I said with a sigh, picking at my nails. “I woke up, and he wasn’t there, and I just… completely freaked out.”
“He wasn’t there?! What the fuck, that asshole!” Julep raged.
“Well, he was still there, but he wasn’t in bed. He’d had to get ready for practice,” I explained.
“Oh,” she said, and then was confused, which made sense because so was I.
“It’s just, I woke up and everything crashed down on me. I have been hardwired for years to hate this guy. I had the worst impression of him. But then, over the last couple of months, I’ve seen the other side, the side I once knew and…” I almost said loved, but grew quiet instead. “I’ve seen glimpses of the boy I knew before everything went to shit,” I landed on. “And… I don’t know. It made it hard to remember why I hated him, until he did something that reminded me, then I was on fire with anger and the desire to shove him off the roof.”
Giana snickered.
“I feel like a yo-yo stuck in an endless cycle,” I continued. “And then, to find out that all this time, I’d been punishing him, punishing myself for something that didn’t even really happen… at least, not the way I imagined. He didn’t know it was me that day he rejected me.” I paused. “But then again, it was still me. It doesn’t really matter if he didn’t know it was me, the girl he talked to online, does it? Because he took one look at me, the girl standing in front of him with a notebook full of sketches, and found me wanting.”
“So, is that what it’s about then?” Riley asked. “Are you still upset by what he did that day?”
“Yes,” I said, then immediately shook my head. “No. I don’t know. I guess that’s part of it.” I paused, thinking, trying to make sense of it all. “I guess I’m just… scared.”
“That he’ll hurt you?”
“Yes,” I admitted softly. “What if he lied and he did know it was me, but then he saw what I grew into and made me his conquest?”
“Leo wouldn’t do that,” Giana said earnestly.
“You don’t think so? Look at all the girls we’ve watched him relentlessly pursue, from cheerleaders to water girls. But does he ever end up with them?” I didn’t give them a chance to answer. “No. They fuck, and he moves on. I mean, you guys saw the article over the summer. The twenty-seven exes of Leo Hernandez.”
Giana looked like she wanted to say something, but bit her tongue.
“I don’t want to be the butt of another joke,” I told them, voice shaking. “I can’t be.”
The girls were quiet for a moment before Julep crawled over to where I sat on the floor. She wrapped me in a hug, resting her chin on my shoulder.
“It’s okay to be scared,” she told me.
“Thank you.”
“But it’s not okay to punish Leo for a crime he hasn’t even committed.”
I frowned as Julep pulled back to look at me.
“I get that he has some groveling to do to make up for the past, but it sounds to me like he’s all too eager to do that, if you let him.”
“It sounds to me like he’s crazy about you,” Giana added. “And that your brain is trying to freak you out by holding fast to what it believed about him for years instead of letting the reality of who he is now shine through.”
“But do people really change? Can I really trust that?” I asked.
“Have you changed since you were fifteen?” Riley asked. “I know I have.”
I swallowed, knowing she was right, that they all were, but my stomach was too sour to admit it.
“What if he hurts me again?” I whispered.
Giana crawled over to join me and Julep, sliding her hand into mine and squeezing it. “But what if he loves you?”
My eyes flooded with tears, and I searched her gaze for a second before a laugh burst from my chest. “Jesus, Giana. You really do read too much smut.”
“No such thing.”
Riley came over to join in the group hug. “Look, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what we think. But, for what it’s worth, I think he deserves a chance. I know what it’s like to deny someone the opportunity to prove they’re good, that they’ve changed… and I regret that time I wasted with my heels dug in on my perceptions. Give him the chance to surprise you.”
I nodded, my chest still tight even as a breath of relief left it.
Because I wanted to give him a chance.
“Maybe I just needed to hear y’all say I’m not stupid for wanting to try, that I won’t get my heart shattered in the process,” I said.
“You might,” Julep replied, but her smile was one that said that wasn’t what she believed would happen. “If you do, we’ll be here to get you through it.”
Riley and Giana nodded their agreement, and I chuckled, wiping my face. “You know, I never had girlfriends before you,” I admitted.
“Me either,” Julep said. “Other than my sister.”
“Fictional characters have been my only friends for years,” Giana added.
Riley poked her thumb into her chest. “I hung out with my brother and his friends, that’s how much I was terrified of making my own.”
“What does that say about us?” I asked.
“You know how they say you have to wait for the one?” Julep asked, looping us all together again. “Maybe it’s like that for us. We had to wait for the right girls to be our besties.”
“We’re soul mates,” Riley added.
We grouped in for another hug, and then Giana sniffed, and I soothed her back. “Aw, G, don’t cry.”
“No, I’m not,” she said, leaning back and wiping her nose. “It’s the book funk.”
I blinked. “Your book funk is making your nose run?”
“It’s like having the flu!” she defended. “My body doesn’t know how to function without at least two fictional stories playing out in my brain at all times.”
That made us all laugh, and as Julep and I started cleaning up and Riley climbed into bed to get as much sleep as she could before practice, Giana went into full detail about the book that had caused her funk — getting particularly dramatic over something about a cowboy hat rule — and how she had tried every known remedy to get out of it without success.
By the time we all crawled into the sheets and turned out the lights, it was just past midnight.
I rolled over and set my head on Julep’s pillow. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
“Always,” she promised.
“You’re getting married,” I sang with a wide grin, poking her ribs under the covers.
She did a little happy dance and squealed, then we both fell silent, and minutes later, she was sound asleep — along with Riley and Giana.
I, on the other hand, stared up at the ceiling and counted down the minutes until morning.
