“Behind, behind,” I yelled into my headset, and then I was getting lit up. “Mierda!” I turned my Legend around to fight back, thumbs pressing wildly on my controller. My screen was continually flashing red, the sound of gunfire popping off in my headphones.
I stuck my tongue out of the corner of my mouth in concentration, ignoring my character’s depleting health until I hit the ground.
“Bleeding out,” I called as I put up my shield, cursing when I saw how close I was to being eliminated. “Fuck. I’m knocked, but he’s one shot!”
My teammate, BlueChip206 also known as Warren from Florida, got to me a second too late, but the fucker who had taken me out was still there.
“One shot, one shot!” I repeated, watching the scene unfold and powerless to help with my guy laid out on the ground. Once Warren took him out, he could revive me.
Except Warren was firing at him and he still didn’t die.
Then, Warren got knocked, too.
The game ended, and I sucked my teeth, scrubbing my hands through my hair.
“He was not one shot, dude,” Warren said with a huff.
I laughed a little at that.
“Alright, man, I’m getting off,” he added a moment later.
“See ya,” I replied, and then I checked the time on my phone. It was late, but I felt restless tonight. Always did in the summer. In the fall, I knew exactly who I was, what my purpose was, where to be and what to be doing. Summer made me feel a little aimless, like I was stuck in some sort of limbo waiting for my life to start again.
Everything had centered around football for me for so long, I didn’t know what to do without it.
So, I prepped for one last game of Apex Legends. Might as well enjoy the late nights before early practices started.
A notification popped up assigning me my new teammate, and I was scrolling through the Legends deciding which one I wanted to play with next when I saw the username.
It made my stomach drop, my eyes scanning it beginning to end.
Octosquid68.
The breath that had hitched in my throat slowly deflated, my heart still racing even as I stared at the name and realized it wasn’t what I thought. I didn’t know why I even thought it would be. I hadn’t seen that name on my screen in years.
Still, anytime I saw one that even resembled hers, it stopped me in my tracks.
A flash of something crossing the living room caught my attention, and I turned just in time to see long blonde waves of hair disappearing into the kitchen. I looked at the screen, then back at where Mary was visible through the little cutout window in the wall between the dining area and kitchen, and ultimately shut off the console with my heartbeat still a little unsteady.
Checking on our new roommate sounded like more fun, anyway.
I made my way to the archway that separated the rooms, the old house showing its age with the lack of open-space concept. I leaned against the frame, watching as Mary unloaded the small cooler we’d filled with what little she had in her fridge across the street.
I knew I needed to announce my presence, but I couldn’t help but take a moment to just appreciate the view. I hadn’t known Mary well over the last year of her being our neighbor across the street — not for lack of trying, but more because she made it very clear she wanted nothing to do with me or anyone else on the team. Still, I’d hung out with her enough to know she was always dolled up — dresses, boots, tattoos on display, and makeup like a movie star. Not like Julia Roberts movie star, but like Olivia Wilde. A little dark, a little edgy.
Always hot as hell.
But right now, she wore impossibly tight black leggings that hugged every curve of her hips and ass, and she was bent over, offering it all on a silver platter as she unloaded condiments from the cooler into the fridge.
I cleared my throat. “Need any help?”
She paused, one hand still on the cooler as she peered over her shoulder.
And fuck if that didn’t make the view even harder to look away from. Now not only was she bent over, but she was bent over and looking back at me with those kohl-lined green eyes and pouty fucking lips.
“Does it look like I can’t handle unloading a cooler?”
I bit back the urge to tell her I didn’t think there was much of anything she couldn’t handle.
Instead, I stepped fully into the kitchen, reaching over her head for a beer out of the fridge door before I hopped up to sit on the counter. I cracked the top on the can, sucking half of it down in one pull.
Mary just stared at me, offering one solo, slow blink before she shook her head and got back to what she was doing.
“Are you all settled in your new room?”
“As settled as I need to be for this temporary situation, yes.”
I paused, something familiar about her voice striking me like a lightning bolt to the gut. It had happened earlier that day, too, and I couldn’t explain it. I’d talked to Mary dozens of times since she and Julep moved across the street. Of course, her voice sounded familiar.
But it almost felt like something more than that.
I shook my head, blaming the weirdness on the heat stroke we all incurred moving Mary’s shit.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I said after a moment, and I meant it.
It had all been fun and games until I’d seen regret in her eyes. For reasons I couldn’t explain, it made me a little ill to think about her spending the night at some cheap motel with God knows who in the room next to her. I was glad she took me up on my offer — that we could help while they fixed up her place.
“Clowning around is kind of my default mode, but I know shit like that can be ill-timed. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sure this is all—”
“It’s fine,” she said, cutting me off. “You can go back to your game now.”
I smirked at the sassy interruption. She was already more herself than earlier. “Game’s over. I think I’ll hang out here, instead.”
She didn’t have to turn around for me to know she was rolling her eyes.
I didn’t know why I loved to get under her skin so much. Probably because I was used to a very different reaction from most of the girls I encountered. The past three years had been easy for me. If I wanted a date, I could have one with the snap of my fingers. If I wanted a girl in my bed, I had a phone full of numbers I could shoot a text to and get just that.
But Mary Silver didn’t give me anything other than slightly heated indifference.
It was sick how much I liked it.
That prickly nature wound me up in a way nothing else could. I liked that she wasn’t simpering, that flirting with me seemed to be the furthest thing from her mind. Her sharp wit was just icing on the cake.
“We should game sometime,” I said.
She froze, only for a second, but enough for me to notice before she grabbed a container of yogurt and slid it into the back of the fridge.
“Kyle told me you have a PlayStation.”
“I doubt we play any of the same games.”
“I could teach you.”
She whipped around, narrowing her gaze at me with one eyebrow arched.
I threw up my hands with a laugh. “Or you could teach me, I didn’t mean to assume.”
She was still glaring at me as she turned back around.
“I’m not really into Battle Royale games,” she said. “Or those weird ass faces you were making out there.”
“I don’t make faces.”
She shut the fridge door and slowly stood, hands bracing on her knees as she did. “Oh?” She squinted her eyes, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth first before she started rolling it like she was trying to wet every inch of her lips. Her hands were braced in front of her holding an invisible controller, and she made sharp, shifty movements, looking like some kind of deranged animal.
Abruptly, she stopped, her face deadpan again.
“So you just look like that normally?”
I blinked at her, then barked out a laugh. “I wish I would have recorded that.”
She didn’t humor me with so much as another glance in my direction before she picked up the empty cooler and started walking toward the stairs. I hopped off the counter and followed.
“We can store that in the garage,” I offered.
“It’s fine, I have room in the closet.”
“I find that hard to believe after the heaps of clothes we carried over today.”
She sighed, still holding the cooler at the foot of the stairs as she turned to face me. “Is this how it’s going to be until my place gets fixed? You buzzing around me like a gnat?”
I had a quip locked and loaded, but there was something about the way she looked at me in that moment that made it evaporate on my tongue. It was the same way she’d looked upstairs that had made me pause earlier — a softness in her eyes that wasn’t normally present, defeat slumping her shoulders.
It felt… familiar, in a way I couldn’t explain.
“I feel like I know you.”
She arched a brow. “Trust me — you know absolutely nothing about me.”
“No, I mean like I feel like we’ve met before.”
Her lips tightened into a line, and with her hands still holding the cooler, she flicked her head back to get the fallen strands of hair out of her face.
I narrowed my eyes when she didn’t answer. “Have we?”
She finally looked away from the stairs and directly at me.
I swore I shrank a few inches.
“Don’t you think you’d remember if we had?”
The corner of my mouth kicked up at that. “Fair point. No way I’d forget meeting someone with such large…” My eyes trailed the length of her, appreciating the ample curves of her bust, her hips, her thighs. When I met her gaze again, she had an eyebrow quirked with a warning in her glare. “Tattoos,” I finished.
Her lips flattened even more, and then she turned and headed up the stairs.
“I really would like to see them all, you know,” I said, leaning against the bottom railing as she climbed.
“Go to bed, Leo.”
“Come on, tell me about them. Just one.”
“In your dreams.”
“Yes, actually, among other things. Want me to detail them?”
She paused, turning on her heel to look down at me. “You’re insufferable.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She shook her head, but under her annoyed expression, I thought I saw hints of a smile.
“I’m too tired to deal with you,” she said, turning to climb the last few stairs.
“Need someone to tuck you in?”
“Goodnight,” she called when she dipped out of view, and I stood there at the bottom smiling even after I heard her door click closed.
