So, what if I have a crush on Roman? Nobody has to know because it’ll go away on its own.
The quick tapping of the keyboard is the only sound in the room as I lift up my coffee cup and take a sip. I’m sitting in my best friend’s giant reading chair, my e-reader resting on my thigh while Jules is quickly typing away on her laptop.
She’s in the zone and I’m trying to control the sound of my breathing. Jules is on deadline with her publisher, and she has the attention span of a goldfish. If I shift, she’s going to getdistracted and then she’s not going to get back to writing for weeks. She’s been like this since kindergarten, when we first met.
The gravity timer on her desk displays she still has twenty-nine minutes left in this writing session.
Instead of hanging out elsewhere in the apartment, I’m here. I want to make sure she’s writing and not getting distracted by her phone.
There’s another reason I’m in here and that’s to record our next podcast episode when she’s done.
It’s definitelynotbecause if I’m left to my own thoughts, I’ll start thinking about Roman. And how he’s playing for the Titans. And living in my city. And that we have a text thread full of messages.
I need to remember that until last night, he hasn’t said a word to me in person since he came here.
I’m often at home games, stopping by the dressing room to see Drew before the game and Roman acts like I don’t even exist. Granted, I haven’t gone out of my way to talk to him either.
I pick up my phone slowly and unlock it, going to my photos and scrolling up to the ones of Roman and me kissing. Two days after my wedding day, I got a text from an unknown number with the photos. There was no message, but I knew they were from Roman.
They make my body heat. Roman’s hand on my neck, our tongues tangled together, bodies pressed against each other.
“Stop looking at those photos!”
Startled, I drop the phone, and it scatters to the floor.
“I wasn’t looking at the photos!” My voice is squeaky and defensive.
Jules turns in her chair, elbows resting on the armrest and fingers laced together. She’s still in her pyjamas, her messyblonde hair pulled into an even messier bun. She calls this her glamorous author look.
“Funny, I didn’t say which photos.”
I groan, falling back onto the chair and pulling the blanket over my face.
“I’m pathetic.”
“You’re not pathetic. You have a crush. Although, why you want to crush on a real man when fictional men are so much better is something I don’t understand.”
I lower the blanket and look at Jules.
“I like looking at pictures of us kissing.”
Jules rolls over to me on her chair and picks up my phone, unlocking it. She knows the password and I have no secrets from her. She’ll never violate my privacy, so I have no fear of her having my password and going through my phone or looking at pictures of Roman and me kissing.
“A kiss you admitted yourself was better than any you had with your ex,” she says, handing me my phone.
I deliberately don’t look at it and shove it between the cushions of the chair.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Jules laughs and rolls back to her desk. Her books are stacked on the three bookshelves around the room. Our teachers used to think we made an odd pair. I was the sports girl, and Jules was the book girl.
Come on, with a name like Lavinia Callahan, I had to play hockey, or my brother would have carried on my father’s hockey legacy by himself. With a name like Juliet Love, Jules had to write romance novels. She has the most romance novel name to ever exist. Not that she writes under her real name.
“Wait, do you think we should save this conversation for the podcast?” She glances at me over her shoulder.
A year ago, we started a podcast for the fun of it and it has gained close to a hundred thousand followers since and climbing every day. Apparently, people want to listen to a sports girl and a book girl talk about nothing and everything.
“I thought we said we aren’t going to talk about our love lives on the podcast,” I remind her.
