“I wouldn’t miss it.”
No sooner do I jump into my truck than I text Lucky.Where are you?
I wait and I wait, but Lucky doesn’t text back.
It kills me that I might have hurt her with a slight I never meant. I need to talk to her, to Jet.
I need to return every wadded up bill that he’s ever shoved my way and set him straight on the fact Lucky isn’t someone he can keep in his emotional lair forever.
I’m going to tell him that I love her.
But first—I need to tell Lucky.
Love ’Em and Leave ’Em
Lucky
Ican counton one hand the times I’ve poured my heart out and told my truths and still had four fingers left over. The night I tore open the wound my mother inadvertently inflicted and let Jade fly out of my mouth like a sparrow racing to the moon was one of them. I bared the deepest part of my soul to Lawson Kent of all people. I gifted Lawson Kent that most precious part of me, my virginity. What the hell has gotten into me? There was a brief moment of insanity that I thought we could have something, that we were building something real, but that was quickly shattered when he all but sidestepped from my affection like I had the plague. I get it. I simply overreacted. I accidentally put on Ava’s rose-colored glasses and let myself get caught up in the firefly, low hanging moon, arms wrapped around one another for dear life, soul melting kisses moment. Lawson Kent is just a player—plain and simple. And it’s time to face the lose-your-virginity-against-the-laundry-room-wall music. I’ve been played.
Monday, I trek out to Hollow Brook Middle School all by my lonesome. When Lawson tries to trap me in the parking lot afterward, I make up some lame excuse about having bad cramps. By Wednesday, he catches on and we don’t bother acknowledging one another once our burrito-based missionary work wraps up. He sends a flood of text messages, and I have Ava delete them from my phone before I ever read them. I may be an idiot in many ways, but I adamantly cling to the axiomfool me once shame on you, fool me twice and I’ll send you to hell with two bloody broken legs. Try hobbling down the court with double thigh high casts, buddy.
As it stands, the last game of the season is tonight, and Ava and Harper have somehow talked me into going. They reasoned the longer I stay out of his airspace the more power I’ll give him. The sooner he sees me out and about getting my groove back, the sooner he’ll realize I’m not soaking my pillow with tears—I might be, but it’s none of his business. I’ll finally prove to Lawson that, yes, I am just as cold as he is. The only thing we have in common is the fact we have barbed wire wrapped around our hearts. We are one in the same, and yet we repel because that’s what loners do. We crave our space like others crave oxygen.
The Mustang Dome is packed with a bevy of heavily made up, heavily perfumed girls, all donning five-inch FMs and short little skirts, you would think that a speed-dating event were taking place upon the final buzzer. It’s true in a way. It’s a well-known accepted and appreciated fact that the boys who run the ball in the name of all things Whitney Briggs are the hottest, the brightest, and the best. The basketball team at WB is smoking, and that in a nutshell is what has turned every filly in the student population into a bona fide jersey chaser—sans me, of course. With the exception that I happen to be lying to the one person who doesn’t buy my bull at the moment—me.
Daisy and Jet are here cheering on Grant, and oddly, I think Jet seems to be cheering on Lawson, too. It’s understandable, I guess. Rex is Jet’s good friend, and Lawson is sort of related in that respect. Piper and Owen are here along with Scarlett and Rex himself.
I guess it’s a good thing Lawson and I aren’t a thing. It would have been a minefield to navigate what with all the commingling of friends and relations, and the fact Jet would rather crush every bone in Lawson’s body than let him get down and dirty against a wall with me.
Eli is sitting with Knox and his girlfriend, Janelle, while Trixy sits with Ava and me. Harper, however, has sequestered herself next to Justin, who oddly is sitting so close to Knox’s girlfriend that their thighs are melding together. Can you say awkward and rude? I mean, Janelle is a stunner. Harper must not have too much of a problem with it because I’ve seen her look over about fifty times to witness the fusing of anatomical parts and hasn’t uttered a single word. Instead, she keeps lashing her tongue over the side of his face as if he were a salt lick. Disgusting if you ask me. Come to think of it, everything about Justin in general disgusts me.
The idea oflovedisgusts me. The idea that I dove headfirst into that dry swimming pool and landed my already cracked heart into a certain paralysis disgusts me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I drank the Kent Kool-Aid and ended up mortally wounding the one thing I worked so hard to protect. It sucks. And what sucks just a little more than that is the fact watching Lawson Kent chase the ball up and down the court makes me realize one very horrific thing. I crave something other than my personal space, more than oxygen—I crave Lawson Kent himself.
The final buzzer sounds, and the Mustang Dome explodes in roaring cheers as the home team delivers one spectacular victory. Every last one of us jumps to our feet. The crowd thunders so loud, I half-expect the top to blow right off this hard-boiled egg of a structure.
Eli picks me up and spins me. “Yes!” he howls so loud, he takes out my left eardrum, and just as I land on solid ground once again, I spot Lawson standing still, his expression stoic as he watches us. And the ovulating cherry on top? There seems to be a veiled look of sadness in his eyes. One can only dream.
I swat Eli’s cheek with a wet one as if doling out a punishment.
Eli grunts and howls, still high off the victory before securing his hands over my cheeks and reciprocating with a longer, far more lingering kiss right back, smack on my cherry-stained lips.
Eli hops down the bleachers to the court, still whooping it up as if he won the lottery, and I freeze. My hand flies over my chest as I glance to my brother, but thankfully, Jet is seemingly oblivious as he offers Grant a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. Ava is already down there riding him piggyback. But Lawson—his dead stare is still glued squarely on me. And then just like that, the entire squad of cheerleaders seems to pick a team member to call their own and start in on what appears to be a mass dry humping session.
“Wow,” I mutter. I’m sure this will make their parents proud. I guess they’re not doling out the big bucks to this overpriced university for nothing. This is a well-rounded education both the cheerleaders and the players will benefit from.
A blonde cheer-bot eats away Lawson’s face as if she were on bath salts. Her legs are looped high around his waist, and his hands have disappeared under her skirt as they start to topple backward. Yeah, he was ambushed—so fucking what. It’s not exactly as if he’s about to catapult her over his head and shoot her into the basket from the three-point line. Nope. Lawson is holding on for dear life. He’s not fighting it. And why would he? She’s busy sucking his soul right out of his throat, and his hands are still precariously missing. It’s clear the two of them are enjoying the hell out of this.
“I’m out of here,” I say to no one in particular as I bolt down the stands and out of that beehive of carnal cheerleaders as they perform one final raunchy routine for the night.
“Lucky!” a female voice shouts from behind, but my feet can’t seem to stop as I continue to race as far away as possible from the pornographic afterglow of a hard won victory. Honest to God, if the cheerleaders were all male and this was thegirls’basketball team, I’m sure there would be at least ten different sexual harassment suits filed by morning. Girls would never let this shit fly. And yet the male species lives on to be accosted by the ponytail brigade another day.
“Lucky, wait!”
I glance back to spot a flame of blonde hair whipping through the night, and I pause just shy of Hallowed Grounds. It’s Daisy.
“Let me buy you some tea.” She nods toward the café, her breathing still erratic from her trek over. “Please.”
We head inside, and I race straight to the back among the fake foliage in the dark armpit of the establishment.
