“Hey,” she said, tucking some hair behind her ear and watching me button it all the way up. “I’m wearing a coat! I just”—she smiled harder, and I couldn’t tell if she was blushing or if the cold was too harsh for her pale skin—“maybe got excited.”
“For our plans?”
She shrugged and tightened her grip on her bag. “To hang out with you.”
Fuck.
Warmth spread through my chest, and my dick hardened.
“So, where are we going?” Athena asked, wrapping her arm around mine and hiding her face behind my shoulder to protect herself from the wind.
“A new mini-golf place opened up a couple of blocks down, and?—”
“You’re not fucking with me, right?”
A chuckle left my mouth. “No.”
While still clutching on to my arm, she jumped up and down. Drizzles of hot chocolate rolled down the sides of the cup from her splashing it everywhere. “Yes! I haven’t been in so long! I’m so excited!”
My lips curled into a smile, but the heavy feelings of dread washed away any fluttery feelings I had for her. Hector was right. I needed to talk to her to see how she felt, but I was scared—fucking terrified—she didn’t feel the same way or that maybe she liked my brother.
Because it had been a couple of days since he’d visited, looking for me, and she still hadn’t said a word to me about him. Usually, she was a chatterbox about her day—which I loved—but something didn’t sit right with me.
And I refused to give up our friendship for some feelings that I had for her.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
ATHENA
“A box of Junior Mints and Airheads, please,” Charlie said to the woman behind the counter, flashing her his pretty white smile and pulling out his leather wallet after he checked us into Purple Starlight Mini-Golf—an indoor mini-golf place that just opened in the heart of Pittsburgh.
I glanced over his shoulder, peeping at a picture of us from three years ago at a Pitt football game. It was the first time we had gone out by ourselves and without our friend group. My chest warmed. I really shouldn’t be having all these gooey feelings, but I couldn’t stop.
Once the lady handed him the candy, he slipped me the Junior Mints. I smiled and ripped them open, popping two of those chewy mints into my mouth. We walked to the first hole in the indoor mini-golf place.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Good.” I beamed. “Same old, same old. Did you work on your virtual reality thingy?”
“My VR thingy?” he repeated with a chuckle.
After dropping my pink ball on the turf, I lined up to take my shot. “Your start-up.”
Charlie grinned. “I set up a meeting with a couple of investors to get funding.”
“You did?” I exclaimed. “That’s great!”
While his parents and grandparents could fund any project that he wanted, I knew he didn’t want their money. He wanted to do this all on his own, which was a complete one-eighty from when I had first met him.
That wannabe player had turned into a man sometime along the way.
Once he grabbed a handful of Airheads out of the bag, he chomped down on them and tore pieces off. “I have to fly out to California in a couple of weeks to take the meeting. Wanna come with me?”
Sometimes, it was hard to believe that he had grown up in a billion-dollar family with a silver spoon in his mouth, that he’d traveled the world and stayed in the most luxurious hotels, or that he had grown up with the finest of manners. He acted like the biggest, cutest doofus.
“Only if you want me to,” I teased.
