Her shoulders stiffened as an involuntary shiver slid pleasantly through her body. It was so annoying that Teddy could still do that to her, even when she was pissed as hell at him. He was standing just outside the fence, smiling at her. A sense of déjà vu niggled at the back of her mind; they’d been here before, after they kissed.
“Isn’t it a little early for you?” She glanced over her shoulder at Indy, who was still focused on her phone.
Teddy shrugged. “We need to talk and I knew you’d be here.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
She thought she’d made that pretty clear right before the Classic final, and if that hadn’t done it, she’d ignored every single text and voicemail he’d sent since. When was he going to get the point? Why couldn’t he accept that things would never be the same between them? And why, despite everything, did what she just said feel like a lie? Because she didwant to talk to him, shealwayswanted to talk to him, and that was the problem.
“You don’t have to talk. You can just listen.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, the damned dimple appearing alongside his easy smile, and then he hopped the fence. Her heart pulsed and then fluttered into a faster beat. Seriously, screw those dimples. “Or you can stand there and pretend like you’re not listening while I talk.”
“You’re such a stubborn ass, you know that?” Jasmine avoided his eyes. If she looked into his eyes, she’d be lost. She’d smile, and his would widen, and she’d give in, and that would be that.
“So, how’s it going?” he asked, a hand gesturing across the court.
Her patience was already gone. “Seriously, that’s what you’re leading with? ‘How’s it going?’ Did you actually want to talk to me or are you just wasting my time?”
“Not well, then, huh?”
“Teddy—”
“Fine, look, I wanted to talk to you because…” he began, but immediately lost his momentum. Jasmine had had enough of his hesitation and stepped forward, pushing past him, but he caught her arm. “Because I feel terrible about what I said to you. You were right. I was being a shitty friend.”
“Come on,” Jasmine said, shooting a glance toward Indy, who was still focused on her phone. The last thing she needed was for Indiana Gaffney to know what a fool she made out of herself with Teddy. She led him through the gate and around the corner back behind the courts where they would have some privacy.
“You wanted to talk, so talk.” She crossed her arms and waited.
“Don’t look at me like that, Jas. We both said some crappy things to each other. And look, you were right about Indy. I wasn’t helping her just to be nice. I—”
“You always did have a thing for blonds.” She cut him off, pushing the hurt down as best she could. “If you like her, you should go for it. Ask her out, I mean.”
Nah,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t think she’s into me.”
Jasmine looked away, studying the twisted chain-link fence intently and avoiding his gaze. “I shouldn’t have let those girls be horrible to her. I could’ve put a stop to it and I didn’t.”
Teddy sighed. “We shouldn’t have done a lot of things, huh?”
Like getting drunk and kissing and nearly destroying their friendship. “You got that right.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a moment, and then Teddy looked down before shooting her a boyish grin, that dimple reappearing, making it impossible for her not to smile back, just like she knew it would. He probably knew it, too. Though maybe he didn’t, and that somehow made it worse.
“So, how is it going, really? Penny told me Dom paired you guys up as a doubles team.”
“We haven’t done much yet.”
“I think you two would make great partners.”
“You would,” Jasmine drawled.
“Not like that. Your games, they’re complementary. It’s like pairing up Federer and Nadal: power and precision withspeed and hustle. Her weaknesses are your strengths, and vice versa. A perfect match, and Dom’s a genius for thinking of it.”
“Yeah, he’s a real Einstein.” The muscles in her calves twitched at the mere mention of the word. “Besides, that’s not the worst of it.”
He was silent, waiting for her to continue, but the words caught in her throat. The girls she thought were her friends clearly weren’t, and she definitely couldn’t tell her parents. She didn’t have anyone else to talk to, and Teddy used to be the person she’d trust with anything, but she couldn’t anymore. She couldn’t tell him about how Dom agreed with Hodges about her game and how he didn’t think she had it in her to be in the top ten. That she wouldn’t win Grand Slams or Olympic medals or live up to her parents’ legacy and that everything she’d worked for all these years was nothing but a dream, one that they all let her believe in for way too long.
So instead, she let the dam inside her break, a lump in her throat choking her as the tears burned her eyes and fell in streams down her cheeks.
Somehow, even after all the crap they’d been through, he knew exactly what she needed. She needed him to be there. Teddy didn’t love her, not the way she wanted him to, but in that moment, as his arms tightened around her and he hushed her lightly and she fought back the rushing of her blood and the tingling warmth that settled in her lower belly, Jasmine knew she would never find a better friend, and maybe one day that would be enough.
