Mercifully, the server chose that minute to ask for our order. We started with drinks, but since we always ordered the same pizza whenever we came in, Piper took on the leadership role and ordered it for the table without consultation. With the way our conversation was going, I doubted I’d want much of whatever she decided to order anyway.
Jamaica reached her hands across to me, palms up. If I took that invitation, I’d probably embarrass all of us by bursting into tears. But I also couldn’t leave my friend hanging. Gingerly, I dropped my hands into hers and nearly lost it when she gave me a loving squeeze.
“I don’t think he wrote you off, Chess,” she said. “Maybe seeing his ex in the same space with you threw him. Maybe he panicked.”
“Maybe last weekend was only a hookup, nothing serious,” I countered.
“How would you know when you’re not communicating with him?” Saylor asked, her tone verging on sour. “I’ve never known you to show an interest in a guy past a few dates. A guy scratches an itch and you move on.” She tapped the tabletop with her fingers. “You always say you have goals—goals that will be easier to meet if you aren’t carrying baggage.” She raised a brow. “Is that how you see Finn, as baggage?”
When I reared back at Saylor’s ugly question, I almost jerked Jamaica’s arms from their sockets. “No! God no. Sure, before he started talking to me, I wouldn’t have said Finn was my type.” Leaning my elbows on the table, I cupped my face in my hands. “Now I think he might be, but I’m not his.”
Piper rubbed her hand over my back. “This is a blip, Chess. A misunderstanding.”
Tilting my head, I let my side-eye speak for me.
“I mean it. The way Finn was always asking Wyatt about you after Wyatt and I got together—” she glanced across the table to Jamaica—“and the way he asks Callahan about you—”
“The way he finally caved and asked me what you like before he asked you out,” Jamaica added. “The man’s got it bad for you, girlfriend.”
“You didn’t see his face, hear his words when he wrote me off.” I sniffed back the tears that were now in real danger of falling because of my friends’ concern. “I don’t know what I said wrong, but whatever it was, he sees me the same way he sees every other girl he’s hung out with.” Trying out a smile that hovered more on wobbly than confident, I said, “Better to learn that now than in a few months when maybe he’s talked me into rethinking my goals. I mean, I’m headed to med school and he’s headed to the NFL. Whatever might have happened between us probably wouldn’t have worked out long-term anyway.”
Saylor tsked. “Here you go again, not giving the guy a chance.”
The server arrived with our drinks—a pitcher of beer for Jamaica, Saylor, and me to split and a lemon drop martini for our more refined friend, Piper, who never drank beer if she could help it. Saylor jumped right in and did the honors, pouring each of us a glass with a perfect head. Normally, I’d truly appreciate her handiwork, but even though the night had barely begun, I was already drained and wished I’d begged off. Then again, the entire gathering had all the hallmarks of an intervention, so I doubt my friends would have allowed me to skip.
I sipped my beer, more to have something to do to avoid talking than because I actually wanted to drink it. A soccer game was playing on the big screen behind the bar, and from where I was sitting on the end of the booth, I had a distorted view of the action. The blue team scored a goal on the red team, and a trio of guys seated at the bar let out a collective groan that drew my friends’ attention.
Turning back to the table, Jamaica said, “With spring ball starting tomorrow, the guys are going to be completely immersed in football. Callahan said we could maybe see each other on Sunday night after our RA meeting.”
“Yeah, Wyatt said pretty much the same thing.” A secret smile tipped up the corner of Piper’s mouth. “But knowing him, I’ll see him before Sunday night.”
“Excuse me. I need to use the ladies’ room.” When Jamaica started to rise to join me, I added, “It’s quiet in here tonight. I’m fine going alone.”
Without waiting for a response, I headed down the hallway to the restrooms at the back of the bar. All that talk of my friends hooking up with their hot guys—guys who shared a house with the one man who’d ever slipped under my skin—had left me needing a moment to myself. They must have figured that out since none of them followed me.
I turned on the cold water and ran my wrists beneath it, the action simultaneously cooling me off, soothing me, and taking my mind off the tears that had been hovering near the surface on a continuous basis since Monday afternoon. Finn hadn’t said anything about spring ball starting this week, but maybe he’d decided hanging out with me would be too big of a distraction from preparing for his last year as a Wildcat. The team had made it to the semifinals this past season, and everyone had high hopes that even with the quarterback graduating, they had a chance to move past the semis and into the national championship.
A goal like that would require a player’s full focus. I could respect that, especially if that player also majored in bio-chem. Yet his friends seemed to have time for their girlfriends, school, and football.
My reflection stared back at me from the mirror above the sink, reminding me I didn’t know Finn well at all. Yeah, my fingers had traced every shadow and curve of his muscular body, and I knew how he pulsed and swelled inside me when he came. I knew the faintly sweet masculine taste of his mouth when he kissed me like he needed my air to breathe. I knew the diabolical way he could use his tongue on me to give me pleasure I’d never experienced with anyone else.
I knew someday he wanted to find a way to stop little kids from suffering the ravages of childhood cancers.
But I didn’t have a clue if he even wanted a relationship. Perhaps that encounter with his ex had reminded him that he didn’t have the time or the energy to give to someone else right now. If that was it, he could have just told me. He didn’t need to be an ass about it, lump me in with mean girls I’d never in this lifetime want to be associated with.
I dried my hands and stared myself down in the mirror. “You’re better off without him.”
If only I could convince my stupid heart to believe that after it went and fell for him even before he showed me the best time of my life.
“Better now?” Piper asked as I slipped in beside her in the booth.
While I’d been attending my pity party in the ladies’ room, our pizza had arrived. I maneuvered the spatula beneath a slice and slid it onto my plate.
“I will be if we can talk about something else.”
Lucky for me, I was on call in the dorm over the weekend. It was the perfect excuse not to head to the stadium with Piper, Jamaica, and Saylor to watch spring practice. Since she’d started dating Callahan, Jamaica had replaced her aversion to all sports with an avid interest in football. It was kind of cute. Piper, Saylor, and I had attended most of the Wildcats’ home games together since our freshman year, but the idea of watching Finn tear it up on the field when I knew he’d lost interest in me would have been too much. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder how practice was going.
Determined to take my mind off a certain football player, I cued up some Mozart on my phone and went to work on a set of calculus problems for my Physics 3 class. I had no idea how calculus was going to help me solve ligament and muscle injuries as a specialist in sports medicine, but I liked the elegance of the math, and usually I enjoyed the challenge of solving the problems. Yet even with my math music playing in the background, I couldn’t stop my mind from straying to a certain defensive lineman and how he was faring in what was essentially the first practice of the season.
