“Fine, I’ll go,” she grunted.
“Yyyyessss!” Brinley said, wrapping her arms around Tessa again. “Okay now get changed, you can’t go in sweatpants, sorry.”
Tessa laughed and looked at what Brinley was wearing, jeans, heels, a nice top. She looked casual but put together, and Tessa breathed a sigh of relief that she didn’t have to get too dressed up. She liked being girly and putting on fancy dresses, but with how emotionally spent she was from her day, she just wasn’t in the place for that.
“Give me 10 minutes,” Tessa said and pushed past Brinley.
“Oh, we’re going to have so much fun!”
“Yo, thought you guys were out at Top Golf tonight.”
Tristan shakes the hands of a few of his teammates as he climbs the stairs into the private area they always frequent. Seeing Tessa today threw him for the biggest loop of his life, and he desperately needs a drink.
“We got there and realized we weren’t feeling it,” Tristan says. “Need a drink instead.”
Tristan comes up to the second floor with Phillip behind him, and they join their teammates and a few other familiar faces who are standing around the bar. Tristan notices some of the WAGS beginning to show up, and he throws back a shot like his life depends on it.
“What’s up with you today?” Phillip asks, concern etched all over his face. “Ever since the meeting this morning you’ve been off.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tristan responds, breathing through the burn of his shot of whiskey, avoiding eye contact with Phillip at all costs.
“Is it the woman from today? Tessa? Why were you asking me about her?”
There’s a moment of silence between the two of them while Tristan contemplates what he should or shouldn’t say to Phillip. Phillip has been nothing but an amazing friend to Tristan since the day he joined the team, but he’s not sure how real he can be about this particular situation.
“I know her,” he says finally. “We were together back at Vanderbilt.”
Phillip lifts his eyebrows in surprise and takes note of the quiet way Tristan is speaking, understanding immediately that this might be a sore subject, best not discussed out in the open, so he leans in before speaking.
“Liketogethertogether?”
“Yep,” Tristan says. “Remember how I told you about my time at Vanderbilt? How I got kicked off the team and they took away my scholarship?”
“Hell yeah I remember,” he says. “That’s like my worst nightmare come to life.”
“Yeah, well it was mine too, and she was at the center of all of it.”
“What do you mean?” Phillip asked, confused at how Tessa could have been involved in football at all. “I thought you got kicked off for fighting?”
“Yeah, I beat the shit out of some douche bag who messed with her. She was my girlfriend at the time.”
“Damn,” Phillip says, taking a step back and letting this new information process. “Wait, you told me how they let you back on the team but, what happened with her?”
“She ran,” Tristan said, signaling for another shot. “Far the fuck away from me.”
“And this is the first time you’re seeing each other?”
“Yep,” Tristan carries out the word and sarcastically pops the ‘p’ at the end before throwing back another shot.
“Well, brace yourself my dude,” Phillip says, putting two firm hands and Tristan’ shoulder and giving him a shake, “Because she just walked in with Brinley.”
“Fuck,” Tristan curses under his breath and closes his eyes tightly.
He issonot in the mental headspace to deal with this right now. He is still reeling from unexpectedly seeing her this morning, how hot and cold she was, how he could practically see her walls up around her; how beautiful and radiant she was, how she exuded both mind bending sex appeal along with unbearable beauty but also managed to be adorably cute at the same time. And now he’s drunk and in the same room as her. He’s so screwed.
It feels like a knife to his chest when he hears her laugh and reluctantly turns around to see Brinley introduce Phillip to her.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Tessa says with her perfect smile. And then Tristan remembers she knew Brinley when she was at Texas Tech, and Phillip said he had met her a few times, and suddenly Tristan feels that green eyed monster creep under his skin again, thinking about how Phillip knew her during the years Tristan was in agony over her. Well, he still is, always has been, but those first two years in particular were brutal.
