It was hard enough—emphasis onhard—that we were going to be neighbors for the foreseeable future. Now we had to work together, too.
Fucking awesome.
“What’d I miss?” Bennett asked after he’d switched his processor back on. A part of me envied the fact that he could tune these clowns out whenever he felt like it.
“Sinclair’s in love,” Pink announced. He narrowly dodged the sweat-drenched shirt that Matty hurled at his head. “What? It’s true. You didn’t see the way he looked at her before.”
“He’s full of shit.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Or the way she looked at him.”
That gave me pause. I wasn’t sure what unnerved me most about Clarke. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking. Not that I would ever claim to be an expert at understanding the female psyche, but it wasn’t like I was starting at ground zero. I had sisters; I’d dated. We’d barely exchanged a few sentences, though, and I was already feeling miles out of my depth.
Maybe it was the fact that, by all accounts, we had nothing in common. Hell, we barely spoke the same language. She was a Georgia peach. I was a Brooklyn bialy. Extra onions. I lived in ripped joggers and Costco brand T-shirts. She matched her candy-apple-red manicure to her lipstick.Fuck.It was going to take more than a couple of cold showers to wash away the vision of her sucking my cock, leaving a ring of red lipstick around the base.
Marking me as hers.
“Sinclair, you in?”
I looked up to find five sets of eyes on me. At some point during my musings on lipstick and blow jobs, the guys’ conversation had shifted away from my infatuation with Clarke and onto—
“M&M night at Bennett and Diaz’s,” Roman said. “You in?”
Bennett and his roommate, our left fielder, Peter Diaz, shared a house in North Portland. Their place had become the unofficialgathering spot for team barbecues and M&M nights, aka movies and margaritas. Diaz was what you’d call a movie buff. He’d even turned the third bedroom of their house into a screening room, complete with a floor-to-ceiling projector screen—because according to Diaz, theonlyway to watch a movie was on the big screen—and a legit movie theater popcorn machine. The margaritas were just the free-booze incentive for the rest of the guys, who didn’t give a fuck about whatever movie he picked that week.
Diaz, and only Diaz, got to pick the movies.
Typically, I wasn’t much for “team bonding” activities, and how much bonding could really happen during a two-hour, quiet, movie-watching experience? Because, yes, Diaz demanded complete silence while the movie played. But I’d been to a couple M&M nights already and, admittedly, they were a pretty good time.
“That depends. What’s playing tonight?”
I’d missed last week, but the week before had beenKnives Out,one of my personal favorites. I had a thing for murder mysteries, and Diaz had a thing for Chris Evans in cable-knit sweaters.
“Groundhog Day,” Bennett said. He shrugged. “Seems appropriate.”
It was only the second week of February and yet, it felt like I’d aged ten years in the past few weeks. A breakup had the power to do that.
“Works for me.”
“I’m in,” Tuck echoed.
“Me, too,” said Matty.
“I’ll be there with bells on.”Fucking Pink.
“Can I crash with somebody?” I asked. “Pink, don’t bother. There’s no way we’re having a sleepover.” I couldn’t help but chuckle when his mouth opened and closed wordlessly. It was nice to know that hecouldshut up if he wanted to.
“You can stay at mine,” Matty offered.
“Thanks, man.”
The drive between Portland and Rose City was less than an hour, but driving that alone at night, when it was raining—and in February in Oregon, it was always raining—was fucking miserable.
I climbed to my feet, wincing at the stiffness that had already set in in my upper thighs. While the rest of the guys packed up their stuff, I leaned over to Matty. “Think I can use your tub for an ice bath, too?”
“Sure thing.” He slapped me on the shoulder.Fucking ouch.“But I get it first.”
“Deal.”
