I pulled away from him and cleared my throat. I said to Erin, while smiling into the camera, “It’s true that Connor and I are going through something right now, but my way-too-invested dad is probably not wrong about the odds of me forgiving him.”
35
Connor
I watched her look around the busy breakfast café, searching, and I stood.
Her eyes went right to me and she headed in my direction, looking ready for work in her cardigan, black pants, ponytail, and glasses.
God, she’s so pretty, I thought, thinking it was insane how much I’d missed her when it’d been only a week.
It felt like a fucking lifetime.
I swear to God I’d squeaked like a damned chipmunk when she texted me last night, making me come to a complete stop as I was about to walk into my building after the game.
Duffy:Can I call you?
I believe I looked up at the dark sky and muttered out loud, “Thank you, God.”
I texted back as quickly as anyone had ever texted in the history of the world:Of course
I’d seen the Erin Andrews footage after the game—multiple times—and I had no idea what to make of it. The running-at-lightning-speed-to-get-to-me was mind-bogglingly sweetholyshit, and the fact that she dropped the word “forgiveness” had my hopes way the fuck up.
And then Tony showed up, acting…well, like he was under the influence of some pretty good edibles or something, so I had no idea what any of it meant.
I knew only that contact with her was better than no contact with her.
I’d just been stepping into my apartment when the phone rang.
“Duffy,” I’d answered, so fucking happy she was calling. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, and I’d hated the weirdness in her voice. “Um, good game.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said, shaking my head as I shut the door behind me. “We played like garbage, but we got it done.”
“True,” she said. “How’s your head?”
“Feels like shit but I’ll live,” I said, heading straight for the ibuprofen in my medicine cabinet. “So…what’s up?”
The silence felt like it lasted an eternity as I gripped the medicine bottle, a pathetic chump desperately waiting for her to say she’d forgiven me.
But instead, she cleared her throat, which was something she did when she was nervous, which mademenervous.
“So I don’t really know how to do this, how to ask a favor to someone I’m not really even friends with, so I’m just going topower through,” she said tightly. The words “not really even friends with” pounded painfully in my already aching head. “I need a favor, Connor, and I feel like maybe you owe me one.”
“Anything,” I heard myself say, realizing that I meant it. I’d do anything she asked. “Tell me what you need and it’s yours.”
She cleared her throat yet again. “It’s probably just my dad overreacting, but he’s convinced that I’m going to go back to being the most hated woman in Minneapolis if the public thinks I broke up with you and then the team loses a game. He says there are rumbles of me being a jinx.”
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to inadvertently say anything that might piss her off, because I liked where her words were heading.
“So I’m wondering if you’d be okay with us, um, doing the whole let-the-public-make-their-assumptions thing a little longer.”
“Wait.”Wait fucking wait.“What?”
“I mean, I don’t know if it has to be full-on fake dating like before,” she clarified. “But if we can maybe be seen together in the next few days?”
“I—”
