Jasper scratched his beard, thinking. “It’ll be okay though.”
“That’s what we told her, but it just made her more mad.” Jupiter brought the bottle to his lips, sipping.
“Why?”
“Because she said that we can’t know it’s going to be okay.”
Cooper scoffed. “Of course, you can. You’ve both been through shit like this before and ridden the wave.”
I shrugged. “I know. But she lost her job and she’s upset about that and how they’ve treated her at the studio, which I completely understand. She’s really hurt and she’s fucking angry.” I sipped my beer. “I mean I’m fucking angry too, especially at that fucking dickwad who started all this.”
Cooper nodded. “I think the girls have got Molly on the case for some investigating. You know how she loves playing Jessica Fletcher.”
“Oh, cool, thanks. Where are the girls anyway?”
“Upstairs with Florence and Molly.”
Felix sat up straight, his head darting from side to side. “Molly’s here? When did she arrive? I didn’t see her.”
Cooper shrugged, not seeming to notice Felix’s strange outburst. “Dunno, just before these two I think.”
“Oh.” Felix slumped back in his chair. “Hey, you know, this thing with Emerson is kind of like getting traded, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Jupiter banged the table with his palm. “Thank you. That’s what I told her.”
“Yeah, but it’s also what pissed her off the most.”
He took another long draw of his beer, eyeing me as he did. “No, Crawley, you’re the one who pissed her off the most.”
“What did you say to her?”
We all turned to find Wolfie, Freddie, and Molly walking into the kitchen.
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.” I glared at Jupiter to keep his trap shut.
I’d rather eat a shit sandwich that share that intel with the girls. And I liked my balls, thank you very much.
“Well, what did you say then?” Freddie nodded toward Jupiter as she sat down on Cooper’s lap, his arms moving around her giant belly, holding her close.
He shrugged. “I was trying to tell her everything would be okay and said it was like us when we got traded.”
Wolfie put some more drinks on the table and sat down, her and Freddie exchanging looks of horrified confusion as Molly scoffed from over on the kitchen counter.
Why was Molly so far away?
“You told her that being fired from her job after she was exposed publicly as a,” Wolfie started aggressively air quoting, “‘cheating, money grabbing slut who loves to go to her brother’s sex parties’ was like being traded?”
Yeah, that didn’t really sound like what we meant.
How did girls always twist words so well?
“Yes?” Jupiter replied, although now he didn’t sound so sure of himself.
“How would you even know?” Wolfie shouted, pointing at all of us. “None of you has ever been traded. You have no idea what it’s like. And you also expect it to happen, it’s par for the course in sports. In twenty-four hours she went from having a career she loves, to being fired because of lies spread by her cunty ex-boyfriend.”
Freddie tried to lean forward to make a point, but it was hard with her belly getting in the way. “Guys, we were there yesterday. She was devastated she’d even been told to lay low. This is her job, and she’s not being supported by the company that she works her fucking ass off for. You hockey boys are so used to the press and the tabloids you have no idea how it can affect people. She’s not protected like you. Another studio isn’t just going to snap her up because winning the Cup or the World Series is more important than gossip.”
Wolfie leaned across the table with more success. “And people live for gossip. Even before all this happened, we’d hear people gossiping at the studio about you both when she wasn’t around, even her own friends. We canceled our membership because of it.”
