Page 14 of Made Better Together

“Good call.”

I briefly rake my eyes over her, trying to memorize the sight of her in my Princeton Soccer tee. Who knows if I’ll ever see her again.

“You stay in my shirt while this dries,” I instruct her. “You can keep it even.”

“Thanks.” She bites her lip.

“It’s fine, it’s just a cheap T-shirt.”

“Still. I just⁠—”

“What?”

She shakes her head. “It’s just refreshing. To have someone else be able to handle this. To not figure it out for myself.”

“That’s unusual for you?”

“A little,” she says in a thoughtful tone. “Not because of my parents specifically. But being an only child shuttled between the coasts my whole life, I’m pretty self-reliant. Not to mention the whole ‘act like the leader you want to be’ thing for soccer.”

I’m fucking dying to explore everything she’s saying, but a laundry room at her friend’s house when I’m bare-chested doesn’t seem like the best setting.

She seems to have similar thoughts. “How long are you in Orlando?”

“I leave in five days.”

Her lower lip shifts, forming the barest hint of a pout. “Okay. I leave for a week-long soccer camp in Atlanta tomorrow.”

“Nice.” My tone makes it clear that it’s not.

Her expression smooths out, and she hops off the washing machine. “Well, thank you for the cleaning service, sir.”

Her feet hit the ground as she finishes the sentence, and suddenly there’s no room between our bodies.

My back immediately stiffens. So does something else. Fuck.

The memories of her from last year might have dulled, but now I get a new one I’m not sure I’ll ever let go of—Eden Larsson brushing against the front of my shorts.

There’s something about her calling me “sir” that makes me want to press against her even more. Pin her against this machine and…

Fuck. I don’t trust my ability to respond verbally right now. So I stay quiet.

“I’m going to get some pizza,” she says as she finally pushes past me. “You hungry?”

Screaming at my dick to calm down, I nod and follow.

For better or worse, the large group snacking on pizza in the kitchen helps my hard-on fade.

Within two minutes, Bree has gone and grabbed me a shirt from her father’s dresser, and as we reach the fireworks portion of the evening, I realize I could probably trade it with Eden so I get mine back.

But the vision of her in my tee, lit up by all the colors exploding in the sky, stops me from changing one damn thing about the situation.

An hour later, as I’m about to leave the party, I shake my head as she gestures like she’ll give it back to me.

I repeat the instruction from earlier. “Keep it.”

“Okay.” Her voice is resigned, like she knows not to fight me on it at this point.

I can’t think of anything else to say, so I resort to being boring. “Goodbye. Have a great time in Atlanta.”