AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I stop and turn to him, genuinely curious. “Do you want to deep-throat my fist? ’Cause it kind of seems”— I mimic the gestures —“like you might.”
His head drops back, giving up an exasperated groan. “Forgive and forget. Ever heard of it?”
“Matter of fact, I have.” It’s something new I’m working on. “Unfortunately, I exhausted my newfound powers of forgiveness on my best friend. Fresh out for the teammate busted ogling my sister’s ass.”
He rolls his eyes and crosses to a treadmill. “Fine. What’s got you in here so early anyway? Kitchen isn’t even running yet.”
I hop on the treadmill beside him. “Just clearing my head.”
We start jogging at a chill pace to warm up, but it’s not enough. I’m still wound tight. Still thinking about Lara. Thinking about high school. Exes and friends. Plans and pacts. How many things I had wrong back then. The things I thought I had right.
I’ve got to stop.
I look over to where Static is bumping up the pace. Matching it on my machine, I try to loosen up my stride, my shoulders.
No good.
He looks over and shakes his head. “All that huffing with the deep sighs over there and you’ve barely even started to run. Come on, man, talk. You obviously need to.”
Dude is the dead last guy I’m going to share my deepest, darkest secrets with. The last.
I open my mouth to tell him that and, “It’s Lara. Old friend from high school.”
“Yeah, I heard. She just moved in.”
Bunch of gossips, this team. Whatever. “I’m all fucked-up in the feels having her in the apartment. Because it’s not just the apartment. It’s not the physical space that she’s occupying, you know what I mean?”
I see his mouth open in my peripheral, but again, I open mine and the fucking firehose of pent-up touchy-feely bullshit blasts free. “She’s in my thoughts”— in my head and my chest —“dragging up a million memories I’ve tried to put to bed about how it used to be.”
He hits Stop on his machine, and I crank mine up.
“Wait, you guys were together, together? Swear Bowie said you were just friends.”
I cut him a lethal look. “Cone of silence, Static. Pre-dawn gym is a sacred space. You think I was pissed about Piper?—”
“For the millionth time, I’m sorry. Nothing happened with Piper.”
My eyes narrow. “Uh-huh.”
“But I won’t say anything. Trust me.”
Those two fucking words. Feels like every person who’s ever uttered them to me has backtracked, found a loophole, or flat-out fed me bullshit.
Those two words are my biggest red flags. But in this moment, my need to process exceeds my need to protect myself from another “friend” fucking me over.
“She and I were just friends for almost all of high school. But there was a small window after, when that just was more of a plus.” Jesus, it feels good to say out loud. To stop pretending this beast of a thing doesn’t exist. “We didn’t want anyone to know, make assumptions, or offer opinions.”
I wanted to keep it as my own. Protect it until it had a chance to grow. Not that it ever did.
“Okay, yeah, I get that.” He looks off into the resistance bands, nodding in a way that suggests he actually might. He looks back. “So, what happened?”
“We agreed before it even started it wouldn’t change things. But it did. Or it did for me.” I huff a breath, flashes of the way she melted into my arms and sighed my name rolling through my mind faster than the belt rolling beneath my feet.
“Not for her, I guess.”
“Nope. And the thing about it… I know she wasn’t trying to be careless with my feelings. She’s not that kind of person. I think she just really saw that situation different than I did.” Wasn’t there when I came back from camp. Didn’t come home before I had to leave again. “Fell out of touch faster than I could believe for what I thought we meant to each other. Even before the plus stuff, you know?”
His jaw shifts. “And now she’s back. In your apartment.”
