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OLIVIA: He’s also really, really hot.
Quinn sends me the crying-laughing emoji. Okay, I can respect that. The million-dollar question, though: What are you going to do about it?
I bite my lip. Then I reply with the only possible answer.
OLIVIA: Nothing.
My thumbs start flying over the keyboard faster and faster. As much as he probably wants to fuck, the whole thing is a really, really bad idea. Besides. What’s someone who’s in five hundred tabloids a week going to do with someone like me? I don’t want to feel like I did after Troy. I can’t do that again, Q.
It’s the first time I’ve even talked about Troy in years. But as I think about what it would feel like to entertain this attraction with Reese, only to end up tossed to the side once he’s gotten his fix, I can’t help but think about the guy that seeded so many of my hang-ups about men.
OLIVIA: What happens if we do sleep together, and then he’s just done with me? What if he realizes that outside of the bedroom, I’m just a boring little shit?
QUINN: First of all, you’re not boring.
QUINN: You’re level-headed which is more than I can say for myself.
QUINN: Second of all, do you really think he’d do something like that?
OLIVIA: I think a guy like him is capable of a lot of things.
QUINN: Fair.
Quinn doesn’t type anything else. I lie there in a ball of insecurity and self-doubt.
My best friend has always had men desperate to get with her. Not just to fuck, but to have. When we were growing up, all I had was Troy. When I didn’t have him anymore, Quinn was still the blossoming extrovert with the bubbly personality every guy wanted to date. I was never unattractive, but when you grow up in a small Texas town, and your experience as a young, pregnant teen is a cautionary tale that the neighborhood moms tell their kids like you’re the freaking boogeyman… well, that sticks with you.
I’ve always been good enough to fuck. But to stay with after?
Not so much.
Leaving home was the best choice I ever made. I needed to go somewhere where my teenage mistakes didn’t follow me like some kind of disease.
But apparently, I can’t outrun everything.
Maybe I can’t outrun anything at all.
24
REESE
I can’t stop thinking about Olivia.
I thought that practice would clear my mind, but there’s no clarity to be found on the ice tonight. Her strawberries and cream scent seems to have embedded itself into my nostrils. I smell it everywhere I go. Even in the depths of the locker room, which normally smells like Satan’s sweaty jockstrap, I could swear I caught a whiff of her.
So it’s onto Plan B.
Dante and Marcus lead the way into Ice Breakers, the club we go to when we need to blow off some steam. They favor local athletes, and since we’re the cream of Dallas’s crop, we’re easy favorites.
On the surface, it seems like a good idea. A distraction is most definitely in order, and you’d think this would have all the right ingredients. Music blares, vibrating the dark, neon-lit walls. A hundred scantily-clad, inebriated people grind up against each other on the dance floor. Drinks come fast and free, and the world is my oyster, if I want it. What’s not to love?
I’m just not feeling it tonight.
I want to be back home. I want to make last night’s fantasy a reality, even though I know full well that I can’t. Maybe that’s why my mood is so shitty. There’s something I want that’s just within reach, and no matter how much I want it, no matter how bad I think Olivia wants it, I can’t just do it.
Fucking hell.
“Yo, Reese, is the light on up there?”
