There’s so much traffic, I’m glad Lukas is the one driving and not me. We’re all quiet, not wanting to distract him at all as he navigates the busy streets.
As soon as we’re out of the city, we pull off and grab a few wraps to go from a sandwich place just off the highway.
“What did you think of the competition?” asks Elliot, interlacing our fingers.
“It was really cool,” I tell him. “I don’t think I’ve seen so many people with such fast fingers in my life.”
“I’m sorry we weren’t the fastest ones there,” says Sebastian. He sounds so disappointed, and I grab his hand in my free one.
“No! Don’t you dare apologize for that. You all did a fantastic job, and I’m so proud of you. You’re all faster than I could ever believe, even having seen you solve cubes a lot of times before this.”
“Still, we weren’t the best,” Sebastian mutters, half to himself.
“Do you—” I start, then chicken out.
“Do we what?” Lukas asks, glancing at me in the rearview.
I sigh. “I’m just worried that I’m the reason you didn’t take first. That I distracted you or something, and you couldn’t focus as well as you normally would have because I was there. And I would feel really awful if that was the case.”
All of them begin to protest at once. From the driver’s seat, Lukas says, “You were absolutely not a distraction. Not at all. We loved having you there. It was awesome to go out to solve and see you out there watching. We didn’t take first because we weren’t fast enough, full stop.”
“But if you hadn’t spent so much time with me in between events, you could have been practicing more.”
Felix turns all the way around in the passenger seat and takes my hand from Elliot, gripping it firmly as he says, “There is nowhere else we would have rather been between events than up in that room with you. What you gave us yesterday was worth more than any first-place medal.”
I find it hard to believe that sex with me was a better prize than meeting their goal of first-place team at Nationals, but when I try to protest they all shoot me down. “But?—”
“No buts,” Elliot says. “You being there meant a lot to us, and you were not a distraction.”
“If anything, we probably did even better than we would have normally, because we wanted to impress you,” Sebastian tells me, breaking some of the tension in the car as we all laugh.
“You always impress me,” I tell them. “You’re all amazing.”
“I just realized,” says Felix, letting go and twisting back to a more comfortable position, but keeping his head turned towards me. “We didn’t introduce you to people like we said we would.”
“Yeah, you only got to meet Calvin and Stephen,” Sebastian says, Stephen’s name coming out like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“I liked Calvin, but Stephen was a real asshole. I hope he steps on a Lego right before he competes at Worlds.” This makes all of them groan with imagined pain, even as they laugh. “Anyway, I’d actually kind of forgotten about that you were going to introduce me to people, to be honest.” Between parents and hickeys and sex, I’d had other things on my mind.
“Well, Worlds is longer, so hopefully we’ll have more time between events and then we can introduce you to people,” says Elliot, completely convinced that I’m coming with them when they haven’t even asked me yet.
I decide to just let it go for now. They’ve had a couple hard days, and we have a long drive ahead of us. Instead, I let them slip into a discussion about what they can do differently for Worlds, from practice sessions to items they need to remember to pack. It’s sweet that they want me there, and I’m going to let them go on believing that I will be for a little while longer.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m startled awake by a tugging sensation. It’s dark and still and there are hands on me. I immediately swing out, trying to protect myself.
“Shhh. It’s just me,” says Lukas, holding up his hands to calm me.
Mentally I recognize him, but my body is taking a little longer to calm down. My heart is racing and I’m still processing where I am.
“We wanted to carry you inside without waking you up,” says Lukas, again trying to shove his hands between me and the seat. “We thought it would be romantic.”
“Maybe next time, romantically wake me up instead.” Even though they terrified me and as I’m not their girlfriend, I don’t require romance, it’s a sweet thought so I suppose I should give them some leeway for their intention.
But now that I’m awake, I’m not going to let him try to carry me. I’m fully capable of walking inside on my own.
I look up once I’m out of the car and realize we’re at their house. “You could have dropped me back off at my dorm room.” I would have thought them wanting to sleep in their own beds again meant they were ready to go back to their normal routine,and have a little break from all the extra people they’ve had to worry about this weekend.
