Get some sleep, O’Riley. You’re not thinking straight.
Connor
Sleep’s going to be a problem, sunshine.
Sunshine
Sounds like a you issue.
Fuck it. It’s around 7:30 there, she might be home from the game. I press the video call button and wait to see if she’ll pick up. I might’ve embellished the truth a little. I’d already sent Jake downstairs with Nate, Ramirez, and a few other guys over an hour ago, all looking for an easy hookup.
The screen rang twice before it connected.
She appeared a second later, bare faced and hair still damp, curling around her temples. The lamp beside her, that Irecognized as the one in her bedroom, was casting a glow on her face. Damn, she looked beautiful.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, sunshine.”
We stared at each other like two awkward teenagers, and I had no idea how to stop. What I did know is that the knot in my chest seemed to disappear as soon as I saw her face.
“I managed to also escape the bar invites.” She smiled, and it brought out my own.
“Looks like we’re just a pair of losers who’d rather be cozy than social,” I said.
“Speak for yourself. I’ve never been a loser.” She poked her tongue out and, it was that exact moment I wished I was right there with her, feeling her skin on mine, kissing her, falling asleep with her in my arms.
Seeing her like this made everything else I’d been carrying tonight feel irrelevant: the loss, the noise from press, the expectation to be somewhere else, doing something else, with people who didn’t matter in this moment. It was effortless how my focus narrowed to her, how natural it felt to imagine a version of the night that ended with this instead of a hotel room. That wasn’t a line I crossed lightly. And yet, here I was, standing right up against it. And I think I wanted to jump over it.
“I, uh, wanted to ask you something,” I said, clearing my throat.
“You’re not gonna ask me to prom, are you?” she teased.
“You’d say no,” I huffed.
She chuckled. “I’d absolutely say no. Prom wasn’t my thing.”
“Shame, you’d have looked good on my arm.”
“Oh my god,” she said immediately. “You were prom king. I know it.”
“Maybe,” I said, my smile loosening as memories invaded me. “Or maybe I was the kid who spoke funny and finally foundfriends when a local rugby team opened up in my hometown. Maybe I was the kid with braces and gangly arms and legs who towered over everyone else and didn’t know what to do with any of it.”
She shifted, pulling one knee up onto the bed, chin resting on it as she looked at me through the screen. She was quiet for a beat, eyes searching my face like she was piecing together something new. “Then maybe I was the girl that had no friends, no boyfriends, no one who even noticed that I wasn’t at my senior prom because I was the loner kid.”
I knew what she was doing, and I wouldn’t look away. Was Teddy finally opening up to me? The inner college boy inside me was reeling at getting his rival to be vulnerable.
I didn’t want to spook her, so I stayed silent.
“I wasn’t sad about it at the time,” she added, soothing the back of her neck. “I told myself I didn’t care. I had training the next morning anyway.” Her mouth tilted downward.
I didn’t interrupt.
“But sometimes,” she went on, quieter now, “I wondered what it would’ve been like to have friends who showed up for me. I had my team back then, but none of them went to my school. Younger me couldn’t fathom being somewhere just because someone wanted me there.”
My throat tightened to swallow the words that didn’t come out. But my heart understood everything she’d said.
“You ever miss him?” she asked. “That younger version of you?”
