“Kayla, are you okay?” Amy asked.
“Huh?”
“I thought you might be choking on your coffee. You made the strangest sound.”
“Oh. Yes. I, um, choked on my coffee. But I’m fine now.”
Kayla turned away with difficulty. After all, that bathing suit could not have highlighted Mack’s body any better if it camewith a flashing neon sign reading “sexy butch here”. Still, it was her best friend wearing that suit, not the woman she was after. She peeked across the table at Skye, but she was busy adding ten packets of sugar to her fresh coffee. At least Skye hadn’t seen her drooling.
Mack sat down next to her, and maybe she had been standing too close to the buffet warming pans because the room seemed to heat a few degrees with her return. Apparently, she noticed Kayla staring because she asked, “What?”
Kayla said, “Nothing. I just like that new bathing suit.”
Mack gave her a wink. “I wore it just for you, babe.”
Kayla’s body was betraying her again. Her heart raced, and she seemed to be leaning closer to Mack without realizing it. She couldn’t take her eyes off Mack’s lips, slanted into a sexy, provocative half-grin. They could kiss again without it meaning anything, right? They had kissed on the beach last night, and it hadn’t been weird. In fact, it had been the exact opposite of weird. Probably way too far away from weird. God, what was going on with her?
Amy’s giggle broke the spell. “You two are so sweet together. How did you meet anyway?”
Mack leaned back in her chair, sadly dragging her lips outside of the kissing zone. No. Wait. Not sad. Kayla shook herself, but Mack’s words didn’t exactly help take her mind back in the right direction. “She was dripping sweat, lying on her back, begging me to pull her legs over my head.”
Skye choked on her coffee, sending a spray all over her breakfast plate. Kayla tried not to laugh, but it was too ridiculous. Technically, nothing she’d said was a lie, even if the truth was far less illicit than it sounded.
Kayla explained, “We ran cross-country track together in high school. First day of practice freshman year, I went down with shin splints and they were agony. Nearly everyone got themsince most folks didn’t run between seasons. I usually ran year-round with my many soccer clubs, but that was my last summer off before I really hit training hard.”
Mack picked up the story. “We ran through the woods behind the school, and I turned a corner to see her rolling around on the ground in pain, so I stopped to help. She asked me to help stretch her leg to work out the cramp, and the rest is history.”
Kayla reached over and squeezed Mack’s hand. This was far more familiar emotional ground. “And there is so much history.”
“Remember the waitress at Waffle House? What was her name?”
Kayla couldn’t hold back her laugh. “We never knew. I think we called her Diane when we asked her to dance on the table for us.”
“She thought we were drunk. You told her we were only sixteen, and she didn’t seem to think that was a denial. Little did she know you never drank during soccer season.”
“It was always soccer season back then.”
“You slept at home maybe half the year?”
“It had to be more than that.”
Mack said, “Trust me. I know. I only had to clean up our room when you came home, so I was very familiar with your schedule.”
Kayla’s heart practically burst, remembering all those late nights hanging out with Mack. They were a gang of two for most of high school. When she was away at training camp or games, she spent half her night on the phone with Mack. When was the last time they’d stayed up all night talking like that? College? They were so much more connected in those days. They shared everything. Somewhere along the line, that changed as they grew up. Suddenly, Kayla ached with the loss of that closer friendship.
Amy said, “Wait, you two lived together as teens?”
Kayla’s stomach dropped, realizing she had walked them into territory Mack might not want to talk about. “She moved into my parents’ house back in high school for a couple of years.”
Mack only hesitated for a moment, then she launched into the story like it didn’t hurt anymore, even though Kayla knew it did. “We came out around the same time, sophomore year. Well, okay, she did. I was too chicken to come out. LaLa was the only one who knew for a long time.”
Amy asked, “What changed?”
Kayla said, “Kids started saying awful things to me. It wasn’t the most liberal school district, and there were a lot of assholes. It didn’t hurt that I was getting called up to the Youth National Team by then, and some kids didn’t like that I was locally famous.”
Amy’s face melted into one of sympathy, and she scored several points in Kayla’s book for that.
Mack said, “So I started defending her, and I guess I felt a little like a coward for staying in the closet while she was getting harassed. So, I came out, too.”
