“You’re strutting again.”
I breezed past Addie’s observation and continued walking.
“Still strutting,” she deadpanned.
“I do not strut.”
Adam snorted, and I whipped my head in his direction. He hiked his backpack strap higher on his shoulder and shrugged. “You kind of do, man.”
“You’re like a peacock showing off its pretty feathers, hoping to secure a mate.” To prove her point, Addie gestured at my hair, which looked incredible, and then she reached up to tug on one of the strands.
Swatting her hand away, I kept walking. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, Addie. Hate me because your best friend thinks so.”
When a giggle snuck past her lips, I narrowed my gaze on her.
“It’s like watching a zoo animal in its natural habitat.” She widened her eyes dramatically. “So fascinating.”
I bristled. “No one said you had to come with us, you know?”
Addie smirked and skipped ahead, entering the lower level of the football stadium. From a few paces away, she called out, sure we could hear her. “Oh, and Adam has always been more Tessa’s type than you, Blake. Sorry!”
“What?” Adam said, his voice carrying to her despite his normal volume. “She what?”
“Don’t worry, Adam. She put you both on her DNF list back in high school.”
At that, Addie took off.
I stared after her, slightly annoyed by her parting remarks and thrown by her refusal to rise when I baited her now.
She’d made an effort to join us at the stadiums and she never missed a Sunday dinner, but her presence had been unusually scarce for a while.
Initially, I’d tried to pinpoint when it began, wondering whether starting college and the attention she got from the guys in our apartment complex had boosted her self-confidence slowly enough that I hadn’t known she’d drifted until it was too late.
Or if it had been midterms.
Maybe once she’d helped me boost my grades to keep from failing and getting kicked off the team, she’d realized she didn’t have to be nervous around dumb jocks like me, like she’d been most of her life.
Neither of those seemed likely, which left the worst-case scenario. Also, probably, the most likely:
That night Becky had thrown my place with them in my face, I’d paused. I’d doubted them, even after all the times they’d shown up for me. Adam had been fine after, but then he wouldn’t have noticed the brief flash of doubt that kept me from meeting their eyes. Addie would’ve.
And she did.
I thought I’d reassured her after, but she’d left that night.
And thenhehad happened.
She met and started dating her first college boyfriend, the douchebag who wanted to be a poet and wrote her fucking sonnets while introducing her to the female orgasm. That information, which no one had asked for, I’d unfortunately overheard the next day, when she’d been talking to Tessa on the phone.
Since then, Addie had been different.
And I refused to believe it was because Finn, who I affectionately referred to as Flynn no matter how many times she corrected me, was that good in bed. The guy was a fucking tool. I’d called it the first night he’d shown up at our apartment.
Adam had noticed it, too.
Even if Addie didn’t see it yet, he rubbed me the wrong way.
Beside me, Adam shoved his hands in his pockets, staring at where his twin had disappeared to start her first lap around the stadium’s lower level. He sighed but said nothing.
