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Wouldn’t go as far as to say that, Isobel thought. Wasn’t stabbing you in the back and running off with your ex the first two no-nos listed on the first page of the best friend bible? Then again, Isobel wondered—why not? What did any of it matter now if Nikki wanted to make up? She and Brad were over, the crew was over. These days it was starting to seem as though reality itself was over. If the sky was falling, wasn’t it better if Ducky Lucky and Loosey Goosey hugged and made up beforehand? Isobel opted for a noncommittal shrug but then, embarrassed by the stinginess of her gesture, added, “No. Not really.”
“I miss you,” Nikki said. “I miss us.”
Looking down between her shoes, Isobel nodded, not certain if she could say the same. She had too much else swirling around in her head. Too much had happened since they fought.
Too much that she could never tell Nikki. Nikki and her, well, that all seemed like a lifetime ago. How could she explain to her that she was different? Changed. And that right now she could think of only one person she could truly say she missed.
“I’m jealous, you know.”
Isobel’s head popped up, eyes angled toward Nikki, who smiled at her. A sweet and sad sort of smile. Isobel was guarded. “What do you mean?”
Nikki shook her head, her eyes glistening. She swept a manicured thumb at each, then laughed instead. “Everyone’s jealous of you, Isobel.”
Isobel blinked several times, uncertain how to react.
“But I’m jealous because . . . well, because I’ve never known what it feels like to be in love.”
Isobel stiffened. All at once, she ceased to breathe.
“Oh,” said Nikki, laughing. She swept at her eyes again, this time with the knuckle of her first finger, trying to save her mascara. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re not that clueless.”
She laughed harder then, though, Isobel thought, more in an effort to keep from crying.
“I guess maybe you are,” Nikki amended, taking in the stricken look on Isobel’s face. “At least for once I’m not the last one to know something.” She laughed genuinely now, and her mirth was so contagious, the weight of her words so startlingly plain, that in spite of everything, Isobel found that she had to laugh too.
In love. In love with the stoic, the sullen, the eternally morose Varen Nethers?
He would never allow it.
Isobel sobered quickly. Suddenly the prospect of seeing him became terrifying, because she knew it was true and that the only way she’d hidden it from him before was because she had never allowed herself to put her feelings into words. And Nikki, the least perceptive being on this planet, had seen through it all.
“Hey, Izzy!”
Isobel jumped, nearly bouncing off the bench. She and Nikki both swung around.
Isobel’s dad was there, leaning against the fence. He waved her over.
Isobel stood, murmuring, “Be right back,” to Nikki, who remained where she was while Isobel jogged to meet her father. She was glad for an excuse to leave the bench, glad for a moment to recover.
“What’s going on with you guys tonight? You’re choking out there. Major.”
“What?” Was he talking about the squad? She hadn’t been paying attention.
“You guys are losing. Big-time. Haven’t you been watching the score?” He pointed.
Were they really losing? Isobel scanned the scoreboard. Wow. Thirty-one to zero. They were losing.
“Hey, what’s the deal with Brad out there?”
“Brad?”
“Yeah.” He folded his arms over the top of the fence, trying to act nonchalant now that he’d brought up the B word. “Didn’t you see him drop the ball? Have you been sleeping out there on that bench or what? This is the worst I think I’ve ever seen him play.”
Isobel looked around for Brad now. She saw him standing with the team on the sidelines, filling up a cup of water and pouring it down his shirt, despite the chill of the fifty-degree night.
While the rest of the team headed for the locker rooms, Coach Logan, his face purple, stood two heads below Brad, berating him the way a yappy dog might bark at a squirrel up a tree.
“Sheesh. Looks like Coach is really laying it on thick,” Isobel’s dad said. “Hey, Iz, I’m not trying to get in the middle of things here, but maybe you should go talk to him. See what’s going on?”
