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I laughed. “Oh, God no.”
This time, I could comprehend his expression perfectly. Surprise soured into irritation. “Why not? What’s so funny about that?” He started to look angry. “Let me guess, they’d also think I was a dumb jock.”
I bit back a grin. “First of all, there’s no way they’d believe me. Rachael Hamilton, dating the Leopards’ quarterback? Ha. Sophie especially would think I’d made it up. And it’d be totally embarrassing.”
“’Cause I’m a dumb jock.”
I kicked him. “Because David would be all, ‘let me pump your hand and say manly things about sports’ and Sophie would be like ‘ohmigod, I slept with half the football team in high school, maybe I should sleep with you too!’” I lowered my voice for David and raised it for Sophie, and then fell silent a moment. “That’s slut-shaming, isn’t it?” How depressing. “I shouldn’t do that.”
“It’s so hard to remember you’re all for sexual equality and no double standards.”
I gave him a look just as dry as his voice. “Don’t worry, I think you’re a slut too.”
He laughed. “Why don’t you like your brother’s girlfriend?”
“She was that popular girl in school. I wasn’t unpopular, but I certainly wasn’t the star of the field hockey and volleyball teams. Freshman year, she decided she didn’t like me.”
“How come?”
“Oh, I barely remember.” I stopped, and abruptly added, “I need to stretch out my legs.”
“Fine.” He didn’t move.
I looked at him warily, but he didn’t seem to feel one way or the other about it. Fine, indeed. After all, he’d decided hooking up with me was a lost cause. We were just...platonic friends. I cautiously extended my legs. They hovered in the air an inch or so, and then landed across his thighs. He was warm and solid and didn’t look like he cared. I felt like I’d done a fifty-yard dash and come out the winner.
I smiled, and continued. “I think she dumped her soda on me, and everyone laughed, and I got up and yelled at her about being a spoiled bitch—except I didn’t say bitch because I was way too Puritanical—and then I said, ‘The only reason people pretend to be friends with you is because they’re scared not to.’ And then she dropped her sloppy joe on me.”
All right. So the entire episode was burned into my memory.
“She sounds like a treat. Though I can commiserate with the name calling.”
“Oh, please. Sure, if it had stopped with the sloppy joe. But then she set out to make my life miserable, and she made fun of Kate and Madison and Carly, too. It wouldn’t matter so much if she wasn’t dating my brother right now, but I worry that she hasn’t really changed. Maybe if she’d only bullied me—who doesn’t have a high school bully?—but the lengths she went to, the things she did to my friends...” I shook my head. “I can’t imagine she’s good for David.”
Ryan watched me with the oddest expression. “That’s not how I would have imagined your high school experience.”
“Really? Huh. How was yours? Star of the football team? Most popular boy in school?”
He turned away. “Not exactly.”
I was surprised. “Really? Why not?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, come on. I just spilled my tragic teen past. What’s yours?”
“It’s boring.”
“Then it shouldn’t take long to tell.”
“All right.” He stared down at my black-stockinged calves, lying in his lap, and then at my feet, and then away, out the window at the thousand lights of Manhattan. His silhouette, like a Renaissance statue, made my breath catch. “I learned to play the game with my brothers and uncles, not in school. Because I wasn’t in school often enough to be on the team, ’cause I had to stay home half the time and take care of my mother. We couldn’t afford a personal caretaker. But she died my junior year, so I played football senior and got scouted. I had few friends and awful grades.” He looked back at me, hard. “Happy?”
No. I was sad. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
His hand landed softly on my leg, and my whole body tingled. “We knew she was dying. Breast cancer. I have this memory in my head of her tall and proud, and then sometimes I get flashes of her at the end, small and fragile and tired. She made bad puns up until the end.” He tugged on his earlobe and widened his eyes like he was shaking off a bad case of jitters. “Anyway. That was a long time ago.”
Nine years, if he’d been a junior in high school. I wondered if it still felt like yesterday. “Did she like football?”
He snorted laugher. “She hated it. All sports. She taught, and wanted just one of her sons to follow in her steps. She always said it would be me.”
