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Shit. I need to get my head on straight, because if I start thinking about her now, I won’t stop.
“Why the sudden interest?” Willow asks, fortunately pulling me out of my thoughts. Though, I’m not sure this is a conversation I should keep taking part in. She raises her eyebrows and asks, “You’ve got your mind on someone?”
I instinctively set my expression blank, giving a firm shake of my head with a quick, “No.”
“Really?” she asks, a journalist’s curiosity and a friend’s teasing glint in her eyes, a smile touching her mouth. “Not even Daria?”
“Daria?” I repeat. I lift my chin, resisting the urge to clench my jaw because Willow’s sharp eye won’t miss the movement. She’ll dig, because that’s what she does, and if she wasn’t a friend, I would’ve been annoyed. “Why would you think that?”
I’m playing stupid, and the look she gives me tells me she thinks as much, too. The truth is, if there was anyone I would ever consider getting into a relationship with, it would be Daria. I get along with her better than most people, and the sex doesn’t compare to anyone else I have been with in the past. She’s beautiful, kind, funny, and isn’t afraid to put me in my place. It’s hot as fuck, and I show her I think as much in every kiss and every slide of my dick inside of her.
But with Willow, of course, I play dumb.
She shrugs, not buying me on my shit. “Because she’s pretty and sweet, and the two of you seemed really close at Lilah’s birthday,” she says, very matter of fact and straight to the point.
I breathe out a chuckle, rubbing my jaw with a shake of my head. “We’re good friends,” I tell her, which is the truth.
Willow tilts her head, looking up at me in mild concern. “Then why are you sweating?”
My back tenses. “I’m not.”
She breaks into a laugh, and my expression flattens in bemusement. I see Reed look over at us, the corner of his mouth tilting up at the sound of Willow’s laugh, and I want to call him out for being whipped but I refrain from doing so. “That was way too easy,” Willow muses as her laughter subsides. “Well, either way—if theredoesend up being someone you wanna be with and the whole media circus tries to stop you, don’t let it. Trust me, it’s all worth it in the end.”
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, slowly nodding. I give Willow a small smile despite the knots forming in my stomach. “I appreciate the advice, Willow,” I tell her genuinely, the corner of my mouth tipping up a notch. “Just don’t think there’s anyone for me yet.”
“Yet,” she emphasizes, a knowing spark in her eyes as she takes a step back. “You’ll get there,” she adds before turning and walking off to where Reed stands, leaving me shaking my head in mild amusement.
* * *
“So, I’ve been thinking—”
“Well, shit,” I say, my lips tipping up as I hear Dad scoff on the other end of the phone call.
“Can it, kid,” he says with a laugh of his own. “I’ve got some vacation days coming up. Thinkin’ about coming back to Chicago for a few days.”
“Yeah?” I ask, the news prompting me to sit up as I drive home. The thought of Dad coming here pulls a smile from me. I haven’t seen him in a little over five months, with him having his own life in Texas. He moved there after I graduated college and was drafted to the NFL, and I never held it against him. I don’t blame him for wanting to get out of Chicago after my brother passed. Besides, even after Dad moved, we’re still close. We talk on the phone often, he comes to our games when we play in Texas, and we see each other during major holidays. He’s got his life, and I’ve got mine. “When were you thinking of coming?”
I hear papers shuffling on his end of the line. “Next week, probably Monday. I’ll stay for a week, I think.”
I grin as I pull into my building’s parking garage. “I’ll have the guest room ready for you, Pops.”
He chuckles. “Appreciate it, son. Oh—will I get to meet Daria and Elaine?”
I suck in a breath through my teeth as I park the car, scratching the back of my head at his question. I’ve mentioned Daria and her daughter to my dad a couple of times—strictly in a platonic way, because anything else would have Dad raising questions that I don’t have the answers to. Or questions I don’t really want to think about in general when it comes to me and her. Questions that turn an easy thing complicated.
“Ah, maybe—I don’t know,” I tell him vaguely. “Maybe we could get together for lunch or something. I’ll ask her.”
But will I actually? Fuck if I know. Meeting my dad, sitting down and having a meal with him—all of us? It feels a little too intimate, and the idea alone might have Daria rattled. The two of us. . . It’s like we are constantly treading the fine line between being casual friends with benefits to something more, and sometimes I think neither of us can tell when we are crossing that line.
It’s too effortless between us. It can be so Goddamn easy to fall into the idea of something more when we are just being us. I know her and she knows me; in the year or so we have known each other, the months we have been sleeping together, it’s damn near impossible to not get to know someone so intimately, on a level deeper than either of us expected. Intimate shit like that—it can’t be kept just casual, even if it’s just between friends.
For fuck’s sake, I don’t even know what my own feelings are when it comes to Daria. Physical and sexual attraction is one thing, admiration as a friend is another—but anything beyond that? Romantic feelings? I don’t fucking know.
Because what if I’m confusing romantic feelings for a combination of my attraction to her and a platonic relationship? Jesus Christ, I can’t remember the last time I was even in a relationship. My life has been about football for so long that relationships always came second to it. Or they just weren’t on my radar. If I wanted sex, I got it from someone who was also just looking for that. But with Daria, it’s become more personal, and yet I can’t ever bring myself to stop.
I may or may not be a little fucked.
When I get back to my apartment, I pour myself a drink, just as my phone rings again. “Popular fucking guy,” I mutter to myself as I reach for the device. Daria’s name on the screen has me tightening my grip on the glass as I answer it and put it on speaker. “Hey, Ria.”
