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Colin stared at me, and a range of emotions played out on his face. Surprise. Confusion. And finally, unease. “You’re texting with your ex?”
I frowned. “Don’t make it sound like that. She texted me because she had a question about the pool. The pump wasn’t running.”
This wasn’t a total lie. Cassidy had sent me a message earlier today asking about this. But it was shitty what I was doing, how I was lying to him.
“Oh.” He accepted my statement, his concern abandoned, and his focus returned to his laptop. I studied my friend for one long, critical moment, and determination built inside me. This conversation was long overdue.
“Guess who I ran into the other day.” I forced casualness into the words, hoping to sound natural.
He didn’t take his eyes off his screen. “Who?”
“Sydney.”
Well, that got his attention. His interested gaze snapped to me. “My sister? Where?”
My heart beat faster. “At the movie theater. We said hi and talked for a minute.”
Actually, we fucked in your dad’s car, and we talked after.
“Yeah? That’s cool.” He nodded but wasn’t all that impressed. Our suburb was small, and running into people you knew happened all the time.
“Remember how she beat me at beer pong at our graduation party?” I asked. “When she’d never even played before?”
“Syd for the win.” His expression shifted as if he were trying to hide his discomfort. “That was the motto in my family.”
His tone was light, but I heard everything he wasn’t saying buried beneath it. Sydney had always been the golden child, even before Colin entered high school. She could do no wrong, and he couldn’t do a damn thing right.
But I never got the impression he resented her for that—only his parents.
“I’m not convinced she wasn’t just lucky,” I said.
He let out a short laugh. “If you played her again tomorrow, I’m telling you, she’d beat you. She always wins.”
It was the opening I was looking for. “So, if I wanted to ask her for a rematch some time, would that be cool?”
Colin blinked, and for a moment, he was sure I wasn’t serious. But the longer my question sat with him, the more worried he became. His smile hung awkwardly. “A rematch?” he repeated, and then sobered. “You mean, like a date?”
I tossed up a hand. “No, of course not.” Shit, I was overcompensating. “I mean,” I sputtered, “I don’t know if I’d call it that.”
His eyes narrowed and his broad shoulders tensed. “Oh, yeah? What would you call it, then?”
Shit. “I just thought we could hang out or something. Me and her.” I tacked it on, but it was pointless. “As friends.”
He laughed again, only this one was humorless. “Yeah, no. Not a chance.”
Annoyance crawled up my spine. “Why not?”
Colin’s gaze was dark. “Are you seriously asking if you can date my sister?”
I should have been smarter and taken some time to consider how to respond, but my ‘fuck it’ attitude stormed in and said it had it covered. “What if I am?”
His expression hardened. “The answer is no. In fact, it’s hell no.”
On some level, I knew how this conversation was going to go, and yet it still hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t just pissed off—I was hurt. Sydney’s comment from before echoed through my mind. Why was I good enough to be Colin’s best friend . . . but not good enough for his sister?
Part of me already knew the answer, but I asked it anyway. “Why?”
He peered at me as if I were suddenly a stranger to him. “Because you don’t date, Preston. You don’t care about feelings or really want anything serious. You fuck a girl, and the next day, you’re on to the next one. So, can you blame me for not wanting that for my little sister?”
