CHAPTER 20
Emily
“Sip and Bitch really does fix everything.”
“I swear to God, if that doorbell is another delivery, I’m going to start crying again and bring you all down in misery with me!” I shout when the musical notes of Shepherd and Wren’s doorbell can be heard upstairs.
“Calm down, crazy. It’s seven o’clock, and the exact time a few of Owen’s teammates were stopping by to use the batting cage in the side yard,” Wren reminds me as I glare at the huge bouquet of red roses lying on the couch next to me that was delivered a half hour ago.
And then give another glare to the bouquet sitting in a vase in the middle of the bar that was delivered a half hour before that.
“This isn’t pretend for me. Nothing about this has been fake for me since the first day you puked your way into my life.”
And then I squeeze my eyes closed and try to block out Quinn’s words that have been torturing me for the last two days, but they stay right where they are, permanently etched in my brain and carved into my heart. I knew, right? A part of me had to have known it wasn’t fake for him either, but I ignored it, and I thought it would be easier to play this pretend game with him, when I should have known better. I just stood there with my back to him, letting him pour his heart out to me, because I was afraid.
I am afraid.
“I believe that last delivery made it a grand total of 187 red roses, Emily’s favorite color, and the number of days Quinn has known Emily, so that should be the last of them. Sorry about that and what Shepherd may or may not have shared with him.” Wren grimaces, making my shoulders droop and my eyes fill with tears, thinking about all the flowers filling every available surface of my cottage.
“Can you stop being stingy and tell us what this note says, pretty please?” Birdie asks sweetly, folding her hands under her chin.
“Not a chance,” I mutter, staring down at the note in my hand that came with the last delivery.
I lost my virginity to Joana Nunes in the eleventh grade. She was an older, more experienced senior. Her brother, who was home from college, walked in on us in her room, and she flew right off me, taking the blankets with her. Instead of covering myself up, I grabbed my phone and pretended like we had just been lounging around, watching videos. With my dick out.
-Quinn
With a quiet laugh, I lean to the side and start to shove the note into my purse. My hand stills and the smile slips from my face when I see the other matching notes shoved inside my bag. With each new flower delivery that showed up at my cottage, at work, at the Dip and Twist while I was helping Wren restock supplies, at Tess and Bodhi’s house last night when I went over for dinner, and twice now since I’ve been at Wren and Shepherd’s house, there’s been a handwritten note accompanying the flowers from Quinn, telling me something new about himself. Pulling the rest of the notes out of my purse, I slowly start flipping through them, the girls all still annoyed with me that I won’t share what they say. Just like the personal stuff he told me the night we met, it doesn’t feel right to share these things with anyone else either.
The first woman who broke my heart was Cherie Lord, sophomore year of college. She slept with my RA when I was at football camp over the summer. I actually introduced them before I left and told him to keep an eye on her. I probably should have specified he did not need to keep an eye on her vagina as well. They’re happily married now with three kids and living in Denver, so all in all, they owe their immeasurable happiness to me. Those bastards don’t even send me a Christmas card.
I wet the bed until I was seven. Fine, it was eight! But I swear to God, if you tell anyone I wet the bed until I was nine, I will deny, deny, deny! It was actually ten. Shut up, the hardest part is admitting it.
My favorite thing about playing football is watching all your hard work pay off. Watching a perfect spiral sail across the field and seeing it land right into your receiver’s hands, right where you were aiming… Jesus Christ, there’s nothing in the world like that high of hearing the crowd roar when you did your job perfectly.
I’ve never wanted to do anything with my life other than football. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t playing. Probably shrivel up and die LOL! I literally have nothing to fall back on. Man, my college advisor would be so pissed at me right now. I do have a communications degree, so I guess I can just bullshit my way into any job. That’s how that works, right?