“Scared of what?”
“Making the first move and it not being reciprocated. Y’all are stuck in a vortex of fear and miscommunication. Someone has to break through it first.”
I know he’s right on my part. I’m terrified to lose her again. I got a taste of it all those years ago when I went off to college and she dropped out of my life, and I never want a repeat. But is the same thing happening on her end? I don’t have enough proof of that yet. “I don’t know how to figure that out without straight-up asking her. It’s too much of a risk. I don’t want to lose her, because she’s seriously the best friend I’ve ever had.”
Jamal slides his jacket on. “First, ouch. And second, you just need an opportunity to test the waters without there being repercussions.”
I’m all ears now. “How do I do that?”
He laughs and slaps my shoulder as he passes toward the door. “I don’t know, man. We can’t do all the work for you.”
“I don’t think you’ve done any work so far,” I tell Jamal, and he waves double birds over his shoulders. “We’ll have a whiteboard planning session soon.”
Price passes by next. “Sorry, I’m too sober to come up with good ideas tonight.”
“A little concerning to hear,” I tell him.
Lawrence stops in front of me next. “I say just go for it. True love only comes once in a lifetime—don’t let it pass you by.” We all blink at our most aggressive left tackle. Turns out he is surprisingly romantic for a man who operates like a tank.
Derek is the last to step up and offer his sage advice on what I should do with Bree to get myself out of the friend zone. But it’s not romantic or sweet, so I won’t repeat it. Although I will tuck it away for a rainy day.
All night I’m lying awake thinking about what my friends said. Part of me thinks they’ve lost it and should be telling me to
get over her instead of considering starting something up. But another part of me is left wondering what I can do to test the waters. And also maybe fantasizing a little too much about what Derek said…
Oh no.
I think someone has mistaken my head for a city road that needs repairing and is taking a jackhammer to it. Curse the guys for letting me drink so much last night! I must have been really far gone because without even opening my eyes, I know I’m in Nathan’s apartment. Everything smells like him, and only in Nathan’s guest bed are the sheets this soft. I had to have been out-of-my-mind drunk if he didn’t even let me go home. How embarrassing.
Memories float through my head, and I give them attention with hesitation. Part of me is not sure I want to remember. What if I took my top off? No. Nathan would absolutely never let me do that. But we all know by now that serenading anyone who will listen is not out of the realm of possibility.
Thankfully, I don’t have any memories of either of those events. I do, however, have a hazy recollection of spilling a drink on my shirt and running off to the bathroom to get it out. I think I remember talking some poor lady’s ear off, and then…oh yeah, Nathan came in and rescued me. He’s always doing that. That probably adds to his reasons for not being attracted to me—he wants a girl who doesn’t ride the hot mess express on the regular.
I kick off the covers, much to the dismay of my screaming head, and look down: fully clothed in my outfit from last night and oddly disappointed by that. In the movies when the best friend gets drunk and the hero gets her home safely, he also helps her change into one of his oversized t-shirts (looking away the whole time with epic chivalry, of course) and she wakes up swaddled in his scent. I just smell like beer. And nail polish?
No time to lie here and wallow. I force myself to sit up and reach for my phone. The sun is out so I know Nathan is already gone. He has to keep a ridiculous schedule for the team and is usually at the training facility by six thirty or seven every morning. I’m grateful for it this morning, because I don’t think I could face him after telling him he smells soooo good. Mmhm, I remember that part, and I regret it deeply. (Although it is true.)
Swiping open my phone, I see that it’s eight AM, and holy moly I have 32 emails?! Is that real? I also notice that my sister has tried to call me several times and texted me a million more. That’s not normal, and a feeling of foreboding creeps over me.
I scroll down my contact list and press call next to her name.
It rings a few times, but I’m not worried she’ll be asleep. One, because she called me enough times to make my cell phone provider want to give up and assume a new identity. Two, because Lily has three kids under the age of six so my poor big sister is always up with the sun. Someone give that woman an award.
“Hi babe!” she says in a loud sunshiny voice that rams into my skull. “NO, JOHNNY, PUT THAT KNIFE DOWN!”
I whimper and pull the phone away from my ear. Ughhhhh is my only response to Johnny’s knife wielding.
“Uh-oh, are you okay?” says Lily. “Hang on, I’ll—DOUG, WATCH THE KIDS, I’M GOING OUTSIDE TO TALK TO B!”
I hiss like an angry cat, and she just laughs. I hear shuffling and imagine her pulling on her puffy pink robe before opening the front door to go sit on the front stoop of her adorable cookie-cutter suburban home. It’s white and has black shutters and a rose garden in the front. If I look out my apartment window, I see a convenience store with bars on the windows, some pretty horrific graffiti caked on the walls, and a tumbleweed of trash rolling down the sidewalk. LA is wild like that, because in a matter of five blocks toward Nathan’s apartment on the beach, you go from my dehydrated-yellow apartment building with sticky floors to his three-million-dollar apartment with valet parking and perfectly manicured shrubbery.
So yeah, my sister and I are polar opposites. Where I have wild curly hair, she has straight, gorgeous, blonde locks that always look like she just left the salon. Where I was out drunk with a bunch of football players last night and tucked in by my best friend, she was probably rocking and singing one of my nephews to sleep before going downstairs to sit on the couch with Doug—her husband and the love of her life—to eat ice cream and watch TV. I’m sure he rubbed her feet.
Sometimes I’m tempted to be jealous of her, but a larger part of me also knows I’d never feel happy in her life. I love where I’m at. I also love that if you go look at that graffiti wall on the convenience store, you’ll find my name spelled out in a really cool font, because I watched the guy while he sprayed the original art on the wall and told him it was awesome. He added my name as a tattoo on the dragon that’s mauling the human. Really sweet stuff.
I don’t want Lily’s life; I mostly just want someone to love me like Doug loves her. That’s the part I’m really jealous of.
“Does someone have a hangover?” she asks gently with a smile in her voice.