Say More (Book 2 in "Say" Series)

F O U R

 I collapsed onto my bed and closed my eyes while Rita beelined for the shelves in the corner of my cramped dorm room. Those shelves held a trove of snacks. The same snacks that were feeding my very present fupa according to the Internet. My exhaustion was so strong that just a few moments after my body sunk into the firm mattress the fog of sleep settled over my brain. I didn't fight it. Being unconscious to everything going on around me would be a gift. No matter how much I wanted to rest, sleep couldn't manage to take me over completely. It still had to go a few rounds with my racing thoughts. I lay there as they batted around in there like they were high on the most potent coke and each refused to go down without a fight.

Devin's voice and the words basketball wife pinged around like curse words. I wasn't a basketball wife. I was a college student with a bright future in front of me. Basketball wives spent their days getting glammed up. By virtue of the state of my wig alone, I was not living up to any basketball wife standards. There was no way I could see myself spending hours to pick out an outfit just to sit in some ass-worn bleachers at a stadium and Yuri would never expect me to. But judging by those Instagram comments, the world would. I always wondered just how long my dirty tennis shoes and graphic tees would be considered girl-next-door cute. It seemed that the time was now. If Yuri went pro the blogs would tear my ass to shreds. That thought alone knocked sleep clear out of the ring and my eyes popped open. In a huff, I sat up and began to fish my laptop out of my bag. I needed to get that article spruced up and ready for the paper. That was at least one step in the right direction. Rita spun around toward me with a bag of Doritos in her hand.

"What are you doing?"

"I need to get this paper to my Maeve before she has an aneurysm." I settled into the wooden chair in front of my desk and connected my laptop to the charger.

"Her tight ass ponytail will cause her to have an aneurysm well before you do." She opened the bag of chips and took a handful before resting the bag on my desk. I fished a few chips out of the bag and let the cool ranch seasoning dance on my tongue and calm me. "Can't you take a quick nap or something and then send it?" Rita was looking at me with that concerned face. The one that made me float back in time to fourteen-year-old me. The girl with unruly hair clinging to a John Green novel and keeping my eyes to the ground. Marching from school to home and back again dreaming about being here at Columbia. Conquering the world. I felt guilty because twenty-year-old me was drowning in that girl's dream. It was all around me. The school. The guy. The friends and family. It was all just right and still, my lungs were collapsing and my body was going limp trying to ride the waves. I needed to get my shit together.

"I can't. I'm already late because I went to see Yuri."

"How was that?"

"He played great and we got to chill for a while. But..."

"Mhm?" Rita dusted her hands off and those deep oak eyes of hers bore into the side of my head. She'd begun wearing this cat eye look that I was crazy about - the chunky eyeliner over her light brown skin made her look like a vixen - but it also meant that her gaze had this added intensity that made me squirm a little. She crunched on a chip and trained her eyes on me as she waited for me to finish.

I couldn't allow the embarrassing words to come from my lips so I grabbed my phone instead. In a few presses, I'd pulled up the photo of Yuri and me and the offending comments. I passed the phone to Rita and busied myself with finishing my paper while Rita engrossed herself in me being dragged on the internet. After she was done she looked at me and poked her lip out.

"Aww, babes. I'm sorry. We've all had bad hair days girl. It's no big deal."

"But have any of your bad hair days made it onto the NCAA Instagram page?" I whispered. Her eyes widened.