I'm Your Wreck

8- I Don't Think Anything

When I met up with Quinn again on Tuesday, I didn't ask her about the text she sent. It had been bothering me ever since Sunday, but I didn't know how to bring it up without feeling awkward about it.

"Remember how we used to kick around the ball when we were little?" she asked me, dropping the ball to her feet as we stood in the middle of the practice field. "Try to think about that. Being at home, Mom making us some homemade lemonade, Dad complaining about how the Rangers just lost a game."

It was easier not to get lost in my head with somebody else there. My chest still felt tense, but I was breathing and I felt grounded there on that field instead of the one at my high school where everything went to shit.

So when she kicked the ball to me, I stopped it with my cleat and took a deep breath before kicking it back to her. My aim was pathetic, but I was just happy to have kicked the ball.

"So, how are classes going?" Quinn asked in an attempt to distract me from overthinking the ball.

"Fine," I said. "I think I'm really going to love my Sport Data Strategy class, the syllabus sounds really interesting. But I'm also taking corporate finance and that's going suck some major ass."

"I think I'd rather pull teeth than take a corporate finance class," she said with a laugh and then slowly, she peered up at me and asked, "Are you dating anybody?"

I squinted my eyes at her. "Did Ollie say anything?"

"No," she said quickly. "Why? What does Ollie know that I don't?"

There was no way in hell I was going to tell my sister about Sam. I shared almost everything with Quinn, but my sexual history was definitely not one of them. Especially since we weren't dating and nothing serious was going to come out of it. So instead of explaining all of that to her, I just sighed and said, "No, I'm not dating anybody."

"You would tell me though, right?" she asked with her head cocked to the side. "Because I'm going to love and support you no matter who you choose to date."

For a moment, I thought she already knew about Sam and was trying to tell me that she'd be okay with knowing that I was having casual sex. Which felt weird, because no sibling should ever be okay with knowing that about their family members. But then it registered. The text from Sunday.

Still hot?

Idk you tell me

"Quinn, you don't think that I'm... or that I want to..." My words were failing me as I struggled to grasp the concept.

"I don't think anything!" she insisted.

"Your text on Sunday. You think that I think Banks is hot?" I stared at her dumbfounded.

"It is an objective truth that he's hot," she defended herself. "That's all I meant by the text."

I never gave Quinn any indication that I had ever thought about how Banks looked. Because I haven't thought about how he looks. I catch myself staring at his tattoos sometimes, but that's because they look cool and I couldn't tell what the octopus was until I asked and that was the only reason.

"You can be straight and acknowledge an attractive person of the same sex, you know," she pointed out with a light laugh. "I'm straight and I think Miley Cyrus is hot as hell. And Naomi Campbell, are you kidding me? Those legs?"

"Okay, I get it," I stopped her, kicking the ball back in her direction.

I wondered if there really was ever an emergency with her friend when we were at Wingin' It on Sunday, but I was too afraid of the answer to even ask the question.