Football players are assholes. I know; I'm related to their king. My older, and annoyingly overprotective, brother Jake is the star quarterback at Santa Cruz High School. I love him but hate living in his shadow. Everyone worshiping the air he breat...
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"No fucking way!" Harper's eyes widened. "Adonis was here!?"
"Yeah." I propped my feet on the back of the bleachers below and rested my elbows on my knees. My parents sat six seats over. All of Santa Cruz was here, except Emma. "Please don't call him that. Any and all of your normal insult nicknames are appreciated."
"Wow, he's got some balls." Harper's lips pulled into a sinister smile, creasing a shadow in the divot below her lower lip from the overhead spotlights. "Jake would've had the whole team kick his ass if he'd seen him."
A clear, cool, and fall breeze kissed my cheeks. It was perfect weather for a game. Not a single cloud hung in the sky. I sat with my best friend to watch our high school team propel itself through another championship-winning season. Peanuts and fried foods filtered through the air with the buzz of excited conversations. And I held no desire to be here. Logan being turf fertilizer didn't make me feel better. Would I have wanted that? At one point in our conversation, yep. "Probably."
She folded a blanket in half and sat on it. "What did he want?"
"To tell me." I inhaled and puffed out the exhale. "That he's been asking around about me."
"And?"
"And he likes me." My cheeks flushed warm. Not the girly, sweet version but soaked with regret, and I couldn't look at Harper. "Which was total, utter bullshit." Heat spread down the sides of my neck. With a squeeze of my stomach, I braced myself for her laughing. For all her escapades with boys, romance wasn't a driving factor. But she didn't laugh. Why didn't she laugh?
"Is that bad?" Her eyes swirled with an unfamiliar emotion. It was like awe, except drowned in hesitation. "Sounds more like the sweetest thing I've ever heard."
"It is a bad thing..." I trailed off and clasped my hands, which blurred under the hot tears that fought me all night. "A horrible, fucking embarrassing moment bad thing."
Her hand rubbed my closest upper arm. "Because?"
"Because, for a moment, I thought I liked him too," I admitted with a frown and glared at my intertwined fingers. It was my only explanation for how seriously disappointed and frustrated I was that he hadn't kissed me. Which was clearly, stupidly fucked up. He wanted to use me. I should hate him, and all of me did... except for an extremely annoying part that acknowledged his honesty and refused to be silenced.
"Elle." By Harper's stifled tone, she held back a smile. "He's hotter than lava, has big enough balls to say that he likes you, you like him back and desperately need to get laid-"
"Because he was using me, Harper." With a jolted movement, she almost fell off her seat. "He was using me to fuck with Jake. Ugh, I never should have kissed him."
The admission turned my tongue into sawdust and surged my blood in faint pulses up my neck. I cupped my heated cheeks. How could I have been so stupid? I saw through all of his bullshit and still gave him the benefit of the doubt. Assholes like that would never change.
