Varsity Quotes

Most Bolton students were scions of the city's wealthiest families. My crewe stuck out like hooker at church. We werent part of their pampered, priveliged world, and many of our classmates were quick to remind us of that fact. Taunting the "boat kids" was practically a varsity sport.

He's gawking at me when I open the door. "Damn girl," he says, looking me over, "what the hell are you trying to do to me?" I look down at myself, still trying to wake up the rest of the way and realize I'm in those tiny cotton white shorts and varsity tee with no bra on underneath. Oh my God, my nipples are like beacons shining through my shirt! I cross my arms over my chest and try not to look at him i the eyes when he helps himself the rest of the way inside. "I was going to tell you to get dressed," he goes on, grinning as he walks into the room carrying his bags and the guitar, "but really, you can go just like that if you want." I shake my head, hiding the smile creeping up on my face.

A game at which the liberals have become masters is that of deliberate evasiveness. The question often comes up `what can you do?`. If you ask him to do something like stopping to use segregated facilities or dropping out of varsity to work at menial jobs like all blacks or defying and denouncing all provisions that make him privileged, you always get the answer - `but that's unrealistic!' While this may be true, it only serves to illustrate the fact that no matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin - his passport to privilege- will always put him miles ahead of the black men. Thus in the ultimate analysis, no white person can escape being part of the oppressor camp.

Puberty flicked a switch inside of them and dreams were replaced by hormones and college prep courses and varsity sports while I continued to look for faeries in the woods behind my house.

You count the years until you get a varsity jersey, then you're a hero, an idol, a cocky bastard because in this town you can do no wrong. You win and win and you're the king of your own little world, then poof, it's gone. You play your last game and everybody cries. You can't believe it's over. Then another team comes right behind you and you're forgotten.

Let me tell you girls a story, short and sweet. In high school, I was a junior varsity cheerleader dating a senior who was up for football scholarships. I'd slept with him several times willingly. One night I wasn't in the mood, but he was. So he held me down and forced me. The few people I told about it - including my best friend - pointed out what would happen to him if I told. They stressed the fact that I hadn't been a virgin, that we were dating, that we'd had sex before. So I kept quiet. I never even told my mother. That boy put bruises on my body. I was crying and begging him to stop and he didn't. That's called rape, ladies.

This isn't 'I do something for you, you do something for me'. This is hard-core friendship. Varsity level. This is me asking you to do something for me without getting anything in return. This is friendship, Howie.

You think you can just throw me away for some junior varsity mall rat?

He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me against him, tossing the ice cream cone over his shoulder. It landed with a splat on the sidewalk. "So does that mean I have a varsity girlfriend?" I giggled like a total girl and linked my hands behind his neck. "Yeah I guess it does." "Sweet." Then he bent his head, and I stood up on my tiptoes and we met in the middle. And it was perfect.

Lainey is hot in a prom queen kind of way and we used to be friends back in grade school, but that was two lifetimes ago. Now she’s a varsity soccer player and card-carrying popular girl who hangs out with the kind of mean girls and douchebags who get killed first in horror movies.

I wasn't worried about myself. I didn't consider the possibility that either of the men could catch me. I was all-star varsity soccer. I was Braveheart in Urban Outfitters. I was Supergirl. I was seriously delusional.

Two boys, both in varsity football, kissing under the bleachers, muscular silhouettes merging against the deep purple sky. I wasn’t the only one with a secret. In the grand scheme of things, my secret wasn’t even as dangerous as some of theirs.

Every three hundred years or so, our kind gets loosed upon an unsuspecting world. And this time around, the history books would know us as the 1989 Danvers High School Women’s Varsity Field Hockey team. Be. Aggressive. B-E aggressive.

Once again, airborne forces appeared to be coins burning a hole in the pockets of Allied commanders, coins that simply had to be spent. Soldiers soon mocked the operation as VARSITY BLUNDER, and burial squads with pruning saws and ladders took two days to cut down all the dead.

The main one I could understand was that money-earning ones pay taxes. Whereas you can’t collect shit on what people grow and eat on the spot, or the work they swap with their neighbors. That’s like a percent of blood from a turnip. So, the ones in charge started cooking it into everybody’s brains to look down on the land people, saying we are an earlier stage of human, like junior varsity or cavemen. Weird-shaped heads.

It would be useless to try to segregate outstanding members of Washington's varsity shell, just as it would be impossible to try to pick a certain note in a beautifully composed song. All were merged into one smoothly working machine; they were, in fact, a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades.

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher.

Jen- I have to tell you - I haven't said this before but I've wanted to + now I want to say it all the time: I LOVE YOU. I love you on the page + I love you in the library + in the coffee shop + in the last row of the Varsity. I love you here. I love you in negitive space - ok, i don't know exactly what that means but i'm pretty sure its true - + I love who you have been + who you will be. I should say this to you in person, and i'm going to - over & over - but I think I needed to say it here first. Jennifer Heyward, I love you.

During my last year of high school, I tried out for the varsity golf team. For about a year, I’d taken golf lessons from an old golf pro.

varsity

You're playing hookey for her? You met her, what, five minutes ago? And now she's what? Your girlfriend? Did you give her your varsity jacket?

When Jordan was cut from the varsity team, he was devastated. His mother says, “I told him to go back and discipline himself.

This kid, he has to remember, this freaking junior varsity water boy, cut the heads off five men and rolled them across a disco floor like he was duckpin bowling. Guilty feet ain't got no rhythm, Eddie thinks.

Coach McConaughy grabbed the whistle swinging from a chain around his neck and blew it. “Seats, team!” Coach considered teaching tenthgrade biology a side assignment to his job as varsity basketball coach, and we all knew it. “It may not have occurred to you kids that sex is more than a fifteenminute trip to the backseat of a car. It’s science. And what is science?” “Boring,” some kid in the back of the room called out. “The only class I’m failing,” said another.

The snow was still drifting from the sky when we stepped out into the parking lot. The Hellcat was covered with a fine layer of the white stuff because it’d been parked there for so long. Beside me, Rimmel shivered, and I felt like an ass because she’d been out in this cold half the day and then stood in the drafty tunnel and had to wait on me. The engine was already purring; I’d hit the electronic start as soon as it came into sight. I pulled off my varsity jacket as we walked around to the passenger side, and I draped it around her shoulders. “Pretty soon I’m gonna have your entire wardrobe.” She smiled and pulled my coat farther around her. “You can have whatever you want, baby.

I have always noticed in high school yearbooks the similarity of all the graduate write-ups—how, after only a few pages, the identities of all the unsullied young faces blur, how one person melts into another and another: Susan likes to eat at Wendy’s; Donald was on the basketball team; Norman is vain about his varsity sweater; Gillian broke her arm on Spring Retreat; Brian is a car nut; Sue wants to live in Hawaii; Don wants to make a million and be a ski bum; Noreen wants to live in Europe; Gordon wants to be a radio deejay in Australia. At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities—to clarify just who it is we really are?

Again and again the demons closed upon Tom, and again and again he took his imaginary basketball and dribbled it into a clear space. He zigzagged fast, dancing feet barely touching the ground, changing direction sharply and unpredictably. “What is he doing?” Stella gasped, her hand over the bleeding wound on her stomach. “He made varsity,” Twist said. “He made what?

Look, no one wants to hear that maybe she’s the reason her mother flew the coop. But my advice to you is to put this behind you. File it away in the drawer that’s saved for all the other crap that isn’t fair, like how the Kardashians are famous and how good-looking people get served faster at restaurants and how a kid who can’t skate to save his life winds up on the varsity hockey team because his dad is the coach.

And more to the point, I have no idea what I want to do. It shouldn't be a surprise. I've had years to think about it. That and just the other day I was pestering Wolf about what he wanted to do--talk about the pot calling the kettle black. But that's just it, I guess. I've never had to think about it. I have very diligently kept all of my options open. The AP classes, the killer GPA, the SAT scores in the 99th percentile, the varsity letters from swim team, the debate club, the fundraising... I've taken on everything and succeeded at it. There is not one weak spot that can be pointed to in my resume, not a single thing that would make an administrator say, "Yes, but what about her..." Except maybe this. Except the part where it's suddenly clear to me why I've been struggling so much with my college essays, with articulating who I am in so few words. How can a person even know who they are if they don't know what they want?

Pete Berman sized up his competition like a predator lining up its prey. Gerry Williams dribbled once with his left hand, stopped on a dime, and nailed an open 15-footer. He had played on the Fellingwood Varsity Basketball Team since his freshman year, and was now a 16 year-old boy in a man's body. Pete sat on a board of the old splinter-ridden, wooden stands fixed on Gerry, but he was unable to defend his turf. His team was losing badly again, and the waiting was pure agony.

always loved school. I played varsity lacrosse and field hockey. I could be friends with the cool kids and the smart kids and the sporty kids and even the stoner kids although I didn’t like to get stoned. I could cross social lines seamlessly and be whoever people needed me to be. I’d like to say it was a gift born of my curiosity about people, but in truth it was more of a response to trauma. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to feel safe. So I needed every single person I met to like me, and if I could make them love and need me, even better.

And this isn’t high school. Now that you’re not worried that (a) your skirt is too short or too long and the other kids will laugh at you, (b) you’re not going to make the varsity swimming team, (c) you’re still going to be a pimple-studded virgin when you graduate (probably when you die, for that matter), (d) the physics teacher won’t grade the final on a curve, or (e) nobody really likes you anyway AND THEY NEVER DID… now that all that extraneous shit is out of the way, you can study certain academic matters with a degree of concentration you could never manage while attending the local textbook loonybin.

For the rest of Kat’s childhood, she moved from one relative’s house to another’s, up and down the East Coast, living in four homes before entering high school. Finally, in high school, she lived for a few years with her grandmother, her mom’s mom, whom she called “G-Ma.” No one ever talked about her mom’s murder. “In my family, my past was ‘The Big Unmentionable’—including my role in putting my own father in jail,” she says. In high school, Kat appeared to be doing well. She was an honor student who played four varsity sports. Beneath the surface, however, “I was secretly self-medicating with alcohol because otherwise, by the time everything stopped and it got quiet at night, I could not sleep, I would just lie there and a terrible panic would overtake me.” She went to college, failed out, went back, and graduated. She went to work in advertising, and one day, dissatisfied, quit. She went back to grad school, piling up debt. She became a teacher. Kat quit that job too, when a relationship she had formed with another teacher imploded. At the age of thirty-four, Kat went to stay with her brother and his family in Hawaii. She got a job as a valet, parking cars. “I’d come home from parking cars all day and curl up on my bed in the back bedroom of my brother’s house, and lie there feeling desperate and alone, my heart beating with anxiety.

William worked on his passing too, so he could feed the ball to the best players in the park. He wanted to keep his place on the court, and he knew that if he made the other boys better, he had value. He learned where to run to provide space for the shooters to cut in to. He set screens so they could take their favorite shots. The boys slapped William on the back after a successful play, and they always wanted him on their side. This acceptance calmed some of the fear William carried inside him; on the basketball court, he knew what to do. By the time William entered high school, he was a good-enough player to start for the varsity team. He was five foot eight and played point guard. His hours of practice with the glasses had paid off; he was by far the best dribbler on the team, and he had a nice midrange jumper. He’d

Talking about your crazy spots not only saves your daughter the work of trying to change your fully formed personality, it also builds her emotional intelligence. In its more basic form, your daughter’s emotional intelligence will help her to consider competing mental states. But when you teach her about your crazy spots, you are taking her emotional intelligence up several notches: you are inviting her to think about your motivations in a broad perspective that includes past experiences and relationships. By encouraging her to expand her insight beyond what’s happening in the moment, you’ll advance your daughter from varsity level emotional intelligence (“Why does Mom act psychotic when I track mud through the house?”) to the pros (“Mom acts psychotic because she didn’t have to share her space when she was growing up, so she doesn’t always handle it well now”).

At Notre Dame, we have a squad of about three hundred lads—both varsity veterans and newcomers. They keep practicing fundamentals, and keep it up, and keep it up, and keep it up, until these various fundamentals become as natural and subconscious as breathing. Then in the game, they don’t have to stop and wonder what to do next when the time comes for quick action. The same principles apply to selling, just as well as football. If you want to be a star in the selling game, you’ve got to have your fundamentals— the A B C’s of your job, so firmly in your mind, that they are part of you. Know them so well that no matter at what point a prospect breaks away from the path to closing, you can get him back on the track again without either of you consciously realizing what has taken place. You can’t develop that perfection by looking in the mirror and congratulating your company for taking you on. You’ve got to drill and drill and drill!

[...]a man and a boy, side by side on a yellow Swedish sofa from the 1950s that the man had bought because it somehow reminded him of a zoot suit, watching the A’s play Baltimore, Rich Harden on the mound working that devious ghost pitch, two pairs of stocking feet, size 11 and size 15, rising from the deck of the coffee table at either end like towers of the Bay Bridge, between the feet the remains in an open pizza box of a bad, cheap, and formerly enormous XL meat lover’s special, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, and ham, all of it gone but crumbs and parentheses of crusts left by the boy, brackets for the blankness of his conversation and, for all the man knew, of his thoughts, Titus having said nothing to Archy since Gwen’s departure apart from monosyllables doled out in response to direct yes-or-nos, Do you like baseball? you like pizza? eat meat? pork?, the boy limiting himself whenever possible to a tight little nod, guarding himself at his end of the sofa as if riding on a crowded train with something breakable on his lap, nobody saying anything in the room, the city, or the world except Bill King and Ken Korach calling the plays, the game eventless and yet blessedly slow, player substitutions and deep pitch counts eating up swaths of time during which no one was required to say or to decide anything, to feel what might conceivably be felt, to dread what might be dreaded, the game standing tied at 1 and in theory capable of going on that way forever, or at least until there was not a live arm left in the bullpen, the third-string catcher sent in to pitch the thirty-second inning, batters catnapping slumped against one another on the bench, dead on their feet in the on-deck circle, the stands emptied and echoing, hot dog wrappers rolling like tumbleweeds past the diehards asleep in their seats, inning giving way to inning as the dawn sky glowed blue as the burner on a stove, and busloads of farmhands were brought in under emergency rules to fill out the weary roster, from Sacramento and Stockton and Norfolk, Virginia, entire villages in the Dominican ransacked for the flower of their youth who were loaded into the bellies of C-130s and flown to Oakland to feed the unassuageable appetite of this one game for batsmen and fielders and set-up men, threat after threat giving way to the third out, weak pop flies, called third strikes, inning after inning, week after week, beards growing long, Christmas coming, summer looping back around on itself, wars ending, babies graduating from college, and there’s ball four to load the bases for the 3,211th time, followed by a routine can of corn to left, the commissioner calling in varsity teams and the stars of girls’ softball squads and Little Leaguers, Archy and Titus sustained all that time in their equally infinite silence, nothing between them at all but three feet of sofa;

How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.

No matter how remarkable his behavior was, you always felt that he was detached from it. More than anything else, it was this quality that sometimes scared me away from him. I would get so close to Fanshawe, would admire him so intensely, would want so desperately to measure up to him—and then, suddenly, a moment would come when I realized that he was alien to me, that the way he lived inside himself could never correspond to the way I needed to live. I wanted too much of things, I had too many desires, I lived too fully in the grip of the immediate ever to attain such indifference. It mattered to me that I do well, that I impress people with the empty signs of my ambition: good grades, varsity letters, awards for whatever it was they were judging us on that week. Fanshawe remained aloof from all that, quietly standing in his corner, paying no attention. If he did well, it was always in spite of himself, with no struggle, no effort, no stake in the thing he had done. This posture could be unnerving, and it took me a long time to learn that what was good for Fanshawe was not necessarily good for me.

When I burst into the terminal, my eyes swept around, bouncing from person to person in the crowded, bustling space. My stomach fell a little when I didn’t see him, but I knew he probably couldn’t come this far. He was probably at baggage claim. I looked around for a sign to point me in the right direction and finally saw one labeled Baggage Claim with an arrow pointing off to the left. But I didn’t follow the arrow. My eyes fixed on someone standing beneath the sign. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his well-worn slouchy jeans. The relaxed action pulled the waistband low, highlighting his flat, narrow waist his Henley tee molded to. As usual, he was wearing his varsity jacket and his blond hair was a mess. My gaze locked on his sapphire-blue eyes and didn’t let go. His eyes, ohmigod, his eyes. The blue was so intense it served as an emergency brake on everything in my life. The second I looked at him, everything else came to a screeching halt. I no longer noticed the huge crowd rushing around. The anxiety-causing flight was just a distant memory, and the two weeks I spent longing for his touch became something I would live through ten times over just to be in this moment with him again. His lips pulled into a smile and the charm that oozed from every pore in his body made me almost lightheaded. Romeo pulled his hands out of his pockets and straightened, motioning for me. I rushed across the space separating us, my bag slapping against my side as I, for once, gracefully maneuvered around the people in my path. His chuckle brushed over me when I was just steps away, and I threw myself at him with a little sigh of relief. My legs wrapped around his waist and his arms locked around my back. I burrowed my head into his shoulder and inhaled deep, taking in his distinctive scent. “Rim,” he murmured, his voice low. I pulled back and his lips were on mine instantly. The moment our lips touched, he stilled, his body and mouth pausing against mine. Before I could wonder why, he muttered a garbled curse against my mouth and then his lips began to move. He kissed me softly but fiercely. There was so much possession in the way he kissed me, in the way his arms locked around me that my heart stuttered. I parted my lips so his tongue could sweep inside, and when my tongue met his, desire, hot and heavy, unfurled within me. Someone chuckled as they walked by, and Romeo retreated slightly, still letting his mouth linger on mine before completely pulling away. He rested his forehead against mine and he smiled. “I really fucking missed you.” “Me too,” I whispered. -Romeo & Rimmel

the cotton fields and strawberry patches of a much harsher world whose tragedies and daily burdens had blunted her temperament and quelled her emotions. But its most immediate impact on this teenage girl was not the lack of a demure coquettishness that otherwise might have defined her had she grown up in better circumstances; it was the visible evidence of the hardship of her journey. This was not a pom-pom-waving homecoming queen or a varsity athlete who had toned her body in a local gym. My mother never complained, but it was her struggles that had visibly shaped her shoulders, grown her biceps, and crusted her palms—while in a less visible way narrowing her view of her own long-term horizons. Decades later, when I was in my forties, I suppressed a defensive anger as I watched my mother sit quietly in an expansive waterfront Florida living room while a well-bred woman her age described the supposedly difficult impact of the Great Depression on her family. As the woman told it, the crash on Wall Street and the failed economy had made it necessary for them to ship their car by rail from New York to Florida when they headed south for the winter. Who could predict, she reasoned, whether there would be food or gasoline if their driver had to refuel and dine in the remote and hostile environs of small-town Georgia? My mother merely smiled and nodded, as

He claimed he was on the right track as far as the two kinds of economy people, land versus money. But not city people against us personally. It’s the ones in charge, like government or what have you. They were always on the side of the money-earning people, and down on the land people, due to various factors Tommy mentioned, monetize this, international banking that. The main one I could understand was that money-earning ones pay taxes. Whereas you can’t collect shit on what people grow and eat on the spot, or the work they swap with their neighbors. That’s like a percent of blood from a turnip. So, the ones in charge started cooking it into everybody’s brains to look down on the land people, saying we are an earlier stage of human, like junior varsity or cavemen. Weird-shaped heads. Tommy was watching TV these days, and seeing finally how this shit is everywhere you look. Dissing the country bumpkins, trying to bring us up to par, the long-termed war of trying to shame the land people into joining America. Meaning their version, city. TV being the slam book of all times, maybe everybody in the city was just going along with it, not really noticing the rudeness factors. Possibly to the extent of not getting why we are so fucking mad out here. It took a lot of emails of Tommy telling me how far back it went, this offensive to wedge people off their own holy ground and turn them into wage labor. Before the redneck miner wars, the coal land grabs, the timber land grabs. Whiskey Rebellion: an actual war. George Washington marched the US Army on our people for refusing to pay tax on corn liquor. Which they weren’t even selling for money, mainly just making for neighborly entertainment. How do you get tax money out of moonshine? Answer: You and what army. It goes a ways

What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?" "...I say our colleges to-day are business colleges—Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result—success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business. "Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them—coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines. "The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale—what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.' "Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count—everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual.

It’s my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn’t planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he’s nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits. Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I’d agreed to go. I guess he’d figured it’d be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don’t want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me. Always. I finally spot him in the crowd--it’s not too hard, since he’s a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground. Oh my God, this can’t be happening. I’ve fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I’m supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming. Heck, it’s a full-blown garden at this point. “Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!” comes the principal’s voice. “Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She’s escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. I’m afraid there’s no escort, so we’ll just--” “Ryder Marsden,” I call out as I make my way across the stage. “I’m escorted by Ryder Marsden.” The collective gasp that follows my announcement is like something out of the movies. I swear, it’s just like that scene in Gone with the Wind where Rhett offers one hundred and fifty dollars in gold to dance with Scarlett, and she walks through the scandalized bystanders to take her place beside Rhett for the Virginia reel. Only it’s the reverse. I’m standing here doing the scandalizing, and Ryder’s doing the walking. “Apparently, Jemma’s escort is Ryder Marsden,” the principal ad-libs into the microphone, looking a little frazzled. “Ryder is…um…the starting quarterback for the varsity football team, and, um…in the National Honor Society and…” She trails off helplessly. “A Peer Mentor,” he adds helpfully as he steps up beside me and takes my hand. The smile he flashes in my direction as Mrs. Crawford places the tiara on my head is dazzling--way more so than the tiara itself. My knees go a little weak, and I clutch him tightly as I wobble on my four-inch heels. But here’s the thing: If the crowd is whispering about me, I don’t hear it. I’m aware only of Ryder beside me, my hand resting in the crook of his arm as he leads me to our spot on the stage beside the junior maid and her escort, where we wait for Morgan to be crowned queen. Oh, there’ll be hell to pay tomorrow. I have no idea what we’re going to tell our parents. Right now I don’t even care. Just like Scarlett O’Hara, I’m going to enjoy myself tonight and worry about the rest later. After all, tomorrow is another…Well, you know how the saying goes.

I whip off my varsity jacket and help her into it, pulling the collar around her neck. My lips graze hers. I don’t give a fuck what happened with her and Donovan in the basement. She’s my rainbow.

But this pure genius was nowhere to be found when Jordan was young. He was not even the best athlete in his family—older brother Larry was. He was not the hardest worker; he actually had the reputation of being the laziest of his five siblings. In fact, after attending summer basketball camp, Jordan didn’t even make the varsity basketball squad in high school.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Child molesters were adults—dirty old men who lured children into their cars with promises of candy and treats. They weren’t A-honor roll students who ran varsity track and went to mass every Sunday.

No, but I know your name. You’re a legend at the varsity. James Douglas-Titmore said you once drank five bottles of champagne in an hour.

commandments that we are called to keep; and it is not God generically whom we are to imitate, but Jesus. The literal walking of Jesus and earth-given commandments also contrasts the Gnostic notion of a purely spiritual connection with a heavenly Jesus. 17. While word has a broader connotation than commandments, the terms are practically synonymous. 18. Calvin, quoted in Jason B. Hood, Imitating God in Christ: Recapturing a Biblical Pattern (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 205. 19. Yarbrough, 1–3 John, 88. 20. Luther, “Lectures on the First

Good Lord!" he said, almost aloud, "in one whole year what have I done? I haven't made one single friend, known what one real man was doing or thinking, done anything I wanted to do, talked out what I wanted to talk, read what I wanted to read, or had time to make the friends I wanted to make. I've been nothing but material— varsity material— society material; I've lost all the imagination I had, and know less than when I came; and I'm the popular man—' the big man'— in the class! Great! Is it my fault or the fault of things up here?

Patryck Durham, hailing from Aurora, CO, is more than just an International Baccalaureate graduate; he's a dynamic individual. Achieving a 4.0 Honor Graduate Cord and excelling in activities like Varsity Lacrosse and DECA, Patryck is a team player with a good memory. His leadership in volunteer projects for Boy Scouts reflects his loyalty and sets the stage for success in the business world.

Now I was eyeing the navy-blue varsity jacket hanging off the back of his chair. It was like a flag, announcing who he was: Brett Wells, captain of the football team. Not that I knew anything about him other than the whispers I heard or the checks his parents liked to write. But part of me wondered if he was as nice as everyone said. Or if his relationship history really was nonexistent.

I’ve watched girls drop off varsity tennis teams, flunk out of school, and carve initials or tattoo cult figures onto their bodies—all to see if their dads will notice.

What if we run into them?” I ask. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror and she gives me a small shrug. “You know seeing you has to hurt them too.” She sets the iron down and runs her fingers through my hair. “Elle must be torn up about what she did.” I open my mouth to argue, but Rosie shakes her head. “She’s not a monster. She might be a terrible friend, but we both know somewhere in there she has a heart.” With Rosie and me being so near in age, she was almost as close to Elle as I was. Elle had even encouraged Rosie to try out for the junior varsity cheer squad, and would help her with the routines—something that the previous varsity cheer captain wouldn’t have dreamed of doing.

0857-8478-5833 (WA) konveksi murah surabaya "Anafa Garment merupakan perusahaan Vendor konveksi surabaya yang menerima berbagai pesanan baju seperti kaos baik oblong, krah/ wangky/ polo shirt, untuk kemeja/ HEM seperti seragam kerja, seragam kantor, seragam bengkel, seragam pabrik, seragam SPBU dll. Untuk jaket seperti jaket baseball/ varsity, jaket bomber, jaket bolak balik, jaket masjelis, jaket hoodie, jaket jumper, jaket komunitas, jaket untuk olahraga/ sport dan bebagai macam peruntukan jaket. Jasa kami mampu memproduksi berbagai jenis baju tersebut di atas sesuai permintaan baik dalam jumlah kecil maupun partai besar. Dengan pengalaman team yang kami miliki tidak perlu Anda ragukan lagi. Yuk, percayakan saja pembuatan baju pesanan anda di team Anafa Garment jl.Penjaringan NO.30B, Rungkut, Surabaya 60297 0857-8478-5833 (WA) " konveksi murah surabaya Terbaik, konveksi murah surabaya murah, konveksi murah surabaya berkualitas, konveksi murah surabaya 2023, konveksi murah surabaya 2024, konveksi murah surabaya custom, konveksi murah surabaya Bergaransi, konveksi murah surabaya Online, konveksi murah surabaya Terpercaya, konveksi murah surabaya Terdekat,

Ready?” he asks as he locks the door. Before I can respond, I’m in his arms. The man freaking cradles me as he stalks off to his truck. “Billy.” “Rox.” He stares straight ahead, like this is an everyday occurrence. “You’re being weird.” “You’re pregnant. You’re literally growing a human. I don’t know—it makes me feel fucking protective of you.” “Thank you.” I grab his scruffy face, and he shoots me one of his flirty smiles. “Really.

Are we still fake-dating? Or is this… is this real? Because…” Say it. But he beats me to it. “Because this feels real.” “Yeah.” My voice wavers. “Don’t cry, biscuit.” He palms my face, and in the dim light coming from the streetlamp outside the window, I can make out his handsome face through the tears. “Forget all that fake-dating crap. You’re mine, and I’m yours. This is as real as it’s gonna get.” He takes a deep breath. “I know you said you didn’t think you could fall in love, but maybe you could give me a chance. Give us a chance. Because I’m ass-over-head crazy about you.” Hope blooms in my chest. Even though the room is dark, I’m filled with sunlight. “Are you saying… are you saying you love me?” I hold my breath as I wait for his reply. “I love you so fucking much, it freaks me out,” he says softly as he dries my tears. “I love you too.” In between kisses, I laugh. “I didn’t think I had it in me, but you’ve changed everything.” “Well, I could put it in you.” I snort and playfully smack his shoulder. “You horndog.” “Let’s put blame where it belongs. My dick is the horndog. It has a mind of its own. The rest of me is much more evolved.

Speaking of money, I can pay rent. I talked to the housing office yesterday, and they said I can use the funds allocated for the football house to pay you. I just need you to fill out a form.” I expect her to be happy about the news, but she frowns. “Maybe just give me half of that money and keep the rest.” “Why would I do that?” “Because like Billy said, this place is a mess, and you’re not getting any of the amenities you had at the football house.” Fucking Billy. “Think of it as both of us investing our money in something for the twins.” She thinks about that a moment. “Really?” “Yes, really.” Before I forget, I grab a notepad off the counter. “I’m going to get groceries later. Why don’t you jot down whatever you want me to get?” “I don’t need anything.” This woman is going to kill me. “What do you plan on eating this week?” She shrugs. “Ham and cheese on crackers. Some soup. Why?” “You need more than that. You’re gestating two babies, Magnolia. You can’t treat yourself like a starving college student.” “I just… I can’t pay you back right away.” Did I not just offer to pay her rent and she was trying to return half of it? She’s making me insane. “I don’t expect you to pay me anything. I want to get us groceries because we need them. I’m in training and burn a shit ton of calories. You’re pregnant and need to eat more than a damn Triscuit.” “Why are you raising your voice at me? I’m doing the best I can. Half the time I can’t eat anything because it comes right back up, so what’s the point? I’ll try to eat something later, okay?” She storms off and slams her bedroom door.

He watches me undress with hooded eyes. “Don’t distract me with those looks, mister.” “I can’t help that you’re hot as fuck.” He reaches down again and does something that makes him groan. “Even with this bump?” I turn sideways and show off my slight belly. “Definitely. Come here.” He reaches for me and leans up to kiss my stomach as I tangle my fingers through his hair. “Baby Bean, you need to sleep for the next two hours. And don’t listen to a thing I say to your mama. That’s not for your innocent little ears.” Oh my God, he’s adorable.

As I walk Sienna to her car, she squeals. “Holy crap, is that Rider Kingston?” Without my permission, my gaze slides across the street to the oversized man-child, who has the gall to be moving furniture shirtless while flexing his stupid abs. Judging by the other sweaty minions pouring out of the two-story, Rider’s getting new roommates too. My eye twitches again, and my focus snaps back to Sienna. “I thought you said you weren’t a fan of football.” “Oh, I’m not. I can’t sit through an entire game. But I am a fan of football players.” Her gaze turns ravenous as she scans my neighbor’s front lawn. Or, likely, the glistening eight-pack Rider’s put on display. “All that testosterone. Those bulging muscles. That deep, masculine grunting. Oh, yeah. Get me one of those!” She cackles, and Rider hears it. Of course he does. Shockingly, he deigns to speak to me. “Hey, Gabby,” he shouts. “How was your summer?” I’m not sure when he decided to stop ignoring me, but that’s better than pretending we’re friends, which we’ll never be. I close my eyes because I don’t need any reminders of his masculine beauty. And I definitely don’t need to see that sexy smirk, the one more powerful than his cannon that took the team to the playoffs last year. No, I’m not interested in the star quarterback. Not anymore.

When I turn, I find that Ben is still talking to Gabby down the street and clench my jaw. What the hell does he want with her? Blonde hair pops into my vision, and I barely have time to school my expression before Miranda leaps up, wrapping all of her tanned limbs around me like a koala bear. “Whoa.” I laugh half-heartedly. Guess I won’t be locking myself in my room for a nap. Grabbing Miranda’s bikini-clad ass with both of my hands, I hoist her over my shoulder, and she squeals so loudly, my ear rings. Everyone on my yard stops to stare. The guys take a long look at this girl’s rear, which wiggles against my shoulder. I don’t even have it in me to glare. Mira and I have always had fun, but we have an agreement—nothing serious. Ever. That’s why it works between us. Because I have never felt that pull toward her, and she never wants more. My eyes dart to Gabby across the street, still talking to fucking Ben.

Ooof.” “Dude, why’d you stop?” “Oh. Damnnn.” I turn around and stare at five zombie football players. Who are actually football players. See, Sienna. I totally could’ve been a teacher tonight! I squint at the guy in the back whose familiar scowl I recognize. “Ben?” He does that thing with his chin that’s supposed to pass for a greeting. I’m really tired of how my brother’s turned into a raging asshole. Our parents would be so disappointed by his lack of manners. “How’s it going, Gabs?” My heart drops at the sound of that voice. Rider Kingston. Of fucking course. Because being on a second date means I have to run into this man. My attention goes straight to those criminally beautiful gray eyes fringed with dark lashes. Even with zombie makeup, the man is ridiculously handsome. I want to punch him in his pretty face.

This is fucking bullshit!” I slip my feet into my fluffy slippers, pull my robe closed, and march across the street. As I bang on the front door, it flings open. There are at least a half-dozen naked women traipsing across the room, gyrating on beefy athletes and doing God knows what. My eyes dart to the sound system, and since I’ve given into my inner psycho, I head straight to it and yank the plug out of the wall. The silence makes everyone look up, and I realize I’m staring at my brother, who looks horrified to see me. And then I realize why and turn away before I hurl. Because the girl down on her knees in front of him is obviously not praying. Jesus, I’m gonna need so much therapy one day. I clear my throat and address the crowd at large. “Some people have to work tomorrow, assholes. Can you keep it the fuck down? Stop terrorizing this neighborhood. The world does not revolve around you and your dumb football games!” I’m screeching. I can’t help it. I’m half-asleep and so hungry I’m nauseous. My eyelids flutter. God, I feel woozy. It’s almost like… Almost like… that time I passed out. Oh, shit. Am I going to pass out again? I can’t remember the last time I ate. Jason and I were supposed to get dinner, which turned into soggy nachos from the gas station, which I passed on. I blink. And blink again. Everything feels fuzzy, like it’s wrapped in film. I don’t even care that Jason is here, and he’s missing clothes. “Shit, Gabby. This isn’t what it looks like.” Ignoring him, I stumble to what I think is the front door, lean against it, and close my eyes. I want to tell Jason to leave me alone, except I’m afraid I’m going to drop to the floor if I let go of the doorframe. Then I hear the little cry. It sounds like a baby. And that’s when I know I must be losing my mind.

I’m okay. I usually try to forget all of that stuff, but with Poppy being in this situation, I felt I had to speak up, you know?” “You did the right thing,” Bree says. “Those dumbasses will thank you someday.” Rider coughs dramatically, and Bree smirks. “Yeah, you heard me right back there.” I glance behind me and see Rider’s lips tugging up. Bree nudges me. “How’d you end up doing so well in school given everything you went through? Going through foster care? Not having parents?” “I kept to myself mostly.” I shrug. “School and studying were always safe. Books don’t level you with a backhand to the face or a kick to the ribs.” When I see the horrified look on her face, I cringe. “Bree, I survived. A lot of other kids have it worse. Which is why I’m really glad we’re protecting Poppy.” She stops to hug me, and I smile. I’ve had so few hugs in my life, I forgot how good they feel. She sniffles and waves her hand at me. “Ignore me. I’m not crying.” Over her shoulder, I catch Rider’s fierce expression, but I don’t want his sympathy. I don’t need anybody’s sympathy.

Gabs, can we talk a second?” He clears his throat. Nothing good ever follows that statement. I brace myself for what’s sure to be an awkward conversation. “I just want to apologize for our… misunderstanding freshman year.” I’m silent for a moment, but the rush of anger that spikes my pulse has me responding before I think better of it. “You’d call it a misunderstanding, huh?” I roll my eyes. “Funny, I didn’t think I misunderstood anything, but if you want to mansplain it to me now, go for it.” Why make this easy for him? It’s always been difficult for me to make friends, but for some reason, Rider slipped through my defenses. I was assigned to tutor him in English. I remember meeting him in the library, and the shy smile he gave me. He was embarrassed to need help. It was the most endearing thing I’d ever seen, and I swear when he leveled me with those big gray eyes, the ground fell out beneath me. I’m a practical girl, but foster care made me cynical, and ending up with my aunt did nothing to help my outlook on life. But Rider was funny and sweet, not to mention ridiculously good-looking, and I went over faster than a felled log in a forest. This was before he was the golden boy of the football team. When he was just this guy Rider from some speck-of-dust small Texas town like me. Even though he rode the bench, I went to all of his games, and we’d grab pizza afterward and talk until late in the night. Although he didn’t outright say it, I knew he had a rough home life. He mentioned that his father was an ass. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and make it better. And I thought I meant something to him. That what we had was special. Until he became the starting quarterback.

He runs his hand through his hair. “It’s just that I needed to focus on football. I had all this pressure, and—” “And you wanted to sleep around and fuck all the pretty girls while you weren’t playing. I totally get it. And I was just some little virgin who couldn’t possibly comprehend your need to sow your wild oats. See? No misunderstanding at all.” “Jesus, Gabby, it wasn’t like that.

But when my ex opens the door, her somber expression and baggy sweats do not suggest we’re about to roll around naked. Nor does the toddler asleep on the bed behind her. I’m frozen as Janelle wraps her arms around me in a hug. “I’ve missed you,” she coos in a baby voice. I would not consider myself the paragon of virtue, but there’s no way I’m doing kinky shit with my ex while a kid sleeps a few feet away. I’ve never seen her baby before. When I found out Janelle’s new guy had knocked her up, I did my best to eradicate thoughts of her from my life. It was too painful to see her move on when she’d promised me that future. I only vaguely inquire about her through my cousin Bianca when I plan trips home so I can avoid my ex. As I take a good long look at the sleeping bundle, I stop breathing. Ernest has blond hair. And Janelle has light brown. My eyes are lasered on the kid, who has thick, black hair. Much like mine. Sweat breaks out on my body, and a giant lump forms in my throat. I cough. “What the fuck is going on?” Janelle wrings her hands, tears forming in her eyes. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Why I needed to do this in person. It’s long overdue.” But like all truly messed-up things in my life, I know the answer to my question before the words are out of her mouth. “She’s yours, Ben.” 3 BEN A suffocating, twisting blackness spreads through me as I stare at this woman I once loved.

Really don’t want Ramirez to beat the shit out of me, so I get it. That’s fine. But I’m starving, and I figure you are too. Cam and I want to take you and Rox out.” He holds out his hands. “Just as friends. I swear.” “Trust me, Jake won’t care.” It’s like we were never friends. My eyes sting, but I can’t be upset with him. I did this to myself. I was too chicken to tell him how I felt in high school, and I only compounded everything when I left NTU without talking to him first. “I don’t know about that.” Billy’s voice lowers. “Aww, hell, Chuck. Don’t cry.” I sniffle and blink several times. “I’m not crying. It’s allergies.” Jake stops playing with Asher to glance over at us, and my heart sinks at the cold expression on his face. There are icebergs in the Arctic warmer than the look he gives me. Billy makes that humming noise again before he slips his beefy arm over my shoulders. “Doesn’t care, huh? I might regret this later, but how ’bout we give him something to care about?” “What?” That’s when the doofus pulls me into his chest and kisses me out of the blue. There’s no tongue, thank God. Just the hard press of his bristly mouth against mine. It’s fine, I guess. When he pulls away, he smacks his lips. “You taste minty.” I sigh, and it’s not because he swept me off my feet. “That was my first kiss.” I don’t mention I was saving it for someone special. His eyes widen. “Like, ever?” “Yes, and now I need to go home and write about it in my diary,” I say sarcastically before I turn to pack my gear, a little upset my first kiss wasn’t more magical.

Did you do this on purpose? Did you know Jake would be here?” “Remember how I said Jake cares?” “Yes.” “If you could see his expression right now, you’d believe me, but don’t look now or you’ll ruin the moment. Keep staring into my eyes. Make me believe you like me.” “Don’t make this weird.” He studies me so intently, it makes me uncomfortable. “If you just had some confidence, Chuck, you’d be a stone-cold fox. You have gorgeous eyes. A beautiful face. A hot little body. A sassy personality that bites back when provoked. All good things. How’s that for weird?” My face heats, and I look away, another awkward chuckle leaving my lips. “Stop pretending you like me.” “I’m not pretending at all. I’d totally fuck you through your headboard if given the opportunity, but I get the feeling you’re into someone else.” Ugh. “Roxy told you?” “She didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face. You don’t give me those sad puppy dog eyes. Ramirez is the lucky bastard, huh?” I brave a glance at his table. The blonde has her hand on Jake’s arm. He’s smiling at her, and she laughs.

It takes all of my strength to stay standing. I’ve won a lot of football games. Thrown the winning touchdown in my high school state championship. Just won a national college championship. But I’m not sure anything has felt as good as when Roxy, who’s still impaled on me, opens her sleepy eyes, takes my face in her small hands, and kisses me long and slow under the hot water. It’s in this moment I realize how much I’ve been lying to myself. About everything. Because this thing with Roxy? It’s anything but fake. Now I just need to prove to her I’m the kind of man she can count on.

Sensitive people, it seems, are the varsity athletes of empathy.

My mom must be loving this stupid show. If I had to guess, she thinks I deserve whatever public humiliation Dakota levels at me. Because without me, one of them had to step up and actually take care of Asher. Which, according to Jake, they blew off once he broke up with my sister. What’s that saying? Birds of a feather? My mom and Kota are both spoiled brats. It’s probably no surprise they’re super tight. They were always whispering, always keeping things from me. Always hoarding secrets I wasn’t privy to. Always making me feel like a third wheel in my own freaking family.

Dad lets out a sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Well, did you ask Billy to explain what’s going on?” “He said it’s not what I think it is. That he would never cheat on me. But he was so cagey and weird, and when I asked him to prove it by showing me the messages on his phone, he looked like a deer in headlights. It was like dating Ezra all over again.” I freeze when my father’s eyes snap to mine. Oh, shit. I slap my hand over my mouth and frantically shake my head. “No. Forget I said that last part.” He braces his arms on the table and looks down. We sit in silence for several minutes. “I wondered if Ezra was Marley’s father. She has his dark hair. And Billy punched him in the face. The better I got to know Billy, the more I realized he wasn’t just a loose cannon, that he must’ve had a good reason for doing that, but I didn’t want to believe the kid I treated like my own son would get you pregnant and then bail on you.” Finally, he looks at me. “I’m assuming you told Ezra the truth?” It’s a sad day when my father wonders whether I told the father of my baby I was pregnant. After how I behaved back then, I guess I deserve that doubt. “Of course.” “And he didn’t want to be involved?” “His response was basically, ‘Fuck no, I don’t want a baby.’” I take a deep breath. “Swear to me you won’t say anything. Because I promised Ezra I wouldn’t tell you the truth if he dropped the charges against Billy.

Laughing, I slide down Rider. I’m still pressed to his hard body when I look up. He thrusts a possessive hand into my hair, and three years of pent-up lust and longing rush over me as his mouth crashes into mine.

A few minutes later, we stumble into his bedroom. He kicks the door shut behind us and shoves me up against it. With a hand fisted in my hair and another on my rear, he kisses me like we’re on the eve of the apocalypse. Keeping time with the pounding of my heart, the floor vibrates with the beat from the music downstairs. I strain against him, trying to get closer. Needing to be closer. Wanting to feel him move through me.` This is what was missing in my other relationship. This unquenchable fire that feels like Rider and I could burn down the whole house with the electricity sparking between us. And tonight, I want to burn.

So do beautiful women dating pieces of shit like Cal Winston. I pinch the bridge of my nose, irritated I have to play another year of football with that asshole. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not mad at Sienna. How could I ever be mad at her? She’s like a damn sunflower, all cheery and gorgeous and perfect. I vaguely remember her from freshman year, but until she moved in with my sister, we never ran in the same circle of friends. In retrospect, I’m a dumbass for not making a point to get to know her because she’s fucking spectacular. She has thick, dark hair and light brown eyes. An off-the-charts smile. A tight little body. A great personality. Literally the stuff of my fantasies. It took everything in me not to tell her Winston was likely planning to fuck a horde of women the second she steps on an airplane tonight.

Weights clank in a backdrop beat to the rock music on the stereo. I should be thinking about this weekend’s game, but my thoughts keep straying to my outing last Sunday afternoon with Charlie. To the way her eyes danced when she got determined to skate. To the adorable way she clung to me when she needed help. To her cute little ass in those cutoffs. I close my eyes, hating how conflicted I feel. No one ever believes me when I say that Charlotte and I have always been just friends. Only that somehow feels wrong now. I’m not sure what’s changed on my end. Maybe it’s because we’re living together and I see her every day? Maybe it’s because dragging her out of that fire scared the fuck out of me? Or maybe it’s because she feels like my best friend again, and lately I’ve been wondering what it would be like if we were… more? And when I thought she was going to wipe out? My heart was in my throat as I sprinted to catch her. When I remember how she looked at me in the park, my whole body heats. Fuck. I shouldn’t be thinking about Charlie like this. Because going there with her right now seems like a really bad idea. I promised myself I wouldn’t get involved with anyone this year. There’s too much on the line.

Charlotte tugs on my jersey. “Do you mind if I take some pics tonight?” she yells over the stereo system, which is blasting our classic rock warmup playlist. “’Course not. Do your thing.” She gives me one of those lingering smiles that makes me wonder if my mom is right. If Charlotte has had feelings for me since high school. I watch her walk away. She’s wearing some cutoffs that make her ass look amazing and her slender legs long. “Just friends, huh?” Billy elbows me hard. “Best rethink that.” “Why are you always pestering me?” He holds a hand over his heart. “You wound me, bro. I’m trying to be a good person. Which means I’m not making a move on your girl like I want to.” I don’t even bother arguing that she’s not my girl. Because Charlotte feels like she’s mine. Fuck it. I’m done debating this. I’m going after what I really want.

That’s when the blonde stands up and whips around, her ponytail flying. Stunned blue eyes meet mine. Eyes that look exactly like my son’s. And my ex’s. What the fuck? I open my mouth. Close it. It probably takes me a full minute before I can say anything. “Charlotte?” I’m so shocked, I almost drop Asher. “What the hell are you doing here?” She flinches like I’ve slapped her, and I’m suddenly so fucking mad at her for how she disappeared, I can barely breathe. How does your best friend of five years up and leave without a word? Why couldn’t she tell me what was going on? Leave me a message. Something. Anything. Even if it was to tell me to fuck off. When she doesn’t say anything, I turn to leave. I can’t do this.

As we walk through downtown Charming toward the diner, I shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and study Rider out of my peripheral vision. He’s carrying Poppy in a front-facing body sling. She’s clapping and kicking and utterly excited to be on this outing. The two of them are quite a sight, and everyone we pass, women especially, takes their time perusing this sexy male specimen. I turn away, chiding myself for wanting to look. Technically, I should be able to stare at Rider unabashedly, especially after our conversation this morning and what we did to each other last night, but I’m a little leery of letting on exactly how much I like him. He can reassure me with words, but I still consider him a flight risk. Maybe less than he was freshman year, but I need more time to see if he means what he says. Being with Rider is like circling the sun, wondering how close I can get before I get burned.

When we’re done, he motions toward my plate. “Are you doing better with your hypoglycemia?” I pause. We’ve never discussed the details of what happened last May, but he must have overheard me talking to the paramedics that day. “Is that why you always try to feed me? First the pizza and now waffles.” He gives me a sheepish smile. “I don’t know. Maybe. Is that wrong?” “No, it’s sweet. But I’m doing better. I haven’t had any episodes since the night we found Poppy. That was the last time I felt dizzy. I went too long without eating. It was an accident, really.” “What happened?” “A bad date.” “That dick Jason didn’t feed you?” I laugh at Rider’s intensity. “Jason’s idea of dinner was nachos from that gas station, which I passed on. That’s how I ended up light-headed later. But unless you’re planning on taking me on a bad date, we should be good.” Rider gives me a wolfish grin. “I plan on doing a lot of things with you. Bad dates aren’t one of them.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her. Gabby. She’s sitting at the bar, slowly stirring her drink, looking like she’d rather be getting a root canal. Her thick black hair is down, and she’s wearing this shimmery little dress that hugs her curves. When she looks up, our eyes lock, and just for a second it’s hard to breathe. Damn. She’s beautiful. Despite the fact that we’re neighbors, I haven’t seen her much this semester. I swear, she’s hotter every time I see her, which seems impossible. But despite having some damn good reasons for creating space between us, I’m tempted to cross the bar to talk to her. Then he walks up to her, that scumbag I inadvertently introduced her to when I called for the ambulance last May. But what was I supposed to do? Let her lie there on the concrete, pale, passed out, and bleeding, and not do anything? How was I to know Jason would show up like a fucking white knight? Nothing that day went right. They told me I’d just missed her at the hospital when I tried to track her down and make sure she was okay, and when I went to her place, she slammed the door in my face. She doesn’t see him yet, but Jason leans in to whisper in her ear. She arches away, clearly uncomfortable, and I realize I’ve made a fist. He’d better not be fucking with her. If this is what she wants, cool. I don’t have to like it, but making the moves on a woman who’s not interested is another thing. It’s been at least a month since I saw him ask her out. Have they been dating all this time?

Ah. Our lovely neighbor.” He coughs dramatically. “That’s Ben’s sister. In case you need a reminder. Bro code and all.” “I’m not making a move on Gabby.” I’ll never make a move on her. Just being near her makes me want to toss her over my shoulder and carry her back to my place caveman-style. That’s reason enough to avoid her like the plague. My reaction to her has always been too strong, and I don’t need to test my control when I have too much on the line this year. I can face three-hundred-pound linemen and not bat an eye, but something about this woman makes me want to run before I do anything stupid. It’s baffling.

clear my throat. “So you like Greg?” “What’s it to you?” The chill in Maggie’s voice makes Siberia sound tropical. “Just making idle chitchat.” “No need. You can go back to ignoring me.” I face her. “When have I ever, in the history of you and me, ever ignored you?” She rolls her eyes. “Perhaps ‘ignore’ isn’t the right word. Maybe I should say you avoid me.” “I don’t avoid you.” “Sure. Let’s go with that.” The parents are now dancing with the bride and groom. We have a minute, so I grab Magnolia’s elbow and tug her into a nearby hall. “What’s your problem?” “My problem?” she hisses. “Didn’t you know? It’s always been you. You have some damn nerve, acting like you and Vanessa didn’t keep me up half the night. Pretending you didn’t know your room was right next door to mine.” I still, my feet rooted to the ground. “What are you talking about? Vanessa left last night.” She scoffs. “Someone was howling, ‘oh, Daddy, hit it harder’ on the other side of my wall. I seem to recall you had that room. In fact, I saw you open that door this morning, half-clothed, so don’t lie.” Oh, shit. I laugh, relieved as hell, now that I understand why her feathers are all ruffled. “Michael Oliver, don’t you dare laugh at me.” Her face is flushed, and she looks like she might deck me. She’s beautiful in her fury. Ready to bust me up if I’m not careful. Makes me want to kiss the hell out of her. I hold up both hands. “Just listen, okay?

An hour later, I’m on my way home when I can’t fucking stand it any longer. I haven’t a clue what I’ll say to Magnolia if she picks up, but I want to try one last time. I pull over to the side of the road and, with my heart in my throat, dial her name. Four rings later, someone picks up. “Maggie, don’t hang up. Please hear me out.” A deep, masculine voice clears his throat. “Is this Michael?” “Who the fuck is this?” He snickers. “Just a friend. Listen, Imma do you a solid. This is not Maggie’s number.” I freeze and try to process his words. I double-check who I dialed, and sure enough, it’s Maggie’s contact info on the screen of my phone. “What do you mean? I’ve left her a million messages. Were they all going to you?” “Yup. And I gotta say, your night sounded hot as hell.” He lets out a whistle. “But I think your girl Maggie got her one-and-done and ghosted ya.” I’m going to be sick. “She didn’t give me her number.” “See? Case in point.” “No, that’s not what I mean. Her brother gave me her number. And I guess… I guess I punched it in wrong. Or I misheard. I don’t fucking know except it’s been weeks now. Jesus, if she wasn’t pissed at me before, she is now.

Tough cojones, brother. Listen, by any chance are you Michael Oliver, the running back on the team? You go by the nickname Olly?” I close my eyes and tilt my head back. Great. Just what I need now. For my dirty laundry to be aired out across town. “Who wants to know?” “Just a fan. I’m Samuel, by the way. I think we had bio together freshman year.” “Hey, man. How’s it going?” It takes every ounce of energy in my body to be friendly. “By the sound of it, better than you. Hey, we’re having a little shindig over here tonight. Wanna come over and toss back some beer?” Fuck it. “Yeah. Sure. Think you might want to help me figure out how to win back a girl who probably hates my guts by now?” A deep chuckle rumbles out of the phone. “I’m a plotting master. Get your ass over here, and we’ll figure it out.” 18 MAGGIE

The final result definitely has my attention. Even my dick sits up and takes notice of Sienna. She’s lean and toned everywhere. Sleek. Her breasts might be on the smaller side, but it fits her gorgeous body. She’s like a sculpture. A goddess. All I can think is that I’d like to take her sweet nipples in my mouth and lave them with my tongue. I can only hope she knows what Destiny said was bullshit. Because her body is perfection. Much like her sunny personality. Here’s the truth. A lot of women are beautiful, but it’s what’s on the inside that takes someone to the next level. There I go, sounding like some Hallmark shit.

I just want a bag of ice for my shoulder, three ibuprofen, my bed, and silence for the next eight to ten hours. I’m in my Jeep, halfway home, when I realize I still have to pick up Poppy. Fuck. I smack the steering wheel with my fist. Guilt instantly floods me for resenting my daughter. This is not who I want to be. Another layer of shame settles over me when I realize I have no idea where she is right now. I left the details of who would be taking care of her today with Gabby, and while I trust her, being an absentee parent sounds just as bad as a negligent one. Get your shit together, man. I pull over next to the curb and turn on my phone, which I always shut off before a game. Although with Poppy in my life now, I probably shouldn’t do that anymore

Her eyes meet mine. “What exactly do you want, Rider?” My throat feels tight. I take a breath. For some crazy reason, I feel like I’m trying to throw for a touchdown. “Just… I need us to be friends again. I miss you, Gabby, and I regret how I treated you. And with everything with Poppy, I’m being reminded of how amazing you are.” I shrug. “I miss our friendship. Don’t you?” My heart feels like it’s gonna beat out of my chest with that confession. “And that’s all you want?” she asks warily. “Friendship?” Yes. No. Fuck, I don’t know. “That’s all I have time for right now.” Do I miss our friendship? Absolutely. Do I want to fuck her until I can’t walk anymore? Definitely. Can I handle anything beyond sex right now while I juggle all the other shit in my life? Probably not. So yeah, I guess I’d better keep my damn hands to myself. “And you’re not going to ghost me again?” she asks. The vulnerability in her voice kills me, and I reach for her hand again. “Because it sucked to open up to you about being in foster care only for you to disappear on me.” I close my eyes. Christ. No wonder she thinks I’m a douchebag. “I promise I won’t disappear again. You’re officially stuck with me now.

I’m already feeling vulnerable around him. Especially after our talk last night. Seeing him like this, first thing in the morning with that sleepy look in his eyes, makes me want to crawl into his lap and do naughty things. Poppy giggles and claps. I’m holding his baby. Right. “Wanna see your daddy? Hmm?” I kiss her on the forehead and lean over Rider, who sits up to take his daughter. “Hey, cutie pie.” He peppers her with kisses and she laughs. “I have to tell you guys that having a kid is so fu—freaking surreal.” As he snuggles her to his chest, his face turns up to me. “How’d she sleep?” “Great. She only woke up twice. I gave her a bottle and patted her butt, and she knocked out again.” “Sorry. You could’ve woken me to do that.

Honestly? I think when you find someone you really want to be with, you don’t need to have ‘the talk.’ If you find the right woman, it would kill you to hook up with anyone else.” She shrugs. “Maybe I want someone who is certain about me and doesn’t need to wait for that kind of conversation to commit to me. Because in his heart, he knows what he wants and goes for it.” God, she’s beautiful. I love this woman’s spirit. Suddenly, he spies me in the background. “What the fuck? Are you dating Kingston now?” He glances at me. “No offense, man. Great game yesterday, by the way. Killer second half.” Christ. This guy. Gabby shakes her head. “Who I’m dating is really none of your business, but he and I are neighbors.” He must see something in my eyes because his narrow. “How can you be with him and not me? He probably fucked a different girl every night last week.” Excuse me, dickhead. I fucked my hand every night last week, thank you very much.

Guess I should go.” He kisses Poppy on her forehead, and she makes a sound of contentment. She kisses him back but ends up slobbering all over his cheek until he laughs. “Be a good girl, okay? Don’t give Gabs trouble at naptime.” He’s standing so close, I get a good whiff of his shampoo or body wash. Whatever it is, it smells masculine and clean, and I’d like to rub my face against his chest. I don’t, obviously. “Kick Oklahoma’s ass.” I look up at him, and when our eyes connect, electricity runs through my limbs. My heart thumps hard in my chest. “Call me if you need anything,” he says. It isn’t until he speaks that I realize I’m staring at his lips. “We’ll be fine. Go.” Before I scale you like Mount Everest. Stepping away, I take a breath, and then another. When I shut the door behind him, I collapse back against it while Poppy clings to me. I look up to find Sienna staring at me. “Holy shit. I almost got pregnant watching you two just now. I’ll be right back. Gonna go take my birth control.” She’s convinced Rider and I are going to end up naked together. As tempting as that sounds, I’m not sure I could handle one of Rider’s drive-bys. If we have sex, I’ll get attached and get my heart broken all over again.

He’s wearing an old, dark gray t-shirt that stretches across his broad chest and strains at his biceps, tapering at his slender waist. His faded jeans mold to his muscular thighs. He’s sex on a stick. And I’m ready for a serving. Am I hungry? I cock an eyebrow at him. “Depends. What’s on the menu?” His gray eyes smolder as he stares at me. He takes my hand, pulls me against him, bites my ear gently and whispers, “Then let’s get an appetizer,” before he leads me back to the living room where music washes over us as we melt into the crowd. At first I’m confused. Did I not just blatantly hit on the man? Admittedly, I’ve never done that before, but I thought my message was pretty straightforward. But then he stops in the middle of the room and wraps me in his arms. Oh. He wants to dance. Speaking of missing clues… Like I’m a middle schooler at her first dance, my heart melts. Rider wants to dance. With me. Don’t catch all the feelings, Gabriela. Just enjoy tonight. My pulse ratchets up as I hold up a finger, chug the rest of my beer, and toss the empty cup into the large bin in the corner. I step up to him. His hands grip my waist. I stare at the wall of man in front of me. He laughs, his voice deep and sultry. “Are you going to touch me or are you waiting for an invitation?” For some reason, that makes me respond like a smartass. “Do I need an invitation?” He shakes his head. “Not at all. You can touch me anytime you want.

It’s dark enough that stars peek through the clouds and so cold I can see my breath, but this is the most settled I’ve felt in months. “Thank you, Billy. I feel better.” We turn so our knees are touching. “If you had dated me instead of Ezra, we could be doing this all the time. Actually, there’s a lot more we could be doing.” He shoots me a flirty smirk. I snort. “I’d hate to curtail your extra-curricular activities.” I love Billy, but his reputation is worse than Ezra’s. His nickname is Billy Bigcock. Can’t get much more obvious than that.

I change the channel before I hurl. After a few minutes, I settle back and watch Friends while I wait for Billy. But by the time he knocks on the door, I’m a hot mess. When I answer the door, his eyebrows furrow as he looks me over. Before I can say anything, he opens his arms and I rush into them. “What happened, my little biscuit?” he asks as he squeezes me in a tight hug. Tears burn my eyes, and I push my face into his chest. “I don’t know. One minute I was fine, and the next, this commercial came on about baby food. And the baby was hungry and started to cry, and…” “And that made you cry.” I nod against him as more tears flow down my face. “I know that sounds crazy, but now everything makes me cry. I want my hard shell back.

He pulls up to the medical complex, and I gather my bag. “Thanks for the ride. You can just drop me off. I’ll call an Uber home.” Ignoring me, he parks. I reach for the door handle, but he puts a hand on my elbow. “Can you give me a minute?” “I don’t know why I said all that crap. Just ignore me, okay? I’m hormonal and hungry. I can’t explain why else I feel possessive about you. I have no right to feel that way.” Finally, I brave a look at him. His blue eyes are dark and positively feral. I suck in a breath as he reaches for me and crashes my mouth to his.

Cam motions to me. “You have murder in your eyes, bro.” “Pretty much what I was fantasizing about just now, but I’m trying to avoid jail time before the draft.” Laughing, he nods. “Solid decision.” He lowers his voice. “How did Roxy’s appointment go?” Cam is the only one of our friends besides Charlotte and Jake who knows Rox is pregnant. A smile erupts on my face. “It was crazy. She had the nurse call me into her exam room at the end to see the ultrasound. I got to hear the heartbeat. It was just whirring away.” I hold my hand over my chest because that moment will go down as one of the coolest in my life. “She’s due in August.” “Girl or boy?” “Too early to tell. It looks like a bean, though.” I hold my fingers apart by a centimeter. “Like this big.” “Y’all gonna make it official or keep pretending you’re just friends?” “We’re definitely not ‘just friends,’ and I think she’s starting to figure it out.” He smacks me on the back. “Happy for you.” His eyes travel across the room to Ezra, but his voice lowers to a whisper. “You’re obviously a better candidate than that jackass.

Roxanne, I’m so disappointed in you. I don’t even have words,” Coach’s voice booms. Suddenly, I forget that I’m sleep-deprived, dizzy, and irritable. Did Rox finally tell him she’s knocked up? When she doesn’t say anything, it sounds like he bangs on the desk. “Who’s the damn father? I want a name.” I glance around, looking for that weasel dick Ezra, but he’s conveniently MIA. “I’m going to ask you again,” Coach bellows. “Who’s. The. Father?” Silence. “Roxanne, do you even know who the father is?” He did not fucking ask her that. Then I hear it. The weeping. I don’t make a conscious decision to go in there, but next thing I know, I’m standing in front of Coach, ready to remove his head from his body. “Don’t fucking talk to her like that.” I must have a death wish. Roxy has her face in her hands. Leaning down, I pull her into my arms. “It’ll be okay, biscuit. Stop crying.” She wraps her arms around my waist and sobs against my chest as I glare at her dad. Like an angry bull, his nostrils flare. “You.” That’s all he says. He’s doing some kind of deep breathing thing that makes me think he might keel over and die. Which would be bad. I might hate him sometimes, but I know he’s a good guy. Deep, deep down. “Coach, it’s not the end of the world. Women have babies every day.” “I should’ve known.” That Roxy would get pregnant? “Coach, you need to calm down before you say something you regr—” “You fucking did this.” Me? “You’re the one who made her cry.” He points at me. “You got my daughter pregnant.” I freeze. I don’t budge an inch. He thinks I did this? That I knocked up this gorgeous girl and let her come in here to give him the news by herself? What kind of asshole does he take me for? The biggest kind. Of course he thinks I’m the culprit. Not Ezra, who’s been cheating on his high school girlfriend for years and kisses Coach’s ass at every opportunity.

After turning off my reading lamp, I crawl into bed next to him, suddenly wide awake with awareness. I have a queen-size bed, and I’m pretty small, but Billy is massive. Scooting to the edge so I don’t accidentally bother him, I roll to my side and face away from him. Billy Babcock is in my bed. Sleeping. Sprawled out next to me in his underwear, looking like some kind of beautiful action hero. “Rox?” His low voice sends chills all over my body. “Hm?” “Wanna snuggle?” My eyebrows lift with surprise before I grin. How I’m smiling after the day I’ve had is a surprise. I don’t consider how it’s probably not a good idea or that we should keep our distance until we figure out what the hell we’re doing. Because the idea of being wrapped in his arms sounds amazing. “I’d like that.” That gets me a grunt before an enormous arm reaches around me and yanks me to his hard chest. And then he buries his head in my neck and groans. “You smell good.” I chuckle. “Thanks. You do too.” Like leather and spice and something masculine.

Where do we go from here? Have you decided what you want to do?” My heart is in my throat as I wait for her response. I never knew I wanted a baby like I want this one, but I do. With my whole being, I do. But Maggie’s the one who has to carry it for nine months. She whispers, “I want to keep it, which I know will be tough because I have another year of school, but no matter how at odds we’ve been over the years, this baby is special to me because it’s part of you.” Her eyes fill with tears, and it about kills me. I take her hand and tug her toward me until she’s out of her chair and in my lap. “That’s probably the best compliment anyone has ever given me,” I say softly as I kiss the top of her head. I hug her to my chest and ignore the stares of the customers around us. “Does this mean you’ll give me a chance to be more to you?” She sniffles and sits up to look at me. “How much more do you want to be?” Everything, Magnolia. I want to be everything to you.

Suddenly, a fast whirring sound fills the room, and I turn toward the doctor. “That’s your baby.” After a moment, though, her smile morphs into a frown, and then she has the technician tweak something on the monitor. They whisper to each other, and I start to freak out. Olly stands next to me, leans down, and whispers, “Everything’s okay. I’m right here.” “Actually,” Dr. Perkins says slowly, “here is your other baby. Congrats! You’re having twins.” And that’s when Michael Oliver, an elite athlete and my baby daddy, whispers, “Holy shit,” and passes out cold.

Hell of an aim, brother. Did this happen on your wedding night?” “Olly!” Maggie looks mortified. “You can’t ask things like that.” “Can I embarrass my sister, who sat on my head and farted on me when I was a child? Why, yes, yes, I can.” My sister pinches me, and I yelp, which makes her snicker. “Actually, we got a little ahead of ourselves, and I found out I was preggers right before the wedding, but I was headed for the altar, so who cares? As long as I had this man locked down tight before I pushed out his kid, we’re good.” Her words give me pause. Because Maggie wanted to go slow, I hadn’t thought much beyond getting us to the point where we were officially together. Now I wonder if Maggie wants to get married. She’s having my babies, so I think we should at least discuss it. Or will asking her freak her out again? Right now, it’s a toss-up. But I think I want to ask. Not because she’s pregnant, but because I love her.

Some of my teammates and their girlfriends were hoping to take a group photo. Would you mind shooting that?” “Not at all.” I slide my arms through his jacket as Jake steps away to talk to one of the guys. A minute later, several huge football players hoist their girlfriends onto their shoulders. “Aww, this is so cute.” I direct them to move closer, and then I have to step back and squat to get everyone in one shot. After I take a few, Jake tells the guys to hold up and then turns to me. “Can you ask Roxy to take a pic? Basically the same shot you just took, just with one more couple?” I tilt my head, confused, but he’s already called her over. He makes me hand over the camera to Roxy before he drags me over to the group. “Hang tight.” That’s the only warning he gives me before he lifts me onto his shoulder. Like, I’m literally sitting on his left shoulder. “Jake!” I laugh as I wobble, but then he reaches up a hand, and I cling to him for dear life. He yells, “’Kay, Roxy. Go for it.” He looks up at me and grins. “Smile for the camera, cupcake.” She takes several shots. I’m smiling so hard, my cheeks hurt, and I forget to worry about whether or not I’m blinking. When we’re done and he slides me down to the ground, I’m out of breath. I almost feel like Jake is claiming me somehow, but that’s crazy, right? He wanted to be in the photo, and I’m his good friend, so he had me join him. Roxy returns the camera and leans into me to whisper, “What was that about? Are you two doing the deed?” “No. We’re just friends.” God, I feel like a broken record. Her eyebrow lifts. “Because the looks he’s giving you tonight…” Jake’s giving me looks? I turn to find him talking to Cam, but his eyes are glued on me. Every molecule in my body heats. “Holy hot sexual tension, Batman.” Roxy bumps me with her hip. “I want all the deets tomorrow!” “There won’t be any deets.” Will there be deets?

We step out of my bedroom just as Jake comes home. Duke hops up and down excitedly, and Jake reaches down to pet him. When he stands upright, I give him a wide smile, but he freezes when he sees me. Then his jaw goes tight. Self-consciously, I pat down the dress. “What? You don’t like my outfit?” His eyes travel down my body and back up again before he turns away. “You look great. Have fun on your date. Is Asher asleep?

Louisa grabs her purse. “He ate chicken nuggets and some applesauce. Did you already eat dinner, or do you want me to make you a sandwich before I leave?” For a second, I hear another voice asking me if I want a sandwich. It makes something in me ache. I don’t know why I’m not over Charlie ghosting me. It’s fucked up, but I miss her more than Dakota. Once I realized what my ex had been doing behind my back, she was dead to me. Charlotte, though… It’s weird as hell not having her in my life anymore. And as much as I thanked her for taking care of Asher, I’m seeing now that I didn’t appreciate how she took care of me too. Always feeding me. Always helping me if I needed a study buddy. Always knowing how to cheer me up after Dakota reamed me out for something stupid. Just being an amazing friend. Did I run Charlie off? Did I do something to hurt her? Was Dakota lying about why her sister left? When I’m not pissed about her leaving, I’m still tormented. It keeps me

And this thing between us… Is this more than just one night?” I try to keep my voice steady because I’m terrified of what he might say, but I’ve been around football players long enough to know not to assume anything. His head jerks back. “Of course it’s more than one night. In fact, the next time Billy hits on you in that playful way he thinks is so funny, tell him to fuck off. Tell him you’re mine.” You’re mine. A huge smile lifts my lips. “Yours, huh?” “You’re wearing my jacket. That’s my name on your back. Pretty sure everyone should know what that means.” I’m speechless. Jake’s never been a possessive guy, but the way he growls out these words makes me shiver. “I like being yours.” “Best thing I’ve heard all night, Charlie,” he whispers before he grazes his lips against mine.

It’s just that sometimes, when I’m lying in bed at night and thinking about Jake, I wonder if my sister is as innocent as she claims to be. I’m grateful Kota is alive, I remind myself. I can deal with anything, even my dreadful case of comparisonitis. Her health is the only thing that matters. I pick at my sandwich, wondering how long the argument will last. Glancing down the hall again, I’m about to ask if I should wait for them when I hear a giggle. “Stop, Jake, my sister is going to hear you and then she’ll know you’ve got a huge dick.” My heart stops, then plummets to the floor. Jake’s low voice mumbles something in response, but I can’t make out what he says. Nor do I want to.

It should be on leading my new team to a victory. Instead, I see my ex, Dakota, bare ass up, face down on our bed as my best friend Troy railed her from behind. While our baby sat in a dirty diaper and cried in the other room. Mentirosos. Liars. Both of them. I’ll admit I wasn’t excited to have a kid. Not at first. But despite my party reputation in high school, I would never let my responsibilities slide. Unlike my father, who eventually left us, I promised myself I’d be there for Dakota. She and I were a hookup after I’d seen my parents get into another screaming match on my mom’s front porch, one that almost made me come to blows with my father. I was pissed off at the world, drank too much, and banged the bombshell blonde at the party who straddled my lap and told me it was my lucky night. There was nothing lucky about that night. I rub the ache in my chest. No, it feels wrong to think that. I got Asher, and he’ll always be the highlight of my life even though his mother has made my life hell. I changed everything for her.

At least Asher is mine—the DNA test confirmed it. Sometimes I’m tempted to pick up the phone and call Charlotte to vent before I remember she doesn’t give a shit. That’s a whole different level of betrayal. I don’t even know where the fuck she went. Dakota and her mother Waverly won’t tell me anything, and Charlotte changed her number, so it’s not like I can ask her. And even though she took pics for her sister’s social media, Charlie never posted any of her own online. After being on that reality show as a kid, she hated being in the spotlight. Charlotte was my best friend from high school, the girl who never asked for tickets to games or wanted my help getting into hot parties or grilled me about my college prospects. I had a little thing for her when we first met. With her light blonde hair, big blue eyes, petite frame, and quiet ways, she drew out all of my protective instincts. She was in my English class freshman year, and one day our teacher randomly picked her to be Juliet. Charlie had to lie there while I, Romeo, reacted to her death. Even though we’d never spoken at that point, I could tell she was terrified. I hooked her pinky finger with mine to help steady her, and from that point on, we became the best of friends. So when guys were dicks to her, I made it clear they’d have to go through me if they ever thought to mess with her. When I saw her sitting alone in the cafeteria, I pulled up the seat next to her. When she seemed sad, I invited her to hang out. But she never looked at me all googly-eyed like the other girls. She never flirted or found reasons to touch me. She actually made me do my homework when we studied together. I figured she wasn’t into me like that and moved on. But she was still my best friend. Even when things got awkward between us after I started dating Dakota.

Float chamber. Choke valve. Throttle valve. Piston valve… As I drive the guys back to the stadium, I mentally review all the parts of a carburetor. It’s something my older brother David drilled into my head when I was younger because he assumed I’d work for him someday. And as much as I hate the idea of toiling in his garage, I find the exercise takes my mind off Charlotte’s perfect, bouncy tits. Her tiny waist. And that flimsy strip of silk between her slender thighs. Billy taps on the window. “So we’re not gonna talk about it?” My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Nope.” “Really? Because I just wanna say I always knew underneath her prim little exterior, Chuck was a stone-cold fox. Talk about spank bank material.” “Shut the fuck up, asshole. We’re not talking about Charlotte.” When he doesn’t say anything, I look over to find him smirking. “What?” “Just wondering when you’re gonna admit you have a thing for her.

Kota and I couldn’t be more different. Where she’s outgoing and fun, I’m quiet and shy. Where she’s adventurous and loves to party, I prefer to stay home and read a book. Where she loves being the center of attention, I’d rather blend in and not cause a fuss. Or as my mother tells everyone, I’m the wallflower and Kota’s the prom queen. She’s not wrong.

Kota, I can’t see—” “Hold on.” She mutes herself. I can see her profile. She’s saying something, but I can’t hear the words. That’s when it happens. The bathroom door behind her swings open, and Jake steps out through a billowing cloud of steam. Freshly washed and completely naked. I blink, a strangled whimper lodging in my throat. Holy crap. He’s perfect. I knew he was beautiful, but my fantasies fall short of the reality. His wet hair falls in his face as he towels off. First his damp locks. Then his wide, muscular chest. Down his washboard abs. And finally his groin where an enormous erection bounces against his stomach. I’m frozen until the sound mysteriously pops back on again, and his deep voice fills my room. “Let’s make this quick, Dakota. I gotta jet.” They’re definitely going to fuck. “Oh God.” I slam my laptop shut. My hands are shaking as I fling it away from me. Nausea sweeps over me so hard, I barely make it to the trash can before I lose my breakfast. Five minutes later, my phone buzzes from my nightstand, but I ignore it. The calls and texts keep coming. I don’t bother to check them because nothing my sister or Jake say will change my pathetic situation. Later that afternoon, Jake knocks on my door, calls my name, apologizes for not knowing I was on a video conference with my sister. My suitemate thinks I’m home, but since I don’t answer, they decide I must be out. I don’t budge from where I sit on the floor with a box of tissues. The sun sets and rises again. My suitemate comes and goes as the dorm comes alive, and by the time I finally dust myself off and stand, I’ve made my decision. I’m going to transfer schools. As quickly as possible.

I hold her to me as it hits me like a fucking bolt of lightning. The realization makes my heart pound. “Charlotte, I need you to know something.” I take a deep breath. “I love you.” At first, she’s quiet. “You do?” I turn my head to look her in the eye and brush her hair out of her beautiful face. “Of course. You’re the most incredible woman I know. Beautiful inside and out. You have the biggest heart of anyone I know.” I graze my lips against hers. “I love you. I think I’ve always loved you in one way or another. But this, where we’re at now, I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. Just you.” Her eyes well again, but the smile on her lips as she says those sweet words back is one I’ll never forget. “I love you, too, Jake.” She trails her fingers through my hair as she kisses me, and for the first time in my life, my future is clear. I love my family. Football. My team. But the woman in my arms gives everything else meaning. If I can wife her up someday, I’ll die a happy man.

Viewed from a distance, Nantucket Island is everything Karen Otis dreamed it would be: tasteful, charming, nautical, classic. The ferry passes inside a stone jetty, and Karen squeezes Bruce’s hand to let him know she would like to stand and walk the few feet to the railing now. Bruce places an arm across Karen’s back and eases her up out of her seat. He’s not a big man but he’s strong. He was the Pennsylvania state champion wrestler at 142 pounds in 1984. Karen first set eyes on him sitting in the Easton Area High School pool balcony. She was swimming the butterfly leg for the varsity relay team, which routinely practiced during lunch, and when she climbed out of the water, she spied Bruce, dressed in sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt, staring at an orange he held in his hands

When Ezra turns and leaves, Billy immediately wraps me and Marley in a hug. “You okay?” I sniffle. “No, but I will be.” He kisses my forehead, and I melt into him. “Why was that so hard?” “Because Marley is the center of our universe, and he’s a threat to that.” She is the center of our universe. “Thank you.” I look up at him and kiss his chin, since that’s what I can reach. “Thank you for loving her like she’s yours.” He gives me a crooked smile. “In my heart, she belongs to me.” I grasp his face with my palm. “I love you so much. And someday when you put a ring on my finger, you can make Marley officially yours. I mean, if you want to.” I’m not surprised Ezra won’t be around, since he hasn’t bothered to try to see her before now. And I’m good with that. My daughter already has a stand-up man in her life. She doesn’t need someone who’s not committed to her the way she deserves. “I definitely want to.” Laughing, he lifts me and Marley in a hug and spins us around. “I’m gonna hold you to that.” “Don’t squish her.” “I’m not. I’m holding you by your ass.” He sets me down, kisses me, and pats my butt. “How about we go get some matching t-shirts so we can make our friends gag?” “Let’s do it.” I don’t know how Billy does that, how he gets me in a good mood after that interaction with Ezra, but he does.

He gives me that sexy smile that makes me melt. “Roxy, you’re the light of my life. You brighten every day, and I never want the sun to set without seeing your beautiful face before I go to sleep. Will you do me the greatest honor and marry me?” He holds out his other hand, and Cam drops a little black box in it. My eyes are saucers as Billy opens it and pulls out a diamond ring that he slides on my finger. “This belonged to my grandmother. She wants you to have it.” I wipe the tear that escapes. “You know this is forever, right?” I whisper. His smile goes soft. “I’m not sure that’s long enough.” I grab his handsome face and kiss him. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” Everyone cheers, and he picks me up in a hug.

Grab a big-ass piece of paper. I have ideas.” Then he turns to our friends and families, holds up my hand, and yells, “I’m king of the world! Roxy Santos said she’ll marry me!” They cheer and clap and hoot. Laughing, I shake my head. “What about your Hail Mary today and your game-winning throw? Might that have contributed to your king of the world status?” Leaning down, he whispers, “That’s just icing on the cake, biscuit. You’re the real prize, and everyone here knows it.

It hits me. I love that woman. So fucking much. And I’m the biggest idiot on the planet for not begging for her forgiveness the other night. Yes, I’ve been freaked out about football and what’s going to happen with my career. Yes, I’ve been sleep-deprived and worried sick, but above all that noise, the truth levels me: if I get the game back, but she walks out of my life, it’ll wreck me. I swallow. Hard. How the hell am I gonna make it right between us again? I’ve been a mess all week. When my dad called to bitch me out yesterday, I lost it. At first, I hoped he’d called to support me, to say something fucking fatherly for once. To offer some advice. But no, he just wanted to rub my face in the scandal and call me a dumbass for getting serious with Gabby. I snapped, yelled shit I knew he wanted to hear just to get him off the phone, but it rattled me. How could someone who supposedly loved me believe the worst about me? Of course, if Gabby really thinks you’re fucking someone else behind her back, maybe you are the dumbass your father claims you are for falling for her when you should have your eyes on the prize and your heart on the game. Not on your neighbor who may want to rip your balls from your body.

Relax, Maggie. I’m not gonna bite you.” It’s a strange experience to finally hold her. I might’ve been Bash’s friend first and initially viewed Maggie as a little sister, but I remember the day that changed. From the moment she strolled up on my lawn on a blisteringly hot summer day with a scraped knee when she was thirteen and I was fourteen, I’ve wondered what it would be like to make this girl mine. To hold her when she cried. To be the reason she smiled. To have the words to make her laugh. I ruthlessly locked away those urges. Sebastian was my best friend. In our small town world, you don’t mess with your buddy’s little sister. At the time, I didn’t know exactly what that meant. I just liked the way Maggie always smiled when I caught her looking. Like a toy secreted away in my pocket, I wanted that. Except I learned to look away when she turned my way. Pretended I didn’t light up inside when she was around. Dated other girls when I wondered what it would be like to ask out Bash’s beautiful sister. It’s something I try not to think about—what might have been. When Maggie doesn’t respond, I lean close to whisper in her ear. “Vanessa wasn’t enjoying herself, and she obviously didn’t click with my family. We both agreed it was best to go our separate ways. So she left last night.

After she takes off, I’m still thinking about what she said as I head to the darkroom. Hearing about someone else’s dating drama makes me so grateful for my relationship with Jake. My phone dings, and I open it. Love you, cupcake. That’s all he says, but it puts a huge smile on my face. As much as we’ve been through, as hard as it’s been to get to this point, I’m grateful for the challenges we’ve faced because we’re stronger than ever. Love you too. Always. I add the lick emoji and giggle. It’s fun to tease him. He responds with the devil emoji. Food for thought, babe! I’ll never get over being in love with this man. It’s like we were written in the stars.

I kiss her forehead. “You know you’re the best, right?” I whisper. Billy points at us with a smirk. “I think I deserve some credit for you two happening.” Circling two fingers in the air a little too suggestively for my comfort, he adds, “Love is in the air…” He scoops up Roxy, flops onto the couch, and sits back with her on his lap. “Yeah, you’ll be on our Christmas list,” I deadpan. Roxy pats his cheek like he’s a misbehaving schoolboy and scoots off. “Please promise me y’all will put away the leftover pie.” Cam chuckles with a wink. “Darlin’, there won’t be any leftover pie.” She smiles and grabs her purse. “All righty. Later, gators. Love y’all.” Everyone yells out their thanks as she takes off. I glance down at Asher, wondering if the commotion will wake him, but he’s in a solid food coma. Billy watches her go, and after the front door shuts, I clear my throat. “Any progress with you and Roxy?” It’s

I find myself by the tunnel as the guys head for the locker room. I’ve just tucked away my cameras so I can grab some water when Jake and I make eye contact as he trots by. I’m so caught up in the excitement of the game, I run up to him and leap up into his arms to kiss him. “Great game! You’re killing it.” “Thanks, cupcake.” He laughs, kisses me again, before he pats my ass and rejoins the team. I touch my lips, which pull up in a huge smile. Life has never felt so good. Coming to Lone Star was the best decision I ever made. I’m busy thanking my lucky stars for Jake and our new school and all of the blessings we’ve had when I pause. Did someone just call my name? There it is again. It came from the stands. I grab my camera bag and look up, still smiling. Splash. That’s when I’m doused with a huge container of soda. I flinch as the cold liquid and ice hits my face and shoulders, but the debris keeps coming. More soda and some food. A hot dog with mustard and relish smacks my shirt and slowly slides to the ground. I gasp, afraid more crap will rain down on me. Someone must have tripped and accidentally dumped their food over the railing. When I look up, though, there are two girls in the stands, glaring down at me. I have a hard time making out their faces because they’re covered in face paint, but one yells, “Hey, skank! How does it feel to get Dakota’s sloppy seconds?” Horrified, I’m frozen stiff. I don’t see the soda can until it’s too late. 36 JAKE When we make it back onto the field, there’s a weird energy on the sidelines.

Is Charlie in her room?” I ask Buffy, who looks down the hall warily and nods. Why is everyone being so damn weird today? Which reminds me of how strangely Billy acted this afternoon. Did he know what happened to Charlotte and didn’t bother to tell me? When I get to her room, I’m confused why all of her clothes are on her bed. “Babe, are you okay?” She freezes before she slowly turns to face me. She has a bandage on her forehead and her swollen eyes are black and blue. Oh, shit. “Are you okay? I just missed you at the hospital. Come here.” I open my arms to her, but she shakes her head. Her eyes tear up and she tries to wipe them. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, her voice shaking. I drop my arms. “Tell you what?” The heartbroken expression on her face tears me up. “Why didn’t you tell me Coach Santos didn’t want us together? That he wanted us to cool things off for the rest of the season?

When someone walks by with a plate of fried fish, I gag. “Gross.” I cover my mouth and nose for a minute. “Kinda felt nauseated there for a sec,” I explain to Roxy when she asks what’s wrong. She folds her lips, like she has to physically restrain herself from speaking. “What?” I don’t want her to hold back with me. “Could you be pregnant?” she whispers. I laugh because no. Except… Everything around me slows down and goes a little sideways as a dizzy spell hits me. I suppose that’s what I get for checking out of the hospital against doctor’s orders. I can’t be pregnant. I don’t think. “Oh my God. What if I am?” “When did you get your last period?” she asks as I break out the calendar app on my phone.

She motions down the hall. “I saw the positive pregnancy tests in the trash.” It takes me a second to figure out what she’s talking about. The pregnancy tests! “It’s not like that,” I say immediately. She smirks. “Are there or are there not pregnancy tests in the bathroom?” “Yes, but—” “Aren’t there two that are positive?” “Yes, but that’s not exactly…” I turn to Jake, about to explain what happened with Roxy this afternoon, but he’s ghostly white. I’ve never seen him so pale. He staggers to the couch, sits at the edge, and drops his head into his hands. “Charlotte, Charlotte,” Kota coos. “Is this not the reaction you were looking for? You know, when I told Jake I was pregnant in high school, he was so sweet. He wrapped his arms around me and told me he’d be there every step of the way. Cradled my face and kissed me. Said that if I wanted the baby, he’d be there for me. Guess he’s not so excited to have knocked you up.

It’s after midnight before I manage to kick out Dakota and get Asher to bed. I immediately reach for the phone and try calling Charlotte, but it goes directly to voicemail. I’m sick about what happened tonight. I can only pray that Charlotte hears me out. “Babe, it’s me. I’m so sorry for how shit went down. I had no idea Dakota was stopping by. I didn’t even realize she was in Texas. And I know I didn’t handle your… your news… very well, and I apologize. I was caught off guard. We’ll make this work. Whatever it takes.” I wonder if she’ll even listen to my message. “I love you. Please call me back.” I obviously

Coach will probably flip out when he finds out I’m responsible for another unplanned pregnancy. I groan, feeling conflicted. I love Charlotte. With all my fucking heart. Seeing my ex only solidified how I feel about my cupcake. She’s amazing. So positive and loving. So sweet and thoughtful. Literally everything I want in a girlfriend. Definitely everything I want in a wife. But we’re not there yet. Got to get her to talk to me first. Have to convince her I’ll be there for her if she decides to have this baby. A baby with Charlotte. I close my eyes, and I can see it. My sweet woman cradling a little bundle. She’ll be a fantastic mother. Me conmueve. It chokes me up a little. Because I want that life. And in this moment, all of my anxiety fades away. So what if this baby pisses off Coach? So what if NFL teams think I’m a jackass? All that matters is getting Charlotte to understand I love her to the moon and back and I’ll be by her side come hell or high water.

Movement catches my attention across the park, and I jerk my head up. It’s him. My heart batters my rib cage as Jake gets closer. The sun sets behind him, and his thick, dark hair blows in the breeze. He’s wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and his letterman jacket. He looks so handsome, and I’ve missed him so much. It takes everything in me not to jump up and run to him. When he reaches me, I smile hesitantly. “Great game today.” The words are barely out of my mouth when he grabs me by the lapels of my coat and yanks me up into a fierce kiss. Everything I’d planned to say to him blows away in the crisp breeze. I toss my arms around his neck and hold on as he threads his fingers in my hair and holds me to him. His tongue battles with mine, but after a minute, he slows down until he’s pressing tender kisses to my lips. “I fucking love you, Charlotte. Please don’t be upset with me anymore.” I open my mouth, but he places a finger over my lips. “Hear me out.” I nod and reluctantly let go of him. We sit side by side on the swings, but he swivels around to face me, and I do the same. He exhales. “I’m sorry for how I reacted when I found out you might be pregnant. I can’t explain why I had an out-of-body experience. I think one of the biggest shocks was hearing it from Dakota instead of you.” “I’m guessing she used the bathroom before I got there?” I ask. Nodding, he reaches over to grab my hand. “She obviously saw them in the trash.” “I just felt really fucking overwhelmed. I thought, ‘I’m stretched so thin as it is with Asher. I never get enough time with him. Every moment with you feels stolen. Some days I’m barely awake in class. Football consumes all of my energy. And I have a mountain of laundry and no time to do it.’” I squeeze his hand. “I get it. I’m sorry you misunderstood. Only one of those tests was mine. The negative one.” I explain the situation with Roxy. She’s given me permission to tell Jake what’s going on with her. “Jesus. I feel dumb.” He lets go of my hand to scrub his face.

The longer I stand here, the crazier the fans get. I’m about to give up and go meet his mom like we planned, but then someone taps my shoulder. I whirl around. And then have to look down. Because Jake is down on one knee, but he’s motioning to Otto. My bodyguard whips out a black box from his jacket and hands it to my boyfriend. I cover my mouth as my eyes sting. Jake gives me the most breathtaking smile. “Charlotte Anne Darling, we’ve had a long and winding road together, and throughout that time, you’ve become the most important person in my life. You’re the woman I want to grow old with. The one I want to kiss first thing in the morning and come home to every day. I’m a lucky man to call you my girlfriend, but I’d be even luckier to call you my wife. Would you do me this honor?” Pretty sure I scream my answer because I have no chill. I barely notice when he grabs my hand and slips a gold band on my finger. When he stands, I leap into his arms, not caring who sees me kiss him.

Michael Oliver, did you have groceries delivered to my door via my neighbor, or did I imagine that?” The deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face makes me laugh. “Will you be mad if I admit that was me?” “Why would I be mad?” He shrugs. “You like to do things on your own. Didn’t want to mess with your girl power vibe.” Girl power vibe? “Plus, we’d had that horrible conversation at the store. Didn’t want to upset you again, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop worrying that maybe you needed some groceries.” I’m momentarily speechless. As we sway to the music, I dust off some lint on his tux. “You know, I baked you a pie and left it on your doorstep to thank you. Did you get it?” He stops moving. Tilts his head. Growls. “Johnny ate my damn pie!” His outrage puts another smile on my face. “It probably wasn’t even that good.” “Everyone knows you’re a damn good cook, Maggie.” Little flutters fill my belly at the compliment, and I make a mental note to bake him another one.

Magnolia. Her hair is down, and she’s wearing a little sundress. She’s so beautiful, she takes my breath away. But her cheeks look hollow, like she’s lost weight recently. Is she having money trouble again? Is she not getting the groceries she needs? Why the hell haven’t I grilled Sienna more? She’s been strangely silent on the topic of her bestie. She and Sienna hug, but the two of them look somber for some reason. Next week, Ben and Sienna will be moving to Houston. The girls are probably sad to be separated. I feel like a thirsty man dying in the desert, steps away from a drink of water. But Ben and Sienna’s party doesn’t seem like the appropriate place to break the ice with Maggie. For all I know, she’ll toss her drink in my face. After a bit, I see her head toward the bathrooms. This is my chance. I follow her and wait in the hall. She’s in there for a while. Then I hear it. The puking. Is that Maggie? I pace outside the bathrooms, wondering if I should go in there, when I spot Ben’s aunt Teresa. “Tía,” I say, because we all call her Tía. “Can you check on Maggie for me? She’s in there, and it sounds like she’s getting sick.” Teresa and Maggie have spent a lot of time together at Ben’s taking care of his daughter, so she isn’t a stranger. After a moment, Teresa sticks her head back out. “Come help me.” I follow her in and find Maggie sprawled on the floor next to the toilet, dry-heaving. “Jesus, Maggie. What’s wrong?” I scoop her hair back and get a good look at her face. She’s pale. Really pale. And covered in sweat. This close, I can see dark circles under her eyes. “I’m fine,” she says, but when she wipes her mouth, her hands tremble hard. She starts retching again. “Did you get food poisoning or something?” Her eyes fill with tears. “I don’t know. I’ve had this bug I can’t seem to kick.” Teresa scoots in behind me and hands me a wad of damp paper towels. “Wipe her face.

From the passenger seat of Michael’s car, I eye the pharmacy like it’s a viper waiting to strike. “Look, I know you’re a ‘rip the Band-Aid off’ kind of person, so let’s go in there and get a pregnancy test,” Michael says. “At least we’ll know what we’re dealing with.” I turn to him, surprised. “How do you know this about me and Band-Aids?” “Because once, a long time ago, you and I used to be friends. You always told your mom you wanted the bad news first.” “And you remember this?” His eyes travel over my face, and I hate that it’s probably red and swollen from puking, but he gives me a tender smile. “I remember a lot of things about you.

I pull out the pregnancy test. Michael moves over to sit next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulder. My head fits perfectly under his chin. It’s such a random thing to notice, but I’m trying not to freak out, and there’s something so steadying about this man. Closing my eyes, I rest my forehead against his chest. His low voice rumbles in my ear. “Whatever it says, you’re going to be okay. Like I said, I’m here for you no matter what. Together, we can handle this.” I hand him the test. “You look.” He’s quiet for a long moment, but then he lifts my chin and gives me the sweetest smile before he kisses my forehead. “How do you feel about being my baby mama?” A

Janelle smiles at me as she bounces Lily on her hip. I can’t deny this situation feels surreal. This right here, a family with Janelle, is everything I thought I wanted in high school. Someone I could devote my heart and soul to, someone who would have my back. Not having my parents and sister in my life fucked me up, and I guess I figured having a family of my own would fill that hole. But when I look at Janelle, that brick wall I erected after she dumped my sorry ass is bigger than ever. I feel... nothing. Not anger or hatred or pain or affection. Just this empty space she used to inhabit when we were kids driving country roads and sharing our hopes for the future. Who says apathy is bad? If it’ll protect me from this woman, I’m down for apathy. My only worry is that I won’t know how to let anyone else in. Like my daughter.

Wooden the preparation freak tracked drills timed almost to the second on the logged file cards. While the varsity worked behind a partition on one end of the gym, rarely seeing the seven-foot phenom or his teammates, the freshmen learned the crisp routine. Two minutes of layups, two minutes of reverse layups from both sides,

conversation that included the news that the Bruins had just lost the freshman coach. Wooden offered Cunningham the job before the end of the meal. A high school junior varsity coach in Ohio tried to land what had suddenly become an unusually attractive role, in the program coming off back-to-back national championships, on the team

What we have here is a bunch of junior-varsity players trying to get on the varsity team.

Okay, so what do we got so far? In Boston we got trees, we got water, we got the Red Sox, we got the aquarium, and we got the…We got the…” Megan looked at Darnell Wilcox. He had ticked off his list on his fingers and was now staring down at his pinky as if it were going to give him the answer. In the other hand he clutched the neck of a half-empty bottle of Budweiser--from what Megan could tell, his fifth or sixth. Darnell was a handsome guy who, according to his varsity jacket, was captain of the football team. At the beginning of the night, he had shown himself to be a smart, friendly, funny guy. Now that he was officially drunk, he was still friendly and funny, but the smart thing was out the window.

He’d played sports in high school, and then proved that a young man with the build of St. Francis of Assisi could play wide receiver for the Harvard varsity football team.

! I’m majorly frustrated! I don’t know if I should quit the team, confront my teammates, or just keep quiet so I don’t make things worse. I really don’t want to give up my dream of making varsity! What would you do?? —Cheerless Cheerleader * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Dear Cheerless Cheerleader, Hon . . . I think you’re kidding yourself if you think you made the cheerleading team based on your awesome moves. My reliable source on the team told me your tryout routine was HOR-REN-DOUS. She said she couldn’t tell if you were trying to dance or going into convulsions! Your backflips were BACKFLOPS, your cartwheels were FLAT TIRES, and your dismount was totally DISGUSTING! Get the picture? You were chosen for one reason, and one reason alone—you look like a sturdy ogre who can carry a lot of weight! It’s been a long tradition for cheerleading captains to hand-pick strong, ugly girls for the bottom of the pyramid. Didn’t you know that?? Quit taking everything so personally! Just accept that the bottom is where you belong, sweetie! You should hold your green, Shrek-looking head high that someone actually wants you for something. Bet that doesn’t happen often! Yay you! Sincerely, Miss Know-It-All P.S. My source wants you to stop dancing. She says you’re giving the squad NIGHT TERRORS! * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He is a police officer in Kasselton. A captain, in fact, though I won’t ask to wear his varsity jacket to the prom.” “Oh,” I said. “Apparently they are thinking of making arrests.” “They started it,” I said.

requirements. In Russia today, everything happened to maintain the nadzirateli, the overseers, to protect their power, to continue looting the country’s patrimony. Nate wanted to devastate the opposition, to avenge MARBLE, to take away their power. Nate was dark—black hair and straight eyebrows—of medium height, and slim from varsity swimming in college. What colleagues and friends noticed however, were darting brown eyes that read faces, weighed gestures, and narrowed with quick comprehension. On the street, those brown eyes scanned ahead, watched the wings, picked up the peripheral anomalies before there was movement. During surveillance exercises as a CIA

From kindergarten through senior year of high school, Evan attended Crossroads, an elite, coed private school in Santa Monica known for its progressive attitudes. Tuition at Crossroads runs north of $ 22,000 a year, and seemingly rises annually. Students address teachers by their first names, and classrooms are named after important historical figures, like Albert Einstein and George Mead, rather than numbered. The school devotes as significant a chunk of time to math and history as to Human Development, a curriculum meant to teach students maturity, tolerance, and confidence. Crossroads emphasizes creativity, personal communication, well-being, mental health, and the liberal arts. The school focuses on the arts much more than athletics; some of the school’s varsity games have fewer than a dozen spectators. 2 In 2005, when Evan was a high school freshman, Vanity Fair ran an exhaustive feature about the school titled “School for Cool.” 3 The school, named for Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” unsurprisingly attracts a large contingent of Hollywood types, counting among its alumni Emily and Zooey Deschanel, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Kate Hudson, Jonah Hill, Michael Bay, Maya Rudolph, and Spencer Pratt. And that’s just the alumni—the parents of students fill out another page or two of who’s who A-listers. Actor Denzel Washington once served as the assistant eighth grade basketball coach, screenwriter Robert Towne spoke in a film class, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma talked shop with the school’s chamber orchestra.

It was decaffeinated jazz he sent to WJZ via Western Union lines from the Hotel Pennsylvania. A distant echo of New Orleans, yet it spoke to listeners.” The ’20s style was lively, rich with saxophone and violin and well-sprinkled with novelty tunes. Lopez was instantly identified by his theme, Nola, given a dexterous workout on the Lopez keyboard. Whiteman had Gershwin: his Rhapsody in Blue concert at Aeolian Hall on Feb. 12, 1924, established his reputation. And though Whiteman was slow to find his way into radio, he was a major force in band music of the ’20s. George Olsen was a master of popular music: his 1925 recording Who was a bestseller, followed by such period hits as The Varsity Drag, Because My Baby Don’t Mean Maybe Now, and Doin’ the Raccoon, a testament to the national passion for fur coats.

Learning how to win even these seemingly insignificant contests prepares you to protect yourself from the varsity challenges. The strange thing about being taught to be a victim is that our status is somehow communicated to the persecutors. Someone who’s looking to harm someone can pick the victim out of a crowd.

in Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (New York: Penguin, 2011).   2. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (ed. Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998], 150) speaks of the city as “humanity en masse” and therefore “humanity ‘writ large.’”   3. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (p. 150) defines city as a “fortified habitation.”   4. See Frank Frick, The City

It just seems weird, you know!” Leila shouted. “The way she talks about you to the other girls! I neeeever thought you guys would get along.

Ebright yawned that his varsity was nothing to write home about—“a good average outfit,

A man can dream, can’t he? And hell, she’s been hosing half the varsity and at least a couple of the JV, I mean, she’s been riding the meatpole like she invented it.

When a person converts to Christianity, he or she not only enters a relationship with Christ and inherits eternal life, but also adopts a worldview—a set of lenses through which to view the world. Other critical worldview questions include What is real? (metaphysics); How do we know that which we know? (epistemology); What happens to a person after death? Where is history going? and What kind of a thing is a person? (anthropology). For more discussion on the subject of one’s worldview, see James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, 4th ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2004); J. P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind (Colorado Springs: Nav-Press, 1998); and Nancy Pearcey and Phillip E. Johnson, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001).

Joe Gordon, the team’s longtime public relations director, said he would be right over. The Rooneys had hired Gordon in 1969, the same year they had hired Chuck Noll, in an effort to upgrade the previously dismal franchise. Gordon was a Pittsburgh native who had played varsity baseball at Pitt and whose hard-knuckle attitude fit perfectly with the brawling team. In the days preceding the 1976 AFC Championship Game against the hated Raiders, Gordon decked an Oakland TV reporter. Asked the next day if his team was ready, Noll said, “I don’t know, but Joe Gordon is.

Ghar wapsi, conversion tools of politicians for political purposes’ Lalmani Verma | 318 words Eminent educationists on Saturday concluded that issues like “ghar wapsi” and “religious conversion or reconversion” are “tools beings used by politicians to gain political mileage”. At a seminar organised by Centre for Advanced Studies of Allahabad University, Department of Philosophy, professors from several state varsities unanimously spoke against such programmes, saying that religious conversion was a rare practice that could not be performed by inducing fear or allurement. Among the attendees were Professors Lalji Bajwa, Shabnam Hameed, Aziz-ur-rehman Siddiqui, M Massey, S P Pandey and Kripa Shankar. Prof Massey is the principal of Christian College in Allahabad while Prof Pandey and Prof Kripa Shankar are with Banaras Hindu University.

If I were to ask you about let’s say coaching a high school football team for your local high school and told you the only time you were needed to be there as coach, was on game day. That is right no practice during the week, just take the team and win is all we ask. How do I prepare them if I cannot practice you ask? Well sir they have been trained and practiced in their freshman, sophomore and junior years. You will be the varsity coach and the team knows the game and how it’s played, all you need to do is set up the game plan on game day and organize your team so they win! Ludicrous! How can I be expected to develop the cohesion necessary to put a winning team on the field, without practice, despite their prior training and the three-plus years’ experience? Yes it is ludicrous. Yet this is exactly what we expect of law enforcement, security personnel and other first responders tasked with responding to and winning in crisis situations.

Among book publishers, the largest number of evangelical feminist books are being published by InterVarsity Press4 and Baker Books. Among popular journals, both Charisma magazine under the editorship of J. Lee Grady and Christianity Today under the leadership of David Neff clearly favor an evangelical feminist position (though Christianity Today has made some attempts to represent both sides fairly). Among parachurch ministries, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is strongly committed to an evangelical feminist position, as is Youth With A Mission.

I’ve often felt like the illegitimate pastor who was good enough to be a starter on the junior varsity team, but never good enough to do anything but sit at the end of the bench in my warm-ups on the varsity squad.

At its worst, privilege is blindness: Amid the vast literature on race and privilege, one especially useful book from a Christian perspective for those from the dominant culture is Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp, Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multiethnic World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

The three-mile course record was then 16:33.4, set by the Washington varsity that Joe had watched from the ferry in 1934. Now Joe and his crewmates came in at 16:20, and they did it sitting upright at the end of the race, breathing easy, feeling good.

junior varsity or cavemen. Weird-shaped heads. Tommy was watching TV these days, and seeing finally how this shit is everywhere you look. Dissing the country bumpkins, trying to bring us up to par, the long-termed war of trying to shame the land people into joining America. Meaning their version, city. TV being the slam book of all times, maybe everybody in the city was just going along with it, not really noticing the rudeness factors. Possibly to the extent of not getting why we are so fucking mad out here.

She said okay. Probably she thought I was growing up to be one more prick in her life, a junior-varsity Stoner. It’s not that I wanted to be mean. But any time I started feeling sorry for her, something in my brain said Don’t go there, it’s a trap.

I was a temporary Horseman – because I hadn’t heard any trumpets from Heaven making it official that I had signed up for the Varsity Apocalypse team.

Michael Jordan initially failed to make his varsity high school basketball team but became one of the greatest athletes to ever play the sport.

MISTAKES AND CURVEBALLS YOU MUST LET YOUR KID EXPERIENCE19 • Not being invited to a birthday party • Experiencing the death of a pet • Breaking a valuable vase • Working hard on a paper and still getting a poor grade • Having a car break down away from home • Seeing the tree he planted die • Being told that a class or camp is full • Getting detention • Missing a show because she was helping Grandma • Having a fender bender • Being blamed for something he didn’t do • Having an event canceled because someone else misbehaved • Being fired from a job • Not making the varsity team • Coming in last at something • Being hit by another kid • Rejecting something he had been taught • Deeply regretting saying something she can’t take back • Not being invited when friends are going out • Being picked last for neighborhood kickball

Think Langston will make varsity?" Red asks. "Don't know. Don't care. Coach picks the team, not me." I busy myself wrapping tape around my stick. I know Langston will make varsity. He's a sophomore this year and he's fucking Langston Juniper. As in Juniper Falls.

If humans do not belong in California or Arizona, where do they belong? In Reisner's native Minnesota where there's many lakes? Of course, this is absurd. Very few people could survive in Minnesota without the energy that is produced there from fuel brought from elsewhere without rapidly deforesting it and belching the pollution of numerous wood fires. So what about further south? Just about everywhere you go, humans are out of their "natural" element—which is some place in Africa. Even where they are in their element, they are there in numbers that are unsustainable based on using only very local resources. (Unless we allow trains, trucks, ships, and planes into our "natural" world.) Indeed, most human habitations make little sense in some way, just as Speaker Hastert said of New Orleans. But, yet, there they are. Hastert's remark was just one comment made in the wake of terrible suffering, and was probably driven by his human sympathy, not wanting to see this go on again. But it was insensitive on another level and he was criticized for it. Reisner's whole book is basically saying the same thing about the entire Southwestern United States. The irony is that this book was largely written at a time when it was abundantly clear than energy, not water, was the common denominator in resource policy. A few short years after the oil shocks, the Iranian revolution, during the Iran-Iraq War, and revised months after the First Gulf War, Resiner and other water conservationists must realize they are the junior varsity. This is before all of this activity unleashed the events of the Bush era.

You got a name?” the ring announcer asked me. I’m sure I had thought of a million ideas, but I was drawing a blank. This was all happening fast, and I had nothing. I totally froze. A wrestler who went by the name Tack turned to Cody, “He’s like the F’n guy from the movie, Varsity Blues, Jonathan Moxley!” In the movie the guy’s name is Jonathan Moxon. So thankfully, he had actually messed it up. Cody gave the OK sign to the ring announcer. I was busy pissing my pants, so I didn’t offer anything. Just like that, I had a name, a name I like to think I’ve defined as my own. The fact that women wearing whipped-cream bikinis are often lurking around every corner ready to accost me is purely a coincidence.

I touch the fuzzy letter I. The pins he’s earned for varsity and captain. This is what we care about. How many pins we have. We want to be MVPs. The most valuable of all. What’s so wrong with that? It’s stupid, Beth would say. That’s what’s wrong with it.

They were kids. But the ones who could play would often mix with an older crowd. There was no distinction between varsity and junior varsity—strict divisions that applied elsewhere often didn’t in the world of local bands.

WWSoccerGirl: I’m Selena, by the way :) I’m on the varsity soccer team. I’ve played since I could walk. I have three older brothers and an older sister. They all play too. I guess my whole family’s obsessed with futbol. Lol. And I suck at math :) and most school subjects. I’d rather be out on the soccer field! Wow. So Reyna, Harper, and Selena had replied. This was great.

*———. The Mystery of Israel’s Origins: An Introduction and Proposals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. *Stager, Lawrence E. “Forging and Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel,” in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Michael D. Coogan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Stark, Thomas. The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It). Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010. *Thomas, Heath A., Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan, eds. Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013. Williamson, H. G. M. 1 and 2 Chronicles. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Wright, N. T. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012. *———. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. Paul in Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. ———. Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why It Matters. San Francisco: HarperOne,

Those Panthers ... those itsy, bitsy football players ... those hearty, gutsy guys from the oilfields ... what about 'em? Yep, its incredible, amazin' and unbelievable, but the li'lfellers do occasionally catch the best end of the stick. All the reasons for the phenomenal support of Permian had been embodied by this 1980 varsity team. They were a classic bunch of overachievers who had become living proof of all the perceived values of white working-class and middle-class America-desire, self-sacrifice, pushing oneself beyond the expected limit. They were the kinds of values that the Permian fans harbored about themselves. What made those boys great on the football field had made the fans great as well. Just as the boys had produced against all odds, so they had produced in the oil field against all odds, not with brains and fancy talk but with brawn and muscle and endurance and self-sacrifice.

Scripture, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2009), provides a layman’s guide to the fundamental principles of how to interpret the Bible in such a way as to avoid misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or distortion of the Word of God.

Justin Taylor, editor of Crossway, cites the example of one writer who wanted to thank “my parents, Jesus and Ayn Rand.” See what happens when you leave out the serial comma? But Andy Le Peau, at InterVarsity, points to a different kind of example. Suppose someone were to dedicate his book to “my mother, Ayn Rand, and God”? Now the serial comma creates the idea that Ayn Rand is in apposition to mother, which it presumably wasn’t.

Dear Miss Know-It-All, I worked really hard to make the eighth-grade cheerleading team this year, but the other cheerleaders treat me like I don’t belong. I never get to do much cheering or dancing like they do. The only time the team captain needs me is when we do the human pyramid, and she always puts me at the bottom! I have to hold the most people on my back, which is totally excruciating, and if I lose my balance, the whole pyramid collapses and everyone bullies me about it! I’m tired of those girls walking all over me. Literally! I don’t know what I did to deserve this kind of treatment, but it’s pretty obvious they all hate my guts. ! I’m majorly frustrated! I don’t know if I should quit the team, confront my teammates, or just keep quiet so I don’t make things worse. I really don’t want to give up my dream of making varsity! What would you do?? —Cheerless Cheerleader * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Dear Cheerless Cheerleader, Hon . . . I think you’re kidding yourself if you think you made the cheerleading team based on your awesome moves. My reliable source on the team told me your tryout routine was HOR-REN-DOUS. She said she couldn’t tell if you were trying to dance or going into convulsions! Your backflips were BACKFLOPS, your cartwheels were FLAT TIRES, and your dismount was totally DISGUSTING! Get the picture? You were chosen for one reason, and one reason alone—you look like a sturdy ogre who can carry a lot of weight! It’s been a long tradition for cheerleading captains to hand-pick strong, ugly girls for the bottom of the pyramid. Didn’t you know that?? Quit taking everything so personally! Just accept that the bottom is where you belong, sweetie! You should hold your green, Shrek-looking head high that someone actually wants you for something. Bet that doesn’t happen often! Yay you! Sincerely, Miss Know-It-All P.S. My source wants you to stop dancing. She says you’re giving the squad NIGHT TERRORS!

Anyway, I wanted to tell you this story, since it just rolled into my gourd while I was into that 1950 Lighthouse shot. I never told you about the Legend of the Gigantic Fart, did I?” “Put the beer in a paper bag. Let’s get it on the road.” “No, man, this story became a legend and is still told in the high schools around the county. You see, it was at the junior prom, a very big deal with hoop dresses and everybody drinking sloe gin and R.C. Cola outside in the cars. Now, this is strictly a class occasion if you live in a shitkicker town. Anyway, we’d been slopping down the beer all afternoon and eating pinto-bean salad and these greasy fried fish before we got to the dance. So it was the third number, and I took Betty Hoggenback out on the floor and was doing wonderful, tilting her back like Fred Astaire doing Ginger Rogers. Then I felt this wet fart start to grow inside me. It was like a brown rat trying to get outside. I tried to leak it off one shot at a time and keep dancing away from it, but I must have left a cloud behind that would take the varnish off the gym floor. Then one guy says, ‘Man, I don’t believe it!’ People were walking off the floor, holding their noses and saying, ‘Pew, who cut it?’ Then the saxophone player on the bandstand threw up into the piano. Later, guys were shaking my hand and buying me drinks, and a guy on the varsity came up and said that was the greatest fart he’d ever seen. It destroyed the whole prom. The saxophone player had urp all over his summer tux, and they must have had to burn the smell out of that piano with a blowtorch.” Buddy was laughing so hard at his own story that tears ran down his cheeks. He caught his breath, drank out of the beer glass, then started laughing again. The woman behind the bar was looking at him as though a lunatic had just walked into the normalcy of her life.

center would dominate varsity opponents when the time came. Not stopping at pronouncing himself “amazed” by the physical presence and “extraordinary demeanor,” Wooden offered the highest praise possible, that Alcindor reminded him of his beloved father in poise and self-control. Comparing anyone in a positive way to the quiet

Airin G-1 Black & White Leather Bomber Jacket Albert Einstein Brown Leather Jacket 4’s up Fredo Bang Varsity Jacket Mens Vintage Cognac Leather Car Coat Alveraz | Men’s Black Sheepskin Biker Leather Jacket Armageddon | Men’s Black Sheepskin Leather Biker Jacket Austin Men Cafe Racer Off White Real Leather Jacket Aviator Pilot Flying Fur Shearling B3 Raf Brown Jacket

There was a tall outfield fence in Caloosa, out beyond the grass that seemed to be freshly cut here the way the infield always seemed to be freshly raked, but Hutch had only seen high school varsity players clear it.

After my family fell apart, the perfect little family, I was liberated. I quit the football team and joined drama. I stopped wearing my varsity jacket and the cool clothes of the time, and shopped thrift stores instead, buying sixties corduroy bell-bottoms and hitting the surplus store for army jackets and fatigues. I decided I was beholden to no one—least of all myself and those fixed ideals I'd developed that turned out to be little more than ant hills.

From then on the disorder became her secret friend. She became not only an anorexic-bulimic, but the absolute best anorexic-bulimic she could be. She was strategic, clean, informed. She knew, for example, that the worst kind of vomit is the kind that isn’t properly chewed up. Lobes of steak that rise up your throat like Lincoln Logs. Ice cream is also a problem. It’s too soft and comes back up like liquid; it doesn’t feel like expelling anything at all and you can’t be sure it didn’t stick to the walls of your stomach. Then of course there is the question of timing. Everything in life is timing and with vomiting it’s no different. Too soon after you eat, and nothing comes up. You wreck your throat trying to regurgitate. Too late, and only the tail end of the meal comes; your finger is slicked in fawn fluid for nothing. You do it too soon or too early and you make too much noise because your body isn’t prepared. With vomiting, you have to work with your body. There is no working against it. You have to respect the process. The hope each morning was that she would barely eat—a pan-cooked chicken breast, an orange, lemon water. But if she failed—peanut M&M’s, a bite of someone’s birthday cake—then she would accept the failure at the same time that she would not accept the failure. She would go to the bathroom. Flush twice. Clean up. And reenter the conversation. It worked, for the most part. Field hockey suffered. In the ninth grade she had been a pretty serious athlete, but by the spring of tenth grade she was so skinny she could barely make varsity. School, in general, suffered. She stopped doing homework and stopped paying attention in class. Her family didn’t question her new body or her new habit. The closest her mother came to Why are you trying to kill yourself? was Why do you flush the toilet so many times?

I became obsessed with her hands. How they were kind of perpetually moving, twitching, the knuckles on her skinny fingers popping every time she remembered to crack them, which was often. I liked to watch them when she spoke, when she curled them around the occasional vanilla latte, when she ran them through her hair. I loved June's hands. I loved June's collarbone. I loved June's hair. I loved her laugh and her nose and her purple varsity jacket. I loved June's everything. I was beginning to think I loved without there needing to be a common noun to follow.

I’m sorry I dragged you into this, Ben.” She sniffles, her soft voice instantly pulling me back from that edge. “I just... I guess I needed to get back at him, you know? Show him he doesn’t matter. I feel so stupid for trusting him.” “I get it,” I whisper. “Use me all you want. Winston and I have never been friends and never will be.” I feel like a dick for not giving her a heads-up about him sooner. But that’s not the kind of thing you just drop on someone, and we’ve never been close like this before. Yes, we conspired to help my sister get back with her boyfriend last winter, and we’ve chatted a few times, but her being with Winston meant me giving her a wide berth. He only asked me to give her a ride because she and I are neighbors. And I have the distinct feeling he wanted to flaunt that she belonged to him. The only kink to staying away from her is the promise I made to my sister to keep an eye on Sienna, which is why I didn’t balk at Winston’s request to drive her to the airport. “I don’t want to cause problems for you on the team.” I shrug and ignore the very real possibility that Winston won’t let this go. “He deserves worse. I’m happy to help however I can.” “You know what would really get under his skin?” Olly, who’s been quiet all this time, takes a swig of soda. “You need a new roommate, right?” he asks Sienna. When she nods, he points at me. “Ben should move in with you. It’ll drive Winston crazy.” I make a face. “Trying to get rid of me?” “Didn’t you just tell me you now have a toddler? Where we gonna put her? In the closet? Next to the Jacuzzi? It was bad enough having a baby around last year, but toddlers are even tougher.” Hell, he’s right.