Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Ever
Giant beer pong was somehow both dumber and more competitive than regular beer pong.
The setup took up one whole side of the Social Club near the giant games section, where the noise from the bar blurred with the crack of pool balls and the occasional cheers from the axe lanes.
Six garbage cans on each side had been painted red to look like oversized Solo cups, lined up in a triangle on the floor with enough room between them that nobody could accuse the game of being easy.
Instead of ping-pong balls, we used red rubber kickballs that had a bad bounce if you threw them wrong and rolled off toward the pinball machines if you got too wild with it.
It was ridiculous.
And, apparently, taken very seriously.
“Okay,” Alice said, holding the kickball against her hip and narrowing her eyes at our side like she was sizing up an enemy in battle. “Let’s all remember who taught who how to play this.”
Lark barked out a laugh beside me. “Nobody taught anybody. You just yelled the rules and made us start.”
“That’s called leadership.”
“That’s called being bossy,” Wren said from the other side, resting her hands on her hips.
Alice pointed the ball at her. “You wound me.”
“Probably not enough,” Wren muttered.
I snorted and bent a little to brace my hands on my knees, already smiling despite myself.
The teams had somehow become me and Lark on one side and Alice and Wren on the other, which made absolutely no sense considering Alice had started out trying to claim me for her team, but Lark had looped her arm through mine and said, “Nope, she’s with me,” and that had been that.
So now I stood shoulder to shoulder with Lark, staring down our makeshift battlefield while Alice bounced lightly on her feet like she was training for the Olympics and Wren looked about five seconds from hustling all of us for money.
“Ready to lose?” Alice asked.
Lark folded her arms. “Ready to watch your old ass pull something trying to throw that ball?”
Alice gasped. “Old?”
Wren cackled.
I laughed under my breath, but even as I did, my eyes drifted.
Not on purpose.
I didn’t even realize I was doing it until I was already looking toward the bar.
Jude was still there.
He’d moved a little farther down, closer to Oliver and Thorn, but I could still pick him out without trying, which was annoying because I was very much trying not to.
He had a glass in front of him now instead of a beer bottle—water, maybe, or something clear.
His shoulders were broad and loose in that way men’s got when they were sitting still but weren’t really relaxed.
Oliver was saying something to him, and Basil was laughing at whatever it was, but Jude barely seemed to react.
My stomach tightened, not because he was doing anything, but because he wasn’t.
Because I hated that I was still aware of him.
“Ever.”
I blinked and jerked my attention back to the game.
Wren gave me a curious look. “You trying to order a drink with your mind or what?”
“What?”
She tipped her head toward the bar. “You keep looking over there.”
Heat crept into my cheeks. “Oh. No. I was just looking.”
“I wonder at what?” Lark asked dryly.
I shot her a look. “Shut up.”
Wren laughed and turned, lifting a hand toward the bar. “Penny!”
Penny was weaving around the end of the bar with a tray balanced on one palm. She glanced over. “Yeah?”
“Bring us a round of Amaretto Sours when you get a second.”
Penny grinned. “Got it.”
“See?” Wren said, turning back to me. “Now you don’t have to stare holes through the bar.”
“I was not staring holes through the bar.”
Alice raised a brow. “You kind of were.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the kickball from the floor where it had rolled after the last toss. “Can we please just beat you now?”
“Oh, she’s feisty,” Alice said. “That’s cute.”
Lark held out her hand for the ball. “Give me that. I’m about to humble them.”
I passed it to her.
She bounced it twice, then took a dramatic breath through her nose like she was centering herself for greatness. “Watch and learn.”
“You say that every time,” Wren called.
“Because one day it’ll be true.”
Lark launched the ball.
It arced high, clipped the rim of one of the front garbage cans, and bounced right back toward us.
Alice clutched at her chest. “Embarrassing.”
“Eat shit,” Lark said.
Wren laughed so hard she had to put a hand on Alice’s shoulder to steady herself. Then she scooped up the ball and weighed it in her hands, squinting at our side like she suddenly had a vendetta.
“You’re gonna miss,” I muttered.
She threw the ball, and it hit the edge of the center can, bounced off the floor, and rolled away uselessly.
Lark pointed at her. “That’s karma.”
“That’s bad luck,” Wren shot back.
“That’s your hand-eye coordination failing you in real time,” Lark shot back.
Alice stepped forward and snagged the ball before it could get too far, muttering, “Move. I’ll fix this.” She lined herself up, tongue pressing to the inside of her cheek for concentration.
“You look like you’re trying to sink a shot in the NBA,” I said.
“I am an athlete.”
“You’re an old lady,” Lark said.
Alice launched the ball without taking her eyes off us. It sailed cleanly into the front-right can with a hollow thunk. “It’s ol’ lady, not old.” She threw both arms up. “And that’s how it’s done!”
“Oh, screw off,” Lark muttered.
Wren pointed at us. “Drink!”
“There’s nothing to drink yet,” I said.
“Then pretend,” Alice said. “Honor the spirit of the game.”
“The spirit of the game is stupid,” Lark grumbled, but she mimed taking a sip from an invisible glass anyway.
I bent to grab the ball again, and there it was—that pull.
That stupid, irritating tug in my awareness.
My gaze slid toward the bar before I could stop it.
Jude had turned slightly on his stool.
Not enough to make it obvious.
Just enough that I could see more of his face from here.
He wasn’t talking now. Thorn was. Oliver had shifted closer to Ender. Basil was looking toward the entrance like he’d gotten distracted by something else.
Jude’s eyes were hidden from this distance, but his head was angled enough that I had no trouble believing he was looking right in our direction.
I looked away first, like I always did.
Annoyance flared low in my chest, more at myself than anything else.
This was exactly what I didn’t want.
I was supposed to be moving forward and having fun.
And instead, my attention kept snagging on the same man it had been snagging on for years.
“Earth to Ever,” Lark said.
“Hm?”
“You’re up.”
Right.
I stepped into position and held the ball in both hands, staring at the red-painted garbage cans like they’d personally insulted me.
“Do not miss,” Alice said.
“Encouraging,” I muttered.
“Just trying to motivate you.”
Lark leaned closer. “If you sink this, I’ll buy your next drink.”
“I thought Wren got this round.”
“She is, but then I’ll buy the one after.”
I narrowed my eyes at the setup and threw.
The kickball smacked the edge of the front can, bounced up in a ridiculous, hanging moment that made everybody suck in a breath at once, and then dropped in.
“Oh!” Wren shouted.
“Yes!” Lark yelled, grabbing my shoulders.
I laughed, surprised enough by it that the sound came out bigger than I meant it to.
Alice groaned. “That was luck.”
“That was skill,” I said.
“That was a fluke.”
“That sounds like loser talk,” Lark chimed in.
Alice held out both hands. “Rematch rules. We’re doing rematch rules.”
“There are no rematch rules,” Wren said. “That’s not a thing.”
“It should be.”
“Only because you’re losing,” Lark snickered.
The teasing rolled on, easy and overlapping, and for a few minutes, it was enough to keep me anchored in the game instead of in my own head.
We played three more rounds of increasingly terrible throws.
Wren got too ambitious and overthrew one hard enough that it bounced off the floor and nearly took out a man walking by with nachos.
Lark wheezed with laughter after Alice tried some kind of underhand trick shot that hit our side nowhere near the cans.
I made one and missed the next two, which Alice took way too much joy in narrating.
At some point, I forgot to keep track of who was technically ahead.
At some point, that didn’t matter.
Then I looked toward the bar again.
And everything in me locked up.
Jude was coming toward us.
Two drinks in his hands.
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
Why was he coming this way?
For half a second, I thought maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was just cutting through. Maybe those drinks were for somebody at one of the nearby tables.
Then he kept walking straight toward us.
My heartbeat kicked weirdly in my chest.
Lark was in the middle of saying something to Alice, Wren was bending to pick up the kickball, and I stood there like my brain had forgotten how to send signals to the rest of my body.
Jude stopped at the edge of our little playing area.
He was close enough that I could see details I hadn’t let myself look at all night. The slight roughness along his jaw. The faint crease between his brows. The way his fingers wrapped around the glasses like he was very aware he was carrying them and very unaware of what else to do with his hands.
“Penny had to run to the back for something,” he said.
His voice should not have done that to me. It should not have gone sliding through my chest like it remembered exactly where to hit.
He held one drink out to Wren, his mom, first.
“Oh,” she said, straightening up. “Thank you, handsome.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
Then he turned to me.
And for one awful second, I forgot every smart thing I had told myself.
Forgot Jesse.
Forgot all my big declarations about being done and moving on and not wasting any more time on a man who had never once given me a reason to wait for him.
But how exactly were you supposed to shut off feelings that had lived in you for years?