Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
SOPHIE
“Sophie Jane Sullivan, you get your shit together right the fuck now,” I mumble to myself, trying, and failing, to tear my eyes away from the crowded dance floor where a very drunk Tyler Hansley and a bunch of his even drunker teammates are currently surrounded by a veritable gaggle of women with big boobs and very tiny clothes.
Evidently, being the best quarterback in Pittsburgh Renegades franchise history mere hours removed from winning a Super Bowl has every cleat chaser in New Orleans shooting her shot.
I have regrets.
Chief among them, agreeing to come out with the entire team tonight for the post-Super Bowl win festivities instead of forcing my friends to come with me to Hamilton night at a karaoke bar in the French Quarter. There is literally nothing that singing “My Shot” at the top of your lungs won’t cure.
Once a theater kid, always a theater kid.
“You know, if you just told him how you feel, you wouldn’t have to try so hard to kill those women with your eyes.”
I whip around and look right into the grinning face of my friend Maddy Wright.
My first instinct is to say I don’t have anything to tell him because I don’t feel any kind of way, but there are five people in the world who know that’s a complete and total lie, and one of those people is standing in front of me right now.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend to make out with or something?
” I grumble, grabbing the drink she holds out to me and taking a long sip.
Tequila. Excellent.
The perfect alcohol to pair with the fact that, for the past three years, I’ve been stupidly, annoyingly in love with my best friend.
Probably longer than three years if I’m being honest with myself, but this is not the moment for that particular brand of introspection.
The feelings I can usually shove down and cover in caffeine, junk food, and my love of all things pink and sparkly are exponentially more stubborn when a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Margot Robbie is hanging off Tyler’s arm, an Emma Stone in Crazy, Stupid, Love lookalike is grabbing his ass, and he’s grinning his uninhibited, slightly lopsided grin that fills the dark club with light.
Fuck, I love that grin.
And speaking of grins, Maddy’s just grows wider. “Where do you think I’ve been for the last twenty minutes?”
“Can confirm.” Maya Casey slides up to us followed by our other friends, cousins Emmy and Sarah Wyles, and Caitlin Parker, each of them with a drink in hand.
My mom, Caitlin’s mom, and Maddy’s mom, along with Tyler’s mom, have been best friends since they all met in law school almost thirty years ago.
Sarah’s and Caitlin’s moms are sisters, and Emmy’s and Sarah’s dads are brothers, and we’ve all known Maya and her family for most of our lives.
It’s a big, complicated, family by blood and friends-who-might-as-well-be-family situation.
It was a wild way to grow up, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Tyler may be my best friend since birth, but these five women—the aforementioned knowers of my big, fat feelings for Tyler—make up my own little girl gang.
They’re the best friends in the world and I love them madly, even if they did want to come hang out with football players instead of having a girls’ night out.
“Caught her and Cam practically fucking against the wall by the bathroom,” Maya finishes with a smirk.
Emmy grins. “It was so hot. Like, I almost had a tiny orgasm just watching.”
“What’s it like, dating a football player who just won a Super Bowl?” Sarah asks.
“It absolutely does not suck.” Maddy’s eyes gleam at the mention of her newly minted boyfriend, single dad of two, and veteran Pittsburgh Renegades offensive lineman Cam Lowry. “Winning a Super Bowl makes my man horny. And watching him win a Super Bowl? Forget it. I’m weak. I may never recover.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter, then immediately wishing I could grab the words and shove them back into my mouth.
Emmy cackles. “Get a little hot and bothered watching Tyler throw all those touchdowns?”
“She did,” Maddy says, linking her free arm through mine. “I saw it myself. Every time Tyler flashed her the heart fingers he does after each one, she practically needed to be resuscitated.”
Of the six of us, Maddy and I were the only ones who were at the game earlier tonight.
Maddy was there because, in addition to being the girlfriend of the Renegades’ starting center, she’s also the team’s Director of Sports Psychology and worked with the players in the hours before kickoff and after the game.
I was there because whether it’s a regular season Sunday game in Pittsburgh or the Super Bowl in New Orleans, Tyler always saves one of his tickets for me, and in a tradition that goes all the way back to his pee wee football days, if there’s any possible way I can make it to one of Tyler’s games, I’m there.
Also, I love football. So there.
“I hate all of you,” I declare, draining my drink and setting it down on a passing server’s tray.
“No, you don’t,” Caitlin says, flicking her long brown hair behind her shoulder. “You’re just a little pissy because the plastic women are hanging all over your man. You really should just go get him.”
I stare at her a little incredulously, because usually when Caitlin opens her mouth it’s to dispense some sort of sage wisdom or to solve a problem we didn’t even know we had.
Not to tell me I’m being pissy. Even though, yeah, I kind of am.
Unrequited love will do that to a girl. Apparently, I’m not the only one who notices Caitlin’s sudden personality transplant because Sarah, a med student, immediately puts her hand on Caitlin’s forehead, as if to check for a fever.
Caitlin shoves Sarah’s hand away. “What are you doing?”
Sarah studies her with a barely suppressed grin. “I’m checking to see if you’re sick. Just go get him, you say? That bordered on advising Sophie to do something spontaneous and unplanned. Spontaneous and unplanned usually gives you stress hives.”
“Oh, fuck off, it does not.”
“It does,” Maya adds. “After I had that string of bad dates last month and decided to get bangs as a consolation prize, you came over to my house with a handwritten list of twenty reasons why bangs were not the answer.”
Caitlin rolls her eyes. “Spontaneous bangs are never the answer. Every self-respecting woman knows that.”
“And when I wanted to fire that client who was annoying the shit out of me, you made me wait twenty-four hours, and it turned out I was just hungry and probably under caffeinated,” Emmy says with a grin.
Emmy and Caitlin are both lawyers and associates at the law firm that my, Caitlin’s, Tyler’s, and Maddy’s moms all own together.
Caitlin shrugs. “What can I say? I’m in a weird mood tonight.
” Her eyes stray to the dance floor, and I follow her gaze directly to Drew Ellicott, the Renegades’ tall and extremely gorgeous wide receiver who’s a good friend of both Tyler and Cam.
I watch as Drew catches her eye and winks and, amazingly, Caitlin flushes. I didn’t know she could do that.
“Did he just…wink at you?” Maddy says incredulously, staring at Caitlin.
“No way,” Caitlin answers quickly, shaking her head vigorously, and it’s all very the lady doth protest too much. Interesting. “Anyway, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Sophie and her inconvenient feelings for Tyler and when she’s going to finally get around to telling him.”
“Uh, that would be never.” My words are quiet, practically drowned out by the music’s throbbing base, but five heads turn my way in unison.
I realize, belatedly, that this conversation is probably the first time I’ve explicitly admitted to my friends that I even have feelings for Tyler, even though it’s not exactly a secret.
“What do you mean never?” Sarah demands, tossing back the rest of her drink. “Never sucks. Never doesn’t get you laid, and never definitely doesn’t get you forever with the love of your life.”
Maddy studies me in that quiet way of hers, the laser lights that shoot across the ceiling playing over her face and making her red hair look like flames. “Forever is a long time to never say anything, Soph.”
I sigh, taking the drink out of Emmy’s hand and downing it. “It’s too complicated. Our families are so close we’re practically cousins.”
Maya shakes her head vigorously. “You are literally not cousins. There is not one single part of you that’s actually related to him.”
“But does it really matter?” I ask, looking at each of my friends.
“It might,” Caitlin says slowly. “It really, really might.”
I shake my head. “Come on this journey with me, besties. So, I tell Tyler I have feelings for him. I tell him that one single moment three years ago flipped a switch for me, and all of a sudden, I stopped seeing him as friend Tyler and started seeing him as man I want to fuck and also person I’m accidentally ass over tits in love with Tyler.
Option one is he tells me he doesn’t feel the same way, and I lose one of my very best friends and quite possibly tear a hole into the fabric of our family and make it weird and awkward for everyone while we figure out how we can be around each other after I spilled my guts.
Option two is we date or whatever and things don’t work out.
I lose my best friend, and our family has to pick sides, except it’s worse because maybe we’ve kissed and oops, we’ve accidentally seen each other pretty naked, and there’s just no unringing that bell.
Either way I lose, and so do you guys. So does the rest of our family. It’s not worth it.”
“You’re forgetting option three.”
I look at Emmy, trying to figure out what option three could possibly be. “What’s option three?” I finally ask.