Chapter 1 #2
She snorts out a laugh. “He feels the same way about you, and you live happily ever after, sexed up and wildly in love with one of your very best friends, and everything is amazing about everything because now our weird, chaos-ridden, and extremely convoluted family tree has another intertwined branch.”
“Nope.” I say it with an air of finality, even though the thought of it makes my stomach feel like it’s filled with glitter.
Tyler and me. A future. Love. It’s not like I haven’t considered it.
I have. I’ve been considering it for years, and sometimes the wanting is like torture.
But the risk to our family and our friendship is too enormous to comprehend.
I’d rather have Tyler the way I already do than not have him at all.
“It’s too risky you guys. I just…I can’t.”
Maddy links arms with me again, leaning her head against mine. “We want what you want, Soph. If you want that man, we’ll figure out a way to get him for you. And if you just want to forget about it, we’ll devise a strategy to help you get over him. And by we, I mean Caitlin.”
Caitlin gives us one of her rare smiles. “I was born for this moment. Give me a day and I’ll have a fifteen-point plan ready and waiting.”
I consider that, my traitorous eyes straying to the dance floor, watching Tyler jump up and down, waving his hands in the air as he yells something to Drew.
Any other night, I would be right in there with him.
Dancing is one of our favorite things. But my stupid brain has chosen tonight as the night it hit the limit of what it can take when it comes to proximity to Tyler Hansley.
“I think I might need something more immediate than that.”
“I know what you need,” Maya declares, reaching over and pulling my phone out of the bag hanging off my shoulder, holding the screen up to my face to unlock it.
“Uh, what are you doing?” I ask, watching as her thumbs tap at the keyboard.
“Giving you the solution to your problem.”
When Maya holds the phone up, flashing us all the login screen for an app called VibeCheck, I let out a loud snort.
“A dating app? Hard pass, My. I love you, but I’ve sat through one too many of your dating horror stories to get within a hundred feet of one of those.
” Maya is a hopeless romantic who is always sure that her next date will be the great love of her life.
Unfortunately, he never is, and she has the stories to prove it.
Sarah makes a face. “I think I have to agree with Soph. Your date a couple weeks ago where he brought his mom with him sealed it for me.”
“What about the one where the first thing the guy told you was that your boobs looked bigger in your picture?” Emmy visibly shudders. “Men shouldn’t be allowed to exist.”
“They really shouldn’t,” Maddy says. “Except all our dads. And…Cam.”
“What about Cam?” The man in question comes up behind Maddy, wrapping his arms around her waist and bending to kiss her neck. With his blue eyes that soften and warm when he looks at her, he is every inch a man in love.
Maddy grins, turning and leaning up to kiss his jaw. “Aside from our dads, you’re the only man who’s allowed to exist because you’re the very best. The rest of your gender kind of sucks.”
Cam chuckles, leaning his head against Maddy’s, and they both look so happy, so in love, that my heart gives a little squeeze. “We usually do fuck it all up.”
“You ready to go?” Maddy asks, laying her hand over his.
“Yep. I promised Riley and Ethan a late-night walk down Bourbon Street,” he tells us with a smile.
Cam’s thirteen-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son both made the trip here for the game, too, but they went back to the hotel with Cam’s mom when we all came out.
“It’s after midnight so it’s probably terrible parenting, but they’re so excited about it and, well, New Orleans.
” He shrugs, smile widening to a grin as he presses a kiss to Maddy’s hair.
“Do you want to stay?” he asks her. “I can come back and pick you up after Ry gets her fill of the wild and wacky.”
She shakes her head. “A late-night Bourbon Street walk sounds like exactly what I want to do right now. Besides, I promised Riley we could do palm readings together one more time before we went home. Give me five?”
“Definitely,” he says, pressing his fingers to her jaw to tilt her head and bending to kiss her. When they break apart, he keeps his face close to Maddy’s, murmuring “Love you, Wildcat,” against her lips, and I practically sigh at the romance of it all. “Meet you at the front in ten?”
Maddy nods, her eyes a little hazy and unfocused. Cam grins again and drops a kiss on her cheek before walking away with a wave at all of us.
“God.” Sarah clasps a hand to her chest dramatically. “You guys are so cute I can’t even take it. That’s what a man in love looks like. Every other guy in the world should take lessons.”
Maddy grins, her freckled cheeks pink with happiness.
“I know. If you would have told me seven months ago that I would be leaving a Super Bowl winning after-party with one of the players to go hang out with his kids, I would have asked you what you were smoking, but…” She trails off, a kaleidoscope of emotion passing over her face, and I know she’s thinking about what it took for her and Cam to get here.
The way they had to keep their relationship a secret for months and navigate the complexities of their jobs and his kids to get where they are now.
Their happy ending was hard earned, and they deserve every bit of the love between them. The family they’ve made.
And if I feel a kind of longing, wishing for that kind of happy ending for myself? Well, that’s just being human, right? It doesn’t have anything to do with Tyler. Probably.
Maddy shrugs, grin returning to her face. “I’m just happy. That’s all.”
“That’s a lot,” Maya says, wrapping an arm around Maddy’s shoulders and kissing her cheek. “Go hang with your man and his kids. Your kids.”
Maddy laughs, leaning into Maya. “My kids. That’s a weird fucking flex. I kind of love it.” Letting Maya go, Maddy wraps her arms around me. “You going to be okay, Soph?” she asks quietly.
I nod against her hair. “Always. It’s just a weird night. See you for breakfast tomorrow?”
“Definitely. And think about Maya’s idea. Getting out there might not be the worst thing.”
I pull back and make a face. “There has to be a better way than a dating app.”
She kisses my cheek. “I’ll brainstorm. Love you.”
“Love you back, Mads.”
She waves and heads out, and I turn back to the rest of my friends. “So…are we done here? I bet we can still catch the end of Hamilton night.”
Emmy makes a noise like a game show buzzer.
“No one wants to hear me sing. Besides, I like it here. The view is…impeccable,” she says, looking at a group of Renegades rookies crowded around a high-top table littered with shot glasses and bottles of what looks like top-shelf liquor, her eyes falling directly to their extremely excellent asses.
“It’s almost enough to make me forget the music is so loud I can’t hear myself think,” Caitlin mumbles, her gaze straying back to the dance floor. When I follow it, I can tell she’s looking back at Drew, and seriously, what the fuck is that all about?
She catches me looking, and in a split second she snaps out of whatever daze she was in courtesy of the super-hot wide receiver. “I think you should consider it,” she says suddenly.
“Consider what?” Sarah asks.
“The dating app.” Caitlin looks at me. “It really might not be the worst idea.”
I roll my eyes. “I think I’m going for something a little loftier than not the worst idea.”
Caitlin shrugs. “I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?”
“She could go out with a guy who codes an app for the sole purpose of melding their pictures together to see what their future children would look like,” Sarah says with a grin. “That happened to you, right?” she asks Maya.
Maya winces. “I really, really wish I could forget that one.”
“We all wish we could forget it.” Emmy shudders.
“That was fucking creepy. But still, I think maybe Cait is right. Make a dating profile. Go out with a couple of guys. See who else is out there. Maybe it will get your mind off Tyler, or maybe it will make you realize every other man is basically the worst and you should finally tell Tyler how you feel, risks be damned.”
“Not going to happen,” I say quickly, not sure if I’m trying to convince them or myself. “It’s way too…”
“Sally babyyyyyyy!” Tyler’s deep voice booms across the dance floor, carrying over the music and cutting off the rest of my sentence.
When I look up and our eyes meet, his are a bright, sparkling blue, a little unfocused from all the alcohol he’s consumed over the last couple of hours.
His face is flushed, and the way his disheveled brown hair flops over his forehead has my hands practically twitching to run through it, to feel the silky strands between my fingers.
The way his face lights up when he looks at me makes me a little weak in the knees, my heart knocking in my chest. “Bestie girl! Come dance with meeeee!” He waves his hands in the air wildly, black and yellow nails from his signature game day manicure sparking under the lights.
Before I can react, he’s grabbed from behind by a woman who may or may not actually be Jennifer Lawrence’s twin sister, and in a split second, they’re swallowed up by the crowd.
An emotion perilously close to jealousy clouds my vision, and absolutely not. No fucking way. Sophie Sullivan is way too smart and fabulous for jealousy.
This ends now.
“Give me the phone,” I order, holding my hand out to Maya.
“Fuck yes!” she cheers, slapping it into my palm.
I unlock it, and five minutes later I’m claiming the handle ChaosQueen, my profile declaring I’m looking for a love that defies gravity.
Corny? Probably yes. But do I also require Broadway references in as many areas of my life as possible?
Also yes. Might as well show these guys who I am right from the start.
“Where do I put the pictures?” I ask, looking up from the screen.
“That’s the best part,” Maya says with a broad grin. “This is an anonymous app. No pictures. The vibes are the point. You get to know someone through your messages, without letting all the physical stuff get in the way.”
“That sounds…”
“Weird?” Sarah says.
“Risky?” Emmy peers over my shoulder and studies the screen.
“Brilliant,” Maya says stubbornly, propping a hand on her hip.
Caitlin shrugs. “I kind of agree with Maya. It’s sort of an interesting concept, and you’re the best texter of us all,” she says to me. “You’re great on the phone. I think this might work for you, and at the very least, you’ll have really good stories for family dinner.”
I study my friends and then glance down at my phone and back up to the dance floor where Tyler and his hoard of women are nowhere to be found.
I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but I have to do something.
So, with a deep breath and a prayer to the goddess of women who are stupidly in love with their best friends and need not to be, I hit the submit button and click off my phone, wondering what’s going to happen next.