17. Teddy
CHAPTER 17
TEDDY
Practice was brutal, and I’m not my usual self as I step out of the showers and walk up to the lockers.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Mascen asks, dropping his towel and yanking on his pants.
“Nothing.” I start changing my clothes.
Not only was practice rough, but I can’t stop thinking about the other night with Vanessa. I didn’t intend for things to happen the way they did—sure, I needed to make it seem like we were having sex otherwise Jude would figure out something was up—but I thought we’d just make a bunch of porno-esque fake moans, get the bed rocking, and call it a night.
But the second I pulled her onto my lap all rational thought went flying out the window. She looked like a fucking goddess above me, felt like one too. And if it was that mind-blowing and I wasn’t even inside her … fuck .
Mascen yanks on his shirt, giving me what the fuck, dude look.
“What?” I ask innocently.
“It smells like crap in here from all the bullshit you’re spewing.”
I snort, zipping up my hoodie. “That’s just Murray’s balls.”
“Hey!” Murray slaps his towel against my side. “Why are you bringing me into your lover’s spat?”
“Are you having relationship trouble with Vanessa?” Mascen asks, suddenly serious.
“No,” I snort, staring into my locker, using it to shield me from his scrutiny.
How can I possibly begin to explain to my best friend, that me, the eternal bachelor, one and done Teddy, is developing real feelings for his very fake girlfriend? Oh, right, I can’t tell him anything because I’m not about to confess now what I’ve done.
Mascen slams his locker closed, shouldering his backpack. “You don’t want to talk? Fine. Don’t fucking talk. I don’t much like words anyway. I’ll see you at six in the morning for a run.”
“No, you won’t!” I yell after his retreating figure.
He gives me the finger over his shoulder. “Yes, I will or, I’ll be at your dorm dragging you out of bed, don’t think I won’t.”
The locker room door slams shut behind him with those parting words.
Murray looks confused as fuck as he tugs on his shirt. “What the fuck is going on?”
I don’t reply, I shut my locker and get the hell out of there.
Normally I would head to The Burger Palace after practice. Not today. I just don’t have it in me to face Vanessa. Especially not when my thoughts are a tangled jumbled mess.
Instead, I drive over to Cole and Zoey’s apartment. For half a second, I think about knocking, but then I’m like nah why start that now?
I wish I had because as soon as I let myself in, I’m met with the sight of Cole’s bare ass with Zoey bent over the counter.
“My eyes!” I shout, slapping a hand over them. “Mom! Dad! Stop that!”
I hear their shouts and curses as I swiftly turn around and slam the door shut behind me. I start down the stairs and hurry to my car when steps sound behind me.
“Teddy, I swear to God if you don’t give me the fucking key right now, I’m calling the cops on you. Don’t test me.”
I turn around to Cole glowering at me, hand outstretched. He’s tossed on his jeans but didn’t even bother to button them to come after me.
I don’t even fight him as I finally, after more than six months, relinquish the key to the apartment I never got to live in. After walking in on that … yeah, I don’t want that to happen again.
“Why are you even here?” he asks suspiciously, crossing his arms over his chest.
Clenching my hands at my sides, I look away.
“Teddy, it’s not like you to beat around the bush, and I know you well enough that I can tell there’s something on your mind.”
Grinding my teeth together, I shove my fingers through my hair. “It’s Vanessa, okay.”
He narrows his eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t do something stupid and cheat on her?”
I rear back in shock. “Fuck no, what do you take me for?” He gives me the look and I sigh. “Right, yeah, I know.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“I just have so many feelings,” I blurt, and immediately wish I could take the words back because I feel like a fool.
Cole presses his lips together, trying not to laugh. “Have you never had feelings before, bro?”
I roll my eyes. “Not like these.”
He chuckles, rubbing his jaw. “Zoey’s decent by now. Come on up.”
“Are you seriously inviting me inside after I just saw you and your girlfriend fucking?”
He narrows his eyes on me, and I have a feeling he’d punch if he could. “Do you want my help or not?”
“Fine,” I grumble, following him back up the stairs and into the apartment.
“Please tell me you got the key,” Zoey bursts out as soon as we step inside.
Cole holds it up triumphantly. “Yep.”
To me, Zoey points like a mother scolding her child—there’s a reason I call her mom. “Don’t you ever do anything like that ever again. I hope you’re good and truly scarred. You deserve it.”
With those parting words, she flounces out of the room, and the bedroom door shuts behind her.
Cole walks over to the refrigerator and offers me a small bottle of orange juice and takes a root beer for himself.
“Sit down and start talking.”
I gulp down half of the orange juice before laying down on the couch like I’m in a therapist’s office.
Then I start spilling my guts to Cole.
“Hold up,” he says from where he sits on the coffee table beside me, “you’re telling me you suckered this poor girl into being your pretend girlfriend and now you’ve fallen for her?”
“I didn’t sucker her,” I defend. “I asked , there’s a difference, Dad. And I haven’t fallen for her … yet, but I think I might be falling. It’s more than I’ve ever felt for a girl before. Normally I just want to pump and dump, but I haven’t even slept with her and I want…”
“You want?” He prompts.
“I want her , for real. I want what we have already, the friendship and banter, but more. I want the kisses and touches to be real too. What’s wrong with me?”
He grins slowly, his teeth blindingly white. “Looks to me like the player has lost.”
“Lost?” I snort. “Me, Teddy McCallister, never loses. The game changed, that’s all.”
He rubs a hand over his jaw. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
He lets out an exasperated sigh. “You might want to figure that out.”
Rising from the couch, I say, “Don’t tell anyone about the fake-relationship crap. I don’t want them to know.”
“I won’t say a word.”
“Not even Zoey.”
He doesn’t have a chance to reply because she peeks her head around from the hall. “I heard everything anyway.”
“Dammit, Zoey,” I grumble, shaking my head. “You can’t tell anyone either.”
“My lips are sealed,” she promises. Sitting on the end of the couch, she gives me an amused look.
“What? I know you want to say something else.”
She laughs, exchanging a look with Cole—and I feel fucking pathetic that I feel a tug in my heart because I want that.
Me.
Teddy McCallister.
Who has never had, nor wanted a girlfriend.
Never pictured myself married or any of that shit.
Suddenly wants those looks where you say everything without opening your mouth. I want to cuddle, have inside jokes, hold hands, the whole fucking shebang.
Maybe I was abducted by aliens and my brain has been scrambled?
If that’s the case, then little green dudes, could you please return me to my normal state?
I feel a tingle down my spine with that thought, because I don’t want to go back to that.
“I just find it amusing you asked Vanessa, a girl you’d never met before, to do this for you when any girl on campus would’ve been happy to do it for you. No questions asked. No favors. Nada.”
I rub my fingers over my jaw, my stubble thicker than normal. Coach is going to give me hell if I don’t shave it soon. Even though she didn’t ask me a question, I say, “I don’t know. My gut seemed to know she was the one I needed.”
“Interesting,” she muses.
“Don’t be cryptic, Mom,” I snap, and Cole glares at me.
“Don’t talk to my girl in that tone.”
Zoey snickers. “I can handle him, babe.”
He gives her a heated look. “I know you can.”
“Oh, ew. Don’t make sex eyes in front of your child. I’m leaving now.”
Before I make it to the door, Zoey says, “We should have a movie night, and you bring Vanessa.”
I pause, sighing. “I’ll think about it.”
Then I slip out the door and down to my car.