18. Brent
Brent
We spend all afternoon in bed, and with a lot of persistence on my part, the deep freeze that sprung up between us when I suggested she shouldn’t flirt with Jaxon melted.
Definitely made me realize I’d have an uphill battle with her if I wanted to make this relationship legit. Good thing that’s not in the plan.
I’m getting ready for my second practice of the day when Jaxon appears at the bathroom door while I’m stuffing dry swim gear into my bag.
“A fake relationship?”
“Val said she was going to convince me to take her back.” I shrug and keep packing.
“And you’ve got so little faith in yourself?”
“Faith you’ve got? You’re the one who told me how it would play out in Bermuda. Honestly, if Posey wasn’t there, you’d have been right.” My motivation to deny Val’s advances was partly my newfound aversion to drama, but it was also a strange loyalty to Posey. I didn’t want to let her down.
“If you’re sleeping with her, cooking for her, delivering her coffees around campus, you’re dating for real. You get that, right? Nothing fake about that shit. You bought her flowers yet?”
Heat creeps across my chest. I picked a single rose on my way back from practice on Sunday because I thought she was annoyed with me. Hardly evidence he’s right. “It’s temporary. We both know that. Get me over the Val hump.”
“Yeah? You weren’t jealous when she started flirting back today?”
“That wasn’t cool.” I glare at him and shove my swimsuit in my bag.
“You two must have had a good weekend together if you’re fake dating now.”
He can be such a smug asshole sometimes. “Just drop it, Jax. She’ll be around a lot for the next couple weeks, but that’s it. Once we’re sure Val’s gotten the hint, we’ll go our separate ways.”
“I’m surprised Posey agreed to it.”
“Why?” I sling my bag onto my shoulder and squeeze past him.
“She was very against boyfriends in freshman year.”
Makes me wonder if he tried to convince her to date him, and another shot of jealousy surges through me. “She’s got her reasons.” I grab my keys off the island.
“You’ve been trading deep, dark secrets too?” He follows me to the door. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I open the door.
“Rebounds are intended to mean less than the relationships that came before them. You’re getting it mixed up, man. Good luck to you. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It’ll be fine,” I say. “We both understand what we’re getting into, and it’s not a real relationship.”
Jaxon’s mocking laughter follows me down the hall to the staircase.
Practice is a good distraction from Jaxon’s comments about Posey.
While I’ve never been into strings of casual hookups, I’ve always been terrible at relationships too.
I use up all my energy in the pool or at the gym, and inevitably women get frustrated or furious with my singular focus.
Val never minded because her singular focus wasn’t on building a relationship either. Her brand. Our brand. The brand.
Brand. What a stupid fucking word.
“Faulkner,” Ethan Simpson calls to me from across the locker room. “We’re going to Jessica’s place for food and a couple beers. You in?”
I had planned to stop by Posey’s apartment after practice, and Jessica only lives a couple blocks from her.
Although Posey and I agreed we’d spend what free time I have together, Jaxon might have a point about slipping into something serious.
Developing real feelings for Posey would be a special kind of hell.
A house party is just as good as anything. A buffer between me and Val.
“Sure,” I say. “Yeah. I’m in.”
Ethan’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Seriously? I asked because you’re the team captain, but normally you’re going home to sleep or something.”
Fair point. I could probably count on a couple fingers the number of times I’ve gone out for a team building event that wasn’t mandated by our coach or Northern’s alumni. “Just came off vacation,” I say. “Not quite back to myself yet.”
Ethan is also chasing a spot on the Olympic team.
He’s one of the few people at Northern who truly understands how much work goes into becoming the best you can be.
He also enjoys being the life of the party—the Dennis Rodman of Northern University’s swim team, except Ethan is lily-ass white like me.
“Let’s hope this version sticks,” Ethan says with a grin. “All you do is train, man. It’s gotta be fucking boring.”
“You train a lot too.” I shove my towel into my bag and close my locker.
We don’t directly compete against each other, since he’s a breaststroker and that’s my weakness.
If you ask me, people who choose that stroke are a whole separate breed.
Their brains and their bodies operate on an entirely different wavelength.
“Yeah, but I also have no desire to look back on my twenties and wonder where the hell they went. Being a complete slave to my sport won’t keep me warm at night.
Women and booze have a place.” He winks at me as we exit the locker room with the rest of the guys from the team.
“Preaching to the choir, I guess. You’ve got Valentina.
” He says her name with a weird accent. “And she is fucking hot.”
“Actually, we—”
“Faulkner,” Jessica squeals and turns to face me and Ethan. “I just heard you’re hanging out with us?” She has her phone up, and she’s clearly recording. Another person obsessed with catching every second of her life on video as though it might slip through her fingers.
Her reaction coupled with Ethan’s makes me realize our coach and Posey might have a point about my swim-life balance. Most of the time, my lack of a social life doesn’t even register on my radar.
“Trying out this whole socializing thing,” I say. “I may need Ethan to hold me later.”
“I do love to cuddle.” Ethan gives Jessica a wicked grin. “Isn’t that right, Jess?”
She flushes bright red and closes her phone. “You’re a total mood killer.”
“Baby, are you embarrassed of me?” Ethan teases.
“Until the end of time,” Jessica calls over her shoulder.
“She’ll come around,” Ethan says to me.
“I didn’t realize you and Jess were together.” Posey and Coach definitely have a point if I’m not even aware of team gossip that doesn’t surprise anyone else.
“We’re not. But there’s something about her... I doubt she’ll ever say yes, but I might die trying.” He chuckles. “Some people are worth the effort, even if it’ll never go where you want it to.”
“She doesn’t mind being teased?”
“At the last team social she got drunk and told me she likes the attention but she just doesn’t like me.”
“Ouch.”
“She wants to believe she doesn’t like me.” Ethan shrugs.
This is getting far more convoluted than I bargained for. No point in digging into that mess. I agreed to socialize, not break my brain. Posey could make sense of this in an instant, but I do not have her people skills.
When we get to Jessica’s place, everyone grabs a beer from the fridge and puts five dollars in a jar labelled Swim Team Beer Fund. Another thing I didn’t realize existed. I pay my toll and grab a beer.
Once I’m settled on the couch, Jess takes the seat beside me. She’s a leggy blonde who took a while to even speak to me when she joined the team.
“How was Bermuda?” she asks as she sets up some sort of drinking game with cards and dice on the coffee table. “Who’s in?”
“Better weather than here,” I say.
“The pictures Val posted looked amazing. It’s definitely on my list of places to visit.”
After we broke up on Thursday, Val’s social media schedule wasn’t my problem any more.
But I wonder whether she adhered to Trevor’s wedding photo ban, or if I went to her profile I’d find a slew of pictures.
It would be like her to not only crash the wedding but completely ignore the blackout.
If I check, I’ll feel like I need to do something about it, and that’ll drag me into Val’s orbit. Ignorance is bliss.
There’s a knock on Jess’s front door, and Jess tips up her drink before rising. “That’ll be Val, I bet.”
“Val?” I clamber off the couch behind Jess. “Val’s here?”
“After I posted to my story about you coming here, she messaged for the address.” Jess grabs another beer from the fridge. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” She turns to face me. “But I can tell that you do. Sorry.”
I finish my beer and slot it into the empty case beside the fridge. “I’ll answer the door. No need to get you involved in this.” I squeeze past her into the hallway and narrow foyer. When I draw back the door, Val and I stare at each other through the screened one.
“You don’t look happy to see me.” A slow smile spreads across Val’s face.
“I was just leaving,” I say.
“So soon? Jess said everyone would be here a while.”
“Jess didn’t realize you weren’t welcome.”
“It’s her house. I suppose I’m welcome if she says I am. Are you going to let me in?”
I grab my jacket off the hook in the hall, and I slip it on.
My swim bag is on the floor, and I sling it over my shoulder.
Guess Posey is getting a visit after all.
“Go on in, if you want.” With a sweep of my hand, I gesture behind me to where everyone else is gathered. “Thanks, Jess! But I gotta go.”
“See you at practice,” she says.
“Boo!” Ethan calls from the living room. “Don’t be a wimp, Faulkner.” He appears at the end of the hallway. “Ah, shit. All right. Whatever. Do what you gotta do. I’ll see you at practice.”
I squeeze out the front door, and I hold it open for Val. “You going in where you’re welcome?”
“I’ll walk you home,” she says, and she tries to slip her arm through mine.
The one time I socialize with the swim team rather than keeping to my normal schedule and Val pops up.
As soon as Jess started taking that video, I should have shut her down.
But I don’t enjoy being the asshole who’s too good for the social media shit, even if that’s how I feel sometimes.
What I’m doing or not doing isn’t anyone’s business.
“Nah, I’m good.” I remove her hand. “I’m headed to Posey’s house. We have plans.”
“Oh please. You did not extend your weekend fling.” She flicks her hair and tugs her winter jacket tighter around her middle.
“It’s a smoke screen, and I see through it.
” She grabs my arm to halt our walk down the street.
“If you want a more open relationship, I can agree to that. And if you wanted both of us at the same time, I could arrange that too. I can play nice with others.”
My lizard brain goes exactly where she wanted it to go, and for a beat I let my imagination run wild.
In every scenario I come up with, Val is out of the picture within minutes, leaving me with Posey.
Despite the fantasy she’s trying to paint, it’s not what I want.
At one time, I would have been all for a threesome if she’d offered.
She must be getting desperate. The other times we fought or split up, her manicured hand zipping down my fly was enough to overcome whatever I was pissed about.
“Do you need me to call you an Uber? I don’t want you walking to the other side of campus alone,” I say.
She loops my arm around her waist and presses herself against me. “Walk me home.”
I dig my phone out of my pocket, and I order her a car to the closest intersection with one hand while I fend off her advances with the other.
A couple of blocks from here is Posey’s place, and I don’t want Val anywhere near it.
Her persistence is worrying. While I never expected her to take our breakup well, I didn’t anticipate how hard she’d cling either.
The only thing being fulfilled by our relationship was her bank account.
Guess I didn’t realize how important the money was.
If she needed the cash to fuel something other than her ego, I’d be more sympathetic, might even agree to play along for a bit.
She’s still pressed against me, whispering a torrent of dirty things in my ear, when the car pulls up to the corner I’ve managed to hobble us toward. The good thing about living near campus is that someone’s side hustle, day or night, is as a driver. The wait is never long for a pickup.
When the guy rolls down the passenger window and asks if she’s Val, she punches my chest. “You called me a fucking Uber?”
“You’re welcome,” I say. “I have plans, and you’re not in them.” I shove my hands in my pockets and haul ass toward Posey’s apartment.
Hopefully Val will make the right choice and take the pre-paid ride. If I wait around, she’ll never get in, and there’s somewhere else I’d much rather be.