Chapter Seven #5
“GJ,” she said, my name only a whisper.
“How’s that?” I asked, increasing the speed of my fingers just slightly. I kept her arm still pinned above her head, her wrist flat against the mattress. I moved effortlessly in and out of her with my other hand.
“Mhm.” She nodded, her eyes tightly closed. “More.”
I obliged, sliding in another finger and then increasing my speed even more. Wetness pooled over my hands, telling me I was finding the right spot.
Leah’s breaths became quicker and more uneven. I deepened my fingers, and she gasped, moving her body against my hand to get me to go even harder. Her breasts moved with her body, her nipples hard.
I ducked my head to kiss her neck again, using the weight of my body to thrust deeper into her.
We found a rhythm quickly from there, Leah’s moans and whimpers becoming increasingly urgent.
I bit my lip, almost shamefully turned on by her.
The noises she was making, the way her body moved—everything was the hottest thing I’d ever witnessed.
She gripped harder onto the sheets as her body tightened around my fingers. Her moans became breathy and distant, and then it all came crashing down as she shuddered through her orgasm.
I slipped my fingers slowly out of her, her legs shaking as I did. I moved my hand to her mouth, and she sucked on my fingers, her eyes locked on mine. I was certain just the sight of her doing that alone was enough to make me finish.
When I moved my hand away, she closed her eyes, looking like the dictionary definition of relaxed. She might as well have just gone to a spa.
I gently brushed my thumb against her cheek and kissed her temple. As soon as I did it, embarrassment swept over me.
Leah didn’t react to it, and I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I was mostly grateful she wasn’t acknowledging how intimate of a move that was.
“Oh my god,” she finally whispered. She opened her eyes again and looked up at me, her pale cheeks flushed. “That was amazing.”
I smirked. “Happy to be of service.”
I laid down next to her and kept my arms open to silently invite her to lay on my chest. She laid nearby, hovering like she didn’t want to get too close.
“Come here,” I said, and Leah obliged, resting her head on my chest and then quickly melting the rest of her body into me.
We laid like that for what felt like hours, and I still found myself not wanting it to end. For the first time since this absolutely cursed semester started, I felt like I was able to take a deep breath.
The spell was only broken when I heard the sound of a phone vibrating. I opened my eyes and looked for the source of the sound. Across the room, Leah’s phone was lighting up like crazy. It buzzed once and then fifteen times consecutively after that.
I nodded my head to my kitchen counter, where it was sitting. “Do you need to answer that? Seems important.”
Leah groaned, throwing her arm dramatically over her eyes. “No, don’t make me.”
I chuckled. “I’m not making you, I’m just asking. I have no complaints about you brushing off whoever so desperately wants to get in touch with you. All the better if it’s an ex or a fling you’re choosing over me—”
Leah shut me up by gently placing a finger to my lips. I opened my mouth and playfully took her pointer finger between my teeth, making Leah laugh. “It’s just my parents.”
“Oh, the Morettis. Of course.”
Leah scowled. “Yeah, the Morettis,” she said and rolled onto her back. “I’m sure it’s a bunch of texts about how they’re about to leave for the airport and wish I’d respond to them before they fly out of town. It’s always something with them.”
I didn’t know that much about the Moretti family dynamic.
Their parents came to games sometimes, but they kept to themselves, and I’d never spoken to them.
That wasn’t totally unusual; some of the parents were chattier and more familiar with the team than others.
But they had a certain kind of removed coldness that made me think they were like that at home, too, and not just at the games.
Still, it was hard for me to relate. I couldn’t imagine straight-up ignoring my family’s text messages after they’d just come to visit. Then again, I was just fortunate that my family hadn’t done anything to warrant that kind of response.
“You think I’m a bitch, don’t you?” Leah asked, glancing over at me. For just a moment, the confident demeanor faded, and she looked legitimately nervous about what I was going to say.
“What do you mean?”
“Your face. It totally changed when I said it was my parents,” she said. “It’s okay. I feel like kind of a bitch for doing it, too.”
“I have a great poker face—”
Leah laughed harder than I’d heard her, making her nose wrinkle. The mental image of seeing her like that—the sheet pulled up over her chest, her hair falling over my pillow, her mouth open in a laugh—was immediately frozen in my memory. “Your poker face is terrible.”
I was still so charmed by her laugh that I couldn’t defend myself properly. “That’s not true at all,” I lightly argued, laughing as I said it.
“You can hide it during games, but you’re, like, the most expressive person I’ve ever met off the court. I saw your face change immediately.”
My jaw went slack. “There’s no way.”
“Yeah, I’ll point it out to you the next time I see you out somewhere. It probably won’t take long,” Leah challenged, her eyes traveling from my eyes to my lips in the process.
“Oh, yeah? Planning on seeing me around?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, I’m going to see you everywhere whether I want to or not.”
I put my hand to my chest. “Ouch,” I joked.
Leah’s phone buzzed again and then again, and then started ringing.
We both looked over that way, and Leah moved the sheet higher up on her body until she was hiding underneath it.
“You’re absolutely sure you don’t want to check it?”
“If you saw how brunch with them went earlier, you’d understand,” she said, her voice muffled by my bedding.
“It couldn’t have possibly been that bad.
You could just talk to them, ease the tension a little.
It’ll only feel worse the longer you drag it out,” I said.
When Leah didn’t respond, I caressed her hair, the only part of her that was still exposed.
“Look, I love conflict more than anyone and will hold a grudge for years, but they clearly want to talk to you. It might be worth seeing what they have to say before deciding you’re not going to engage at all. ”
Leah moved the sheet down from her face so I could at least see her eyes. They were the most incredible shade of hazel I’d ever seen—deep brown with shades of green, flecks of yellow. I didn’t hate having an excuse to look at them this closely. “I snapped at them.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed. “They were talking about how I was going to, like, follow Mags to work for whatever professional team she goes to play for—”
“Hilarious to assume Mags is absolutely going to be drafted, by the way, but whatever,” I said, making Leah snort. We both knew she probably was, but I couldn’t miss an opportunity to rag on her sister, especially for Leah’s benefit.
“Like I was saying,” Leah said and moved so I could finally see her full face again, a smile at her lips already.
“Mags offered that as an option, and my parents were thrilled because they love being able to force me to follow Mags somewhere. I think if we could be roommates forever, they’d literally make us do it. ”
“I guess there’s nothing that’s stopping you. Your future partners might have some thoughts on that, though.” I brushed off the jealous buzz in my chest at the thought of that being someone who wasn’t me.
“I’ll have some thoughts on that.” Leah looked off to the wall across the room from us. “But yeah, I got really upset with them about it and for the first time literally ever in my life I actually stood up for myself.”
“What did you say? Like, fuck you level of bad?”
“Basically just telling them they’ve never actually cared that much about us and they like having us in the same place because it makes their lives easier,” I said.
“Which is true, by the way. I’ve been my sister’s shadow for forever.
My entire schedule growing up was based around hers.
And I only ended up at Lakeside Green because my parents said they wouldn’t help with school if I didn’t go where she went. ”
“Wait, seriously?”
“I mean, I don’t know if they’d actually follow through on a threat like that because I’ve never made them do it before. But that’s what they said. And I hate disappointing them, so I just rolled with it.”
I took in what she was saying, nodding as I thought it over. It was glaringly obvious now how different our upbringings were. No wonder she was willing to brush off their texts. “Damn.”
“Yeah. Only took me twenty-one years to finally say something to them. I probably should’ve played it smarter and waited until after I graduated from college and could be financially independent, but I don’t know.
Something took over me today. I think it was hearing them yet again steamroll me and any type of independence I want to have away from my sister. ”
“I don’t think that’s unreasonable. There was probably a nicer way of saying what you said, but I also don’t think it was totally out of line,” I said, even though I would never in a million years speak that way to my parents. They’d hand my ass back to me without hesitation. My sisters, too.
Leah twisted her lips in thought. “You don’t have to be nice to me about it,” she responded sheepishly. “I regretted it immediately. I know it was stupid.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a good thing you learn how to speak up for yourself, or it sounds like you have an entire lifetime ahead of you of your parents telling you where to live, what to do.”
“That sounds like them.” Leah looked at me and then looked away again, quiet for a beat.
“I think the part that hurt the most was that my sister was the one who basically threw me to the wolves again. I don’t know if she’s just oblivious or what, but she always puts herself in the middle in the worst way.
And my parents love her. She’s the golden child.
If she said anything at all about not wanting me to follow her, they’d actually probably take it seriously.
But instead, she’s always, like, playing hero or something. It’s fucking annoying.”
I paused. “I want to offer you something insightful in response, but I’m still stuck on Mags being the favorite of your family.”
Leah shrugged. “My parents just want to be able to brag at the country club about something, and she’s the one who gives them an easy opportunity to. Everyone loves an athlete who’s actually good.”
“Let me in the ring. I’ll let your parents know where she actually falls in the grand scheme of college women’s basketball right now,” I said lightly and then made myself get serious again for Leah’s benefit.
I wasn’t dumb enough to fuck around during a conversation like this.
“They really make you follow her around like that?”
“Yeah. They treat it like we’re one entity. It’s like they wanted to have one kid but ended up with twins, so they just decided they’d only actually parent one child.”
I didn’t have anything of substance to contribute. My first and only thought was that sucks, but I knew better than to say that.
I thought about what my life would’ve been like if I’d had to follow my sisters.
Ada, Bev, and Vivian all followed pretty similar trajectories that were so different from my own.
They’d all dabbled in some kind of physical activity at one point or another, but they’d always gravitated toward dance classes and never at a competitive level.
They didn’t understand team sports, and they definitely didn’t understand that I’d known I’d wanted to be a basketball player since I learned what the sport was.
I couldn’t imagine having to follow them wherever they went. They’d all stayed close to home, so I never would’ve ended up here. I probably never would’ve played basketball seriously enough to be a D1 athlete on the way to being drafted. I never would’ve actually known who I was.
“I’m really sorry,” I said and then stopped. “Sorry, I actually don’t know if that’s helpful to hear.”
“No, it honestly…kind of is,” Leah admitted.
“No one in my family has apologized to me for basically taking away any opportunity at autonomy I could’ve had.
And I don’t really talk about it with anyone except friends sometimes, so I’ve never given my family the chance to apologize or sympathize or, like, make it better.
” She bit her lip. “I know I have to take some responsibility. I could’ve put up a fight at any point, but I just don’t have that kind of personality. ”
“Maybe you’re gaining that now, considering you finally stood up for yourself today,” I said and shrugged. “It’s not too late.”
Leah nodded, thinking the words over. “You’re right, it’s not,” she said softly. “I’ve never really thought about it like that before.”
I held my hands out in a confident shrug. “Here to help,” I said smugly, and Leah laughed.
She half-winced. “Do you think I should check and see what my parents had to say?”
“You can’t avoid them forever.”
“Fair enough.” She started sliding out from the bed, maneuvering over me in the process. As she was about to put her feet on the ground, she turned to look at me. “Thank you.”
Her expression was so earnest, so vulnerable, that it made me want to help her for the rest of my life. Anything she ever needed, I’d do. Anytime she was scared or hurt or even just mildly inconvenienced, I wanted to be there to make it better.
It took everything in me to not lean in and kiss her.
Leah got up from the bed, body on full display with absolutely no shame. I took in the shape of her lean but strong build, the way her ass moved as she walked.
God, her confidence was so sexy.
She hesitated as she reached for her phone, but eventually picked it up. As she looked at the screen, her expression became visibly nervous. “I think I might need to go.”
I was surprised by how disappointed I was. I fought off an instinct to come up with excuses for her to stay. “Oh, okay. For sure.”
Leah started picking up her clothes from the ground and pulling them. “Thanks for…everything,” she said, gesturing broadly to the bed I was still sitting in.
“Yeah, for sure,” I said, and it took everything in me not to get up to kiss her, walk her to the door, and ask her if she was sure she had to go.
But this was casual, and I wasn’t going to be the one who fucked that up—even if I really, really wanted to.
.