Chapter Twelve
Leah
I woke up the next morning with a ball of light in my chest and a literal pep in my step. It was the only way to describe it. I felt like a Disney princess—birds literally chirping outside, warm light streaming through the window.
As soon as I opened my eyes, I got out of bed and pulled on some clothes to go for a run. I could hear Mags banging around pots and pans in the kitchen as she put away the clean dishes we’d left out to dry.
Despite GJ and me just having spoken last night, I felt like we might have as well have had absolutely filthy sex.
I’d never experienced this before, even with my biggest crushes—I was happy.
As I brushed my teeth, I leaned into the mirror to inspect my skin.
My cheeks were rosy pink, and I didn’t even have bags under my eyes.
This was ridiculous.
But it also felt…good. It was the kind of feeling I didn’t want to go away.
I wasn’t interested in bringing myself back to earth or thinking about what all of this meant or how stupid it would be for me to lean into having a crush on GJ; I just wanted to enjoy this for a minute.
I could let myself be a little naive without it ruining my whole life.
After putting up my hair, I headed into the kitchen.
“Did you end up picking up more frozen strawberries?” I asked as I opened the freezer. Mags didn’t respond, but I brushed it off; she wasn’t much of a morning person to begin with. When I found the giant family-sized bag in the freezer, I pulled it out and shut the freezer door behind me.
“When are you leaving for your away game?” I asked. Mags was quiet again, which was now enough to trigger my annoyance. It didn’t take much. “Mags? Hello? Anyone home?”
She kept her eyes fixed on her phone. “Why? Are you asking because you want to know when GJ is going to be leaving town?”
My blood ran cold. I’d never been a convincing liar, but I was about to have to put on the performance of my life. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you were with GJ.”
The statement was so vague that it almost felt like a trap. It was just asking for me to walk into giving Mags more information than what she knew—or thought she knew.
“At the game? Along with the rest of the basketball players?” I asked, trying as best as I could to play it off.
My sunny disposition from earlier was quickly melting away into something much heavier and guiltier.
And something more nervous, too. All of the worst-case scenarios were playing out in my head in rapid succession as I waited for Mags to respond.
“Funny.” Mags crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. “Gemma and I saw you after the game. She drove me home because you had the car, and it was too cold to walk. You were with GJ’s family.”
I nearly let out a sigh of relief. I wasn’t exactly thrilled Mags was potentially onto us now, but just seeing me with GJ’s family was nothing. A friend would do that; Theo used to do that all the time.
“Yeah, I ran into them outside. I was just trying to be friendly.”
“By teaching GJ’s niece and nephew different cheers?”
“They’re kids. That’s like, what you do with kids,” I said, scrambling to find explanations that didn’t make me sound guilty.
I knew in the grand scheme of things, disobeying my sister and fooling around with someone was pretty low on the list of unforgivable acts.
But still, I knew how my sister was going to feel about me fooling around with a teammate.
And not just any teammate, but GJ, who Mags infamously had never gotten along with.
Even if I didn’t like the rule, my sister had always communicated it clearly and made it known that she wouldn’t approve.
I’d intentionally chosen not to give a fuck about her feelings, or to even try to talk to her before jumping into something.
And no matter how annoying those feelings were, Mags probably deserved better than that.
Mags leaned her back against the counter and looked at me. “I don’t like the idea of you being close to GJ.”
“It wasn’t even really about GJ; it was about GJ’s family.
I was just saying hi. You’re spinning this into something bigger than it was,” I insisted.
My heart rate picked up. I hated the idea of upsetting Mags so much that I was already playing out in my head how I was going to call this whole thing with GJ before it went too far.
I was sure GJ would understand. It was the right thing to do—even if the thought of it opened an unexpected pit of sadness in me.
“GJ doesn’t let girls meet her family. Ever.”
I fought off my lips turning up at the thought.
I’d gathered based on her family’s teasing that they didn’t meet many of GJ’s conquests—and that made sense, considering it would be a constant rotation.
But I assumed there’d been at least a handful that had been serious enough to justify meeting her family.
I turned my head quickly away from Mags so she wouldn’t see the thrilled expression on my face.
“Maybe you should take that as a good thing, then. She views me more as one of you guys than some girl she’s interested in. ”
“I don’t think so,” Mags said. “Twin-tuition.”
I rolled my eyes. “We haven’t said that since we were, like, twelve years old. Maybe now that we’re older, you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“No, I think I see exactly what’s happening. Even with you insisting it’s nothing, I know you, and I know that you have a tendency to latch onto people. Your taste has always been bad, and someone like GJ is exactly that—”
I frowned, immediately offended even though she was right to say it. Mostly. Just minus the GJ part since GJ has demonstrated to actually be different so far. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mags threw her hands up. “You like them emotionally unavailable and difficult to reach. You like the chase and the feeling of someone wanting you. You have so many people who’ve had crushes on you over the years, and you have never paid attention to any of it because you’re always fixated on the person you can’t have. ”
I scoffed. “So many people is an exaggeration.”
“I’ve had, like, basically entire team rosters I’ve had to fight to keep away from you. People ask all the time at parties if I know if you’re seeing someone. But you still make it so hard for yourself for some reason.”
I was annoyed—both by how much she was simplifying the situation, and how she wasn’t lying.
I did make it difficult for myself. I didn’t have a shortage of options, and I was sure I could’ve found a nice partner by now if I’d really wanted to.
But I never wanted them nice. Mags was right to say it; she was just being intentionally dense about why that would be the case.
“For some reason?” I snapped. The guilt I was feeling earlier was washed away by bold-faced annoyance. “It doesn’t take a fancy therapist to realize that I chase shitty people because that’s how you guys make me feel.”
“What the fuck do you mean by you guys?”
“You know exactly what I mean. I have never been anything to our parents because of you. I am always in your shadow. All I know is chasing people down for approval and wanting them to care about me.” I put the frozen fruit back in the freezer, not wanting it to melt over the course of our conversation.
My smoothie was long forgotten by now. “You don’t get to play dumb on that.
I know it’s hard for you to see because Mom and Dad have always loved you and made it clear how much they love you.
You probably don’t even realize how hard and awful and distant they’re capable of being.
And I’m so happy for you that that’s the case, but you don’t get to act like this is all some big surprise.
My dating history sucks, and it’s self-inflicted, but it’s not out of nowhere. ”
Mags shook her head. “You are so stuck on this idea that Mom and Dad secretly resent you or something. It’s honestly kind of crazy. They take great care of us. We’ve had so many opportunities—”
I groaned into my hands. “I’m not getting into this with you. I can’t. I have things to do today. You’ve never listened to me, and you never will.”
“Oh, great. Here we go again with the fucking melodrama—”
“God, you are the worst.” I took a deep breath, doing everything in my power to calm myself down. My hands were literally shaking.
“What is going on with you?” Mags asked, dropping her voice back down to a normal speaking volume. “You’ve been so weird this year.”
I shrugged, less from a place of uncertainty and more from a place of I don’t know, leave me the fuck alone. “It’s senior year. We’re preparing for a big transition.”
“I just want to make sure you’re okay. I want what’s best for you,” Mags said, her voice raised again in an effort to really make me hear her.
But it was such a familiar refrain that it didn’t mean anything to me anymore.
My parents also always insisted that they wanted what was best for me, but they’d never actually asked me what that meant to me.
There was no concern over what I wanted.
I lowered my voice. I didn’t have a fight in me—there was no use.
I’d been trying my best to figure out how to communicate with my family and how to finally stand up for myself, and it was becoming abundantly clear that maybe my issue wasn’t that I didn’t have a backbone—it was that I knew the people I was talking to sucked at listening. “Yeah, okay.”
“And what’s best for you starts with not surrounding yourself with shitty people anymore.
Okay?” Mags said, ducking her head so she could meet my eyes.
I refused to look at her, turning my head so my eyes were fixed on the subway tile lining our kitchen walls.
“I don’t like seeing you go through all of that.
You deserve better than to be crying over people.
And GJ is the last person you want to get yourself caught up in.
You fall hard and fast, and if you think the people you’ve been down bad for before are awful, GJ is a million times worse.
Even if you just picked her because you knew it’d drive me insane, you need to stop before it goes too far. ”
That stopped me in my tracks. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I mean, it’s obvious that this has to do with me. The person I hate most on my team and my sister? Either one or both of you is doing it vindictively. You can’t tell me that’s not the case.”
I was so caught off guard that my mouth just hung open, no words coming out. I didn’t even bother trying to keep up a convincing lie anymore—it didn’t feel worth it. I blinked and shook my head. “You think this is because of you?”
“Literally, what other reason would there be? You just got mad at Mom and Dad and are basically fighting with them. And based on how you’re talking to me now, you seem to harbor some kind of resentment over being treated unfairly in the family.
I don’t know. I know you think I’m stupid, but I can connect dots. It’s an easy form of revenge.”
I looked at her, locking our eyes so she knew that I really meant it. “Right now, I don’t think you’re stupid—I just think you’re self-centered.”
Mags rolled her eyes, never capable of taking anything I say seriously. “Whatever. I have to go. Sorry for trying to help you.”
“Yeah, fine. Whatever.” It wasn’t the most clever closing line I’d ever had, but it was the best I could come up with.
My body was buzzing with adrenaline and agitation and hurt.
And there was the tiniest bit of fear in there too—the fear of how close Mags was to figuring out the whole truth and the fear of how she would act if she ever found out everything.
In a way, I understood where she was coming from with wanting to keep me away from GJ.
On the surface, it looked like an awful match—even Soph had been skeptical and probably still was.
I was always chasing someone who I knew would inevitably go on to hurt me, always seeking the approval of someone I didn’t even really like just because I wanted the satisfaction of knowing they liked me.
But despite Mags’s insistence that GJ was no good for me, there was one person who listened to me and supported me between the two of them, and it wasn’t Mags.