Chapter Sixteen
Leah
In a rare moment of silence between the two of us, Soph and I were completely focused on our work.
We’d just wrapped up a morning cheer practice and grabbed food, dragging the meal out as long as possible to avoid having to do any work.
But with the holidays coming up just around the corner, we were deep into midterms and then preparing for finals.
As much as I loved college, I was absolutely not going to miss how the fall semester felt—the anxiety, the deadlines, the nonstop practices, and hopping between cheering for different sports.
Even though I’d been able to give myself a slightly lighter workload for my senior year fall, writing paper after paper and cramming for exams was not my favorite thing in the world.
I clicked through the digital flashcards I had up on my computer and fought off a sigh.
Across the table, Soph was significantly more locked in than I was.
She was so focused she didn’t even sense me staring at her, willing her to look up and chat for a few minutes, or what I would tell her would be a few minutes, and then would end up being at least an hour.
As if knowing I needed a break, my phone vibrated next to me. I glanced over to see that it was GJ and smiled to myself. A little spark fluttered in my chest, but I let it be—if I picked up my phone now, there was no way I was getting this practice test done.
Of course, that got Soph’s attention.
“GJ, hm?” Soph teased, apparently not getting the memo that we were letting the text go. “Still going strong?”
“If by going strong you mean still casually hooking up, then yes.” As I said the words, I had a flashback to the marathon of sex we’d just had.
My body very much remembered it and was not being particularly cool about it.
But just because the sex was so good I could basically still feel the orgasm days later, didn’t mean we weren’t casual.
Soph nodded, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Right. I see.”
I half-sighed, half-laughed. “Do you have something you’d like to share with the class?”
“Just seems awfully serious. Way more serious than what I would ever consider to be nothing.”
I shrugged. “We haven’t talked about anything, and I like where we are right now. And I mean, it’s not like it can be anything because of Mags anyway—”
As soon as I said it, I knew I had made a mistake. Soph’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you’re so into GJ.”
I hid my face, absolutely mortified. “Wait, no—”
“You’re not getting out of this one. Once you get to the point where you’re using your sister as the excuse standing between you and making it official, it’s something.” Leah leaned forward, closing her textbook. “Oh, this is juicy.”
“You’re not even supposed to approve of this. GJ is a player, remember? The enemy? Would absolutely break my heart if I tried to turn this into anything?”
“I can hear in your voice that you don’t believe that for even a second,” Soph said, and she was right—annoyingly.
Everything with GJ felt totally different than what I was used to.
She was available and kind and warm. She listened to me and took what I said seriously.
She even remembered my order from my favorite restaurant and got it delivered for me.
I didn’t want to set myself up for failure, but the most logical part of my brain could recognize what was going on—GJ had to have a crush on me.
Even the best actor in the world couldn’t put on a performance that convincing.
Beyond just my own gut feeling, the stories about GJ getting caught up in drama with girls at The 151 had stopped, meaning I was pretty sure we were exclusive.
But none of it mattered since we were never going to date. It was in my best interest to ignore it and let the crush-like feelings I was experiencing pass—because they definitely would. Eventually.
“You’re supposed to be talking me out of this. Remember how you felt at the beginning: GJ was only getting a pass because she was better than Kai. I feel like there was a wise woman in my life who had really emphasized that and didn’t want me to forget it.”
“My feelings have changed since clearly whatever I thought was going on was not actually what was going on at all,” Soph explained.
“Maybe you guys won’t ever like, fall in love, or whatever, and maybe it’ll just be a college fling, but you seem happy.
And that’s all that matters to me. You haven’t come to me once, stressing about what GJ is doing or where GJ is.
You’re not obsessing over whether she might be dating someone else.
Literally all of the things you used to do every time you were hooking up with someone you haven’t done at all.
And I know you’re not just keeping those feelings to yourself because you can’t hide anything from me. ”
I immediately jumped to be defensive, but then quickly realized I had no counterargument.
Soph was totally right—I hadn’t behaved at all like I usually did when I had a crush.
I was acting like a sane, level-headed person would—or how a person who was receiving kind, consistent communication for the first time ever in her dating history would.
I didn’t have to worry because I knew, all without asking.
As time had gone on, GJ kept me updated on her travel schedule and when she wanted to see me next.
I never left her apartment wondering if it would be the last time.
“Okay, maybe you’re right,” I admitted. Leave it to my best friend to be able to see right through me before I could even put all of the pieces together.
“Of course I’m right. But seriously, happy you’re learning how to date normally either way. I wasn’t strong enough to spend even another week hearing about Kai.”
It was funny to have Kai’s name brought up in conversation again—I hadn’t thought about them in what felt like forever.
And in retrospect, everything with Kai had felt so…
stupid. It was nothing. Just two people who weren’t compatible and didn’t actually like each other.
I didn’t know why I’d gotten so wound up over them in the first place.
“Yeah, I guess things have been good,” I admitted, which felt like an understatement now that I was really thinking about it.
Things with GJ had been going better than good.
Good enough that I—maybe stupidly—hadn’t experienced any anxiety at all about it.
I’d just communicated what I wanted and texted her when I wanted, and she’d done the same. No games, no weird back-and-forth.
“Have you guys had a sleepover at your house yet?” Soph asked.
Just the thought of that alone was enough to give me a heart attack. “Absolutely not. There’s no way to sneak GJ into the house. Besides being like, six feet tall and impossible to hide, I know Mags is on high alert now.
Soph shrugged. “It could be kind of hot, sneaking around like that.”
“It already is hot sneaking around in the way we have been, but I don’t have a death wish,” I said and Soph snorted.
Midterms came and went, which meant the first month of the basketball season had come to a close.
The girls began fluttering during practices about how they couldn’t believe it was almost the end of the season or almost the end of their college cheering career.
It still felt like there was so much time left, but I understood where the feeling was stemming from—December might as well have been the new year, and then once the new year started, the regular season only went until early March.
I, however, was doing everything in my power to ignore what the holidays actually meant and how soon graduation was.
I wasn’t so much sad about finishing my career as a cheerleader, but I was sad to be graduating.
The fact that things were still tense with my parents helped take my mind off of it.
I couldn’t stress about how I was less than a semester and a half from graduating when I was stressed about finding a middle ground with my parents.
“Oh, they’re calling,” Mags shouted from the living room.
I considered blowing it off, but it was stupid of me to do something like that.
As mad as I still was at my parents—who hadn’t even attempted to call me or text me individually to check in—the likelihood of getting an apology from them or talking things out increased if I spoke to them.
I had to at least give them the chance to try.
My heart rate immediately skyrocketed, but I brushed it away.
Things had felt really weird—they never spent Thanksgiving with us, but it had felt intentional this year.
I hadn’t gotten any of the customary, Are you sure you and your sister don’t want to come home, even for a weekend?
texts, always with a little twist of mom guilt thrown in there.
All I’d gotten was a photo in the group chat of my parents at the massive family Thanksgiving my extended family hosted every year, and that had been two weeks ago.
“Hey, miss you guys,” Mags said, her voice booming through the apartment as I opened my bedroom door. I walked over to meet her, sitting on the arm of the couch that Mags was sprawled out on. “Are you at the beach right now?”
“Miss you too, sweetie. We decided to escape the winter weather for a little bit between the holidays. You know how stressful this time of year can be.” Mom propped her hand up over her eyes.
I didn’t state the obvious—winter weather didn’t apply to San Diego like it did to most other places, and the holidays didn’t have to be stressful for her because she never actually contributed anything to them or traveled that far. “Is that your sister?”
“Hi, Mom.”
Mags shifted her phone camera over my way but did a poor job of it, cutting off most of my face and mostly showing my shoulder.