Nothing, just a laundry emergency #2
Before she can retreat, I catch her ankle beneath the table and hold it firmly in place. I do not expect Maddy to hook her toes between my legs while DJ asks who we play next.
My balls. That’s who we’re playing.
My actual answer comes out calm and controlled because that is just me. Internally, I cannot remember the team’s name.
“What happened to your shoulder?” Leon asks innocently when we’re getting changed for practice.
I am standing in front of my locker with three scratches beneath my shoulder blade and the faint taste of Maddy’s lip gloss at the corner of my mouth. I almost answer Leon with sex, then swallow the word before it can leave my mouth. “Got distracted.”
That’s the best I can do.
Maddy dragged me into her room an hour ago. A perfectly natural thing to do after the footwork she was giving me under the table.
Nate’s eyes narrow from the locker beside mine. He watches me pull my jersey over my head and believes absolutely nothing about my face.
That expression stays on Nate’s face throughout two hours of practice and brands onto my brain, out of the athletic centre.
Someone from the campus sports media team stops me on my way to class after training and wants to know where I celebrated, who I called and what it felt like to beat the second-ranked team in the country.
We return from the holiday tournament with half the campus suddenly interested in Princeton basketball. People I have never spoken to start congratulating me between classes.
The one thing I cannot tell them is who I called.
By the time another International Relations lecture ends that afternoon, I have stopped giving a fuck about anyone knowing.
I no longer give a shit about whatever excuses that require me not to kiss her whenever I see her. I don’t even know exactly why we’re doing this. I am just so finished with the secrecy.
I shove my laptop into my bag and follow the other students towards the doors.
————
To my surprise, Maddy is already waiting for me outside.
She never waits quietly. She usually enters a room, locates me and begins speaking regardless of whether another person is already using my attention.
Today, she is leaning against the stone wall with her arms folded across her chest.
She wears a short black skirt, the same high boots that make her legs look crazy long and an oversized leather jacket that almost conceals the coffee in her hand. Her golden hair falls loose over her shoulders, and when she sees me, her entire face brightens.
That smile is mine.
At least, it feels like mine.
I want that smile on my lips.
In five steps, I cross the corridor and catch her lightly by the waist, bending down. “Did you miss me?”
Maddy immediately leans away, just enough on an angle that my lips miss hers and brush the edge of her cheek instead.
She holds out the cup, grinning. “Delivering caffeine to a man suffering academically.”
I tilt my head towards her. So, we’re definitely doing this no-public thing, I see. It still feels like a door closing in my face. I guess I owe her a proper conversation instead of just kissing her like a confused teenage boy.
I take the coffee cup and straighten. “We need to talk.”
“Wait. One kiss and now you’re all captain serious on me?” Maddy’s smile remains, but it has become brighter and less real. “I brought you coffee.” Her eyes flick towards the students moving around us.
“Walk with me.” I demand, firmly.
She follows me with the curiosity of a girl who enjoys secrets and terrible survival instinct.
We leave the building and cross towards a quieter path beside the science building. She keeps pace beside me, drinking her coffee as though she has not just inserted a knife into the middle of my afternoon.
Not literally. But it feels like it. I wanted that kiss and now I’m sulking because I didn’t get it. Like I said, a teenager boy.
“Willy, you look angry,” she observes, catching up to my steps. “Public affection is not my thing. People might think you’re collecting Fairfaxes.”
What the fuck? “What did you just say?” I stop walking immediately. My whole body snaps towards her.
I heard her perfectly. My brain refuses to hear it anyway.
Maddy stops walking too. She calmly takes a drink from her own coffee. “Nothing.”
“No. You said something. Say it again.” My hand reaches out to stop her drinking more coffee. Now is not the time to drink coffee, doesn’t she realise that?
“It was a joke.” She shrugs lightly.
She shrugs.
“You brought your sister into this. Explain it.” I pull her wrist a little, demanding again.
For several seconds, she looks at the coffee cup rather than me.
Then she shrugs again with exaggerated carelessness. “You liked Lizzie.”
Is she joking with me right now?
Her still eyes tell me she’s not.
Fine. It was never exactly a secret. Lizzie knew it. DJ knew it, for obvious reasons. Nate knew because Nate somehow meddled into everyone’s business all the time. Maybe Collins too at this point. But we never talked about it.
I guess the whole house knows my stupid kiss with Lizzie. And now that Maddy is part of the house, she knows too.
I just don’t expect her to bring it up now of all time. After we’ve been doing whatever we’ve been doing since she moved in.
“I did.” I give her the simplest version of the truth.
Her face changes at the speed of the answer.
I do not soften it.
However long she’s been keeping it inside, Maddy has been behaving as though she did not care enough for it to matter.
And frankly, it did not matter.
“I liked her,” I continue. “Past tense.”
I cannot rewrite history because the truth makes her uncomfortable.