6. Sadie #2
I'm still looking at the grey one when someone comes from the other direction, crossing their path, walking like they know exactly where they're going and exactly how long it will take to get there, and moves into the frame beside the grey one the girls are talking about.
He tosses something, a set of keys, to the one in the grey jumper, and when they turn around, I see who it is. Mason Crawford, and his sexy brother Miles. Not sure how he can be sexier; they’re identical twins, but to me Miles looks a lot hotter.
"The guys from last night were better looking," I say, and my voice comes out completely normal, even though I know that's a lie. These Crawford brothers are on another level hot.
"Hard disagree," Maya says.
"The tall beer pong one," I insist. "Genuinely." I need to stop thinking about a boy who I’ve not spoken to, and by the looks of it, can get any girl on campus if he wants.
"You're only saying that because you beat him and it's given you feelings." Cara teases.
"I don't have feelings about someone I beat at beer pong."
I really don't think there was one guy at that party who made me look twice. Except one. I noticed the way he stood against that wall like the party was happening around him and he'd simply decided to allow it.
Miles Crawford. Wow, that's the only word for him. Sexy, gorgeous, just wow.
"That's exactly when feelings happen," Juno says sagely. "Sadie." She pauses mid-step, and I feel it before I see it. She follows the line of my gaze across to the science block, then back to me. "Sadie, are you crushing on Miles?"
The silence lasts approximately one second too long. They all look at me.
"I don't know who that is," I say.
"Yes, you do," Maya says.
"He was at the party," Cara says, from somewhere behind me. "He was standing against the wall by the back hallway for most of the night."
I knew exactly where he was standing. I'm not going to tell them that.
"He's a Crawford," Cara continues. "Miles. The older ones are twins, him and Mason." She pauses. "The family is…" another pause, a Cara pause where a word gets selected before release, “…notable."
"Notable how?" Bree asks.
"Just notable."
"Sadie." Juno plants herself directly in my path, walking backwards now, facing me, which is a level of coordination I respect and resent simultaneously. "On a scale of one to completely gone…"
"One," I say. "Barely a two." I cut her off quickly.
"She's at least a seven," Maya tells Juno.
"Minimum," Bree agrees.
"I've spoken to him for approximately zero minutes." I point out to them all before they start planning a wedding for me.
"Doesn't matter," Juno says cheerfully. "Go talk to him."
"Right now?" I question.
"Right now. Go. We'll wait."
"We will absolutely not wait," Cara says. "We have practice in twenty minutes."
"We'll walk slowly," Juno amends, without looking away from me. "Go."
"I'm not going to walk up to a stranger outside the science block and just…"
"Hi, I'm Sadie, you were at the party last night," Maya offers helpfully. "That's literally all you have to say." She tries to push me that way, but I hold myself in place.
"It's not that simple."
"It’s exactly that simple."
I look across at the science block. Miles is still there, talking to Mason, there’s something calm about the way he stands, like the morning has a different pace for him than it does for the rest of the campus.
He laughs at something, and something in my chest does the thing again that I'm declining to name.
Am I starting to like a guy just by the look of him?
"He doesn't look like a one woman man," Bree says.
Everyone goes slightly quiet because Bree has a gift for stating the thing in the room at full volume.
"She's not wrong," Maya says, more carefully.
"I'm never wrong," Bree says, not unkindly. "The ones who stand like that at parties, watching everything, dancing with whoever, they're not looking for something real. They're just looking."
I know she's right. Some part of me that is sensible and self-preserving and has made it nineteen years without a single genuinely bad decision knows this is true.
The other part of me watches him tip his head toward something Mason's saying and he looks like a sex god. His lips curl into a smile, and the only thing I’m thinking is, I bet those lips could make you forget everything around you.
"I'm not going to talk to him," I say.
"You're absolutely going to talk to him eventually," Juno says.
"That may be true, but not today,” I tell her.
She looks as if she has more to say. She always has more to say. But she turns and falls back into step beside me and lets it go, which is one of the better things about Juno. She knows when she's made her point.
The athletics building hits me before the door is fully open, the chalk and floor cleaner and that warm rubber-and-effort smell that I have associated with gymnastics since I was six.
My shoulders drop.
The others fan out toward the changing rooms. Juno is already unwinding her scarf, back on the conditioning block monologue. Maya has her phone out. Bree tucks her sunglasses into her kit bag with the careful reverence of someone storing something irreplaceable.
I stop at the changing room door and look back through the narrow window at the morning outside, the path, the sky, and the corner where the science block would be if I could see that far.
I can't.
Maybe I will talk to him, maybe I should push myself to do something I wouldn’t do, but can I? No. I’m not that type of girl, I like to have fun, but I’ve never asked a guy out, and I don’t think I’ll start now.