When I park in front of the upscale warehouse-style gym, my anger has decreased by half. I spot Andreas’s Bronco two spots to my left. No surprise he’s already here. He, unlike me, lives right on campus in a shared apartment with Danny Hudson, a freshman who will probably take my place as the new QB next year.
I grab my duffel bag from the trunk and head inside the building. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and the place is pretty packed. It annoys me to work out in a full house, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I quickly change and then head to the gym’s main room. Andreas is spotting Danny at the bench press when I find them.
“Dude, who stole your cookie?” he asks.
I roll my eyes. Everything out of the guy’s mouth is related to food or girls. “It’s one of those days. I had lunch with my mother and Jane earlier. You know how those events usually go.”
“Like eating sawdust?” Danny chimes in.
“Pretty much.”
“How is Jane doing? I haven’t seen her in months,” Andreas asks casually, not even glancing in my direction.
He knows he’s not allowed to get near my sister or entertain any ideas about her. She’s still in high school, for starters. Also, she doesn’t need to get her heart broken by the most notorious manwhore on campus.
“Jane is fine,” I reply through clenched teeth.
“Whoa. You don’t need to bite my head off. I was just asking.”
“You look pissed,” Danny pipes up. “Are you still sour about your talk with the coach?”
“Nah. I’m over that,” I lie. I hate that I screwed up, but wallowing in it won’t help either. “He had the right to chew my ass. My current mood is in part to blame on a fucking nosy reporter from the school paper.”
“Wait. I thought Ludwig was a buddy of yours.” Andreas arches his eyebrows.
“He couldn’t make it, and his replacement was a fucking bitch. She dared to ask when I stopped giving a fuck about football.”
“Wow. That’s savage.” Danny chuckles. “Your charming skills didn’t work on her?”
“I wasn’t myself.”
“Please tell me you put the bitch back in her place,” Andreas retorts angrily.
I take Danny’s spot on the bench. “That’s what I should have done. Instead, I left.”
Andreas whistles. “Troy Alexander avoiding a confrontation. That’s new. Are you sure you didn’t sleep with her and forget to call the next day?”
“Unlike yours, my bedroom doesn’t have a revolving door. I remember my hookups.”
He shrugs. “If you say so.”
“Can we drop the subject? I didn’t come here to gossip like a fucking sorority girl.”
A wicked grin appears on Andreas’s face. “Speaking of sorority girls….”
He proceeds to tell us about his latest sexual escapade, not sparing us any details, but I tune him out. No matter how much I want to forget what happened in the coffee shop, I can’t get the Lois Lane wannabe out of my head.
Damn it.
2
CHARLIE
I’m in the zone, my fingers flying over the keyboard, when Blake sits on the edge of my desk. I ignore him. It took forever for me to get a good flow going, and he’s not going to mess it up.
Wishful thinking.
Blake is a pest and clears his throat, as if his butt occupying precious space on my workstation wasn’t obvious enough.
With a sigh, I lean back in my chair and glance at him. “What?”
“What the hell did you just send me?”
I fake an air of innocence. “You have to be more specific than that.”
“Cut the bullshit, Charlie. You know I can’t publish that article about Troy. You destroyed him. Shit, I’ve seen movie critics be kinder to The Phantom Menace.”
“I only wrote what was presented to me. It’s not my fault Troy bailed from the interview when I asked the tough questions.”
“Come on, Charlie. I know you. You can’t fool me with your angelic face. I’ve seen your dark side, and it’s mean as fuck. You got mad at Troy because he was late, and you decided to get revenge. You can do that on your own time, not in my paper.” He jumps off the desk, fixing his tweed jacket in the process.
Blake is the poster child for the dress-for-the-job-you-want mentality, hence the stupid jacket and slacks. His dark hair is combed back, highlighting his widow’s peak and pale complexion. It’s not by chance that he plays a vampire in our ongoing LARP game.
We’ve known each other since kindergarten, and we dated in high school. Most exes can’t remain friends, but Blake and I had a solid friendship before, which helped. And the decision to break up was mutual.
“Whatever. I’m not rewriting it.” I turn to my screen.
“We can’t simply not run the interview!”
I shrug. “Get Ludwig to write one for you. He’s buddies with Troy. I’m sure he can come up with a bullshit article that highlights all of Troy’s assets.”
“You can be such a bitch sometimes,” he mumbles.
“Heinous bitch. That’s what Troy said.” I smirk.
“Did he really call you that?”
I look at Blake, noticing the deep frown. He can call me names—sometimes, when I deserve it—but we have the relationship for that. He won’t tolerate any jerk disrespecting me.
“Chill, okay? Technically, he said I was pulling the heinous bitch card, which, to be fair, I was. You can put away your knight in shining armor outfit for now.”
He clamps his jaw shut, but he’ll ruminate on that for hours. “If you were trying to get me to publish your interview, it won’t work. I’ll think of something to fill that spot.”
“Whatever.”
I don’t care one way or another. I wrote the article, which served as a way to get rid of the anger. I might also have tweeted about it, but no one in Troy’s circle follows me, so the chances he’ll read it are slim.
I’m fine if my article never gets published. I have bigger fish to fry. I’m writing the storyline for next weekend’s LARP event, and it needs to be finished today. Most of the time I don’t mind this side job. It’s fun to come up with crazy stories that will be acted out, but I’ve had to work on several assignments for school as well, which has made my schedule this week hell.
A text message pops on my screen. It’s from Ben, my baby brother. I see it’s a picture, so I click on it. A smile blossoms on my lips. Ben finally finished his costume for this weekend. His character is a troll hunter and, as such, needs several props. He’s been working on that project for months. I reply with a heart emoji.
Growing up, Ben and I shared our love for fantasy worlds and grand quest stories, so it’s not a surprise we both got into LARPing. He found it first, a suggestion from the school counselor to help him with his social anxiety.
“Wow, did you see that? Ben is looking badass,” Blake says from across the room.
No surprise Ben also texted Blake. They’re close.
“Yeah. I can’t wait for this weekend.”
“Me neither. How is that storyline coming along?”