She looked at me with an amused smirk, her eyes dancing. “You just spaced out for five whole minutes. And if you're not spacing out, you’re beating my equipment into the ground. Something has you wound up tight.What is it?”
“Uh,” my eyes bounced around the room, looking for a distraction. “Nothing Jen. Just a lot on my mind.”
“Is it Connor?” she asked. Unwisely, I reared back at the question. Giving her a frown and turning my nose up slightly. In doing this, I totally gave myself away. She nodded as if understanding. “Ah, of course it’s Connor.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, despite my plans to deny, deny, deny.
She shrugged and began working her fingers to roll up my wraps since I hadn’t moved to do so. “You two have looked a little less…in your own world lately. Something happen?”
“In our own world?” I asked.
She paused. “Oh, come on. Don't tell me you think you're fooling anyone with the friends act.”
“It isn’t an act, Jen. He’s my friend.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
“Tell me what‘in our own world’means first,” I protested.
Jenny sighed and put her hands on her hips. “When the two of you are together, it's like there’s this bubble around you. I’m not sappy enough to say some shit like, you're the only two people in the room, but it does sort of feel like you’re the only two that matter to each other. When it’s the two of you, the rest of us might as well be background noise.”
Crossing my arms over myself, I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course it doesn’t make any senseto you. You’re in the bubble,” she said, not elaborating on it any further. Instead, she just inclined her chin in my direction. “Your turn, spill.”
I bit my lip as I dropped to the ground starting a quick stretching sequence. I guess she really did want me to talk. Sighing, I bent over and curled my body along an extended leg, stretching my left hamstring and avoiding Jen’s eyes.
“We may have had a slip up a couple of weeks ago,” I said, keeping my eyes on my leg instead of hers.
“A slip up?” she asked. “You're going to have to explain.”
Another sigh, which was fine because it brought me deeper into my stretch. “You know what I'm talking about Jen. Connor and Islipped up.”
There was a beat of pure silence where I switched legs and began stretching the other side and then there was an audible gasp from my boxing instructor. “Oh my god you slipped up! Did you guys kiss?”
“No.”
“Have sex?”
“No!”
“So what? Did he just like slip inside—”
“Jesus, Jenny!” I scrambled to my feet and looked around us even though we were the only two in the boxing room at the time. “No! We just—Things got a little heated, you know? And if it had gone on, we may have done all of those things by the end of it.”
She rolled her lips into her mouth as she looked me over head to toe. Then she laid into it. “Let me guess. You’re the one who stopped it.”
I narrowed my eyes, feeling instantly attacked. “I had to!”
“Why?”
“Because we’re friends. Do you think we could stay friends if we did something like that?”
“So what?”
“So what?” I reared back to look at her fully. “So what is, I would lose my best friend over something stupid like—”
“Love?” she asked.
