“Yup.” He licks my face. “You’re mine now.”
“Eeew! But, good. You’re mine too.” I don’t lick him back though. Think I’ll leave that as a Meyer thing.
“I think I’ve been yours for quite some time.” He reaches behind me for the shampoo and squirts a dabble on my head before he massages it in.
There’s no shower sex because there’s a social for me to get to that I’m not missing this time no matter how hot my boyfriend is.
Boyfriend.
Never thought I’d call someone that again.
“We make ourselves official and I’m just supposed to let you walk out of here?”
“You could come. We used to drink with Coach Cannon all the time. Hell, Elias was at our last social for a bit.”
He twists his lips and his brows at the same time. “Okay, guess a couple of beers couldn’t hurt.”
* * *
Our condo’s hosting the social and that just makes the high extra high. I sit my ass on the marble kitchen counter, nursing my beer. Mercy stands between my legs, fiddling with the hair that curls out from under my ball cap. He’s got whiskey on his breath.
When he showed up, I took his hand and introduced him to my personal group of friends as my boyfriend.
“We know, dude,” Dirk said. “We’ve been trying to tell you.”
I might have been slow on the uptake. Now, we’re floating in a Jack and Mercy bubble. There are surreptitious glances and flat-out stares, me getting shy as fuck when he smiles at me—all that shit. I know there are bets on how long we’ll last just like there were bets on if we’d ever get to being boyfriends.
I sling my beer-holding hand around Merc’s neck and rest my arm on the cleft between his shoulder and his neck. He’s quiet. Not that he’s an overly talkative guy, but this is quiet even for him. I speak into his ear.
“Merc? Should I be worried?”
“Never. I’m digesting and not entirely sure you’re not going to run off to Italy with Rhett or wherever rich assholes like him get married.”
“No. I choose us. I’ll deal with Rhett.” And for the first time, I feel that I can. “It’s, like, I got a boost of confidence that was missing. I know that doesn’t mean I’ll make the draft, but they want me enough to watch. He said they wanted me before too.”
It’s all coming together now how much not making it when Rhett did, not even getting a scrap of interest, was tied up in all the drama that season and it made the blow all the more painful.
He pulls back to look at me. “They said they wanted you before?” His eyebrows raise so high they’re gonna crawl off his forehead.
“Something like that. Didn’t make it that year either I guess, which only emphasizes I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“Shouldn’t get your hopes up? What kind of bullshit is that? Get your hopes up. Way up. It’s the same amount of devastation either way, at least have some fun with it in the meanwhile, eh?”
“I’m havin’ fun here with you.” I rest my forehead on his. Our noses touch. Yeah. This is what it’s supposed to feel like. Heart beating so fast it’s like you’re rushing toward the boards and can’t stop. A buzz that’s threatening to vibrate me off this counter.
“You’re up, Leslie,” Dash says.
“For what?”
“Beer bong. You remain the undefeated champion. Get your ass over here.”
“And that’s my cue to go,” Merc says. “I’ll leave you to the hijinks of twenty-something-year-olds.”
I groan, but then I get an idea. “Y’know, if you leave your door open, I can crawl into bed with you later.”
“Even better. A twenty-four-year-old drunken elephant to wake me out of a dead sleep,” he says.
I frown and blast him with the puppy eyes. “But we’re boyfriends now, Merc. I’m gonna be your twenty-four-year-old drunken elephant in an hour from now after I defend my beer-bong championship title.” If there’s something we athletes are, it’s competitive. I can’t lose a title like that.
