Page 29 of The Fake Divination Offense
I scowl and pocket my phone. “How’d you even—”
“I can read lips. The subtitle earrings just make my life easier. You and the guy from the bar? You were shitfaced last night; there’s no way you took him home. What happened?”
My mouth opens.
Uh.
Whatdidhappen?
“Turns out he works here.” I wave at HQ, behind Marlow. “It’s a bit early to say we’redating, but the sites figured us out, and hedidagree to see me, so we’re taking it slow, but… um. Yeah. Not much to tell yet. Kind of boring, really, but I wanted to tell my mom before she saw something and erupted, ya know? Moms. And stuff. They can be.Ya know. Ya know?”
Oh my gods.
Did the publicity people brief us on a cover story? They might’ve while I was comatose in Roesia’s office. Super helpful right now. I’m doing great.
Marlow blinks at me, her confused gaze going from my eyes to my lips and back again like she’s not entirely sure she understood me right.
“Okaaaaay,” she says, making sure to sign it in a long, drawn-out, disbelieving way I do not appreciate.
I shove the side of her head. “Race you?”
“Well, that’s not fair to you. Choke on my dust, tank.” And she bolts up the track.
I hurry after her, focusing on her taunting, on the heat of the sun, on the upcoming practice.
On anything else, literallyanything else, other than Alexo. Or Seb. Or Urzoth.
Or Alexo.
Mostly Alexo.
Fuck my life.
Chapter Four
The weeks until our first game fly by. Because Iforcethem to fly by.
To make sure all mention of my divisive lawsuit fades into the background, the team publicists arebuilding a narrativewith me and Alexo. Teasing it out, keeping it simple. Aside from our coffee date, we don’t have any other face-to-face interactions scheduled until the game itself. Alexo supposedly watches one of my practices, but Ido notlook around to see him. I’m so focused on my plays that both the tank coach and the head coach tell me, in two separate asides, that if I keep playing like that, our defense will be an impassable brick wall.
I haven’t seen Seb either. Because I am very focused on training, thank you. And not at all because he texted to see how my renouncing of Urzoth went, and when I told him I didn’t do it—it wasn’t the right time—we had a bit of a back-and-forth. And then a day later, he texted me a link to a pro rawball article about my coffee date with Alexo, and asked if mysudden concern about timing had anything to do with this pretty little Urzoth cheerleader?
No. Yes. But no.
I’m even more of a poster boy for Urzoth now—much to the exultation of the group chat between my mom, my dad, and me, where my mom has been heaping praise on Alexo while berating me for not telling her that he’s a follower of Urzoth, too. Luckily, there haven’t been more Galaxrien cult rituals and therefore no subsequent Urzoth responses, so mine and Alexo’s Urzoth ties haven’t needed to be too in-your-face. But all the positive press from me and Alexo has Reverend Drach and Roesia happy, as told to me by a publicist who prepped me for a media blitz.
It took everything in me to keep from asking how Alexo was doing. I know he leapt into practices with the same ferocity I did, but his reason was because he only had two weeks to get up to speedwith the rest of his squad. I didn’t ask about him because I didn’t need to know about him, like I didn’t text him because I didn’t need to text him.
I’ve slotted him into a healthy box like everyone else.
Alexo: PR stunt.
Simple as that.
Before I can catch my breath, I’m heading into Bwararax Stadium for the first game of the season and I’ve got everything in my life so compartmentalized that I’m basically a walking, talking IKEA storage system.
Alexo and I are scheduled for aninteractionafter the game, win or lose. It’ll be fine, a quick hug or something, then we’ll separate until our next scheduledinteraction.
In the meantime, I’m here to play.
