Page 24 of Irresistibly Us
ChaosQueen
Setting expectations pretty high there, aren’t you?
RenegadeRush
They’re not high if I’m positive I’ll meet them.
ChaosQueen
That’s some serious confidence. Confidence is sexy…if you can back it up.
RenegadeRush
Well of course I can back it up. I’m sexy as fuck.
I have to run…some friends came over. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, chaos girl. Think of me.
ChaosQueen
I will maybe give you a passing thought. Potentially two, but it’ll be a game time decision.
RenegadeRush
If you’re even thinking of me once, I’m a happy guy.
“Earth to Tyler! Are you on this planet right now?”
I click off my phone and glance up at Drew standing in front of me, arms crossed, scowl on his face. “Keep your damn pants on. I was having a conversation.”
“A conversation that makes you blush and smile like a lunatic?”
Jack smirks and drops down onto the couch next to me. His dad, Ben, and my mom are twins, and he and his twin sister, Caitlin, are not only my cousins, but also my best friends. Jack, Maddy’s brother Oliver, and I are the male wing of our little friend group, and Caitlin, Sophie, Maddy, Maddy’s best friend Maya, Caitlin and Jack’s cousin Sarah Wyles, and Sarah’s cousin Emmy Wyles are our own personal girl gang. Since I started with the Renegades, Drew and Cam have basically become my brothers, and now that Cam and Maddy are in Capital L Love, Cam is around a lot more, which means Drew is too.
All the people I love hanging out together makes me unreasonably happy.
Except for right now, I kind of wish the guys were anywhere but here so I could keep texting. I was extremely not ready to stop.
I elbow Jack in the ribs. “Fuck off, I’m not blushing. I’m just texting.”
“Uh huh,” he says, kicking his feet up on my coffee table. “Who are you texting?”
“Sophie,” I say quickly. Too quickly, probably.
Cam drops down into the chair across from the couch, making a sound like a game show buzzer. “Nice try, pal. Sophie, Maddy, and the rest of the girls are having margaritas at Fireside before the game, and everyone knows they go no contact for margarita nights. So, who were you actually talking to?”
Fuck.
I do know they go no contact when they’re drinking margs at Fireside, the Strip District bar Jack’s dad, Ben, and Maddy’s dad, Jeremy, opened a million years ago and Jack now runs. I also knew they were planning on pre-gaming Maddy’s brother Oliver’s hockey game that we’re all going to tonight. He’s a center for the Pittsburgh Lightning, just like his dad was. We bond over the whole professional athlete, sons of former professional athletes thing.
I blow out a breath, tossing my phone on the coffee table. “I kind of…met someone.”
“No way!” Jack’s face splits with a wide grin. “Who is she?” A carbon copy of his dad, Jack really is the best of us. The wholesome, born and bred Pittsburgh boy, thrilled to settle into the city where he grew up and run the family business and probably raise a brood of kids one day right down the street from his childhood home.
My dreams aren’t that much different than his. I have no interest in playing for any team other than the Renegades, the team where my dad spent his entire career. And ever since the Super Bowl, I’ve been thinking more and more about settling down. But while other people might call me wholesome, I know better than that.
People with brains that like to spin out without any notice and who spend their days wondering when the anxiety humming beneath their skin will surface and totally wreck the moment are not the wholesome type.
“She’s…no one,” I say quickly. Even though the two text conversations I’ve had with her are more fun than I’ve had with anyone other than for Sophie in a long, long time, and I think she might really be someone.
