Page 77 of End Game

Mack is still asleep on the couch when I make my way downstairs. Quietly I sneak out of the house and into Athlete’s Village. There’s almost nobody out and about at eight o’clock on Sunday morning.

Jogging through the streets, I head back to the soccer house, where Johanna is sitting bleary-eyed at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.

“Where have you been?”

“Out.”

“You need to tell us when you’re not coming home,” she says petulantly.

“I wasn’t planning on not coming home. It got late quicker than I expected.”

She looks me up and down. “You were with Barrett Zhang?”

“Yeah.”

She looks away and presses her lips together.

Okay, now I have to know what went down with the two of them.

“How was coffee with him a few weeks ago? You never said.”

Johanna snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

I blink. “Okay. Sure. I will.”

The last time I brought it up, Barrett changed the subject and then pretended I hadn’t said anything. Neither of them seemed pissed or hostile. I just chalked it up to personality differences and forgot about it.

“Will it be an issue?”

“Why should it?” she says.

“I don’t know. He’s coming to our game today.”

“Well, good for him,” she mutters into her coffee.

“You’ll be civil?”

Johanna rolls her eyes.

It’s too early for this shit. Leaving her to wallow in coffee, I trudge up the stairs to my room. Taking a quick shower, I scrub off yesterday’s grime and detangle my hair before pulling it back into a no-nonsense braid. By the time I’m dressed and ready to go, Rosie is poking her head out from her room.

“The coast is clear?” she whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“Johanna went on a rampage last night,” she reveals. “She threw the biggest queen bitch fit I’ve ever seen.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

Rosie waves it off. “Not your fault.”

Except actually, I think my being out with Barrett might have been part of it…

She disappears into her bathroom, and I head into my room. While she’s in the shower, I pick up any visible mess—my shoes go in the rack in my closet, my dirty clothes in the hamper, my vibrator back in the bedside drawer, my books into my backpack or in a neat pile on my desk.