Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (11 page)

That one stung. Bad. I screwed up, and I knew it. I was her first, and I'd ruined the experience for her. That was a fact.

'
You could've stopped by sooner.'

'I had a game.'

'And thanks for NOT inviting me.'

'Is that what you're upset about? The game? If you wanted to go, you should've asked.'

'This isn't about the game, Tyce Winship. If you think it is, you should really go now.'

'Is it about the sex?'

I fired off that last text and waited with a thumping pulse in my neck. It felt like I was eating my heart. Sex didn't mean shit to me. I didn't care who I did it with, how I did it. I wasn't a sex freak like Mason or Kai or Kirk, but I treated it like eating or breathing or sleeping. I just did it.

Until now.
Even more reason to get up and run like hell,
my brain quipped at me.
Before things get so sticky, you find yourself stuck.

I kept staring at the screen, refusing to pull my gaze away until the next text came in.

'You made me feel like a whore.'

'You're not a whore,'
I shot back, wanting her to know that with every fiber of my being.
'You're anything but a whore, Tea. I don't know why we did what we did back there, but it happened, and it's okay. We'll always have a history together. Emotions, memories, they get messy sometimes. This doesn't have to be the end of the world.'

I licked my lips and pulled a knee up, leaning my tattooed right elbow against it as I put my forehead in my hand.

'It may not mean the end of the world, but it does mean SOMETHING. At least to me.'

Pound, pound, pound. My heart jumped up in my throat. I was practically feasting on it.

'I'm not saying it meant nothing, Tea. I didn't know you were a virgin. I'm sorry.'

Crap. As soon as I sent that last one, I knew I'd made a mistake.

'Please go away, Tyce. Like, seriously. Go. And don't come back. I mean it this time.'

My forehead crinkled and my jaw tightened.

'Leave me the park at least,'
Teagan added after a few seconds.
'You can find somewhere else to run.'

“No, seriously, I can read auras,” Melia said, clapping her hands together and scooting closer to her on-again, off-again best friend, Risika. They fought like cats and dogs and had more 'breakups' than any romantic couple I'd ever seen. Their last fight got hot and heated, with me caught right in the middle. Something about Melia sucking Risika's boyfriend's dick at a party last year.

I couldn't keep up with any of it.

“I don't believe in auras,” Risika said, letting her brown velvet eyes drift over to me. She reached up and pushed some blonde dreads over her shoulder while raising a pierced brow in question. “Do you?”

“You can't
not
believe in auras,” Melia continued, grabbing her best friend's hands and dragging them onto the folded legs of her lap. “That's like saying you don't believe in oceans or the moon or white bread. They just exist and there's nothing you can do about that.”

“For the record, I don't actually believe in white bread. It's all sugar.” Risika pinched her mouth and waggled her brows. I laughed and shook my head, leaning back into the lumpy beanbag behind me. At first, I wasn't sure about Melia's apartment. It was messy and weird and definitely a bit of a culture shock for me, but maybe I just couldn't appreciate it because I was so wrapped up in Tyce that day. I wouldn't say that I was completely over the shock of losing my virginity to that asshole, but it was starting to meld into the rest of me, become a part I just lived with and didn't think too much about. Anyway, Melia's apartment was becoming like a second home to me, a place I could really be myself and not give a crap about anything else. I loved it here.

“Just because you don't eat it doesn't mean it's not real,” Melia shot back, rubbing her thumbs over the tattooed clouds on either of Risika's wrists. One was gray with a lightning bolt crashing through it while the other was white and fluffy and basked with sunshine. “Now hold still and let me get a read.”

“You're on my side, aren't you, Teagan?” Risika continued as I turned my phone over and showed her a picture of the Swiss flag.

“I'm a neutral country here,” I told them as I watched Melia close her almond brown eyes and hum under her breath. The piercings on either side of her lip spun as she played with them with her tongue. “No votes from this peanut gallery, babe. Sorry.”

“Distract me with more stories from your anarchy days back in the desert. I want to hear everything. What did you burn down? Where exactly did you hide a dead squirrel? Who did you first fuck?”

I felt my face blanch, but I thought I'd recovered quickly, sweeping my hair back and pushing the mental calendar in my head as far away as I could get it.
Two weeks, four days.
That's how long I'd been a regular, sex card carrying adult human. I felt like Risika could see it on my face.

“I see indigo,” Melia continued, sitting there in her bright blue and white sundress. It was totally inappropriate for the weather, but I had little faith she'd be venturing outside the rest of the weekend. “Indigo indicates intuitiveness.”

“What are you, an alliteration expert? Let go of my hands. You're so full of shit.” Risika pulled her arms from Melia's grip and turned to look at me with a cocked brow. “Girl, you better not be holding back on something. Melia says you've been regaling her with stories.”

“I fucked up a lot,” I admitted as Melia pulled out a glass bong from beneath her couch. She lit up and took a hit, offering it to me. I didn't smoke, so I turned her down with a raised hand and tried to figure out how to salvage this situation. Risika was looking at me like I was a nut to be cracked. “I was a really angry kid. I tagged the school with graffiti that I called
street art
at the time.” I smiled a little at that. Tyce had been right there beside me, holding the spray cans while I painted the cement walls the way I wanted to paint my face. I'll admit, I wasn't a very good free form urban artist. It took me a while to channel that urge to be creative into makeup. “And yes, I found a squirrel on the side of the road and left its body in the AC vent in the principal's office at the junior high. It took them a week to figure out where the smell was coming from.”

“Kick ass,” Risika said as she leaned back against the couch and crossed her bare feet at the ankles. “You were a wild child, huh?”

“Yeah, but not anymore,” I said as I reached out and grabbed my soda, twisting the cap off the bottle and taking a drink. “That was the Teagan Fletcher from four years ago. After …” I wasn't sure how to explain Tyce to them. Could I tell them that their star quarterback was a bratty little boy from Nevada? It didn't feel like my story to tell.
How stupid is that. Of course it's your story. Your mom went through so much to protect Tyce from his foster mom, to show him love, make him feel safe. And she paid for that. We both did. If anything, he owes me.
“Anyway, I cleaned up my act, made good grades, got into the U of O.”

“Boring,” Melia said, taking another hit. “You forgot the last question. Sex. How old, with who, and was it good? You can forget the last part of that if you want. I'm sure the answer is
no.
” Melia and Risika both laughed, digging into the bowl of tortilla chips that was sitting between them.

“Who cares about high school sex?” I laughed, wishing my stomach didn't feel like a lead weight. I should've just made up a lie and rolled with it. But knowing me, I'd end up forgetting what exactly that lie was and eventually botching the whole story. Best to just let it go completely.

“Me,” Risika said, raising her hand. Melia copied her and they both proceeded to stare at me. I'd heard their virginity stories about a dozen times each, and we'd been friends for about as long as I'd been without the V card. “Tell us or I'll let Melia read your aura next.”

“Shut the fuck up,” her friend said, tossing a sea of chips in Risika's lap. “Let her talk. She has a story. I can tell.” Melia folded her legs up and leaned toward me, rainbow colored bong in one hand, white smoke drifting from between her closed lips.

I stared back at them, at the different shapes of their faces, their lips, their eyes. They looked so different, but yet they were so similar at the same time. I felt trapped beneath their gazes, and I still felt sick from that text conversation between me and Tyce. I kind of wanted to tell someone. Hell, they probably wouldn't even believe me if I told the truth.

“I … lost my virginity two weeks ago?”

“Is that supposed to be a question?” Risika asked, sitting up and raising her eyebrow at me again. I really wanted to reach across the space between us and rub the chocolate brown lipstick from her mouth. With her peach pale skin tone, she'd look better in pink. “With who?”

“Tyce Winship,” I said, and they both laughed. I didn't. I reached down and straightened out my gray wife beater, the one I'd been wearing since I was sixteen. It was still in relatively good shape, and it looked flattering on my body so I kept it. Hey, it wasn't like I was swimming in designer tops like Chelease.

“Tyce … Winship?” Melia looked confused as hell, giving her bong an evil look like the weed was probably to blame for my strange hallucinations and her misunderstanding. “Like, the QB for the Ducks?”

“Exactly like that guy,” I said, feeling a weight fall off my shoulders and crash to the mound of Persian rugs beneath me. “Like your future husband,” I joked, but nobody laughed at that one. The air was getting foggy and thick, and I was just about ready to leave, but I figured I was stuck here until I explained this one in detail. “We kind of have a history together.”

“What kind of history?” Risika asked, like she didn't believe me either.

“We grew up together. Since I was four.”

“You've … known Tyce Winship since you were four?” Melia again, still sounding confused as hell. Her brown eyes were narrowed on me suspiciously. “And you failed to mention this before, why?”

“It's complicated,” I told them, feeling my throat get tight and my hands turn into fists. I
really
didn't want to go through the full story here. Then I'd have to tell them about Tyce's family, about how his mother was killed at age twenty-two on her way to work. I'd have to tell them about the evil bitch that was his foster mother, how she hit him. Starved him. Abused and berated and tore him apart until my mother couldn't take it anymore. Then I'd have to explain the kidnapping charges that the city levied against her when she refused to give Tyce back to that monster. That story was not something I enjoyed telling.

“Holy
shit
, woman,” Melia exhaled, blowing smoke in my face. I needed to go before I got a contact high. I wasn't against smoking pot per se, but I personally wasn't a fan of it. “You lost your virginity to Tyce Winship, your childhood friend, two weeks ago?”

“In the park,” I continued, putting my face in my hands. “It was so stupid. We could've been arrested.”

“In the park?!” Risika stood up and moved over to me, sitting down hard next to my beanbag, pulling my hands away, so that I'd look at her.

“Did he have a big dick?” Melia asked, reminding me of that day I came over and watched the football game.

“Jesus, Melia, are you stupid? She's clearly upset about this.”

“I'm not upset,” I lied, raising my brows at them and taking another sip of my soda. When it tasted like ash, I knew I really, really was. Great. No matter how hard I tried to get over this, it kept creeping back up on me. In my heart, I knew it wasn't because of the sex, not exactly. It was Tyce and his seriously terrible attitude problem. It was his lack of empathy, his lack of apology, of explanation. I just wanted it all out on the table.
Yet when he came to you to talk, you turned him away. You should've gone out there that day.

“You are seriously upset,” Risika told me, brushing my hair back and leaning her head against mine. “What happened?”

“It wasn't anything he did, exactly,” I started, trying to figure out how to explain it both to them and to myself. “It's the cold hard truth that's getting to me, I guess.” I took a deep breath, blowing it out and disturbing the cloud of white smoke in the room. “Tyce doesn't care about me now. Maybe he never did. The only thing he gives two shits about is football.”

“Well, if you really want to know,” Melia began, lifting up her phone and flashing me with a Snapchat video. “Then you should go and ask him.”

I took the phone from her hand and watched a dark, bouncing clip of Tyce dancing in New Intentions, drink in one hand, a girl in the other. I almost tossed the damn thing at the wall. Instead, I stood up and brushed my hands down my ratty old tank top. I passed the phone back to Melia and tried to catch my breath. My heart was skipping several beats, making this uneasy rhythm that had me seeing spots. It was one thing to know that Tyce had already gotten over our chance encounter, our single fuck, but it was a whole other thing to have to look at it.