Pucked Over (Pucked #3) (15 page)

Lily’s hand on my thigh pulls me out of the dark spiral of my thoughts. I realize I’m glaring at Kirk and give my attention to her. Her smile is tight, questioning. “You okay?” she whispers.

I shift her chair so she’s right up next to me and brush my nose against her cheek. She shivers. “I’ll be better after dinner’s over.”

“You’re not hungry?” She pokes at her salad.

I don’t think she’s eaten anything. Based on how lean she is, and how active, and how incredibly flexible, I don’t think it’s advisable that she misses any meals.

“I’m hungry, but not for this.” I stab some lettuce, so I’m a good role model, and shove it in my mouth, chewing slowly.

She spears a lone leaf and regards me thoughtfully. “What’re you hungry for?”

“You. Come home with me tonight.” I don’t consider the words before they’re out. I just say them. If she was a bunny, the answer would always be yes.

“I-I—” She removes her hand from my leg. “I can’t. What would I tell Sunny’s parents?”

“You don’t have to tell them anything.”

“I’ve been invited to stay with Alex and his family for the weekend. We have some kind of shopping thing we’re doing tomorrow.”

“I’ll drop you off early, then pick you up later, for dinner.”

“Don’t you think it’s kind of rude to take off so I can have my brains screwed out?”

“Is that what you think I want to do?”

“Isn’t it?” She arches a brow.

“What if I just want to talk?”

“In moans?”

I laugh. She’s a funny girl. I really do want to screw her brains out, without having to worry about anyone interrupting, or either of us having to be quiet. “If you don’t feel comfortable coming home with me tonight, you should at least plan to stay over tomorrow.”

“You’re determined to get me back into a bed.” She stabs another piece of lettuce and takes a bite.

“The bed isn’t the most important part; it’s the getting you naked again part.” I trail a finger across the back of her dress from shoulder to shoulder.

She shivers. “I can’t do a sleepover. My flight’s super early on Monday. I have to work in the afternoon.” She looks at me, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “You could crash here tonight.”

“I haven’t been invited.”

“No one’ll notice.”

I spend the rest of dinner trying to get my hand up Lily’s skirt while she tries to eat. It’s next to impossible because of how close we’re sitting together. It’s a good thing I’m a lefty and she’s a righty, otherwise I’d have to leave more space. She excuses herself to the bathroom, and I think it’s going to be the perfect opportunity to follow her out for a quickie, but Sunny goes with her.

I’ll never understand why girls have to go to the bathroom in packs. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s messing with my ability to get back inside Lily. Whatever. I can wait until after dessert. Post-food there’ll definitely be an opportunity to disappear again.

Sadly, by the time dinner’s over, the girls have all vanished over some Violet-related emergency. Miller, Lance, and I are standing around, drinking beers while we wait for them to figure out what the problem is. Miller keeps getting texts from Sunny and passing his phone to me. Despite the fact that they’ve been dating nearly six months, Sunny still uses a lot of text slang, and that doesn’t work for Miller.

The short forms combined with numbers and missing vowels make the messages difficult for him to read. Most of the time I send him voice memos. It’s way easier. He’s got a memory like a steel trap if he’s told the information rather than having to read it.

“Says something about the moops.” I pass the phone back.

“What are moops?” Lance asks.

“Violet can’t handle dairy; it gives her problems.” Miller hands me his phone again. There are more messages from Sunny.

“Problems?”

“It goes right through her,” Miller says.

Lance pulls a face. “That’s nasty. Why would she eat dairy if it makes her sick?”

“She does it to punish herself or something. Girls are messed. I don’t get it. I also don’t understand why she’d eat dairy today of all days. Maybe it wasn’t intentional.” He rubs his head as I scan the new texts. They keep coming in. The last one is personal, and pertains to activities later in the night, so I message her back and let her know it’s me reading because of all the slang. She sends back an
oops
and a blushy face.

“Violet’s broken out in hives. Also, Sunny’s looking forward to cookie-eating later.”

Miller snatches back his phone. “That’s not gonna happen if we can’t get Violet under control. I wanna know who gave her dairy.” Miller looks worried, which has been his expression most of the night. “I think I need to talk to Waters. He’s gotta stop pushing the wedding crap on her. They’re living together. He needs to back off a little and give her some damn breathing room. She’s obviously not ready for this shit.” He drains his beer and sets it on the closest table. “I’mma go find him.”

“I’ll come with you.” It’s more to keep those two off each other than anything else. Miller’s protective of Violet, even though they’re not related by blood. He’s like that, though, super loyal. He doesn’t let anyone mess around with the people who’re important to him.

“You coming or staying?” I ask Lance.

He shrugs. “Might as well see what’s going on.”

Miller gives him a look. “How long’s this shit with Tash been going on, anyway?”

“What’re you talking about?” Lance gets real busy staring into his beer.

“Romero, come on,” Miller says.

“A while.”

“You better watch it. Coach finds out he’s gonna be pissed,” I say, following Miller through the house.

“He won’t. Tash is looking for a ride more than anything.” He drains the rest of his beer. “She just wants to see what all the hype is about.”

He sounds bitter, which is odd, because Lance is probably the biggest player in the league. After Miller got serious about Sunny and we’d go out, he constantly pawned the chicks off on one of us. Lance was always good with taking on more than one. I don’t like having my attention divided.

We find Lily, Tash, and Alex standing outside a door at the top of the stairs. Sunny must be in the room. Alex keeps trying the knob, but it’s clearly locked.

“What’s going on?” Miller asks.

Lily turns; her gaze stops at me for a second, and her hand flutters to her throat. “Violet’s not feeling well.”

“I know. Sunny’s been messaging me.” Miller holds up his phone.

“She won’t let me in,” Alex looks wrecked. His tie is half-hanging off.

“I keep telling you, Waters, you’re pushing her too hard. She hates this kind of thing, and you let my mom and yours run with this. Now they’re gonna expect something even bigger when it comes to the damn wedding.”

“She said it was okay,” he snaps.

Miller scoffs. “Do you even know who you’re marrying? Do you remember the first time you met her and she flashed every member of the team her bra?”

“She didn’t do that on purpose.”

I’ve only heard this story secondhand, but apparently it was epic.

Miller throws his hands up in the air. “Exactly! That’s the point. Embarrassing crap happens to her all the time. She doesn’t want to be humiliated. She probably thinks this is gonna be exactly like her mom’s wedding.”

“You mean another wardrobe malfunction?” Lily asks.

“Wardrobe malfunction? What are you talking about?” Alex asks.

I’m wondering the same thing.

Miller’s eyebrows rise. “She hasn’t even told you?”

“Told me what?” Alex looks somewhere between confused and angry.

Miller lets out a long breath and shakes his head. “I wish she’d damn well learn how to talk about shit.” Miller knocks on the door. “Vi, open up. We need to have a discussion about you not telling your fiancé highly important information.”

After another minute or two, Sunny finally comes out. “She says she’ll talk to you.” She’s not looking at Alex, though, she’s looking at Miller.

“You can thank me later.” Miller disappears inside the room.

Waters rubs his forehead. “All we were supposed to do was thank everyone for coming.”

“You sure you want to go through with this whole getting-married deal?” Lance asks. “Seems like kinda a pain in the ass.”

Tash rolls her eyes. “You’re such a dick, Romero.”

“You seemed to like it enough earlier,” he fires back.

Tash’s mouth drops open.

Lily holds up a hand and snaps, “Enough, you two.” She turns to Alex. “Why don’t you go down and do the thank you? Unless you’d like me to do that on your behalf. Then we can start wrapping things up and get people out of here. That might help Violet be less stressed.”

He taps on the door, regarding Lily for a long while. “I wanted this to be fun for her.”

She rubs his shoulder. “You can’t make everyone happy, Alex. I love your mom, but you gotta rein her in if you don’t want Violet to fall apart between now and this wedding.”

His head drops and he sighs. “Fuck, I’m a pussy.”

Lily laughs. “No, you’re not. You’re trying to make too many people happy at the same time. Violet has to be priority number one all the time now. Above everything else.”

Eventually they manage to get Violet to come out of the bedroom, but she’s covered in hives. Alex goes downstairs to deal with the guests, and the girls all huddle in the bedroom to provide moral support or whatever it is girls do when one of them has an emotional breakdown and winds up with hives.

No one seems to question Violet’s absence at the party.

Lily messages me a while later to let me know she’s staying with Violet. I’m not surprised considering how tight she is with the Waters family. I end up getting a ride home with Lance and Tash. It’s awkward; no one really talks. Tash seems pissed, all quiet and brooding in the front seat. Lance drops me off first, which I expect.

I walk up my drive and palm my phone, keying in the code for my door so it’s unlocked by the time I reach it. This definitely wasn’t how I thought tonight was going to end. I’m glad I managed a little alone time with Lily. And at least I have tomorrow.

I’m on high alert the second I walk into the house. The TV’s on in the living room, and there’s a body on my couch, shoes hanging off the end. Beer bottles and a half liter of vodka litter my coffee table. One of the bottles has tipped over, and beer drips onto the floor. I’m definitely not in the mood for this. The body on my couch groans and pushes to a sitting position.

It’s like I’ve stepped into a time machine and I’m looking at a much less fit, older version of myself. Without tattoos. Randall Ballistic Senior is crashed out on my couch.

“How’d you get in here?” It’s not a friendly greeting, but I don’t like my dad much.

“I tried the code from your New York place. Nice pad, kiddo. They’re paying you better than they did me.” He’s slurry drunk.

I don’t mention that I’m a better player than he was. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

He ignores the indirect question. “You’re comin’ home late.” He pushes up and tries to stand, but ends up falling back down on his ass.

I stuff my hands in my pockets. Now I wish I’d gotten an invite to stay at Waters’. “I was at a party.”

“And no bunny? You losing your touch?”

“It wasn’t that kind of party.”

“It’s always that kind of party.” He picks up a bottle from the table and checks to see if there’s anything left.

I go to the kitchen to get him a glass of water and a rag to clean up the mess he’s made. It’s the story of my dad’s life. He’s a loser in every sense of the word. Returning to the living room, I mop up the spilled beer and set the water on the table.

He picks up the glass and frowns. “Where’s the booze?”

“I don’t think you need it.” I collect the empty bottles. “Look, you’re welcome to stay the night and sleep it off, but I’ve got plans tomorrow night, so you gotta be gone in the morning.”

“I haven’t seen you in six months, and that’s how you treat your dad? Don’t be so damn disrespectful.”

“It’s one in the morning, and I find you lying on my couch, messing up my house, and you’re talking at me about disrespect?”

“I need a place to crash for a couple days. I gotta lay low. Got some business I need to take care of before I head home.”

“You’re still in Boston?”

“I’m between places right now.”

I run a hand through my hair. “So by a couple of days you mean what exactly?”

“A week, maybe two, tops.”

I definitely don’t want my dad here for the next week, let alone two, but he’s hammered, so discussing it now is pointless. I’d set him up in a hotel, but the last time I did that he racked up a two-thousand-dollar room service bill. Half of it was porn. It’s not that I don’t have the money to pay for it, it’s the goddamn principle. And he’s generally a dick.

“Right. We’ll talk about it in the morning. I gotta crash. I’ve got a workout at ten.” That’s a lie, but talking to my dad in this state isn’t productive. It’s not that useful when he’s sober, either. Looks like the rest of my weekend has gone to shit.

Fluttery Eyed Fear

LILY

At one-thirty in the morning, I’m back in my room at Alex’s huge, nice house. Alone. Violet’s hives have finally subsided after a boatload of Benadryl, and everyone else has gone to bed. Probably to have awesome sex. I bet even Violet and Alex are having sex, though she still has a few welts on her face. I’d hate to be that stressed out over getting married.

I change into a pair of tights with a hole in the crotch and one of my T-shirts from high school. They still fit exactly the same since I haven’t grown even a little bit since then—not anywhere. I don’t have to pull down the sheets because they’re already messed up from earlier.

I still can’t believe I did that. Well, I can. It was part of my plan, but not quite so early in the evening. I figured it’d be later, like now. I step on something gushy and shriek. Jumping back, I discover the used condom.

“So gross,” I mutter to myself. At least he had the courtesy to tie it in a knot so the jizz didn’t ooze out and end up between my toes. I snap a picture of it beside my foot and send it to him with a frowny face. I don’t get anything back right away, which is kind of a disappointment.