Something softened his face then, like that actually hurt to hear, but he quickly laughed it off with a shrug. “I am. But I’m trying to make up for being an asshole yesterday. There’s a difference between the two, you know.”
“Yeah. Kyle’s a douche,” Braden said, piling a stack of pancakes on his plate. “But Leo’s an asshole.”
“And Braden’s a pussy,” Leo quipped.
I instantly flung my arm out, swatting his chest with the back of my hand and a loud thwap. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Braden snickered while Leo stared at me open-mouthed, rubbing the spot I’d just hit. “I was just—”
“You were just using female anatomy as an insult because in your Neanderthal brain, pussy is less than dick — weaker, not as important.”
“On the contrary,” Leo said, his lips curling as he stepped a little closer. “I think pussy is the most powerful thing in the world.”
“So you were complimenting him?” I challenged.
Braden shook his head, slipping in between where I was glaring at Leo, and he was smiling like the Cheshire cat.
“Alright, alright,” Braden said, holding a hand up to me and his plate of pancakes against Leo’s chest. “Break it up. We don’t need a fight this early in the morning. Besides, like I said, Leo’s an ass,” he said to me with a shrug. “We don’t take anything he says too seriously.”
Braden popped a piece of bacon into his mouth with that, exiting the kitchen and heading toward the living room with his food. I turned my glare back to Leo, ready to square off, but all the humor had faded from his expression. He almost looked a little… sad.
I thought about when we were younger, about the nights we talked until we were hoarse and bleary-eyed.
“Sometimes, I’m hanging out with all these people, all my friends, and I just look around and realize that I don’t really know any of them at all, and they don’t know me. Aside from football, I mean.”
An unwanted emotion caught in my throat, my brows bending together as I watched Leo. But he didn’t look at me again. Instead, he took a breath and put his cocky smirk back on his face before clapping Kyle on the shoulder as he plated his last pancake.
“Thanks for breakfast, man.”
“Thanks for the coffee. I swear, no one makes it better than you.”
“La jefa is the only one, and she’d disown me if I didn’t live up to her legacy now that I’m on my own.”
“La jefa?” I asked as Leo filled his own plate, and we all plopped down on the couch to eat. There was a folding table that could serve as a dining table, but it was currently sticky from what I could only hope was beer and not the alternative.
“The boss. In other words, mi madre.” Leo winked, and then the attention of my roommates shifted to the television where Braden had just turned on ESPN.
I smiled, but again, something pulled at my chest. Because I knew probably better than his roommates how special Leo’s relationship was with his mom. She and his dad had split up when she was pregnant with him, and so she’d given him her last name instead of his dad’s when Leo was born. And while his father pushed him to follow in his footsteps, his mom always gave him space to be whatever he wanted to.
Of course, Leo didn’t play football because of his dad. He played it because it was in the very fibers of who he was. Still, I wondered what it was like to have even one parent who supported you in that way.
My dad tried, he did. He was gentle with me in a way that Mom never could be. Still, I saw the disappointment in his eyes when I told him I didn’t want to go to college, when he realized I meant it when I said I wanted to be a tattoo artist.
He didn’t stop me, but he didn’t support me, either.
That hurt just the same.
I looked down at the smiley face that was melted into my pancakes now, and then up at the three shirtless boys chowing down on their massive stacks that could have fed a family of four each.
For the first time, I felt myself take a real breath and relax.
“Thank you,” I said out of nowhere, and all the guys swiveled their heads toward me. “For letting me stay here. It… it’s really kind of you. And I…” I swallowed, looking down at my plate. “I don’t know what I’d do otherwise.”
Kyle reached over from where he sat on the couch and thumped my knee. “Hey, we’re happy to have you.”
“Just remember how thankful you are when our mess starts to creep in,” Leo added. “We might have spent two hours cleaning before we started moving you in yesterday.”
“I am always clean,” Braden argued.
And then they were bickering again, tossing bits of food at each other and slinging insults like it was their love language.
I smiled.
Maybe it really was.
Leo
“The twenty-seven exes of Leo Hernandez,” Coach Lee read off loud and proud, as if I wasn’t seeing the words on his computer monitor. Just under the headline was a picture of me at one of the parties we’d had at The Pit after winning the championship game last season. I had two girls under each arm, and though their faces were blurred, their scantily clad bodies were not.
Coach lifted a brow at me while Giana covered a little cough with her fist in the corner, pretending to write something in her notebook so she didn’t have to look at me. I hadn’t seen her since she helped us move Mary in last week, and I had been glad for it, for the break from doing press.
I had a feeling that was about to change.
“The number is probably closer to thirty-seven, if we’re being picky here,” I said with a smirk. That was my defense mechanism, like the old black and white movie my mom used to watch when she was having a bad day — Singin’ in the Rain. I lived my life like Donald O’Connor.
Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh…
Coach wasn’t having it, though, and his stern expression said as much.
I sighed, sitting back in my chair and folding my arms over my chest. “It’s a sorority-run blog. It’s not like it’s the Associated Press.”
“No, but one of the girls made it into a video which has now gone viral,” Giana said, and when I looked at her, she cringed, like she was sorry she had to be the one to break the news. “And this morning, it showed up on the College Sports Network when they were talking about predictions for this upcoming season.”
“And the only prediction they have for you is that you’ll get a girl knocked up,” Coach clipped.
“Coach, come on,” I said, leveling a gaze at him. “You know me better than that. I’m careful. I’m—”
“Wasting your talent on the field by acting like an amateur off it?” he shot back. “Yes, you are.”
I zipped my lips closed, settling into my chair even more when I realized I wasn’t getting out of this lashing. Coach Lee was as severe as he was untouchable as a head football coach. He’d come in guns blazing as our new coach last season, a legend out of Alabama with a reputation that far preceded him. My father was ecstatic when he heard the news, because in his eyes, anyone who played or coached in Alabama was in a league above the rest.