“It’s great,” Julep said with a bright smile as she picked up a piece of chocolate. “If spending hours on seating charts and flower arrangements is your cup of tea.”
“Sounds fun!” Giana said, which made us all snort.
“It’s fine,” Julep added, without the sarcasm this time. “Mom has been helping a lot — which is… weird,” she admitted. “And also nice. I just wish Holden could help, too. And he wants to, but even riding the bench, the team gets ninety percent of his time. And I’m happy for him. He’s living his dream. And I know it’s just the season where he’ll be like this. I’ll have a little more of his time come February.”
“That’s why you planned the wedding for April, right?” Riley asked.
Julep nodded. “Yeah. And he helps when he can, but he’s tired after practice or games, and let’s be honest — what little time we get together, we’re not spending on filling out our registry.”
Giana waggled her brows at that.
“Does it ever freak you out?” I asked, trying not to project my own insecurities but failing. “Him on the road, all the women throwing themselves at him both in person and online…”
“It’s hard sometimes,” Julep admitted honestly. “I mean, any woman who says it’s not is lying. It doesn’t matter that I trust him, that I know he’d never do anything with anyone else. It’s still sharing, even if he’s not a participant. He’s part mine, and part the rest of the world’s, too.”
I nodded, a thick lump in my throat at the fact that it would be the same with Leo. Then, I mentally slapped myself for even thinking that far ahead when we’d literally just slept together. But I couldn’t help it. He’d been so engrained in my past, threaded through the very fabric of my being for so long… and now, he was in my present, saying things and touching me in ways that made me think he wanted me.
That was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.
“I’m excited for you,” I told Julep. “It’s going to be perfect. And tag us in if you need us. We’re here to help.”
She smiled her agreement, and after sucking a shot from the bottle of tequila, she handed it to me. “Okay. We’ve got the feelings tunnel lubed up. Are you finally going to tell us why you sent an S.O.S. text or are we going to have to hold you down and tickle it out of you?”
I winced as I drank from the bottle, even though it was nice tequila. We didn’t have a lime to polish it off with, so it burned every centimeter on the way down.
“I wish it was easy to explain. I feel like a crazy person,” I admitted.
“Why don’t you just start talking and see what comes up?” Giana offered.
So, I did.
I had to fill Julep in on why I had spent the last seven years hating Leo, since the other girls had heard the backstory before we went out the other night. Once she was caught up, I proceeded to tell them about the bar, about the scene he made with Nero and the blow up that followed when I chased him outside. When I told them about the tattoo, they freaked out and demanded photos, and then, I told them about what happened when we got home.
Although, I left out all the details, because my friends didn’t need to know I peeled a Magnum off Leo’s gargantuan cock and licked him clean.
“And then,” I said with a sigh, picking at my nails. “I woke up, and he wasn’t there, and I just… completely freaked out.”
“He wasn’t there?! What the fuck, that asshole!” Julep raged.
“Well, he was still there, but he wasn’t in bed. He’d had to get ready for practice,” I explained.
“Oh,” she said, and then was confused, which made sense because so was I.
“It’s just, I woke up and everything crashed down on me. I have been hardwired for years to hate this guy. I had the worst impression of him. But then, over the last couple of months, I’ve seen the other side, the side I once knew and…” I almost said loved, but grew quiet instead. “I’ve seen glimpses of the boy I knew before everything went to shit,” I landed on. “And… I don’t know. It made it hard to remember why I hated him, until he did something that reminded me, then I was on fire with anger and the desire to shove him off the roof.”
Giana snickered.
“I feel like a yo-yo stuck in an endless cycle,” I continued. “And then, to find out that all this time, I’d been punishing him, punishing myself for something that didn’t even really happen… at least, not the way I imagined. He didn’t know it was me that day he rejected me.” I paused. “But then again, it was still me. It doesn’t really matter if he didn’t know it was me, the girl he talked to online, does it? Because he took one look at me, the girl standing in front of him with a notebook full of sketches, and found me wanting.”
“So, is that what it’s about then?” Riley asked. “Are you still upset by what he did that day?”
“Yes,” I said, then immediately shook my head. “No. I don’t know. I guess that’s part of it.” I paused, thinking, trying to make sense of it all. “I guess I’m just… scared.”
“That he’ll hurt you?”
“Yes,” I admitted softly. “What if he lied and he did know it was me, but then he saw what I grew into and made me his conquest?”
“Leo wouldn’t do that,” Giana said earnestly.
“You don’t think so? Look at all the girls we’ve watched him relentlessly pursue, from cheerleaders to water girls. But does he ever end up with them?” I didn’t give them a chance to answer. “No. They fuck, and he moves on. I mean, you guys saw the article over the summer. The twenty-seven exes of Leo Hernandez.”
Giana looked like she wanted to say something, but bit her tongue.
“I don’t want to be the butt of another joke,” I told them, voice shaking. “I can’t be.”
The girls were quiet for a moment before Julep crawled over to where I sat on the floor. She wrapped me in a hug, resting her chin on my shoulder.
“It’s okay to be scared,” she told me.
“Thank you.”
“But it’s not okay to punish Leo for a crime he hasn’t even committed.”
I frowned as Julep pulled back to look at me.
“I get that he has some groveling to do to make up for the past, but it sounds to me like he’s all too eager to do that, if you let him.”
“It sounds to me like he’s crazy about you,” Giana added. “And that your brain is trying to freak you out by holding fast to what it believed about him for years instead of letting the reality of who he is now shine through.”
“But do people really change? Can I really trust that?” I asked.
“Have you changed since you were fifteen?” Riley asked. “I know I have.”
I swallowed, knowing she was right, that they all were, but my stomach was too sour to admit it.
“What if he hurts me again?” I whispered.
Giana crawled over to join me and Julep, sliding her hand into mine and squeezing it. “But what if he loves you?”