“Is that him?” Blakely asks.
I nod. “He just told me he ate an apple.”
“That’s it?” I nod again. “No freaking way. Let me see.” I flash the screen toward her, and she squints while reading, then leans back in her chair. “Wow, you know, I’d expect a text like that from someone like Halsey Holmes. He’s so introverted and quiet that an ‘I ate an apple’ text feels very fitting. But from the outgoing ladies’ man of the team, I never would have guessed. What do you even say to that?”
I type him back and press send. I show her my screen.
Penny: Was it red?
“Was it red? Oh, my God.” She laughs again. “Okay, I can see what you’re talking about.”
“See?” I groan and slouch in my chair. “It’s like we’re trying to force something that’s not there. I truly believe we had one hot night, and that’s it. There really is nothing between us, friendship-wise. I’m not sure we even have much in common at all. What do you think? Would he be mad if I asked him to leave?”
“He might be relieved.”
“I think he might be too.”
My phone buzzes, and I lift it to read it.
Eli: Green.
I flash my phone to her, and she covers her mouth, cackling. “This has to end.”
**ELI**
“Posey, I need your goddamn help right now. Emergency,” I say, barging through his hotel room. We just got back from our morning skate, and this is about the time when a lot of the players take a nap, but I’m at DEFCON 1 right now, and I don’t care if Posey needs his beauty sleep. I need him.
“Dude.” He lifts his eye mask up—it’s one of the ones with the googly eyes on it. He saw it on Ellen and thought it was funny as shit, so he got himself one . . . as well as the rest of the team. “You know I need to sleep before the game.”
“I know, but this is important.”
“What could be so important that—”
“I told her I ate an apple.”
His brow creases in confusion. “What?”
“Penny. I was trying to come up with something to say to her, you know, to start a riveting conversation, and all I could think to say was that I ate an apple, and it’s just been disastrous from there.”
He sits up a little taller. “That was your conversation starter? You ate an apple? What happened to googling some questions to ask her?”
“I did that, but they all seemed unnatural like I was interviewing her, so I’ve been trying to come up with some more everyday conversations.”
“So you told her you ate an apple?”
“At least it seemed better than telling her I like snow because it’s white.”
“Jesus Christ,” he grumbles while throwing his blankets off and walking over to me. “Hand me your phone.”
“Why? What are you going to say? Don’t say anything stupid.”
“Any more stupid than I ate an apple?” He quirks one brow at me.
“You know what I mean.”
He shakes his head in annoyance and then starts typing away on my phone. I try to look over his shoulder, but he turns away from me, blocking me from seeing the screen. “What are you writing? Hey, I can’t see. Did you send it? Don’t send it without my approval, and don’t say anything inappropriate like ‘I like your ass.’”
He glances over his shoulder. “Do you like her ass?”
“Of course, it’s hard not to like everything about her body.”
Another raise of an eyebrow, and this time, he fully turns toward me. “Eli Watkins Hornsby—”
“That’s not my middle name.”
“I know you crushed on this girl, but from the way you’ve been acting and your abundance of paranoia, I’d say that you actually care. You’re acting almost like you . . . like her.”
“Enough with that shit. I don’t like her in the way you’re saying. I mean, yeah, is she hot? Of course. You’d be dumb to think otherwise. But I barely know her. And the things I do know about her I wouldn’t say would tip me over the scale to liking her like that.” Even though I do kind of like the rambling. It’s funny. It’s one of the reasons I pressured her to spend my birthday night with me. I had one of those perpetual, stupid smiles on my face from her rambling that night.
“Then why does it matter to you what I say to her?”
“Because she’s still the mother of my baby. I don’t want to come across all clingy and horny.”