CHAPTER 13
Paige
Two days after my dinner with Dallas, which did not end in screaming orgasms because we really did end up watching reruns of The Office on Netflix, I’m working on putting newly arrived books into the computer system when Nolan brings in a package to my office.
“You’ve got mail,” he says, impersonating the guy who does the AOL voiceover. He’s been watching a lot of I love the 90s lately on You Tube. He places the medium-sized box on my desk and takes a step back.
I look at the return address in confusion. “I didn’t order anything from McMahon Drive—that I know of. What’s on McMahon Drive?”
Nolan rolls his eyes. “That’s your sister’s office… at the Renegades Stadium?”
“Oh.” I smile sheepishly. “I have no idea what the address is because Google Maps does all the work.”
Layton walks in my office. “And because I always drive.”
“That too.” Picking up the box, I shake it. A soft thump hits each side.
“It’s not snakes, Paige.” Layton takes the box from me and uses the sharp side of my scissors to open it. “Oh my.”
Nolan’s eyes widen. “You lucky dog.”
“What is it?” I pull out the first item, turning it around. “Is this a jersey? Oh wait, Dallas’s number is on it. Neat.”
Nolan starts to sputter. “Why does he bother to waste this on her?”
“Get over yourself, Felicia.” Layton bumps Nolan out of the way with her hip. “Looks like your man sent you some goodies.”
I open the box more fully, finding all sorts of Renegade-themed items and clothes. One sweatshirt in particular is labeled a Men’s Double XL. Nolan all but shouts with joy when he sees it.
“Would you like to have this?” I ask, then snatch it back when he makes a grab for it. “Uh-uh. I want something in return.”
“Like what?” Nolan controls the calendar and while he’s very fair, he rarely lets us take the day off unless we’re dying or have cleared it months in advance. We’re a small, private library that’s open to the public, so our staff isn’t very large.
“The next time I need off at the last minute, you say yes.”
“Even if I’m taking it with her,” Layton chimes in.
I scrunch my nose.
“What? We always go places together.”
“True.” I turn my attention back to Nolan, who is practically salivating now. “What do you say?”
“I don’t know.”
Holding the sweatshirt up to my nose, I take a deep breath. It smells nice and clean, but nothing like Dallas. “Oh my gosh, Nolan. This smells exactly like him. Can you imagine him wearing this after a game or something? Think of all the bonus points you’d score with the wifey…”
“Deal.” He holds out his hand and I give him the sweatshirt, smiling broadly as I do.
“Nice doing business with you.”
“You should be ashamed,” he scolds.
“Give it back then.”
He hugs the sweatshirt to his chest. “No take-backs.” He marches out of my office, not bothering to wait for my reply.
“Fine. Wouldn’t want to break up a new couple anyway.”
Layton snorts. “Dinner tonight? With meeee?”
“Is it for freeee?”
“Pfft. Nothing in life is free, but for a t-shirt, I won’t make you put out at the end of the night.”
“Sold.” I pluck out a t-shirt and toss it to Layton, who catches it like a champ. Unlike me, Layton is very graceful and slightly sporty. I think she contains said sportiness because she doesn’t think it’s very ladylike. Only I remember just how unladylike she could be during the juniors-versus-seniors powderpuff football games at homecoming in high school.
“Don’t forget your list.”
“No one could forget that list. It’s practically indestructible.”
Layton narrows her eyes. “That statement best not be based on experience.”
“Yeah, right.” I laugh nervously. “I would never purposefully leave it in the pocket of my oldest pair of jeans and wash them on hot. Like ever. Never.”
“Don’t make me add to the list, Owens.”
“No, please,” I beg.
“That’s better.” She sashays out of my office, leaving me with a box of goodies from Dallas.
I dig through it until I find a note at the bottom:
Bright eyes,
I want to see you wearing my number on Saturday night, around nine pm. Text me to let me know if I’m coming to your place or you’re coming to mine.
Dallas
P.S. I don’t wear pajamas.
“Relentless,” I say with a smile as I put the note down and grab my phone.
Me: Your place again.
Dallas: Look at you being all brave and whatnot.
Me: Layton’s mother is coming for the weekend.
Dallas: Remind me to send her flowers.
Me: I’m not spending the night.
Dallas: I don’t remember asking you to. ;)
I almost tap out a response, then realize he hadn’t asked me to spend the night in the note.
Me: My mistake. I didn’t know you were literally talking about pajamas.
Dallas: I’m literally all about fashion. You should let me undress you sometime.
Dallas: (that’s not a typo)
Me: I didn’t think it was.
Dallas: Gotta go, bright eyes. Offense team meeting in two minutes.
Me: See you Saturday.
He doesn’t reply, and my heart sinks with disappointment. It shouldn’t, but it does anyway. I plop down in my chair, picking up a book only to set it down again.
I can’t believe I compared Dallas to Shakespeare and Keats. It was a moment of weakness brought on by good food and… flirty banter.
But I really meant it. I wasn’t being sarcastic and the look on his face—he really would have rewarded me with screaming orgasms.
Stupid no-casual-sex rule.
Except that rule has kept me from giving away parts of myself that I wanted to save. Not for the right guy, mind you, but for the guy.
The one.
Dallas can’t be the one. He just can’t. I’ve known him for all of two weeks. That’s simply too fast. Insta-love doesn’t happen for me. I mean, I’ve only slept with two guys in my life and I didn’t love either of them.
They were safe.
They were dependable.
They weren’t athletes.
Instead, they turned out to be cheaters.
Liars.
What if the guy who is supposed to be those things isn’t any of those things? Never has been and never will be?
For all the drama that surrounds Dallas, none of it involves women who accused him of promising them the world and getting the shaft instead. Well, I imagine they got his shaft—he spread it around freely, apparently.
A nervous giggle bubbles up.
I’m just… I’m out of my mind. I should enjoy myself. Keep flirting and eating good food… and maybe even break the only rule I have that used to keep me sane.
* * *
“Not again,” I groan, propping up my feet on the coffee table. “I’m so done with your list.”
“Shut up.” Layton gobbles down the last of her slice of pizza before slurping down the Pina coladas I made for her. “I so needed tonight.”
“Your wedding dress doesn’t.”
“I won’t eat a thing for the next three weeks,” she vows, her fingers hovering over her heart.
“Draw it. Draw the X.”
Layton snorts. “You can’t make me.” I grab her hand, forcing her finger back. She shoves at me. “Stop pointing that thing at me.”
“Put on your big-girl panties and woman up, Price.”
She gives me the stink eye. “I don’t want to give up pizza and alcohol.”
“Too bad. White is not forgiving on anyone.” Especially when said white dress has been perfectly tailored to contour her body shape. Change it up… and she was heading into dangerous territory.
“I don’t care.” She sticks out her lower lip, pouting. “Joe and I want to elope, but our parents said no. Joe’s too scared of my dad to say yes.”
“Maybe he respects him.”
She rolls her eyes, then leans her head on my shoulder. Her dark hair is so long that it reaches my thigh. “Joe’s a really good guy.”
“Yes, he is.” Joe’s always been a good guy. He always does the right thing, just like Layton, which is why they’re perfect together.
“I love him.”
“Joe loves you.”
“I love Joe, too.”
I glance down at her. “You are so drunk.”
“I don’t go to work until noon.”
Unfortunately, I go in bright and early at seven thirty. We open at eight, but I like to get there early so I’m prepared. “We close at four.”
“Whoo-hoo.” She tips her head back. “Now that you and Dallas are going steady, you don’t have to kiss the best man.”
“We’ve had three dates. That’s hardly serious.”
“He sent you his colors to wear. That’s almost exactly what Joe did in college when he had his fraternity sing to me.” She blows a piece of hair out of her eyes. “You’re a couple now.”
“If you say so.”
“I might have done a bad thing.”
No way. Layton never does bad things—even her bad things are good things in disguise. “What’s that?”
“I invited Aiden to the wedding.”
“That’s not a terrible thing. He’s best friends with your brother.”
“I know, but I invited Finley, too.” She rolls her head so it rests on the cushions instead of me, sounding less drunk and more sober with every minute. “Will Finley come if she knows? Should she know? I feel so awful, but Momma and Daddy insist it’s the right thing. Plus, I think they like the notoriety of a man with Aiden’s background at the wedding—even if he is a Yankee. Bless his heart.”
Layton’s parents take southern by the grace of God to a whole other level.
“I’m pretty sure Finley can handle whoever comes to your wedding. He is a client of her firm.” One that she doesn’t rep personally, but Finley’s always been the type to separate personal from business.
“I’m glad, because I don’t think I can handle another person getting on my damn nerves over this wedding.”
For Layton, getting on her damn nerves is subjective. It can mean anything from ‘I never want to see that person again because they have deeply offended me and my momma’ to ‘someone cut in line’. “Anything I can do?”
“Tell my momma to stop calling me every second of every day.”
“Done.” No way am I telling Mrs. Price to stop anything.
“And tell Joe to stop pressuring me. The closer we get to the wedding, the more he tries getting me into bed or on the couch, or even the dining room table.”
“Don’t you want him to be excited?”
“Not when he’s like a bull in heat. I have no idea why he’s insisting on sex now when he’s respected my decision to wait all these years.”
I don’t point out to her that it might be exactly the reason why. He can see the finish line and is very anxious to cross it. “Have you told him how you felt?”
“I don’t want to argue.”
“That would be a no.” I link our hands together, examining her ginormous diamond. I hate that she’s hurting and that she and Joe are having problems. They aren’t the type of couple to fight. They’re the couple to envy. The couple who has their life together and adults every day, no matter what. “Talk to him, honey. He can’t fix what he doesn’t know is wrong.”
“I will.” She sighs, then swings her gaze my way. “What about you?”
“I’m going to let you handle talking to Joe about your potential sex life.”
“Har-har. I meant what are you going to do about Dallas?”
I lift one of my shoulders. “I might be going to his house on Saturday night, after his game.”
“That sounds fun.”
“He asked me to wear one of the shirts he sent me.”
“You didn’t tell him that you gave all but one away, did you?”
“It would seem rather odd for me to be walking around wearing number seventy-eight’s jersey.”
“Or it could make you a fan.”
I cover her mouth with my hand. “Hush, you’re drunk.”
She licks my palm and I yank my hand away, disgusted. “Next time, I’ll bite.”
“There won’t be a next time.” I shake off my hand, like it’s a reasonable, scientific way to get rid of germs. “Ugh.”
“I think you give Finley too much control in your life. If anyone should know about controlling families, it would be me.”
“Says the girl who has the nicest parents ever.”
“They want me to move back home, remember?”
“You wanted to move back home after you and Joe got married, remember?”
She makes a face. “I hate it when you remember things.”
“I hate that you’ll be moving.” I really do. Losing Layton as a roommate feels the same way as it did when Finley left for college. “How will I sucker someone into paying more rent than me because I pretend to give them the bigger bedroom?”
“The closet is bigger.”
“Rent just went up twenty-five dollars.”
Layton snorts. “I’m going to miss this.”
“Me too.”
“That’s why I want you to take a chance on Dallas. He could be the one if you give him the chance.”
I pretend to ponder her words. “You might have a point.”
“He seems to be exactly what he presents to the world. You can’t get much better than that. If he were a liar and a cheat, then you and I—the entire planet—would know. Women don’t keep stuff like that quiet. We have to look out for the sisterhood.”
I’m convinced now more than ever that Layton and I share a brain. “I’ll think about it.”
“Promise?”
This time I cross my own heart. “Swear it.”