Sweet Keeper (Sweet Talkers Book 1)

by Thalia Sanchez

  Chapter Twelve

  I think I’m getting used to Stanley. After spending almost three weeks meeting up him practically every day—except during weekends—his presence starts becoming less irritating and more bearable. After that night that we shared in the city, I find us becoming sympathetic and friendly towards each other, which is insane. Part of me still finds it hard to believe that we have a decent alliance… and that I’m enjoying it so much.

  I find it hard to believe that the same Stanley that gave me his sweatshirt when I was cold is the same one that asked to copy from me three weeks ago. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know when he managed to change my perspective of him, but he did it. Stanley did what I thought was impossible. I no longer see him as an insensitive and egocentric idiot. I mean, he’s still a little idiot and conceited, but he’s not heartless.

  Stanley McKinley might feel more than I do, and his levels of idiocy are acceptable.

  After meeting Ryder Weiss, the rest of the world feels eternally humble. That guy, as funny and friendly as he is, has an ego of the size of the Eiffel Tower. I don’t complain about it, though. It’s part of his essence, of what makes him so unique. It takes a while to get used to the intensity of his personality, but once you do it, you cannot get enough of him.

  The truth is that having Ryder’s attention is nice because he’s the kind of guy that doesn’t take anything seriously, but he’s thoughtful for the people he cares about.

  And he cares about Stanley.

  Last week, Ryder put out his plan to save both of our asses, although he did it for Stanley, not for me. He sent John’s phone to his own mail, inside an envelope with a note, faking to be a couple of members of a rival team that Carter had gotten into trouble over the summer. Stan told me that he almost blew up when he read it and was livid, but bought the lie; everything can be believable if you blame the right people. If John had issues with that other team, he doesn’t have any reason to believe that his roommate stole the phone. It passes as a prank to push his buttons and see how he reacts.

  It’s not a secret that rival teams are always trying to piss the other to spice it up during the games, to see if they can trash talk enough to get them kicked out of the field.

  John isn’t a friendly player. He’s rough, and sometimes he has gotten benched for his aggressive behavior, something that irks me because we don’t know how he’ll react if he finds out the truth about what happened. I hope that this stays as something that he’ll take it out on the field when the season starts, and not beforehand because that might ruin everything for us.

  “Fancy seeing you here,” Cora comments when she spots me sitting on top of the kitchen counter, eating chips with my phone in my hand.

  I raise my eyes from the phone, frowning at her.

  “I live here,” I remind her with an evident ring.

  Karma’s laugh comes from the hall, and she appears, just barely entering the kitchen. I glare at her.

  Is there some kind of inner joke that I’m missing? I despise being in the shadows without knowing what they have been talking behind my back. Because I don’t get their points, but part of me is afraid of wanting to know what’s gotten inside their crazy heads.

  “Do you? Because we’ve barely seen you in two weeks,” Karma replies with a shrug.

  Excuse me?

  “Look who’s talking!” I accuse, wrinkling my nose with irritation. I point at Cora to support my argument. “You are always at the academy.” I turn to point at Karma. “You sleep the whole day, go to the art studio and disappear the whole night. And I won’t even talk about Ash and her infinite shooting schedule.”

  They chuckle in unison, exchanging looks that I can’t comprehend. For the first time, I’m missing a joke between my friends. I’m lost, and I don’t know how to feel about the fact that maybe I have been distracted.

  “We just say that it’s weird that you’re not with Stanley,” explains Ash, and I jump, startled to hear her behind me.

  First, when did she get here?

  I turn around to look at her, half confused and skeptical about the fact that she’s attacking me too.

  Ash is carrying her high heels in her right hand, her exhausted expression buried under the layers of heavy and eccentric makeup. However, I spot a hint of mischief shining on her blue orbs.

  “Why is it weird that I spend time studying with Stanley?” I question as I drop the bag of chips at my side.

  “Darling, two weeks ago you were screaming how much you hated his guts,” Ash reminds me, cocking her head. There’s a trace of amusement in her tone.

  I hesitate because she’s not lying. I was professing my hate for Stanley McKinley, but that was before I knew him. He’s not that bad once you get past that façade of the egocentric jock.

  “Because I did!” I express, heavily frustrated with the situation.

  “And now?” Karma snoops, putting a hand on her hip.

  Three pairs of eyes observe me cautiously, waiting for my response, for something that betrays me and gives them material to bother me for days, if not weeks. I admit that Stanley and I had an unconventional beginning, and we were forced to push our differences aside to join forces. We just happened to be nicer to each other, and now it’s sticking.

  “Well, now he’s tolerable,” I mutter, shifting on my place, trying to keep it normal.

  “So, there’s nothing more?” Ash inquires with entertainment.

  I quickly shake my head in a negative gesture. Shit, that probably was more suspicious than I intended.

  I know that they’re messing with me and that there’s no way that they genuinely think that something is going on between Stanley and me.

  The world seems to conspire against me because the broken screen of my phone lightens up with an incoming call. Stanley’s last name glows on the phone, and I curse in my head.

  Can he be any more inconvenient?

  “Fuck you,” I tell them when I notice their new exchange, and jump off the counter, heading towards my room. I wait until the door is safely closed to answer the call. “What?”

  I hear a snort from him.

  “Someone’s moody today,” he comments nonchalantly.

  “Go to hell, please,” I mutter in a strained voice.

  Stanley laughs.

  “Nah, I’ll probably bump into you there.”

  “Are you calling me a sinner?” I quip, raising a brow even though he can’t see me.

  Stanley takes his time to answer. The seconds drag, and it feels like an eternity before he clears his throat.

  “Sometimes you look like a small devil when you get angry,” he confesses in a low murmur.

  I pause, turning on my heels to meet my reflection in the mirror. I know that when I get pissed my face turns red and that my temper carries the strength of a thousand demons. I won’t debate with that. However, am I really that tiny?

  “Small? Am I not a full devil?”

  “Bree, you might as well be a dwarf,” Stanley croaks out.

  A groan emerges from my throat.

  “I agree, darling.” Ryder’s voice fills my ears, and I wonder if Stanley has me on speaker. “You’re pocket-sized.”

  I’m slightly offended. No, scratch that, I’m completely offended. It’s not my fault that I didn’t get the right genes from my dad and got stuck in the body of a twelve-year-old.

  In every way because my boobs are practically non-existent too.

  “You’re both assholes,” I grumble. “What the hell do you want?”

  “I thought that maybe we could skip on the library and meet at my apartment.”

  Stanley’s suggestion catches me unguarded.

  A knot forms in my stomach, making it clench painfully when I remember that John also lives there. I don’t think that I want to see him any time soon. I still haven’t fully recovered from the shame, so I want to be away from him for as long as possible. It’s not like we were able to delete the message, so he might’ve seen it, he might rec
ognize me.

  There’s no way that I can handle that. At least not now.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper.

  “Give me a second, Ry. Fuck, just give me a minute,” he hisses. I can vaguely hear Ry complain, and I can only guess that Stanley is getting away from him. “Look, Carter’s out of town, and you won’t be seeing him if that’s what worries you.”

  I bite my lip without knowing what to say. I was not prepared for this. The least I expected was him inviting me over to his place. I know that we’ve been friendly, especially after the night that we shared in the city where I ended up wearing his hoodie.

  This feels intimate, and my anxiety is rising considerably as my instincts kick in.

  “I’m not sure that’s the best,” I mumble, scratching the nape of my neck. There’s silence from his part. “I think it’s more… personal, I guess. A library is a neutral place.”

  “More personal?”

  “Yeah, you know,” I stammer, shrugging as I lick my lips. “Like something that closer people do.”

  “Closer people?”

  I don’t know if he’s doing it on purpose to get me to say what I want to state explicitly, or if he’s lost. Either way, I have to rephrase what I’m thinking, and it takes me a minute to come up with a sentence that’s clear enough. It’s going to get awkward, and I don’t feel well saying it.

  “Like something that friends do.”

  Five…

  Ten…

  Fifteen seconds pass before Stanley’s laugh breaks the silence. I’m walking around my room, feeling the pressure on my shoulders. It’s agonizing.

  “I consider you my friend, Bree.”

  I abruptly stop pacing.

  “You do?” I pronounce in a whisper.

  My stomach clenches.

  “Yes, we’re friends. At least from my perspective,” he confirms. “We spend a lot of time together more than sitting down to study in silence. I accompanied you when you were taking photos, and we also talk about a lot of things that normal classmates don’t. I think that makes us friends in my book.”

  I never thought about it that way. I knew that our relationship was more sympathetic since we’re not fighting every five seconds, but now that he mentions it, I can see what he means. We have been sharing part of our lives that regular classmates or allies don’t do. I’ve just been blind to that fact because sometimes my stubbornness is bigger than me.

  I guess that we are friends.

  “Putting it like that, yeah, I guess we are,” I agree softly, slightly embarrassed by the fact that he had to explain our friendship for me to understand.

  “So, are you coming over or what?”

  I hear a noise on the other side of the line, mostly like a struggle, and I wait impatiently until they stop behaving like children.

  “Hey, dwarf, bring your tiny ass over. Stanley’s cooking today, and I don’t say this like his friend, but the son of a bitch knows how to cook,” Ryder tries to persuade me.

  I chuckle at his choice of words.

  “Are you sure that I won’t die from food poisoning?” I quip.

  “Trust me, Bree. I’ve been to the best restaurants in the country, and they don’t stand a chance against Stanley’s homemade pasta.”

  Oh, Lord.

  That’s something that I did not see coming, and I need to see it to believe it.

  “Okay, okay,” I comply, smiling. “When should I come over?”

  “As soon as possible, sweetheart.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It takes me a full minute to soak in the achievement of convincing Bree to come over. Insecurity creeps in, making me uneasy about the decision to invite her in the first place. Swiftly, my eyes scan the area, trying to see if something’s out of place. The apartment looks decent. At least decent enough for a girl to spend time here. It’s better than what you would expect from three single guys living together.

  On the bright side, it doesn’t look like the bottom of a trash can.

  Since this is our sanctuary, and we don’t get visited often, the apartment is almost perfect. We rarely bring any hookups, not even Ryder. He prefers to have his one-night stands in other places. There’s an unspoken rule to keep this place to the inner circle only for people we can trust.

  Bree is one of them.

  We’re all bound together with the phone scheme. I don’t think we can get any closer than that. I felt that until we shared that night in the city, and I consider her to be a good friend. The only female friend that I’ve had since high school.

  For that reason, I’m slightly worried about how this may look, if it can be misinterpreted. I’m afraid that I’ll burn the food. It makes me uneasy to know that I’m anxious and nervous about this new interaction with her.

  I don’t want to ruin it, but I don’t know how Ryder will behave. However, Bree isn’t bothered by his attitude. She’s the first girl that doesn’t take his constant flirting seriously. The double meaning jokes and his dramatic personality. Everything is a joke with her, and she accepts it without making it weird.

  Maybe this will be okay, I tell myself, nodding slightly.

  “You’re going to burn the pasta,” Ryder says, his voice dragging me back to reality.

  “I’m not,” I groan.

  Even when I know that he’s messing with me, I peek at the stove to make sure that everything is the way it was a minute ago.

  “Why are you making a big deal out of this? I thought you wanted her to come over,” he presses with a frown.

  I roll my eyes, cursing his perceptive ass. Ryder is too intuitive for his own good.

  “I don’t want to fuck things up. That’s it,” I state in a simple tone, keeping it vague.

  From my peripheral vision, I see him crossing his arms as his eyebrows rise, intrigued by my declaration. I choke back an irritated growl because my words probably gave him more than I intended to. Clearly, I didn’t mean it that way.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Ryder’s curiosity decorates his words. “Do you have anything to fuck up?”

  We don’t have anything more than a friendship. Hell, I had to pressure her to admit that we’ve become friends. I cannot imagine her having any other thoughts about me. The girl hated my guts, and I wasn’t her biggest fan, either. We’ve managed to get past that, and I can sense a connection between us—the friendly kind.

  She’s a good girl. Chaotic and messy, but she’s nice and funny, and somehow things seem easier with her around. Bearable. I think that we get along because Bree doesn’t even look at me. She’s not interested in me in a romantic way, and that makes it easier for us. Well, relatively easy. I want us to stay this way.

  “It’s taken me some time to build a friendship with that girl, and she’s pretty great when we’re not at each other’s throats. I’d like to keep that, okay?”

  Ryder’s jaw falls open, and he leans back on his seat, taken aback. He furrows his brows as confusion makes its way to his face.

  “Wait, you’re not fucking her?” he asks. A whistle escapes his mouth when I move my head in a negative gesture. He thought that I was screwing her? “Hell, I thought that you guys were at least on the third base. Haven’t I taught you anything?”

  I snort. “It’s not like that with her. She’s a friend,”

  His loud laugh echoes in the kitchen.

  “You’re naïve,” he sings. “There’s obviously some tension between you two, and not the friendly kind.”

  “And since when did you become a relationship expert? No, I have a better question. When was the last time you had a friend that you didn’t fuck?” I question, raising my chin, defending myself.

  It’s a low blow. I realize that. Ryder is only messing with me, and I’m giving him all the reasons to doubt my words. I’m defensive and touchy with the subject, trying to get him off my back. However, I can’t afford Bree to find out that Ryder thinks that we’re having sex.

  She would cut my balls, and I happen to like
them where they are right now.

  “Fine.” Ryder shows me his hands in peace. “Keep living your friendship lie. I’ll be waiting for my turn to say I told you so”.

  He’s going to be waiting for a long time because that’s not going to happen. There’s absolutely no way that she and I are going to end up being more than friends. I think she still hates me a little to think of me that way. Yes, I’ve stared at her ass a couple of times, but that doesn’t mean that I’d be willing to try and hit that.

  Bree would skin me alive if I even thought about going there with her.

  “You’re going to wait a long time,” I mutter, rolling my eyes with irritation.

  Dragging the irritation to a recondite place in my head, I focus on cooking my mother’s recipe. She taught me how to make it the summer before moving here because she didn’t want me to starve to death. This is probably one of the few things that I can cook without burning the kitchen, but I can feed myself a proper meal.

  Twenty minutes fly by before the dry noise of knuckles hitting the door breaks the silence that had been installed in the apartment after my conversation with Ryder. The corners of my lips curve. The two times that Bree’s been here, she has never used the bell on the side of the door.

  “Who the hell knocks like that?” Ryder asks as he stands up from the couch to walk over to the door. There’s a trace of irritation in his tone.

  I bite my bottom lip, holding back a chuckle. Ryder hasn’t experienced the way Bree behaves in places.

  “Bree does.”

  Ryder opens the door, and I get closer to him. I don’t want to miss this exchange between them.

  I stop halfway when I catch a glimpse of Bree. She looks completely different today. Well-rested, happier. Her hair isn’t in a bun at the top of her head but let down in dark waves that fall over her shoulders. For the first time since I’ve met her, she’s wearing skinny jeans that hug her legs in all the right places, along with a tight black shirt. Her feet are covered by black combat boots that make her look tougher than she usually does. It suits her, though.