Lover's Game (South Bay Soundtracks Book 3)

by Amelia Stone

  But then I frowned. “Wait. What about your run?”

  “Um. I wasn’t going to run,” she lied.

  I’d always been able to tell when she wasn’t telling the truth. She looked at my left ear, because she could never look me in the eye without tripping over the lie.

  I gave her a deliberate once-over. “Really? So you always go for breakfast at five in the morning these days? And in top-of-the-line running clothes?”

  She huffed, but her lips tipped up in a reluctant smile. “Should have known the professional athlete would see through that one.”

  I grinned triumphantly. “Damn straight. So how about we go for a run first, then we can stop by this café of yours.”

  Her smile fell, and I wondered if maybe I was being too pushy, inviting myself on her run like that. But then her eyes flicked to my knee.

  “You know, I don’t really feel like running anymore. I didn’t sleep well.” She raised her eyes again, but only as far as my left ear. “So maybe just some breakfast would be good.”

  Goddamn it. If there was one thing that pissed me off more than her lying to me, it was her pitying me.

  “Krista.” She met my eyes again, her own widening at my growl. “I’m not a fucking invalid. I can run.”

  She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” She sighed. “It’s just that I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I gritted out.

  Now it was my turn to lie, because it actually was that bad. It really wasn’t okay that I couldn’t even fucking walk without limping. I’d been an athlete for almost as long as I could remember. I was used to relying on my body to be strong, to perform better than everyone else’s, to handle what I threw at it. I was not used to recovering, and taking it easy, and stopping when the pain got to be too much.

  I was not used to being less than everyone else, less than I used to be, less than I fucking should be.

  But none of that was her fault, and it wasn’t fair to snap at her like that.

  “Tell you what,” I said, softening my tone. “Why don’t we run as far as Town Beach, and then we can grab something while we walk back?”

  It was a two mile trek, which would be nothing for her, if she was a regular runner. But it was just about all I could handle.

  She nodded, but it seemed reluctant. “Okay.”

  So we took off, and before we’d even made it to the end of the block, I was grunting with each agonizing step. I could tell she was going a lot slower than her usual pace, but I didn’t mention it – and not just because I was out of breath.

  A glance at her watch told me we were running a nearly twelve-minute mile. The last time I’d bothered to clock myself, it had taken me more than seventeen minutes to drag my gimpy ass around for a mile. I was so disgusted by the reality of my injury that I’d left my own watch at home ever since. But I was sure my usual pace hadn’t increased since then. If anything, it had probably dropped to ‘seriously man, just stay home’ levels.

  Krista, on the other hand, had barely broken a sweat. The only thing that seemed to cost her any effort, in fact, was curtailing her pace. More than a few times, she actually outstripped me for a couple dozen feet, before she remembered to take it back a notch or ten.

  To take my mind off how goddamn frustrating this entire exercise was, I watched her for a bit. Her long, toned legs told me she did this a lot, and I wondered when she’d become a runner. She used to shun pretty much any kind of cardio that wasn’t walking the dog, because she wasn’t the best with things like hand-eye coordination, stamina, or strength. But now, she seemed so sure of herself, like she knew how to use her body to its best advantage.

  Which was way too sexy a thing for me to be thinking while still wearing those damn compression shorts.

  At least my inappropriate thoughts about my… whatever Krista was to me now… occupied my mind long enough for us to reach the beach. She slowed to a walking pace, and I eagerly followed suit. After a quick stretch and a stop at the water fountains on the boardwalk, we headed up Grand Avenue at a glacial pace.

  “So, how long have you been running?” I asked.

  She gave me a wry smile. “Because I was such an athlete before, right?”

  I held my hands up in an innocent gesture. “You have to admit, you were not exactly the most enthusiastic participant in gym class.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because gym class is more of an exercise in persecution than a lesson on maintaining a healthy lifestyle.”

  I chuckled. “So true. Especially with Sister Mary Sebastian ruling that gym.”

  Krista shuddered. “She was definitely the worst. Always screaming that sloth was a sin and chucking dodgeballs at us.”

  I grinned at the memories. “But at least she didn’t turn you off exercise forever.”

  “Not entirely, anyway.”

  She reached up to adjust the pile of curls she’d made on top of her head, and I watched her long, freckled fingers combing through the russet tresses, fascinated by the swift, efficient motion.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I fucking hate exercise.” She laughed at the stunned expression on my face. I’d never heard her drop an F bomb before. “But logically, I can acknowledge its benefits. As Ellie says, anyone who sits at a computer for as many hours as I do needs to get moving whenever possible.”

  I frowned. “Ellie?”

  “Oh. Um. She’s my friend. She was my roommate at MIT,” she explained.

  “And she got you into running?”

  She nodded. “She woke me up at five a.m. on our second day there, then dragged me around campus for four miles before she’d let me have a soda and something to eat.”

  I chuckled. “I bet you loved that.”

  “I definitely had to convince myself not to stab her in her sleep at first.” She gave me a wry smile. “But eventually I got used to it.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Just used to it?”

  “Well, like I said. I still hate it.” She shrugged. “But I do it anyway.”

  We stopped in front of a storefront. The sign painted on the door told me we were at our destination, a coffee shop called Cool Beans.

  “Besides, it keeps me in shape.”

  “So is that how…” I trailed off, thinking of a delicate way to put it as I pulled the door open for her.

  “How I lost the weight?” She looked down at herself. “You can say it. I’ve changed.”

  My eyes eagerly tracked all the changes. The aforementioned freckled tits. The slim waist. The slope of her hips. And she definitely did not have that ass when I knew her. Christ, that thing was downright grabbable.

  “So all the running helps?” I asked, because I needed to not be ogling her goodies in the lobby of a restaurant at six a.m.

  Fucking compression shorts. The damn things were like a dick prison.

  “Actually,” she replied with an arched brow, “it turns out the secret to getting the body you’ve always wanted is to grow really tall.”

  I snorted as we seated ourselves at a table in a sunny corner. “I’m pretty sure that’s not what the people selling gym memberships and green smoothies say.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Well, it’s not like I did anything special to get like this. Yes, I run now, and I do yoga a few times a week. But I only weigh about five pounds less than I did in high school. The biggest agent of change was the extra seven and a half inches.”

  I smiled. “Seven and a half?”

  She picked up her menu. “When you’re the only short person in a tall family for most of your life, that half inch is everything.” She gave me a mischievous grin. “It makes me half an inch taller than both Lindsay and Phoebe, two inches taller than my mom, an inch shorter than Jess, and only three inches shorter than my dad.”

  “Makes sense.” I glanced at the menu, too, quickly deciding on an omelet. “But then, I was taller than my dad by the time I was fifteen.”

&nbs
p; Unlike Krista, I’d had all my major growth spurts pretty early. I’d reached my full height of six-three by seventeen, though it had taken a bit longer to pack on all the muscle I’d had at the peak of my career. I’d been gangly until college.

  “How is your dad doing, by the way?” she asked.

  I smiled. “He’s great. He lives in Phoenix now. And he got remarried about four years ago.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh wow. That’s good, right?”

  I chuckled at her cautious tone. “It is. Cindy is a librarian, and she’s amazing. Not a drop of evil stepmother in her blood. And they’re really happy together.”

  “I’m glad.” Her smile looked relieved. “He deserves that.”

  I smiled, too, remembering how my childhood best friend and my dad had always had a tight bond. “Yeah he does.”

  The waitress came to take our order then, and I watched Krista as she interacted with the woman. She seemed shy and awkward – a complete one-eighty from the easygoing conversation we’d just been having. She’d had similar troubles at the reunion last night, though I’d chalked that up to being around so many people, or maybe the confrontation with Melody. But now, watching her fumble just to order breakfast, I wondered how a woman who seemed to have it all could still feel so uncomfortable in social situations.

  “So anyway,” she said, once the waitress had left. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about last night.”

  I frowned. A lot had happened last night. If she was trying to apologize for ambushing me, or again for all that old crap from high school, it was water under the bridge.

  But if she was trying to apologize for the kiss, that was another matter altogether.

  “Which part?” I asked slowly.

  She blushed, and my heart sank. The kiss, then.

  “For telling you I didn’t want my friend back.” She took a deep breath, like she was steeling herself. “I thought about it for a while after I got home, and I have no idea what came over me. I think maybe I just got carried away by all the nostalgia, you know?”

  I frowned. “Nostalgia, huh?”

  “Yes. Exactly.” She nodded a little too enthusiastically for my taste. “I mean, yes, I did have a crush on you when we were kids, but that’s in the past. And we’re adults now, you know? You’ve got your life, and I’ve got mine, and I think it’s best if we just stay friends.”

  “Friends.”

  She nodded again, obviously not picking up on the growly tone of my voice. “I mean, if you don’t still hate me.”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, I don’t hate you.”

  She let out a breath. “Good. I mean, thank you, I guess. For forgiving me.” She gave me a tight smile. “And besides, I realized it wasn’t fair to you to just…” She trailed off.

  “To just what?” I prompted.

  “Well, are you, um.” Her cheeks flushed, and she squeezed her eyes closed as she picked up her napkin. “Gods. I probably should have asked this before…”

  I leaned forward. “Just spit it out.” I reached a hand out, laying it on top of hers to stop her from completely destroying her napkin. “I’m not going to laugh at you.”

  She took a slow, deep breath, looking at me once more. “I know that.”

  I squeezed her hand gently. “So, you should have asked before you…”

  Her cheeks reddened even further, which I would not have thought possible. She took another deep breath as my thumb gently swept across her knuckles.

  “Right. So I probably should have asked before I kiss-mugged you. But are you seeing anyone?”

  My hand froze. The words came out in a hurried jumble, so it took me a moment to understand what she’d said. Was she asking if I was single?

  A slow smile spread across my face as she bit that pink, perfect lip and looked up at me with anxious eyes. She was totally asking if I was single.

  Friends, my ass.

  “No.” I tried to pull her hand toward me, but she took it back, reaching for her water glass.

  “Well, that makes me feel better. At least I don’t have to worry about you having to explain all that to some poor woman. But it still wasn’t okay for me to kiss-mug you, especially because you obviously weren’t into it, and you probably were still mad even though you said you weren’t, and I just feel awful that I forced you to make up with me before you were ready to. So can we please just be friends?”

  I narrowed my eyes. As she had so eloquently put it, she kiss-mugged me. She hadn’t even given me time to get over my shock – how could she possibly know I wasn’t into it? Not to mention, she’d said last night that she’d never wanted to be just friends. And now she was trying to say that was exactly what she wanted after all?

  Yeah, no. That was not going to work for me. I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted out of this reconnection with her, but somehow “friendship” seemed too small a word to describe it.

  “So, are you?”

  She blinked. “Am I what?”

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  If she noticed that I’d diverted her, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she shook her head quickly.

  “No. I was with the same guy since college, but we broke up about…” she paused, looking up at the ceiling as she thought about it. “Two years ago, I guess.” she finished. “I haven’t ventured into the dating pool much since then. I’m not so good at it. It’s like the pressure of a normal conversation times a million, because they don’t know you yet, and first impressions are everything, right? So you have to be funny and sexy and interesting, and I’m not good at any of those things, so I bomb, and then I never get a second date. Or a first one, in some cases.”

  I frowned. “I think you’re funny.”

  She shook her head. “But you’ve known me forever. I don’t even have to explain my jokes to you anymore.”

  “And you’re interesting,” I argued. “You’re the smartest person I know.”

  She scoffed. “I’m not even the smartest person I know. You should meet Ellie. She’s a legitimate genius. She was only sixteen when she graduated high school. And she completed her undergrad degree in two years. And then she went to med school. At eighteen.”

  I smiled. “But I don’t know Ellie. So my point still stands.”

  “But even if I am smart or interesting, I can’t be those things when it counts.” She shook her head again. “It’s like my whole body locks up under pressure. It doesn’t matter how great I am. If I have to actually demonstrate how great I am, then it’s like, brain soup.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Well, at least you’re still sexy.”

  She frowned. “Funny.”

  “I’m dead serious.” I shifted in my seat, because the way her shoulders were hunched had squeezed her tits together, and it was a little too sexy for the compression shorts I decided to burn the second I got home.

  Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes darted out the window. “I think you’re probably dehydrated,” she quipped, in her usual dry-as-toast way.

  “Nah,” I replied. “I really don’t think the problem is you.”

  Her sapphire eyes flicked to mine, swimming with uncertainty. “No?”

  I shook my head. “No, the problem is that you don’t know how to be yourself around guys you don’t know.”

  She frowned doubtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  The waitress came back with my coffee and Krista’s Diet Coke, distracting us for a moment.

  “Does that really bother you?” I asked, once the waitress had left again. “Feeling like you’re bad at dating?”

  She frowned. “Kind of?” She took a sip of her drink, and I watched as she swallowed. Her nails were the same peacock color as her toes, and I noticed the paint job was much neater than I’d ever seen before. I wondered if she’d improved her technique in the last decade, or if she maybe frequented the salon now.

  I wondered about a lot of things when it came to her, actually. Things a friend would not be wondering, like whether her lip
s were the same color as her nipples, like that old wives’ tale said. Or what kind of sounds she made when she was turned on.

  But somehow, despite being so far beyond the boundaries of ‘just friends’ that I couldn’t even see the proverbial fence, my mind filled with these and other questions. So many fucking questions.

  And I really, really wanted answers to them.

  “I mean, it’s kind of a basic life skill,” she continued. “Dating, flirting, et cetera. If I can’t do it, then I’ll probably end up with someone who has poor self-esteem and very low standards. Or I’ll just be alone for the rest of my life.”

  I chuckled. “That escalated quickly.”

  She shrugged. “I have my very own Greek chorus in my mind, I guess.”

  “You probably just need more practice,” I assured her.

  She frowned. “Practice?”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “Any athlete will tell you, practice is essential to a good performance on the field. It builds muscle memory, develops skills, and warms you up for the main event.”

  “What, like, dating practice?”

  I nodded. “Exactly like that.”

  She chewed on that starfish-pink lip for a moment. “So what do you have in mind? Make a Tinder profile and put ‘just looking to fake date’ in there?”

  I scowled. “Tinder is a meat market. You’re better than that.”

  “At this point I feel like my meat is going to go bad soon, unless it gets eaten.” Her entire face went red as she realized what she’d just said. “Oh gods. Please forget I ever said that.”

  I laughed so raucously that Mrs. Kilkenny shushed me from a table on the other side of the restaurant.

  “I don’t think I can forget that.” I made a show of thinking about it. “Yeah, no. Sorry.”

  “Seth, be serious. This is a terrible idea.”

  My laughter died as I took in her dire expression. “I am serious,” I assured her. “It’s not terrible. It’s pretty great, actually.”

  Especially considering I had someone in mind as her fake date – someone I was pretty sure she wanted to date, even if she was now trying to push a bullshit ‘just friends’ agenda.