When in Paris... (Language of Love) (4 page)

This is the shit I’ve been dealing with for nearly eight months. Eight months. Damn, why didn’t I see this in her before I asked her out?
Because she was pretty and looked perfectly normal.
And she’d been the new girl at the school, moving in from out-of-state sophomore year.

Lifting my head, I give it a shake, as if that’s enough to clear everything from my mind—dating her, sleeping with her, trying to break up with her and everything that followed. I never wanted a do-over so much in my life and right now, I just don’t have the energy to deal with her.

Despite the call, it’s images of Olivia’s gorgeous face and not irritated thoughts of Ashley that fill my mind as I make the fifteen-minute drive to practice. It was the same in high school, once I got a glimpse of her, I couldn’t get her out of my head for days running. I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore.

When I arrive at our brand-new practice field the school just spent half a million dollars on, a glance at the clock confirms I’m late—but only by five minutes. Maybe the coach will take pity on me, first day of classes and all that. Fat chance and I know it.

A cool million and a half was spent to upgrade Jaguar Stadium, our home field. Needless to say, Warwick is investing heavily in their football program. The last bowl game they played in—and lost—was three years ago, but Coach Brighton sees the Rose Bowl in our future. How far is the real question.

As I jog to the locker room, I can’t see them but I can hear the coach barking out orders and my teammates’ grunts as they’re put through the paces.

Yep, I’m late. And I’m screwed.

When I enter the locker room, I’m not expecting company, so I’m surprised to see my roommate Troy, leg propped on the bench, lacing up his cleats.

Peering up at me, he’s wearing a smirk on his face as he watches me approach. “Pearson, you’re late,” he says in his best imitation of Coach Brighton, who has this scratchy Al Pacino voice.

“
Yeah, no shit. What about you, aren’t you late?” I stop in front of my locker.

“
Had to have my leg checked.”

I lower my gaze to his knee and notice the brace and bandage are gone. I almost forgot the hit he’d taken last week. He’d landed awkwardly, twisting his knee. After diagnosing it as a bad sprain, the team physician had benched him until he gave Troy the okay to resume practice. But being benched doesn’t mean you don’t have to come to practice, it just means you don’t have to do the physical stuff.

“
Hey, you got plans tonight?” Finished lacing his cleats, Troy straightens, coming to his full height, putting him at an inch taller than me.

“
Why, you asking me out?” I joke and begin stripping out of my street clothes.

His response is a good-natured laugh. “Don’t you wish. No, April’s coming over for dinner tonight. I’m ordering Chinese. Just wanted to know if you wanted to join us. She’s bringing a friend.”

“
What, two too much for you?” The
very
last thing I need is a setup. Unless she’s in it just for fun. I’m not trying to get serious with anyone right now.

I tug my jersey on then angle my head toward him, eyebrow raised.

“
April? I thought your girlfriend’s name was Katie or Courtney?” Or something like that.

Troy’s from Illinois and made the mistake of
not
breaking up with his high-school girlfriend when he went away to college. Let’s face it, most long-distance relationships don’t work, especially at our age. Add in college and there’s an almost one hundred percent certainty of failure. 

I think he said his girlfriend is taking night classes at a community college and working full-time at either a dentist’s or doctor’s office. I’d only been listening with one ear when he’d briefed me on the relationship.

“
April’s only a friend,” he states firmly.

“
Right, I get it. She’s nice.” Code for
she isn’t attractive enough to cause my girlfriend too much grief
. That’s the only way male/female friendships have a chance in hell of working long-term.

“
Nah, man, it’s not like that. April’s good-looking. She’s real pretty.”

Real pretty? An image of Olivia instantly comes to mind. I’ll bet my left nut his April has nothing on Olivia. I turn back to the locker after I pulled on my pants and socks. “Then I guarantee you, one of you wants to do the other.”

I laugh, expecting him to join in. He knows I’m just busting his chops. Sort of. Only when I turn back to him, a smile still stretched across my face, do I pick up on the fact that there’s something off about his reaction.

No laugh, no smile, just eerie somberness.

“
It’s not like that either.”

Okay, so he’s real touchy about April. I make a mental note of that. “Well, yeah man, I get it.” Although I don’t. I never had a girl who was just a friend—at least not past the age of twelve.

“
So, you on for dinner tonight?” Troy asks after another few seconds of silence.

“
Yeah, sure, you can count me in. I might be late though, after practice I got to go to the registrar’s.”

Troy grabs his helmet off the bench and heads for the door. “Cool. I’ll make sure to save you a fortune cookie.” He tosses the parting remark over his shoulder as he exits.

Hmm, April, huh? I wonder if she and her friend are hot. Now my interest is piqued. Maybe either or both will help get Olivia out of my head now that she appears to be firmly lodged there.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

OLIVIA

April’s barely through the door to our dorm room when she demands, “Okay, spill. If you went to school with that sex god from French, I want to know why this is the first time I’m hearing about him.”

Her backpack hits the floor with a
thunk
as she drops onto her bed, her pursed lips demanding a response.

I’m not even going to dispute the term but I sure as hell refuse to confirm it. “He’s just a guy from high school.” Although I’m positive she’s going to make a big deal about him, my voice still tries to downplay his significance, like he really
is
no big deal. Which, let’s face it, he shouldn’t be.

April’s response is a combination of a snort and a laugh, a sound that always makes me smile. And even now, she doesn’t fail to elicit that response.

“Yeah, right. Spill, girlie. I know you’re holding back. No one who looks like that is ‘just a guy’. She punctuates “just a guy” with expressive air quotes.

I slide onto my bed and sit cross-legged on my thick down comforter. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. I got nothing. We never hung out in the same crowd. He was the football quarterback and all-around jock. We had a couple classes together but apart from that, that’s it.” I’m definitely not about to tell her anything else. Not about the locker-room incident or that he was my first major crush.

Skeptical, April gets all squinty-eyed. “Are you holding out on me? I’m sensing something else is going on here. Seriously, Liv, the guy is…well, majorly hot. What’s his name by the way?”

It’s ridiculously stupid, but for some reason, I don’t want to tell her. “Zach,” I say, hoping I managed to keep the reluctance from my voice.

“And the two of you never…?”

Just the thought of it causes heat to rush to every part of my body. I pray my face isn’t as pink as it feels. “Absolutely not. Not even close. If you want to know the truth, he doesn’t even like me.” I hate that my voice trails off at the end, as if the knowledge hurts me. I hate that it
does
hurt.

I must have gotten some sort of wounded look on my face, because the next thing I know, April is at my side, all concerned.

“What do you mean he doesn’t like you?” She makes it sound like it’s a crime, like not liking me requires explanation. But her indignation on my behalf is touching. And so like April.

“Hey, it’s no big deal. It’s not like I care. Anyway, you know I’ve never been into jocks.” Okay, the last was an out-and-out lie. I should have quit while I was ahead.

“Wasn’t Jeff on the baseball team?”

My ex-boyfriend Jeff. Crap. So he was. “I mean football jocks.” My correction is duly noted with another arched brow.

“But why doesn’t he like you?”

“I don’t know or care.”

“You might not know why but you care,” she shoots back, equally adamant.

“No I don’t.” I pray we’re not going another couple of rounds of this because she has this way of wearing me down. It’s called tenacity and persistence, which is fine when it’s not being used against me.

“Then why are you tapping your fingers on your leg. You only do that when you’re lying.”

And sometimes she’s too damn observant.

Yanking my hand from my thigh, I thrust both under my butt. I’ll be much better off sitting on them.

My thoughts are all jumbled because I want to tell her all, everything I’ve ever felt when it came to Zach. She’s my best friend and I know I can tell her anything, but on this subject—on Zach—I’m blocked. It’s like peeling off the protective part to the place I’m most vulnerable and I just can’t go there. Not even with April.

“So he really doesn’t like you?” she asks, scooting closer. She looks as if she wants to put her arms around me.

“Nope, and you know what’s funny?”

“What?” April asks.

“He was nice to almost everyone else. At least to all the girls. I think I was the only girl he never talked to.”

Or at least that’s the way it’d seemed. Isabel Murray, a girl in our graduating class, had worn glasses as thick as those old-fashioned Coke bottles and he’d defended her when some of the guys had started making fun of her, which in essence had stopped
anyone
from even attempting it. I’d seen the whole thing myself. And that had disabused me of my second impression of him, which was that he was one of those heartless, conceited jocks who thought they were better than everyone else. Nope, for reasons I still don’t know, I’d been one of the only girls he hadn’t liked.

“Which means you have to stop calling him
my
high-school hottie, because he’s not. I’m sure he won’t mind if you call him plain hottie,” I say, hoping an infusion of humor will work to deflect further questions.

April’s lips compress into a pink line of Maybelline peach rose. “Then screw ’em. He’s not that hot anyway.”

In the silence that follows her fiery outburst, our eyes lock. Our bond is strengthened. She has my back and I have hers. The next thing I know we’re rolling on my bed giggling like a pair of thirteen-year-old girls, legs flailing and clutching our stomachs.

“Yes he is,” I gasp between breaths.

April tosses back her head and lets out a high-pitched howl of laughter. “I was trying to make you feel better.”

It takes a few more seconds before I’ve calmed enough to throw my arms around her neck and say more soberly and sincerely, “I know you were and I love you for that.”

The hug she gives me in return is tight and constricts my heart. But I’m determined to not get all mushy about it and fix a smile on my face when I pull back, holding her at arm’s length.

“So what’s on the calendar for tonight? Are we going to the cafeteria for dinner or do you think we should splurge and go out for pizza?”

April flicks her hair over her shoulder as she springs from my bed.

“Didn’t you get my text?” She directs a pointed look at my purse where she knows my iPhone is set to silent. “Troy invited us over for dinner. Get your chopsticks ready, we’re having Chinese.”

Great. Nothing like a pair of chopsticks to make you feel like you have two left thumbs. And my best friend isn’t any better at it than me. This should be fun.

“Have you seen him since you’ve gotten to school?” I ask, my mind immediately going to what I’m going to wear. I haven’t seen Troy since I was in Illinois for the summer six years ago when he was twelve, which feels like a lifetime ago. When I’d gone back two years later, he’d started spending his summers at various sports-related camps.

My last memory of him is this skinny kid with brown hair that was too long and in a constant state of dishevelment. He’d had a mouthful of braces and I remember him being short, at that time standing at least two inches shorter than April. But then April has always been tall for her age. Still is at five-nine, six feet in her standard three-inch heels. At five-six, I feel short beside her.

“No, he’s been busy with football and I had the shoot last week…”

April only arrived at school two days ago. Saturday she’d been in Manhattan finishing a cosmetic shoot. She hates modeling but claims it’s a necessary evil. Her hope is that she can schedule her shoots around school breaks, but I can tell she’s worried that if she can’t, she’ll start losing jobs. I hope she’s wrong because she says she needs the money.