For all the talk of professional athletes and our revolving door of fuck buddies, I’ve never been able to really convince myself to go that route. Sure there are willing women, but I haven’t been one really to indulge since college. Not since I screwed everything up with Julia because I thought that would be better than what I had, that I would be missing out if I didn’t take advantage of the perks of being a football star. It turns out I like the steady stuff, commitment and all that comes with it. It also turns out I’m an idiot because by the time I figured that out Julia had moved on. And she never looked back.
And now I’ve gone and slept with her best friend. A woman who I would have thought hated me until she jumped in my lap as I unsuccessfully tried to get us home from our drunken evening at Mamacita’s. Well, I succeeded in getting us to my home, something Cassie regretted this morning if her crazy behavior is any indication. She ran out so fast I wasn’t able to say anything at all. And she and I have to pretend to be the best wedding party ever over the next few months. Her unhappiness at waking up in my bed is going to become a major issue if I don’t get to talk things through with her. Luckily, I know exactly where Cassidy Blake goes when she needs to forget about her problems. After downing copious amounts of water and enough ibuprofen to tranquilize a moose, I get in my car and head in her direction.
Sure enough when I push through the glass doors of the weight room at Fantastic Fitness, there she is with a bar loaded heavy enough to put most guys to shame. I watch Cassie go through her squat routine and try to gather my thoughts. There has to be a way to go back to before, right? Some sort of a reset she and I can negotiate in order to get through the next few months until Julia’s wedding is finally over. Then we can go back to only seeing each other when we absolutely have to, just the way we like it. Or at least the way I liked it before because right now I’m having a hard time remembering what it is about Cassie that I don’t like, especially when I catch a glimpse of her ass in the tights she’s wearing. She bends to adjust the weight on the bar before hoisting it up again and I can see every muscle in her legs flex. My hands twitch involuntarily, remembering how soft the skin under those leggings felt under my palms, how warm. Great, now I’ve got other less convenient body parts twitching. Down boy. I’m not here to convince her for a repeat. I’m here to make sure she knows it’ll never happen again.
Cassie catches a glimpse of me from across the room and narrows her eyes. I give her a smile and a wave. She answers me with a scowl. The girl who always gets under my skin is back. So much for starting out playing nice. I set my shoulders and stride over to her as she slides onto a weight bench. I clear my throat and stand there, waiting for her to at least acknowledge my presence. She ignores me and gets set to lift the barbell positioned over her head. It’s loaded up fairly heavy and I instinctively move closer. I don’t want her to drop it on herself or something.
I clear my throat again. “Do you want me to spot you?”
Cassie’s scowl deepens. “No.”
“Are you at least going to talk to me? Or are you going to pretend you don’t see me standing here?”
Silence.
“Fine, then I guess we’ll just work out.”
“No, I’ll work out and you’ll leave me alone. Actually, you’ll just leave.” She blows out a long breath as she raises the bar. “How did you get in here anyway? I know you don’t have a membership.”
I shrug. Cassie knows how I got in here. I worked my magic on the girl at the front desk. Took a few selfies with the rest of the staff and told them I was here to see my friend. They basically begged me to come in, already posting their photos to social media. When I need to use what I’ve got left of my celebrity, I do it.
Cassie rolls her eyes. “Damn it, now I’ve lost count,” she gripes, still holding the bar up.
“That’s twelve.” Her face contorts again in silent fury. “What? Habit. If someone’s lifting then I’m counting.”
Cassie rises from the bench, keeping her back to me. When she stalks off to the free weights, I follow her at what I think is a safe distance. I’m not entirely sure she isn’t about to turn around and try to pummel me with a piece of equipment. She grabs a set of hand weights and I do the same, positioning myself next to her in the mirror for curls. She moves two steps away from me, shooing me away with a wave of her hand. She looks so frustrated that I laugh and immediately regret it when Cassie’s fierce face locks eyes with mine in the mirror. If we weren’t in public she would definitely kill me.
“We have to talk about it.” She continues to ignore me. “There’s no way to avoid it. Not if we have to spend time together for all this wedding shit.”
I try to convince her as we move our weights up and down. I’m keeping my voice low, but Cassie’s acting like she can’t hear me, her eyes focusing straight ahead, arms rhythmically pumping. She’s one of the most stubborn people I know, always busting my chops for stupid shit. Having her ignore me would be a dream come true in any other situation, but today I need her to listen to me. I don’t want to cause a scene, but she’s not giving me many options.
I drop my weights and let them bang onto the floor. Several sets of eyes turn our way and when Cassie finally whips around to face me none of them turn away. This isn’t exactly private, but I’m willing to have an audience if it means she and I can hash things out.
“The whole point of coming here this morning was to forget about what happened last night,” she hisses at me, dropping her weights next to mine with a colossal thud. “This is my space. My place. Not yours. I’m not talking about this here.”
She points a finger toward my chest and I will her to touch me. Her anger’s doing funny things to me. Making parts of me perk up in ways they shouldn’t. An image of her face positioned over mine from last night flicks through my brain. I consider reaching out for her, pulling her to me and pressing my mouth on hers. I shake the thought away, but lean in toward her accusing finger. She moves her hand away and points her defiant little chin up at me. I look down at her and am startled by how pretty she is. Her angry, flushed face competing with her red hair. Green eyes glittering under long lashes. She’s slightly sweaty, definitely hungover, and without a stitch of make-up on. Still she’s beautiful. How have I never noticed this before?
“Mama, we can either talk here now or we can talk somewhere else later but we’re talking about this.”
Cassie plants her feet and pulls her hand up in front of my face, giving me the finger. “Fuck you, Graham. You come in here and call me that name? Fuck you.”
She’s getting loud now, attracting more and more attention. I’m not sure why her old nickname sets her off, but now she’s furious. Out of the corner of my eye I see one of the gym’s personal trainers shuffling over. I’m guessing he’s drawn the short straw here because from the look on his face he’d rather be doing almost anything other than being in charge of telling us to cool it.
“Is everything all right here?” he squeaks out before clearing his throat. “I’m going to need you to—oh, Graham Stevens?” The poor guy does a double take, looking me over. “I’m a big fan. I mean I was. I still am. God, sorry about your knee.” He looks down at my right knee and I feel it twitch.
“Thanks, man,” I manage. “It’s all good.” It isn’t, but there’s no use in talking about it. For a normal person my knee is fine; I’m here working out, right? But for a professional football player? My knee is a disaster. The kind of disaster that gets you put on injured reserve and eventually puts your career in the crapper. The kind of disaster that leaves me figuring out what to do now that I can’t do what I love anymore.
“I do need to ask you two to keep your voices down. And I can’t have you throwing the equipment around.” He hesitates. “If that’s alright with you.”
“We understand.” I clap a hand on his shoulder. “My friend and I were just having a little disagreement but we’ve worked it out. Right, Cass?” She’s still shooting daggers at me with her eyes, but
she doesn’t contradict me. “I promise we’ll keep it together over here. No more yelling.”
“Okay,” the poor guy says, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Could I ask you a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Can I grab my phone real quick and get a photo?”
One hour later I’m waiting in a coffee shop down the street for Cassie to grace me with her presence. She agreed to meet only after I continued to shadow her every move at the gym for a good thirty minutes. Between her annoyance with me and the constant interruptions from people wanting to talk football, she’d finally given in and sworn she wouldn’t stand me up if I left her alone and gave her a chance to shower. I’m still determined to convince her that we can both put last night behind us and go back to the way it was before, but if today is any indication, I’ll be lucky to go back to her previous level of hatred. Somehow, sleeping with Cassie Blake has made her hate me even more than before.
From my seat by the window I can see her as she makes her way up the sidewalk. She’s got her hair piled on top of her head, strands of it sticking out everywhere, and the way she walks swings her hips just enough to make more than one guy on the street turn around to look at her as she passes by. For some reason this makes my fists clench up. I work on getting my fingers to uncoil as I watch her pull the front door open and scan the room. She looks relaxed, happy even, until her eyes settle on me—then her top lip curls up into a sneer that would look fitting on a damn cartoon character. It would be funny if there wasn’t so much on the line here. If anyone finds out Cassie and I went home together, there’s bound to be trouble. I’ve got enough going wrong in my life without this extra drama adding to it. I’m here to shut this thing down.
Cassie slides into the booth, folding her long legs under the table. I’ve had to push the table forward to fit in on my side so she’s squished up against the edge of it once she gets settled. This only makes her more irritated and she gives the tabletop a shove, sending the thing slamming into my midsection.
“Cassie, what the fuck?” I rub a hand over my middle.
“Let’s get one thing straight here, okay? Last night. That’s never happening again. As far as I’m concerned it never even happened. I’ve already put all of that”—Cassie gestures in my general direction with her hand—“in the vault and I’m expecting you to do the same.”
“O-Okay,” I stutter out. I hadn’t expected her to be as adamant about things. I’m supposed to be laying down the law to her, not the other way around. “But we should still debrief so we have our stories straight. Do you want coffee or something?” I move to signal the waitress but Cassie slaps my hand back down. She pulls a napkin from the metal dispenser on the table and makes a show of wiping her hand. “Give me a break. You touched way more than that last night,” I remind her.
Cassie shudders, deliberately exaggerating the movement. “What part of ‘never happened’ are you not understanding? If anyone ever found out that I slept with you…” She lets her disgusted face do the rest of the talking.
“Please, if people found out they’d be high-fiving you all over town.” I puff up a bit because I know that this is partly true. Some people would think Cassie had picked the golden ticket getting to roll around in my bed. Other people… not so much and we both know it. Julia. Her parents. Our shared friends. None of them would be celebrating. They’d all be thinking we’d lost our minds.
“Look, you and your ego can add last night to your spank bank, I guess. But I don’t think we need to hash out the details. We shared an Uber. No one needs to know that you dragged me back to your lair instead of taking me back to my own apartment.”
I look across the table at Cassie in disbelief. “Excuse me? I didn’t drag you anywhere. You’re the one who jumped all over me. I couldn’t even get you to keep your seatbelt buckled! The poor guy driving us almost threw us out of the car. You had your hands down my pants.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Cassie tells me flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. Her breasts spill over the top of her V-neck T-shirt, distracting me.
“Well, how do you remember it then?”
“I remember you trying to get me drunk and then waking up naked. That’s what I remember.”
“Are you kidding me?” I run a hand through my hair. I sincerely hope she’s lying here. We were both pretty drunk, but I never would have done anything to take advantage of her. I’m starting to feel my chest getting tight. “God, Cassie. I don’t even know what to say right now. You don’t remember the ride home? The rest of it? I mean we were at it all night. That’s a whole lot of orgasms to conveniently forget.”
Cassie’s face flushes and I know she remembers. She remembers everything.
“Lower your voice!” Cassie leans forward in the booth.
I lean forward to meet her half way. “How many times did you come last night, Cassie?” Her face is inches from mine and I can see the blush rising on her neck. “How many times did I get you off?”
She glares at me before turning her head and mumbling something under her breath.
“What? What’s that?” I cup my hand around my ear. “I couldn’t hear you.”
“Five,” she spits at me. “Five times. Happy now?”
I lean back into the cushion behind me, unable to keep the smug grin off my face. “Not as happy as you were last night. You’re welcome.”
3
Cassie
Stupid fucking Graham.
Actually, stupid me for fucking Graham. Yeah, that’s more like it. I slam the front door to my apartment so hard it rattles on its hinges. I’ll probably get a noise complaint from one of my elderly neighbors but I don’t care. I’ll just add that to the rest of the shitty things piling up on this already monumentally shitty day. I swear I hear Mrs. Duthie’s door creak open. Luckily, she doesn’t try creeping down the hall to see what’s happening. That’s the problem with living in an old building—you can hear everything. The floors groan, the windows rattle in the breeze, and the old duct system carries every secret argument through the building. But there’s no place with character like this one. I fell in love with the old mantle around the fireplace, the high ceilings, and the giant trees in my front yard. It’s like a park with birds singing in the morning and squirrels scampering around. And it’s only ten minutes to downtown and my job at the hospital, giving me the best of both worlds: tranquility and convenience.
But right now I’m not feeling very tranquil at all. And my situation is far from convenient. I’ve slept with Graham and he refuses to just forget about it. I’ll admit it wasn’t fair of me to try to pretend I didn’t remember what happened. After my acrobatic routine this morning with his window blinds everything came rushing back into my foggy brain. Even if it had been gratifying to make him squirm a little, I can’t let him take responsibility for all of this. Especially when I know I’m the one who started it.
The seatbelt thing?
True.
Mauling him with my mouth in the Uber?
True.
The hands down his pants part?
Also, mortifyingly true and surprisingly interesting. Graham is built everywhere.
He tried to be a gentleman, but I wore down his resolve and I’m not even sure why. There were plenty of other willing participants at the bar last night so why did I pick Graham? Why did I flirt with him instead of someone even marginally more suitable? And I’ve got no excuse for the number of times we, um, forgot all the reasons we hate each other. I mean, once is a drunken mistake, but over and over again? We were the definition of screwing our brains out. In the morning we were both definitely idiots. I know I have fewer brain cells today and it isn’t all from the tequila.
I try to zero in on the reasons I would make such a stupid decision when my phone pings. Julia’s name lights up the screen, texting me from somewhere in her perfect house with her perfect family. I’m not jealous, but I get a familiar twinge. Loneliness. I was feeling it last night too,
watching my best friend smile up at yet another adoring face. I don’t want a husband, babies, and a white picket fence, but sometimes I do wish I had some of what Julia has. Here it’s just me, running the show the way I like it but occasionally wishing there was someone here to share it with me. Of course, setting myself up to keep a giant secret from Julia isn’t the best way to keep your friends close. And who am I supposed to talk to about any of this? Graham? I certainly can’t ever tell Julia. At least Graham and I agree on that. If I’d been looking to hurt her, sleeping with her first love is a pretty good way to do it. But I don’t think that’s what I was trying to do last night. I don’t think I’d been thinking about much at all except having a man’s hands on me. Too bad I had to pick the biggest asshole in the place to make that happen.
Julia: Did you make it home safe last night?
I let my fingers hover over the screen.
Of course! Graham and I got a ride together!
Delete.
Sure did! Nothing interesting to report!
Delete.
Exclamation points? What is wrong with me? Julia’s not even standing here in person and I’m ready to spill everything I’ve just sworn I’ll never, ever tell her.
Yes.
Send.
Julia: Good. Didn’t see you leave. Did u have a good time? Thought maybe you’d found someone new to hang out with. Any new prospects? ;)
If only you knew, Julia. Then there’d be no cute little winky face blinking at me. There’d be some sort of middle finger emoji.
Forget About It Page 2
