Right of First Refusal (Radleigh University #2)

by Dahlia Adler

  Bless Frankie’s heart, I see she’s responding immediately. Sorry, Caity J But you know you’re always welcome at our place!

  I start to type a response, but Lizzie gets there first. Srsly, C, we can work something out if you need.

  I know they mean it, and I love them for it, but I can’t exactly just move all my stuff into their apartment. Besides, between Frankie’s frequent hookups and Connor, they really don’t need an extra body living on the couch and cramping their style, especially since I’m…not the neatest. <3 you both, but you’d prob both kill me after three days of my stuff all over your floor. I send the text, then sigh and send another. Plus, there’s prob some mature way I’m supposed to deal w/this.

  Fuck mature, they both respond immediately, and I crack up. God, I miss them. Life was so much more fun when it was the three of us living here, our trio against the world. I know why Lizzie had to move, and I know it made sense for Frankie to go with her, but sometimes, my loneliness with them gone feels like a physical ache even hours of Icy Hot can’t cure.

  Maybe Samara can help? Frankie suggests.

  If this is you “helpfully” suggesting she sleep at your place so I can take her bed…

  Hahahahaha. Lizzie’s being equally helpful.

  That too, says Frankie, but I meant maybe she has an idea, seeing as she lives w/u.

  Fair point. I’ve chatted online with Sam a little this week—she checked in to see how the shower was (I said it was Fine) and I asked her about some fancy dinner she had to go to with her family, including her small-town mayor dad (she said it was Fine)—but I’ve steered clear of the topic of Andi. Which is silly, because A) she’s not completely clueless about me and Mase, and B) Frankie’s right—I need her help.

  I check to find that Samara’s indeed online right now. I open a chat window and type, Hey, how’s it going over there?

  Samara: Is it terrible that I cannot wait to come back to school?

  I’m tempted to say I’d switch places with her in a heartbeat, but then I remember how much I enjoyed my recent vacation time spent with family and think better of it. Trust me, I’ll be very happy to have you back.

  Samara: Are you just being sweet, or is that loaded?

  I wonder if she’s that smart, or I’m that transparent. Probably both. Does it have to be one or the other?

  Samara: Uh oh. Fill me in.

  So I do, cringing through every second of my clash with Andi as I imagine Samara’s judgment on the other end, and how badly she wants to say, “You should’ve told her the truth from the start.” Frankly, it’s exactly what I would’ve said to someone in my situation, and I have no idea how the hell I became someone who makes such idiotic decisions.

  I blame sexual deprivation.

  Any ideas for how we can get through the rest of the semester without her killing me in my sleep? I finish.

  Samara: Yiiiiikes. At least she’s an early sleeper (though so are you), and you’re an early riser, so maybe you can just avoid each other?

  Cait: Hmm, that’s true. Maybe I just have to be a less early sleeper. The idea physically pains me—I’m usually drop-dead exhausted by the time I fall asleep, and the two-a-days awaiting us for the next two months are only gonna make it worse—but it’s less awful than the nauseated feeling I get when I imagine Andi daggering me in my bed, if only with her sad eyes.

  Samara: If you can keep yourself away at night for long enough to let her pass out around ten like she usually does, I can stay on watch and report in when it’s safe for you to return.

  The idea of a lookout spying for me is hilarious…and oddly comforting. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but would you? I know this is completely ridiculous, but drama is not my specialty.

  Samara: Not a problem! Kinda fun to have a “mission.”

  I love that she’s not making me feel like an idiot about it. As much as I miss living with my best friends, I’m glad to have met her. Thank you, I reply, adding a little heart at the end.

  Samara: Anytime. You’re like a real life YA novel. Or NA novel, I guess.

  Cait: What’s NA?

  She starts to type a response, then deletes it, then types again, Dammit, I gotta run. Another Dad thing. I’ll text you some recs when I get some downtime later.

  Cait: Wait, one more thing before you go?

  Samara: Yeah?

  I take a deep breath and type my question, nervously, having thought about this a lot over the past week. Despite all my drama, any chance you might wanna consider living together next year? Just the two of us?

  My cursor just blinks on the screen as I wait for her to reply, and I quickly wish I could take it back. I haven’t exactly proven my capabilities as a drama-free roomie, and if I were her, I wouldn’t wanna live with me either. What I should do is suck it up and move to Shamblin with everyone else, but I’ve always liked living separate from the other jocks—gives me a little headspace from the game to focus on my homework.

  I’m about to tell her not to worry about answering right now when she writes back, Sure! Would love that. Talk more later!

  Samara Kazarian has signed off.

  I sigh with relief and put the laptop aside, then pick up my phone again. I’ll officially have a lookout for the rest of the semester, I write to Lizzie and Frankie.

  Awesome, says Frankie. And hey, if you need anyone to look at *her* for the rest of the semester…

  FRANCESCA.

  At Lizzie’s sympathetic hahahahahaha, I decide to call it a night. But I’m feeling the tiniest bit better, knowing they’ve all got my back.

  • • •

  Sam is every bit as good a lookout as promised, but after two weeks of showering at the gym and doing work at the library or at Jake’s instead of in my room, and going to sleep later than usual even though two-a-days have my eyelids dropping hours earlier, I pretty much want to die. The bright side is that I haven’t seen Andi, and she hasn’t done anything like leave me passive-aggressive notes or text me asking to talk. I haven’t seen Mase, either, though somehow that feels less like a good thing. I know I could show up at the community center, or play the dutiful girlfriend at one of Jake’s games, but what’s the point? I don’t have any more to say to him than I did on the walk home a few Sundays earlier. Maybe I don’t know him well enough now to know how we’d fit.

  Maybe I don’t know me without lacrosse well enough to, either.

  The thought ribbons in and out of my head throughout the day, every day, but for practice, and for games, I push it aside—if I’m gonna be at odds with my family and the guy I…maybe sort of still have feelings for…over lacrosse, then I’m damn well gonna make the most of lacrosse.

  It’s been three games and plenty of traveling, but I’ve used the bus rides for strategizing or catching up on reading instead of wallowing. (Mostly.) I’m clearly one of the few who actually followed the practice schedule over break, and while everyone else gets back into form eventually, I smugly accept Nora and Tessa’s muttered resentment at my general kickass-ness on the field. The irony is that I’ve never been on a shittier sleep schedule, but exhaustion somehow gives way to adrenaline at game time, and I’m not questioning that magic.

  We’re just getting ready to file out of the locker room for practice on Friday, fresh off another blowout win, when Brady halts us all with our gear still in hand. “Girls, huddle up.”

  We do, gathering around obediently in a mass, the excitement in the room palpable. Yesterday’s game proved us to be a well-oiled machine, and we’re all ready to kill it again tomorrow. Even our current circle around our coach is as perfectly formed as possible, given the locker room’s structure, though it’s obvious from everyone’s jittery feet and white knuckles around their crosses that we all just wanna get on the field already. This is the first time Brady’s stopped us like this.

  Which can only mean one thing.

  “I was gonna wait until after tomorrow’s game to make this announcement, but I want us to go into it with
a strong sense of leadership,” he says, confirming my suspicions. “As you all know, Mariana will be graduating in a couple of months. Although obviously no one can replace her”—pause while everyone cheers and shakes our crosses in our fearless leader’s direction—“we will need a new captain. I’ve thought long and hard about this choice, along with Larissa and Kathy, and I think you’ll all agree your new captain is a talented and hardworking leader, who helps hold this team together, and has been instrumental in taking our team to new heights this season. We know she’ll continue to help bring us home that championship trophy.”

  My face is on fire, and I don’t dare return any of the stares I feel picking me apart, or acknowledge the hand—Tessa’s, most likely—on my back. I want this more than anything, and everyone knows I’ve worked and sacrificed like hell for it, but I don’t want attention; I just wanna lead. Which I’ve practically been doing for the last couple weeks anyway, since Mariana spent her spring break in Cabo with a couple of the other girls, celebrating our victorious season with a few dozen margaritas too many.

  “Congratulations…Tessa!”

  Blood freezes in my veins. Tessa? Not that I don’t love her and she isn’t a great player, but…captain? If she’s ever even wanted that, it’s news to me.

  “Um, what?”

  Apparently, it’s news to her, too.

  Her fingers are still on my back, and all I wanna do is shake them off and run. But this isn’t her fault, and if there’s anyone I should be able to be happy for, it’s Tess. The silence in the room as everyone looks from Coach to us and back is awful, and shitty as this feels, the thought of Tessa getting hurt is worse. I force myself out of my stupor to say, “Congrats, Tess,” with as much warmth as I can muster, squeezing her shoulders. “You’re gonna kick ass.”

  “Damn straight,” Latisha says quickly, and Nora agrees, and Tessa’s hand finally falls from my back as she accepts congratulations from the whole team. I watch, feeling like I’m underwater, everything around me vaguely blurry and muffled. I hate how embarrassed I feel. I have the best scoring record on the team right now, and I’m the only one nationally ranked for goals per game. I’m at every practice on time—even earlier, now, to make sure I’ve escaped my suite before Andi stirs—and I’m usually the one people ask to stay late to help them practice passing. How could I have screwed up badly enough that they’d take this away from me?

  “Okay, enough chatter, ladies,” Brady admonishes. “Goggles on. Take the field.”

  Everyone obeys. Including me. Just as I always do.

  • • •

  Practice is full of the worst kind of crackling tension, people staring at me as if waiting to see whether I’ll blow up in some way. As if I’d put my pride before the team, or before my friend. But the worst is when Tessa comes up to me after practice and tries to apologize.

  “Tess.” I put a hand on her arm, hoping to end this conversation once and for all. “First of all, you have nothing to be sorry for; you’re a great player, everyone gets along with you, and obviously Brady, Larissa, and Kathy think you deserve it.”

  “You’re better,” she argues, as if it’s fact. Which, I guess, statistically it is. “And yeah, it’s been a little rockier for you this season with the team, but everyone loves you. Everyone wanted this captainship for you. This is fucked up. I don’t even want it.”

  I know she means to be kind, but that last bit hurts the worst of all, even though I already knew it. “Tessa—”

  “Seriously, I’ll tell Brady that. This isn’t my life the way it is yours, Cait. I love lax, but it isn’t my whole heart and soul. You deserve this. You put lacrosse before everything, and they should recognize that.”

  Welp, turns out there’s even further to twist the dagger.

  They’re not that different from the thoughts I’ve already had, but…my life? My whole heart and soul? I think of myself as passionate and devoted to a sport that’s meant a lot to me, that’s given me sanity during hard times, that’s paid my way through a college I could never have afforded otherwise. It’s a way to physically express myself, and a healthy distraction from life’s drama. But between Mase and Tessa, I’m suddenly seeing the love of my life in an entirely different way: pathetic.

  And it feels like shit.

  Worse, it feels like Mase was so, so right.

  “Thanks, Tess,” I manage weakly, my crosse suddenly feeling like it weighs a thousand pounds. “But really, please don’t. You deserve this. I can always try again next year.” I can’t handle any more of the conversation than that, so I forge on ahead, past the locker room, past the gym entirely, leaving her and the rest of the team behind.

  • • •

  With my mind full of that conversation, I don’t even think to pull out my phone and text Samara; I just head back to the dorm. And of course, because luck is never on my side, the first person I see when I walk in is Andi, standing over the stove, stirring a pot of what smells like tomato soup.

  “Oh,” I say, then instantly feel like an idiot for the obvious surprise in my tone. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She glances over just long enough to take in that I’m still in my lax uniform, then turns back to the stove. “How was practice?”

  I’m so surprised at her attempt at civil conversation after all this that I couldn’t recall the honest answer to the question if I wanted to; it takes me longer than it should just to stammer out “Good.”

  “Good.” She shakes something into the pot, which already smells so delicious, my stomach lets out a little rumble.

  “Welp, guess that’s my sign I should hurry up and shower so I can get lunch,” I say, glad I have a good excuse to extricate myself from this awkward little encounter. I get as far as putting my hand on the doorknob to our room when I realize that doing so isn’t fair. She’s been stewing in this for weeks, is dealing with a shitty breakup, and had her roommate lying to her on top of everything else. And I’ve let myself not care because—how did Tessa put it?—oh yes, because I put lacrosse before everything. Well, not today.

  I turn back.

  “Why did you break up?”

  She answers so tersely, I wonder if she’s been waiting for this question for weeks. “Ask him.”

  “I’m asking you. He and I have had enough conversations about this…triangle that don’t include your voice. You’re clearly upset about that. So tell me.”

  She sets her jaw, and I realize my biggest fear is that she’ll say it was my fault, that I’m the kind of homewrecker I’ve never wanted to be. Yes, I wanted them broken up, and I was happy it happened. Yes, I wanted him to want me again. But I didn’t want her to get hurt.

  If only relationships—and life—were ever that neat.

  To my surprise, she sighs into a slump. “I liked him for who I thought he wasn’t. When I met him, it was right after that knee injury, and I guess it was just the pain meds talking, but he really made it sound like he was gonna quit. Put sports behind him for good. I’d recently been dumped by one of those cocky jock types—dropped me as soon as he realized being able to hit a ball with a stick meant he could get way hotter girls. And Law was…well, you don’t need me to tell you he’s hot. It felt like such a jackpot to get a guy who looked like that and wasn’t a jock.”

  But he was. He would always be, in some way. And if Andi had really known him, she would’ve gotten that.

  It doesn’t need to be said aloud. So it isn’t.

  “What about you?” she asks. “Why’d you break up?”

  For so long, I thought the answer to that was just physical distance, real life, whatever. I thought he got bored, or it was too hard, and I should feel the same way, so I pushed myself to. But it wasn’t any of that. Not really. And Tessa may be right that I put things before lacrosse, but she isn’t right that lacrosse has my whole heart. I hate that I’ve given that impression—both to her and to Mase—but the question of who he and I could be now doesn’t detract from who I know we were then, how I know I felt
then.

  “I guess I loved him for being someone he isn’t anymore.” My voice is a whisper, and only when I see her flinch do I realize she used the word “liked”; I used the word “loved.” But I really did. He got me through some of my very worst moments; he was the reason for some of my best.

  And those moments that were all me? He celebrated those with me too, as proud as Cammie, as Matt, as my dad used to be, once upon a time.

  He didn’t need to be on the court for any of that.

  He still doesn’t.

  Fuck.

  “You sure that ‘loved’ is past tense?” asks Andi, her tone dry but her voice thick with hurt.

  I hate that she’s hurting.

  I hate that she’s right.

  I shake my head, and she smiles, just slightly. Resignedly. I feel like crap. But…honest crap. Finally.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. No qualifiers, no explanations—just an apology, for all of it.

  She nods, but even without words I think we’re gonna be okay. Not BFFs okay. Not living together next year okay. But I don’t think I need a lookout anymore, and I’ll take that.

  It feels good to sleep in my room again, to lie in my own bed reading Greek plays and typing up Communications presentations while Andi sits at her desk, poring over her anthropology textbooks and Spanish flashcards. But it’s also way more restless sleep. Whereas before I’d been able to focus my five or six hours, now my solid seven are full of tossing and turning, things I wish I’d said back to Mase when I had the chance, and questions for Brady about why he gave the captainship to Tessa. I dread having to tell my father that he was right to be apathetic about my lacrosse career. He’s been continuing to send me wedding things without any hint of acknowledgment that my plans might have changed. And maybe they shouldn’t.

  I’m obviously not valued on the team. My own teammates don’t seem to care nearly as much as I do. And the guy who used to make me love all this stuff no matter how hard it all got wants nothing to do with me.