Page 45 of Tumbling the Cornerback

"Shhhh," Tori soothed. "It's really not. You've just set your standards to a level that doesn't exist."

Marisol gently patted my knee. "I know about having stupid high standards, babe, and yours are bananas."

Pushing Tori's hand away, I glared at Liz. "Don't you have anything to add?"

She shrugged. "They'll tag me in when they need a breather," she said, laughing at my offended gasp.

"Listen, Lucas," Liz redirected, "we're not saying high standards are bad. Just make them realistic."

"You're not a saint, babe." Marisol took a savage bite of her cookie. "You're stronger than you think. And if your mom or auntie think this is some divine sign they're right, I'll kick their asses for you."

"Titi could totally take you in a fight," I muttered, snagging another cookie. Brown butter chocolate chip fixed everything, really.

"So here's what I'm thinking." Liz brushed crumbs from her hands, her clear tone interrupting the incipient cat fight between me and Marisol. What can I say—arguing's our love language."You have two options here: hang on to hope and pray management comes down hard on your side and stands up for you. Or two, you start looking for the good in this. Like," she waved one finger, "you are officially free to date Cooper without trying to keep it quiet."

"And you have the time to get an actual paying job that doesn't require you to wax from eyebrows to toes every three weeks," Tori added.

Marisol rolled her eyes. "Y'all are forgetting the most important part. Lucas can make Creel look like shit and also boost Queering Sports!" She paused, giving me a wide and toothy grin. "And the super-secret third thing: be out and open with his actual boyfriend who gives a good goddamn about him."

Oh. I sat up, putting my drink and the remains of a cookie down on the coffee table without a care for a coaster. I'd suffer the wrath of Renata later, but at that moment, a beam of sunlight broke through iron-dark clouds, and I couldn't look away. "Cooper."

My friends leaned forward. "Go on," Marisol urged, a tiny smirk playing on her lips. "Tell us all about him."

"If one good thing comes of this whole mess," Tori added, "you can date whoever you want. Even another player."

"And you stop seeing all players as unmitigated assholes," Liz threw in.

"They're not all assholes," I grumbled, cheeks warm. "Just some of them." Grabbing my cookie again, I took a decisive bite. "And Cooper is the polar opposite of Jameson. No! He's not even on the same spectrum as Jameson! He's amazing."

"Awwwwww," Marisol teased. "Someone's twitterpated."

Liz shook her head. "No, someone's happy."

"He was here earlier. I made him leave, though. I wanted to wallow and be mad." The cookie was gone, and I was sad about it, but the bubbling excitement in my chest was more than enough to make me forgo another. "Cooper just wants me to be happy." And saying the words made everything lock into place.

Cooper was a constant for me. We were building the one thing that felt real and solid. He had no expectations other than my happiness—our happiness—and he didn't want me to fit some idea in his head of what his boyfriend should seem like, act like, be like in order to make him look good.

"That's the goofy face of a man in love," Tori teased softly.

"He's just so good," I sighed with a hint of a whine.

"Tell us about him," Marisol urged again, this time kindly, no hint of teasing. "If our bestie is gonna date this guy, we need details."

"But not the naked ones," Liz blurted. "Keep those to yourself! I don't need to know about anyone's penis!"

"Except Robert's," Tori muttered.

I sat up. "Excuse me? Robert? As in Robert the groundskeeper? Robert with the pretty eyes? Robert with the arms?"

"Shut up," Liz whined. "This is about you!"

"And Cooper," Marisol intervened. "So spill."

"Right. We'll get back to Robert in a bit," I muttered. "Because hello, miss secret squirrel with this news!"

Tori cleared her throat. "Talk. Now."

So I did. And it was disgustingly sappy. Cooper's goodness, the way he didn't try to remake me, the way he respected keeping it quiet but not because he was ashamed... How kind he was. Smart and funny and how he made me feel. "Honestly," I said, pausing for a moment, weighing the words, "he's the first guy who saw me and not some idea of who they wanted me to be."

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