Page 45 of Playmaker

Normally, this would be the part when I’d leave. I’d make up some lame excuse about having to train or call it an early night, but for the second time, I find myself wanting to stay and talk with her.

I’ve known her my entire life. Until I got to high school she was one of my best friends, and I care so much for her. Now that we’ve rekindled our friendship, I feel more myself than I have in years, but with this added intimacy, I’m worried it’ll change things for us. We agreed to no expectations and to end this when we head back to school, but when that happens, will I lose this rekindled friendship too? I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle losing all of her again.

“Do you remember when we went to that ice-cream parlor the summer before you guys started high school?” she asks, dragging me from my thoughts. “When you got a slushy and you laughed so hard it came out of your nose?”

I laugh at the memory. It feels so long ago, and yet I can remember it vividly. It was the week before we all went to Myrtle Beach. “Yeah. Ethan was telling that stupid joke about a cow? Cat? I can’t remember what it was, but it wasn’t even that funny. I don’t know how that happened.”

“It was a cow,” she says, “and that was the first time I realized I was attracted to you.”

I sit up in disbelief. “Thatis the first time you thought I was hot? When a fuckingslushycame out of my nose? Mads, come on.”

“What?” She giggles, pushing some stray curls away from my face. “I couldn’t help it! Your laugh was obnoxiously cute. It still is.”

Her laugh is cute too. I’ve always been infatuated with the way her nose wrinkles up, or when she’s laughing so hard she can’t breathe and snorts. Maddie has always held my attention no matter what she does, but there is only one day I can think of when I had been about to spill all my feelings for her—the night I came to terms with the fact that there wasn’t a more beautiful human being on the planet than Maddie.

I bend down to give her a kiss and whisper, “Myrtle Beach.”

“Hm?” she asks.

“The summer your family took us to Myrtle Beach. You convinced me to sneak out, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive.”

At the mention of that night, her body stills. “That was when you were first attracted to me? I probably looked like shit, Cam.”

She didn’t. I still remember it as if it was yesterday. Her hair was in a messy bun, and she was wearing an oversized sweatshirt and a pair of my sweatpants I’d let her borrow, but that washer, and it was breathtaking.

“Well, if you want me to be honest, the first time I was attracted to you was definitely when you wore a bikini to the beach for the first time,” I admit. “Same vacation if I’m not mistaken.”

She rolls her eyes. “There’s the Cam I know.”

“What?” My hand drifts to her breasts beneath the comforter, loving the sharp little inhale she gives when I caress them. “I’m a guy. These wereverydistracting.”

When she laughs again and swats my hand away, all my worries fade. It’s just her and me, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

I don’t want to get up. I want to stay here with her all night long, but unfortunately, her parents and brother are under the same roof, and if her father caught us in bed together I’d be a dead man walking.

“Ugh,no,” she whines when I slide off the bed. I ignore the urge to crawl back to her while I slip my dress clothes back on. They’re uncomfortable and stiff, and now I’m regretting not asking Ethan to borrow a change of clothes.

When I’m finished, I find her panties and T-shirt scattered on the floor and pass them back to her. “This won’t be the last time we do this,” I say.

She grins. “I certainly hope not.”

I lean over the mattress to give her one last kiss, groaning when her hands rake through my hair. In seconds I’m hardagain, ready to spring into round two, but I pull myself away before I can get sucked in. It was dangerous enough doing this once tonight, let alone twice. “I need to see you as much as possible before we leave for the Grand Canyon.”

“Yes please,” she hums in agreement. “Maya can help out. She wouldn’t say a word to anyone if I asked her to cover for me. You know, just so I have an explanation for why I’m away from home so much.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” I give her a devilish grin and back up toward the door. “I hope you keep your energy up, Maddie Davis, because if we only have eight days left of this? I’m not going to keep my hands off you.”

“Looking forward to it, Holden.” She relaxes against her pillows, content and happy, and that tightening sensation happens in my chest again—the kind of feeling one gets before bungee jumping off a bridge or heading out to give a speech to a large audience. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s not foreign. I’ve gotten it before, and it’s fucking terrifying to know that the only other time I’ve felt it was again with her on that night in Myrtle Beach right before I was about to pour my heart out and stopped myself.

I had been about to tell her that I was in love with her.

Correction: Iamin love with her.

No matter how hard I tried to distance myself and push her away, the feeling never made it out of my system, and now I’m left to deal with the repercussions after telling her she should go on a date with someone who isn’t me.

It’s better this way, I tell myself.

Safer.

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