Page 16 of The Goalie

Now this time, I let myself smirk. “There’s a fine line between love and hate,” I said.

Josh, surprisingly, did not seem perturbed. “Not when it comes to Sam,” he said firmly.

“You know, she’s not as black and white as you think she is,” I said. I didn’t know why it mattered to me. I didn’t know why it was so important for me to tell him that, for him to understand it.

Before he could respond—and it did seem as though Josh wanted to respond—Sam came out of the bedroom with a small box filled with what appeared to be clothing and knickknacks.

“I think this is it,” she said, handing him the box. She took a step back so she was closer to me than she was to him. It made my heart skip a beat—something else I promptly ignored.

“Sam, since I’m here—”

“I think you should go,” she said quickly. She moved from me and headed for the door. “Dan and I have plans and I need to get ready. Thanks for stopping by.”

“But—”

“You heard her,” I interrupted, narrowing my eyes. “You should go.”

Josh glared at me, clenching his jaw. He gripped the box tightly and made his way out the door, muttering things under his breath.

Sam all but slammed the door and turned her attention back to me. She did not look happy.

8

Sam

“What doyou think you’re doing?” I turned from the closed door and glared at Dan. “Who do you think you are? I didn’t need help with that. I didn’t need help at all.”

“I wasn’t helping you,” he said, glancing down at his fingernails as though what happened was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

“Then why pretend to be my boyfriend?” It took everything in me not to stomp my foot. Despite everything else, the last thing I intended to do was act like a child. Even though being around Dan reduced me to bad ideas with good intentions, I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me reduced to a victim. Especially with Josh there.

Dan looked away. He dropped his hand back to his side. I wouldn’t exactly say that he was guilty, but there was something in his eye that seemed to be something like sympathy. That would have been worse than what Josh did this morning.

“Look, it’s not my business,” he said, walking around me and heading back to the kitchen.

“You made it your business by getting involved,” I pointed out. “Which means now I’m making it my business asking what the hell you were thinking by making it your business. What, you think you can just do whatever you want because we fucked twice?”

I followed him into the kitchen and stepped behind the stove. I grabbed a spatula and continued to make the eggs.

“No, of course not.” He looked at me from across the bar between us. “Lucy told me. Why you and Josh broke up.”

My mouth dropped open. Why the hell was my best friend telling her brother—the man I had made clear that I loathed with every fiber of my being—about my personal life? Why would Dan care about my breakup? He hated me just as much as I hated him.

“I didn’t ask,” he insisted. The buttery scent began to tickle my nose and I resumed moving the eggs around in order to scramble them. “I’m not—I would never invade your privacy. But she told me he was basically a dick who thought you were boring, and something rubbed me the wrong way about how he just shows up out of the blue at your place to pick up his things, like he was checking up on you.”

“He wanted to see if I was with someone,” I muttered. I turned off the stove and moved the pan to a cool burner.

“What do you mean?”

I reached up to my cabinets and grabbed a couple of plates.

“Josh called last night just before you showed up,” I said. “He wanted to pick up his stuff last night because he assumed I was doing nothing but sitting around, binge-watching television. And that happened to be exactly what I was doing, but the last thing I wanted him to know. So I lied.”

“You used me as a way to make your ex jealous?” He seemed confused.

I grabbed some eggs on the spatula and placed them on a plate. He went to my fridge and pulled out ketchup without even asking. As though he was comfortable with my place even though he’d only been over one night.

“No, I don’t care about making him jealous.” I didn’t know why it was important that he understood that, but I wanted to make sure he did. “I wanted him to know that I wasn’t the type of girl he assumed I was. The type of girl he broke up with me for being.”

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