Page 37 of The Baller

Goldilocks: Because I say so.

Lux: Playing hardball, I like it. Then I’m going with Jack Ryan. Complex, tough, does what he needs to save the country. Gotta respect that, right?

Goldilocks: You’re a philistine

Lux: How dare you! Jack Ryan saves the day every single time. Not unlike someone else you’ve recently met… *winky face*

Goldilocks: Is that what happened?

Lux: From what I remember, yes.

Goldilocks: I think you hit your head harder that you realized.

Goldilocks: I have to go, I’m at class now.

Lux: Study hard. Enjoy Elizabeth Bennett, even though she ranks somewhere in the low hundreds as a likeable character.

Iwaited to see if she’d bite back one more time, watching as thedot dot dotappeared then stopped.

Guess not.

I shut my phone off with a little chuckle and dropped it to the side, only to find Ace staring from the sunbed next to me, and not asleep like I thought he’d been. A few days in the sunshine, and his face was almost back to normal.

Parker and Tanner were on the deck below us, beers in hand, attempting to catch a Marlin. They were making adjustments to their fishing rods and staring out at the water like they’d done it a thousand times before. This was thefirsttime, and if Tanner didn’t move away from the edge of the deck soon, he’d be the one getting fished out.

Ace rolled onto his back and tugged on the waist of his shorts. They moved lower and lower as he shifted the band into a straight line, and retied the string, then pulled them down another inch.

“Duuude! Any further and your dick will be popping out, and I’m telling you right now, I’m not lying here while you sunbathe with your dick out.”

“My dick’s not coming out,” he griped, but tugged them back up regardless, and turned to me with the same annoying shit-stirring grin he wore seventy percent of the time.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he smirked, clearly making itsomething.

“What?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. I just like that you’ve met a girl, is all.”

“I…” I began then stopped.

Is that what had happened? I’d met someone?

Factually, Ihadmet a girl, kind of, in the physical sense thatwe’d been in the same space in real life and had a conversation. And for the past four days we’d been messaging… some… a little bit. It wasn’t like I’d been glued to my phone or anything.

“You’ve been glued to your phone.”

I sat upright and pinned Ace with a stare, or I would have if the sun wasn’t bouncing off the water and blinding me. “No, I haven’t.”

He pulled the edge of his sunglasses down and peered over, like my grandma did with her bifocals. “You’ve barely spoken since we got on the boat.”

“We’ve been on the boat an hour, and for forty-five minutes of that, you’ve been asleep,” I shot back.

He nodded to where I’d tossed my phone. “I was awake for the last fifteen minutes while you were tapping away over there.”

I shrugged. “She was on her way to class; I had a limited conversation window.”

“What’ve you been texting about?”

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