Page 55 of Pinkie Promise

I shove my tongue in my cheek and nod.

She’s going to send me videos of her cheer training sessions? Sweet baby Jesus.

“I should head now,” she says, blinking quickly as she glances behind herself. I don’t know what’s going on in her brain but that tiny crease on her brow is making me really not want to let her go.

I hate watching her leave me.

After a lot of squirming on her part I finally release her waist, and she flashes me a soul-warming smile, as if I’ve actually put her in a good mood.

“Bye Hunter,” she says. I press another hard kiss to her cheek, making her squeal happily before she turns to go.

“Bye Fallon.”

Chapter 15

Fallon

I hold my palms face-down on the mat underneath me, slowly sliding them further and further forwards until my forehead touches the floor. I ease my shoulders backwards and begin widening the stretch of my thighs, until my body makes a full T shape, my legs in a horizontal split. I hold the position for a good thirty seconds, feeling the sharp burn in my loins, before I place my hands shoulder-width apart and suddenly push my body upwards.

A small gasp whooshes out of my lungs as I propel my upper body from the ground, my legs in a perfect one-eighty degree split and my arms unwavering. I smile secretively as my cheer playlist blasts out of my phone, and the sharp chords in the music give me the motivation to raise my legs from horizontal to vertical. I hold my body in an extreme handstand before slicing my legs in opposite directions so that I’m now doing a front split, as opposed to my previous straddle split. I keep my toes in an elegant point and then I slash my legs back through the air, holding the stand before dropping into another split.

The ping on my phone makes me tip my head to the side. I drop the position, letting my chest thump hard against the mat as I reach out with my extended leg and kick my cell into grabbing distance. I settle into a ground-based side split as I click open my Messages.

The text is from Hunter.

HUNTER:Traffic’s being a motherfucker, I’m sorry. Only one minute away.

I look at myself in the wall-to-ceiling mirror in front of me, tempted to send him a photo of my current position. In the end I just switch back to my Music app and face-plant the mat in front of me, moaning as I move my hips and take the stretch as wide as it will go.

A warm tingle spreads through my waist and I hide my smile as I think about the other recent messages that we’ve been sending to each other.

After I finished my shift at the diner on Sunday, I showered and got into bed to send Hunter two videos that I had stored from my previous cheer sessions. They were instantly marked as ‘read’ and I clicked the top button on my cell, waiting for my home-screen to light up again with Hunter’s response.

After a good few minutes I finally got a swathe of short breathless messages.

HUNTER:Fuck.

HUNTER:Fallon.

HUNTER:Watched them both.

HUNTER:Multiple times.

HUNTER:Can we start tomorrow?

HUNTER:Need to see you.

Smiling, I ignored his messages and went to bed in a mood so good that I felt as if I would physically burst.

When I woke up I’d received four more messages at various points in the night, all of which simply read:Fuck.

So that’s why Hunter and I are starting my pre-events team training now, instead of over Christmas. I’m glad that he won’t have to stay on campus over the break for me because thatwould’ve made me feel guilty as sin, but, on the flip side, I’m also really happy that I get to start having more one-on-one time with him this term.

I push myself back into a handstand and hold the pose until I hear the jiggle of the lock on the door at the back of the room, followed by a series of heavy knocks on the wooden pane.

“Fallon? You in there?”

I cartwheel out of the pose and brush my clothes back into place.

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